Harvard ENGL E-129 - Lecture 8: Coriolanus

okay thank you you hear me okay good can everybody else hear me okay welcome back we're we're talking today about Coriolanus and we'll regroup and think about the Shakespearean romances for the rest of our semester on the board you'll find a revised schedule this is necessitated by the fact that the evening before Thanksgiving next Wednesday evening is not a university class meeting time according to the extension schools rules so we cannot have a class that evening and we're not having class that evening and we apologize for having put it into the syllabus in error and so we have slightly reorganized things I think in a way that's actually better because this will allow us to kind of have one culminating session right after the winter break on January 2nd to have what we call in this class a plenary discussion that is to say discussion that emanates from questions from all of you all of you meaning both those of you in the room and also those of you who will have communicated your questions by email or other communicate other modes of communication to mell or to Larry we'll start off wherever you want us to start off and we will talk about issues particular general linguistic cultural historical whatever it is that interests you most about the itinerary that we followed in looking at the later plays of Shakespeare so that will be our last class session and then for those of you who are taking the course for credit there will be the final exam and we're still able to maintain our rhythm of a play a week which i think is a good rhythm for us any questions about this and professor Garber I just wanted to tack onto that just to make it clear to everybody this is the revised schedule okay so I'm sure most of you got my email in which at first we thought it would be better to do Pericles in assembly both on the same day and then we decided this schedule would be much better so I will send out another email to you and to the folks at home so that we've got this in black and white so just note that this is a rear-vision yeah so so this this is the you never say final but this this is what we believe is the final schedule as I said I think it is better than the previous schedule that we had in any case because it allows us to bring the class to a close collectively rather than have a diminuendo of first a plenary and then a review as if those things were different in my sense the two activities are really the same they're an opportunity for us to look back over the semester and whether it passages it character is that Shakespearean development at whatever it is that interests you when we get to that point I'm gonna remind you and I'll try to remind you in late December and hopefully none of us forget it as we go through the holidays and into early January that the what we will do be discussing on the that day depends entirely upon your interests in your input so if you want your topics your characters your plays your critics whatever it is to be discussed rather than somebody else's please bring them forward to us in good time and we if we have two hours together we should be able to cover absolutely everything that is brought to our attention okay all set the but the play today is Coriolanus and let me begin again by seeing for how many of you this is a new experience the reading of Coriolanus how many have you have you have read it before seen it performed good okay this is a play which has come in for an enormous amount of critical attention in the 20th and 21st centuries it's the and and I'm going to go through with you for just a second or two some kinds of approaches that people have taken in to this play just to suggest to you how patience it is and how powerful it is as a play this is the play famously that TS Eliot in his essay called Hamlet and his problems said was a better play than Hamlet a more successful play than Hamlet and he wasn't joking really I mean he he it's it's not that he thought it was a greater play than Hamlet but he felt that it set out its premises better and fulfilled them more effectively there Harry Levin in a discussion of this play felt also that this was one of the greatest of Shakespeare's plays and a play that should have the richest meaning in our time as he said writing as early as 1934 this may strike you as rather terrifyingly prescient in terms of what was about to happen in Europe in the mid to late thirties certainly people have read this play as a play about tyranny about dictatorship about individuality about and it's been read as I think I explained in my chapter from from every possible political point of view it's been read with the idea of the oligarchy at the centre it's been read with the idea of the heroic individual at the centre as a reading focused on the figure of Coriolanus himself it's been played as a as a play focused upon the people called in this this text as you will have noticed very often of voices Berthold Brecht famously rewrote some scenes from this play so as to emphasize the degree to which the people where he thought the main characters of the play and the the the the politics of the play are far from secure that is to say it has been read very effectively from almost every possible political position won't surprise you having discussed other plays here in the last several weeks to see that that that various feminist readings of this play were also very available to readers in the latter half of the 20th century with this very strong figure of Volumnia the mother of Coriolanus who has also occasioned very powerful and differing psychoanalytic readings of the play depending upon whether you think that she's a good enough mother to use winnicott's phrase or whether she's the kind of mother who who denies food and such sustenance re to her son her certainly she is in the in the line that we'd begun to see a very strong powerful women in these later plays Lady Macbeth Goneril and Regan the the the this figure of Volumnia may be the most powerful and successful of them all and certainly the most dominant with respect to her child you'll notice that this is a play which unlike some other plays that we've looked at which have fathers no wives and daughters here we have a mother no husband and a son and the reversal of that trajectory here carries with it its own power it's a play that's also been looked at from the perspective of philosophical skepticism significantly in readings for example by Stanley Cavell and it's been looked at as a play about speech and speech acts about the degree to which words are deeds the degree to which remember that a speech act especially a performative speech act is a speech is a piece of speech that does something as well as saying something as well as declaring something and in this case the the various modes of declaration in this play from the the claims of banishment on both sides to the renaming of Coriolanus and the unnamed of Cour all have have real power for somebody who wants to look at speech act theory in connection with a play which is not usually where speech act is is is examined most recently this play has also entered into a lot of as you can guess from reading its its text a lot of conversations among critics about the body about gender and the body about the openness and closedness of the body about the above about embodiment altogether and the capacity or incapacity of the body itself to speak whether we're talking about Menenius is fable of the belly on the one hand the sort of parts of the body or speaking and we'll want to talk about that more explicitly or about the the inability the apparent inability the splenetic inability of Coriolanus himself to be an eloquent speaker and what that says and does in the course of the play the recent political readings have been extremely interested in questions of republicanism in the in the Civic sense not American Republicans and Democrats but the notion of Republican rule and what that has to do with this text and have taken very seriously the kind of political models that it is presenting out of classical history and what lessons might or might not have been learned from those models by 17th century political theorists they've also been historical readings and interesting historical readings that have tried to look at the fact that the history being remembered and enacted in this play like for example the the hunger of the plebeians of the citizens at the beginning of the play their their desire for corn for food their unwillingness to be fed with words instead would have echoed the corn riots of the early 17th century in the Midlands in England we'd have had therefore a kind of topical reference just as the this terrifying very strong maternal figure who dominates and motivates or emasculates or does both perhaps to her heroic son could have been looked at as a figure for the the what John Knox in an earlier treat is called the monstrous regiment of women the the terrifying regiment hear me rule the rule by women and the degree to which being ruled by women was itself a monstrosity because a world turned upside down whether the woman being imagined as ruling was the recently relatively recently deceased Queen Elizabeth James the first mother Mary Queen of Scots beheaded in the 1580s or the various women still on Thrones and in power throughout England so that the the historical readings as always with a play like this touch upon many different historical moments the historical moment in which the history of Coriolanus took place in classical Rome the historical moment in which Shakespeare was writing the play and it was being produced the historical moment in which variously the play has been read interpreted produced enacted one last word just along these lines productions I have seen and fairly recently of this play have tended to emphasize this multi historicity by often having costumes from different time periods so that you might have a gladiator and a Doughboy and somebody in Vietnam camouflage and so forth so that a a Redcoat so that should have a whole sedimented series of different historical modes of soldiering or of other kinds of costuming so that rather than picking an historical period into which to produce the play to produce it as a play about the end of World War two or as a play about Vietnam or as a play about ancient Rome you might produce it as it often has been produced recently as a play about all wars at all times and about what it means to be a hero or a figure pushed into the position of a hero who recognizes or doesn't recognize his own hollowness in that regard so this is just to give you some very broad overview of the kind of cultural impact that this play has had on the last century or century and a half before we turn to talking about specific portions of the play let me turn to you to see what you might want to say about these historical and critical intersections are you all dying of the heat may I ask if it's yes you don't think it's on I see okay I'm sorry okay well let's see which one it is except better believe me it's equally warm up here okay so shall I say all that all over again were you in the hall able to hear me yes okay good okay but maybe the call could be made outside the room thanks so much I think you know where are we the 14th of November I think the expectation was of a different kind of climactic climatic moment different climatic moment from what we actually have so questions comments about about about the broad historical or interpretive sweep of this play yes wait we have to wait for the microphone I read a lot I'm speaking to microphone sir I've recently read some some Homer and Sophocles and I'm astonished by the by the intensity with which Shakespeare recreates the the classical ideal that you find in in in in things like the the end of the Iliad where Achilles turns into a machine of death or figures like Ajax in the south and Sophocles who rejects all of it tries to reject all of his family ties it's just it's just astonishing the way he recreates that that classical feeling well let's let's let me try to and thank you very much for that let me try to unpack that a little bit when we say recreates we may not mean imitates or even is familiar with the classical original but reinvents for his own age that's the one thing I would say about that and the other thing I would say is that we're looking at this from our own perspective so these are our own notions of what this classical heritage might be like and to a certain extent that our taste in these things is shaped by Shakespeare that it's that our notion about what what what kinds of because when we're dealing with the classics we dealing with translations presumably we're dealing again with with a with modern writers rewriting ancient texts so so let's let's let's put a little pressure on this question of classical ideals or classical notions yeah good is there anything anachronistic about the the Weeping that becomes so important at the end I mean in the Classical like in classical Greece it wasn't considered unmanly for a manta to we've to shed tears well we've thank you for this question that we've had a number of cases in the last several weeks in which Shakespearean men have resisted weeping and then have wept or been invited to weep and in in those cases have actually functioned a little bit differently from this moment where this is the moment where uh phidias says thou boy of tears now it's not clear that he is weeping rather than just having a kind of a tantrum yes that refer to the tears that he'd shed in his conversation with Volumnia and a few scenes earlier well that'd be the reconciliation scene between them yes and that could be that could well be that and in that case the so called on Manning is again he is his submission to the will of a woman in this case his his mother but but nevermind but remember King Lear with don't let women's weapons water drops stain my man's cheeks and then then the storm weeps for him and so forth and then then when he awakens the question again is who is weeping he is he weeping or his Cordelia weeping and the much discourse in that play about tears the Macduff at the end of Macbeth we talked about this a little bit the degree to which he pulls his hat over his brows or at least so says his interlocutor and he doesn't want to weep and he is told to give sorrow its way and in fact that that that weeping while he thinks of it as a woman in activity could also be a manly one so this question tears are very important in these texts and this question of of whether you can sir so that so let's look at the taunt for example thou boy of tears how know how might Coriolanus have responded to that as a figure how does he receive it and how might he receive it remember this is this isn't we were starting at the end of the play but we can we can start here and then go backward because this is the the stripping scene basically this is the scene of the the the removal from Coriolanus of the carapace of various social honors and especially names that he has accumulated up to this time and that really function for him as a protection against a a confrontation with himself but he he develops a whole series of of names and of identities and then a phidias very connolly begins to strip him of them toward the end and the the the first name to go is Karen Coriolanus and then he says my name is Marcia's name not the God thou boy of tears that so that that all of these public names and all of these names that have to do with a certain kind of heroism of phidias is attacking him by by subtracting leaving him back in the position in which he very much does not want to be that is the position of the boy with respect to his mother sir wait you want to wait for the he responds with anger rebuking them and basically not yielding in any way yeah I mean there so there's no moment of recognition on his part at that there's no accommodation as there and for most of these characters there's in fact that not not an accommodation of the idea that that weeping is part of the human rather than part of the defended masculine here and that's that that's that's how we ping seems to be functioning in these plays as a it's either a an activity coded female or an activity coded not male or not heroic or but this this speaks again to this question of the openness of the male body here that one of the ways in which he would be open would be that the the that his tears would flow that he would not be defended or contained against that and again much of the recent criticism about Coriolanus has talked about his openness rather than his close admissible thing let's let's start let's let's return maybe a little bit to the chronology of the plane or to see how he gets back to that position if we can it's this is as with so many of the place we've looked at again we hear a lot about the title character before we encounter him where the situation is developing without him and then he appears into it what is happening at the very beginning of this play yes some of the citizens are speaking and they feel they're starving and nobody's caring for them and that Coriolanus has no interest in their welfare and ever he's not yet Coriolanus of course his case Martius okay and that what he did he did for his own pride they said there they have an opinion about him and their opinion about him is just a contrary to what we saw at the beginning that name Cleopatra where you heard rather grandiose statements about the heroes and then they appeared and they were being measured against images of their own greatness so to speak in and and with Troilus and Cressida you may recall those characters were for us being measured against their cultural reputation which had preceded them although they were were were unaware of that in this case marshes has a reputation and it is an indigenous reputation reputation within Rome and among the citizens so-called he they are not fans of his they're not supporters of his why these characters called citizens in Italy you know I supposed to be in a way they're faceless they're not individuals to him they're of a mob they're they're a group which you can't trust in battle you can't trust in the street and they they talk as one you know they talking individual voices but it's all the same to him yeah but citizen citizen also would have had as the name implies a certain kind of Civic Association it was a word which in Shakespeare's own time referred to the residents of London for example it's a it's a a low social rather than a middling sort or a high social location and it's it suggests from the very beginning a kind of commonality between the historical circumstance that we're looking at and maybe the current day circumstance maybe just the play itself one question in there on the other side Coriolanus is is there a soldier ideal there or what is the other I mean the great person in Rome is purely as a great soldier a great man and battlers or something beyond that in terms of political I'm sure you asking me about in the time of Coriolanus yeah I mean is a soldier ideal of the main ideal for the for the senator for the for the note this is a very very very early in the history of Rome this is not whatever war all the time and everything that the only ideal so ruler for him and it's the soldier idea well let's look at the modes of manhood that the play actually presents us with it prevents it presents us with generals and with with with whether it's convenience or courtliness Margaret Gaius marshes or o phidias the volscian general what other modes of manhood does the play suggest to us there are the senators who are kind of elder statesmen and in addition to the general so there there is another way and some people like cominius seem to combine be able to combine both roles yeah welcome it cominius has has a public persona which is exactly what KS Martius doesn't want to have but again it's based upon his being a good general so that that's those are the other figure that we see of course at the beginning in the figure that we're about to seeing is seen as Menenius who occupies a very different social space who is old wordy skilled politician powerful for reasons that have very little to do with with with with Warcraft per se but who's also vulnerable for that reason so I think all that we can do in looking in a play like this is to see what kinds of models the play itself presents for us because or whether by illusion or by representation that because otherwise we since we're we're not talking about real ancient Rome and we are only trying to imagine what the belief structures were the historical structures were in Shakespeare's England we we have no way of verifying these models except to see how them how their their structure here but the opening scene gives us I think a very good sense of how that that those issues are opposed because these dissensions as as marshes will then call them who have it's arguable a very good case to make that they are starving that they need support that they need food and so forth are about to be managed politically and they're about to be managed by Menenius with his fable of the body and the what very briefly somebody kind of summarize for us what the fable of the body or the table of the belly is here yes he tells the story about how all the other organs in the body mutant eyes against the stomach or the belly am assuming it's the same thing and then he goes on to say that the belly provides you know the nutrition for the rest of the body so even if you don't see it or they don't the organs of the body don't see it whatever so then he makes the comparison to the belly being the center of Rome the the console or whatever and then the rest of the body parts being these ungrateful other body parts right see the connection right right this is you will all know not an original thought with Shakespeare it is brilliantly brought to life by Shakespeare but this is an old political theoretical notion about the body politic about exactly exactly the idea of the working together of these body parts this the theory of the body politic so-called begins with this kind of metaphor and the body is an actual player in the notion of the body politic that's the kind of metaphor that we wear we've forgotten to a certain extent the fact that it was a metaphor to begin with but it's something that shows up in Livy it is then we translated into it but by political theorists in Shakespeare's day he's working very much with a familiar image of the body and with with notions about natural and political discourse here the what's what the genius of the Shakespearean representation of it is it is like an atom cartoon as the Menenius himself notices very well look you I can make the belly smile as well as speak that that this this rather slumber anatomical description comes to life and and he's and think of it as I mean think of it like b-movie where these bees or speaking about the hive and so forth again if by my reading of the reviews is correct these are all you know male bees in a society which is exactly entirely female society but the so the fable of the bees is here remade for a modern social world which unreflective Li imagines that that you know young persons going out into the world or normatively male or rather than normatively female at the power structure in b-movie is male even though whole hive is in fact a Pia logically so to speak female so here to you have an image of the body which is like an animated cartoon in which Aeneas is able to tweak the inherited body discourse in order to both entertain them and also calm them and and disarm them let's let's look a little bit more closely at the text here see how this works about act 1 scene 1 of that line 95 there was a time when all the bodies members rebelled against the belly thus accused it that only like a golf it did remain in the midst of the body idle and you know on active still courting the vine still storing up food never a bearing like labor with the rest where the other instruments should see adhere devise instruct walk feel and mutually participate did minister unto the appetite and affection common of the whole body to the complaint of these other members is the belly does nothing the belly answered person simple well sir what answer made the belly sir I shall tell you with the kind of smile which nare came from the lungs but even the so it's not like a burp it's like an inadvertent smile it's a deliberate smile for look you I may make the belly smile as well as speak it tauntingly reply to the discontented members notice that this word members here is playing into a role that it means body parts members you know the hands as members and the feet as members and so forth it also means social members mm-hmm mutinous parts that envied his receipts that is what the stomach the belly receives even so most fitly as you malign our senators for that they are not such as you so he's going to punctuate this fable with some moral interpretation in case anybody's not getting it First Citizen your bellies answer what the kingly crown at head the vigilant eye the counselor heart the arm our soldier our steed the leg now again these are all the equivalence this is the signifier and the signified these are equivalence that seemed to work our leg is like a seed the heart is like a counselor the arm is like a soldier and in these these in this his retelling of the fable of the body as the first citizen understands that all these parts have these noble roles the tongue our crumpet er with other mutants and petty helps in this our fabric if that they what then for me this fellow speaks what then what then so he's making fun of the way in which the fable was being taken over by the first innocence the former agents I'm skipping a line or two if they did complain what could the belly answer I will tell you says Menenius if you'll bestow a small of what you have little patience a while you just hear the belly's answer for a citizen you're long about it note me this good friend your most grave belly was deliberate not rash like his accusers and thus answered now once you look at words like rash you need patience and so forth because these are his his critiques of the citizens but they're very shortly going to be critiques that could easily be made about marshals truly is my in corporate friends quoth he that I receive the general food at first which you live upon and said it is because I am the store in the shop of the whole body but if you do remember I send it through the rivers of your blood even to the court the heart to the seat of the brain and through those cranks and offices of man the strongest nerves and small interior veins from me receive that natural competency we're being lit they live and though that all whence you good my good my good friends this says the belly marked me that I should say I'm not telling you this this is you know my story only I sir well well but once cannot see what I do to liver out to each yet I can make my audit up but all from me do back receive the flower of all and lead me from but the brand what say you to it what do you think about this narrative it was an answer how apply you this so here's here's remember I talked to you a couple weeks ago about emblems in the English Renaissance and and books of emblems in which there was a picture there was a moral and then there was a poem that extrapolated it so here we're gonna get the the rationalization of this the Senators of Rome are this good belly and you the mutinous members what do you think you the great toe of this assembly and Erie's he's breaking out of this classical picture of the steed the leg and so forth to pick a very inglorious member the big toe I the great toe i degree toe for the being one of the lowest basest poorest of this most wise rebellion thou goest for most you stick out in front even though you're not a very noble member that rascal there are worst in blood to run leadest first to win some Vantage so he tells the fable of the belly and he's got them entertained he's got them like a good politician in the palm of his hand and now we have enter chaos marshes hail noble marshes thanks what's the matter you dissension rogues that rubbing the poor each of your opinion make yourselves scabs so here we have body parts again but their body parts that have to do with disease and with injury not with wholeness and not with the heroic structure that the people are indeed part of the body politics exactly the kind that you hope will disappear rubbing the poor each of your opinion so it's all about effect and desire and symptom 'it is a ssin rather than about nobility and classical structure and so forth and he won't stop talking this way for a citizen we have ever your good word he that will give good words to thee will flatter beneath have whoring what would you have you curves what occurs dogs that neither like nor peace nor war the one affrights you the other makes you proud he the crust to you where he should find you lions finds you hairs where foxes geese you are no sure Noven is the coal of fire upon the ice or hail stone in the sun and so forth who deserves greatness deserves your hate and your affections are a sick man's appetites who desires most that which would increase his evil he goes on at great length particular rising the the degree to which any noble person cannot depend upon them he that depends upon your favors swims with fins of lead and hues down oaks with rushes that is with straws or bobtails cut cattails what's the matter that in these several places of the city you cry against the noble senate in this encounter with him what do we learn about marshes as contrasted with Menenius and as contrasted with the common people you know of the citizens and he lets them know that directly right right so here just even here before we get to his heroism before we get to his refusing to expose himself to the people as a candidate before before we get to his unwillingness which will is crucial to ask for their voices ask for their votes to pretend to be the a good candidate here and this is the plate that's often read incidentally in the month of November and together with the idea of American academic politics or national politics to in this case what do we what what kind of sense do we have about his capacity to use the language he's pretty articulate in all the wrong ways yeah he has no he has no he doesn't seem to have any power to persuade like the senators do so how do you judge him at this point do you judge him as noble because he declines to make nice to the common people but pretty clearly Menenius has no higher opinion of these folks than Coriolanus but he has a very different way of approaching him yes it seems arrogant arrogant and so you judge him negatively in the entire play I mean he is haughty toward them well don't they deserve it so should he lie to them and say I mean that if he's haughty and they deserve it what would be better politics what would be better a better social model and how do you feel about that after speaking to microphone could you speaking of microphones in hell it's his destiny in a way - in the model of his heroism well and that is the kind of hero that he is goes through various stages so let me get clear about what you mean by destiny do you mean something like that adage that we have cited from classical drama and talked about that character for mankind is fate that his persona produces both his moments of achievement and his moments of self-destruction what do you mean I guess like King Lear in the sense that you know they do certain things and the scene I see I see so you're talking about the tragic model here about the fall of a great man because all the characters in the in these plays behave according to I mean the other way around our sense of them as characters comes from what they say and what they do and the relationship between those those two things but in this case because he is the central figure in the plane because we track what happens to him it looks as if the the entire structure of what happens is it is produced by his view of himself by his self blindness by the blind spots that also make it possible for him to be heroic so so my question then really had more to do with with whether the the image of heroism here to come back to this he is also inevitably a fee an image of both self blindness and of of partial rather than wholeness do you have to be a wounded person in order to be hero I'm kind of puzzled by this because I you know I see everything he does is self-destructive I mean he destroys himself ultimately his act his actions are going to be self-destructive of preserving harmony or order in Rome as a government official mm-hmm at the end of the play of phidias you know lists his flaws pride lack of judgment singleness of nature and that he says but he has merit to choke it in the utterance in other words his merit overwhelms all of these flaws he's a being but I I was always taught that a heroic figure especially a tragic heroic figure has to have tragic recognition has to understand himself finally in the end and I'm wondering if this character really understands himself in the end if he well okay let's let's let me again let me try to reverse the telescope began here because the leaving aside the little frame I was always taught these these structures of this must do that this is the pattern and these the only law that makes this up is the concretion of our observation of individual histories so we could say that macbeth does or does not get the point of what's happened to him that Lear does or does not get the point of what's happened to him that he even at the end he is thinking that Cordiale he's alive that the two of them can go off and sing like birds in a cage there there there is a sense of the recognition just to use Lear as my model here again the recognition of poor bear forked animals of the thing itself and so forth but whether there's a moment when the Lear figure says oh I see that's very often in these plays it's a partial sight if it's that at all you may feel that there's a moment in this play that when Coriolanus could see himself and does not but maybe we should revise our paradigm including this play rather than to say this is a play which doesn't fit what we think or have thought up to this point is the tragic paradigm that's actually the very strong invitation that I came here this evening to to offer to you and that is the possibility of revising backward even our understanding of how these patterns might work by looking at what might seem to be something that is slightly eccentric to the pattern please let me just restate it then I find this guy hard to like ah many do many do but but that's that's that was really my point before as well that the and that's that's the again there have been people who have thought he was terrific and people who thought he was a spoiled brat you know a jerk a pampered mama's boy whatever that is a protected patrician somebody who came became famous too early and who didn't ever you know have to go up the hard way and so forth who knows what it is but there are there are people TSLA is one of them but there are lots of critics for whom he is nobleness precisely lies in his intolerance for what he thinks of as the mediocre and that so that the the there's not gonna be one right answer here this is again this is more than almost any play we've looked at it up to this point this is a play where opinions about the title character have very enormous Lee and where how you regard the title character or you know where you're you begin with in terms of politics but let's say we're how you regard the title character is going to influence how you see not necessarily the successfulness of the but but what it's what its implications are yes right back there back there I I don't think that oiliness has ambition political ambition like Macbeth had I think he's a simple soldier he's good at what he does he doesn't he calls a spade a spade I in the beginning we we as we go along we learn more about him but and we find out more about him but at the beginning he's nothing there's nothing wrong with him there's nothing negative about him he just is he doesn't play games he doesn't try and win over the crowds like Menenius does he doesn't con them along like he does but he just straightforward soldier that's what he does that's what's good at well I agree with what 99% of that but I wouldn't call him simple and I really wouldn't call him straightforward he's a very complicated psychological figure I think and he is but his ideals such as they are have to do with heroism in warfare with being the single one alone I did it he rushes into the city of Crowley's before anybody else he that will look in a second at Kamini is's speech beginning I shall lack voice the deeds of Coriolanus should not be uttered feebly that went kind of wonderful use of that topos of inexpressive ility that then goes on for wonderful lives and what I do want to look at that to talk about what's great about Coriolanus but but but that to say that he's simple I mean first of all nobody you Shakespeare whoever it says he is himself simple is simple Richard the third or Henry the fifth or whatever it is but in this case his his relationship certainly to Volumnia also to both of the mail or all three maybe of the male models that he's dealing with cominius o phidias and Menenius is very complicated he is relationship to his wife and his son is complicated these are not simple relations I think but there's something uncompromising about him there's there's something about him that will not make a deal and or doesn't want to make a deal whether the deal is running for office and extra his wounds and so forth it this business of not being willing to show the wounds that again has stirred so much interest in very recent critics in this question of his body and whether the body speaks and whether there is something that something that renders his body not at neither male nor female in its self exposure and its refusal to the two to self expose the his and also the reconciliation scene with the mother in which he he remember the he wants to think of himself as an author of himself who has no other kin he divorces his mother so to speak he divorces his wife and his child hypothetically because these are painful encroachments upon him and because somehow the human feelings that he has toward them keep him from having that frozenness of demeanor that self protectiveness of not feeling that is the carapace into which he begins to to pull himself after these moments of injury so that the the the paradox about him has to do with the fact that his moments of human feeling so to speak and his moments of relationship are also those moments that ultimately bring him to his doom so it's a you could say it's another kind of retelling of this fable of the belly in which his connectedness to the socio lack to the to the world of people to the to the nuclear family as we would call it and they would not but to the to the mother to the wife to the son to the the the old father of Aeneas who is the stand-in for the father here that his rejection of all those things is so aggressively self protective and because he feels that to be a man he can you must not feel and or at least he must not feel in the domestic he must not feel in the social where he can feel as in the Marshall and that's where the complicatedness of his relationship to a phidias and to Comenius comes in as well yeah please good you have you were right to rebuttal absolutely just very briefly I think that's what I mean by simple yes his personality stays the same everything else weaves around him let's say that this comes back to the question that we head up over here earlier which i think is a really important one as to whether he that whether or not he has a moment of recognition he has several moments in which he seems to recognize something whether what he recognizes is himself is maybe another question but whether there is a change in him or whether heat whether the world changes around him and he remains stable that's a very good question I think for us who feels that there that there are yes I think he's a he's an anti politician you know in the in a very political play in other words everybody else in the play is concerned with some aspect of political life right and they're also everybody else in the play is concerned with it constantly talks about their opinion of him and in fact most of them would seem to be able to find in his virtue even in his virtuous flaws I mean the very first citizens talk about talk about well really he's he's only joining this army in order to you know if if it succeeds he'll take all of akka meanness glory if it doesn't succeed he can blame it on Caminos when in fact he he doesn't want any credit for the victory when it occurs and I think he does have one moment of self he has a moment of self realization when he breaks his bond so to speak in the and gives in to Volumnia he recognizes that it is a mortal yes choice right right most mortal to him I mean that's that that's that that's maybe the moment that one would look at in which he says this is a choice this is a decision most were the that he's talking about the the mother having prevailed and that this is most mortal to him which means has the usual double meaning of about to cause his death making him alive and this the the moment of his mortality is the moment of his non immortality yeah but also the moment of his is being able to feel and so this but I hear we would find I think a consistency with with the pattern of Lear and the pattern of Macbeth in that the moment of concession and self-abandonment here is also the moment of re self claiming that that that he has to lose himself to find himself that there's a would take one more question and then I think would probably have to take a break yes I'm sorry you can try to speak for some time past that point now I just wanted to mention one of the scenes that I found sort of endearing about is when he's in disguise at the house of phidias and and and he's incorrigible I mean he treats the he's there he is in rags and he's indubitably himself right yes yeah no I it's it's a wonderful scene on stage as well it's a great scene I quite agree I think we are constrained by our tape and our time to take a five-minute break we'll regroup in maybe seven minutes ah and a question right away okay I promised that we would start by talking about the question of whether in the play at least deeds of war inevitably dehumanize whether because this speaks to this same question that we were talking about a few minutes ago the question of whether he's better than or worse than regular people so to speak and the the speech that led to this this question and speaks that I promised you that we look at anyhow is Kamini is's speech I shall lack voice in act 2 scene 2 I promise it will get to the next question as soon as we looked at this so it's act 2 scene two this is the praise of course by the eloquent convenience of the less eloquent Coriolanus the citizens seek yes indeed we're no height okay you haven't missed anything we're we're we're trying to enter into the question of whether an argument within the play is that heroism and war is inherently or consistently or persistently a dehumanizing activity it's a good question for the contemporary world so we're looking I'm just gonna read you briefly or not so briefly since its long this wonderful speech by cominius beginning I shall lack voice the speech that I've mentioned a few minutes ago the invitation comes from Menenius that committee is that general will proceed and speak the praise of Coriolanus who has left but the sage baron lied I had rather have one scribe would rather one scratch my head in the Sun when the alarms were struck then I'd lease it to hear my nothings monstered so again I I would be treated like a toy or a dog or some other kind of figure rather than a soldier if I were to stay here and listen to the monstering that is from the word monstro meaning to show to demonstrate but also making myself into a monster my nothing's monster at my achievements blown up into a kind of a caricature so he leaves and we have this feature committees I shall lack voice the deeds of Coriolanus should not be uttered feebly this is as I say that that in express ability to oppose I can't possibly give you his praise which I'm about to give you it is held that valor is the chiefest virtue and most dignifies the haver if it be the man I speak of cannot in the world be singly counterpoise nobody matches at 16 years when Tarquin made a head for Rome he fought beyond the mark of others our then dictator who with all praise I point out saw him fight when with his Amazonian chin he drove the bristled lips before him what is an Amazonian chin here young boy doesn't doesn't have it doesn't shave yet he drove the bristled lips before him so he's he's young the other soldiers are older or men he's a boy so is that hidden boy again to which we're gonna be returning heba straighten or pressed Roman and in the consuls views through three slew three opposers torqulon's self he met and struck him on his knee and say make him kneel in that dais feets when he might act the woman in the scene he proved the best man in the field and for his Mead was brow bound with the oak what does it mean he when he might act the woman in the scene could have been a boy actor but he also could have behaved not like a man but like a non man here I mean as with Macbeth the opposite of man could be woman could be weeping person could be boy it could be child we might ask the woman in the scene he proved best man in the field and for his meat was brow bound with the oak that is the garland of course of heroism his pupil aged men entered us so he's a student but he be he's already become a man he never was a pupil really he wax it like a sea so here we have already his his transformation into a natural force in the brunt of 17 battles since he lurched all Swords of the garland that is to say he won every possible award for this last before and in cariah's let me say I cannot speak him home hears that in express ability again I can't say enough I can home meaning you know perfectly okay I can't my words are inadequate he stopped the Flyers and by his rare example made the coward turned terror into sport as weeds before a vessel under sail so men obeyed and fell below his stem his sword deaths stamp where it did mark it took from face to foot he was a thing of blood whose every motion was timed with dying cries alone he entered the mortal city gate of the city which he painted with sunless destiny a bliss came off and with a sudden reinforcement struck Corelli's like a planet what is the mortal gate of the city here yes yeah the dangerous the the potentially definitely to him but this the mortality is theme of mortality as the speaks against this question of the thing so that the mortality here is located in the space or mortal the word mortal is located in the space of death rather than the space of the humane here the mortal gate of the city but a gate is also a breach and this speaks again to this question of the openness of the body and it's therefore vulnerability but in this case it's the city that is open it is he who who penetrates the city and he has become a thing his every every stroke motion is it was time with dying cross who who so the cries who's dying sorry yes the the the enemy so-called that people whom he's he's killing here so so this is the speech in which he gets transformed rhetorically from boy to men to thing of blood and we may see this as a kind of apocalyptic image if we like that he emerges as a thing of blood as a kind of avenging figure of Revelation but in any case what we also have here is the refusal of childhood the refusal of woman the transcendence of man and the becoming instead of a thing now this is meant as praise this is meant be the kickoff of the Coriolanus campaign that now he's going to get his surname his addition Coriolanus and he's going to enter from this is again not not unknown to our modern era could enter from the marshal into the political but he's the the description of him runs exactly counter to that yes this description of him in battle I was thinking of Macbeth in the description we get of Macbeth at the beginning of the play where he unseen him from the nave to the chops this from face to foot he was a thing of blood right and then of course he does get this this title after this glorious combat as Macbeth does as well right but to push that a little further it seems to me that Coriolanus refuses ambition and Macbeth embraces it maybe a contrast well again I you know it depends upon what we mean by ambition I wouldn't say that he is on ambitious but he's ambitious for undying which might also mean unliving Fame not for money not for power not for me if we want to restrict the notion of ambition to the idea of civic or kingly power then we say well Macbeth is ambitious but I don't think that this is an unambitious figure it's just that he's ambitious to become something quite different from a political figure but I don't think that he's without I mean there isn't there is a becoming modesty to him and his his ambition and his modesty are are our versions of the same so I think I mean I it's not that I disagree with you really but I think that it's not that he doesn't want something it's just that what he wants is not something he wants to depend upon people to get yes well I was thinking about balunia and do you think that it's only she who could have reached through finally to her son because it was she a powerless creature who created this hero warrior and made him so successful what do you think our 'less well I think as a woman she had Roberts impotence that's that's that's what you think over here where do you find it the play hmm where do you find it in place I don't really this well it's the same question about the course of heroism about ambition and so forth that that our invitation her name is Volumnia her name isn't minima that that women in Rome at that time at least we're behind the scenes well you know I grip Pina I mean there there are power historically there are powerful women in Rome but but this is not wrong it's not isn't even England it's it's just a play but the references to Rome erm certainly president well it just seemed to me that she she helped create this great he wrote warrior after all that's crippled him to some extent because she didn't create a fully human person he was never able to move between he was intractable because he couldn't you didn't have the ability to move away from all he all he knew it was only she in the end you maybe could reach him I think this is absolutely the case that that that she has created him but I think that we should look at the passage in which I'm trying to quickly find it here the this the the that much commented upon passage in which the idea is that she the breasts of Hecuba that's suckled Hector look not more beautiful than her his fitting blood you know that the the idea that she refuses milk and that she wants from him blood instead that this that she creates him in a model that is very very much somebody find this passage for me really quickly while I'm hunting if I should have it written down I'm sorry to say I don't but let's look at another another Vilonia moment while I look for this and that's the moment when having created him in this martial image she then in his view betrays of a model that he you know he thinks he's done it just right and then she says to him well come on what's a little pretence was a little lie was a little acting after all and for him this is a matter of tremendous psychological reversal this and and and here we are in act 3 scene 2 about that page that about line 70 actually if you go back with me as far as line 46 this is the where she's she's changing the rules basically she now is suggesting to him that haven't done this other thing it's time to to become ambitious in the worldly sense if it be honor in your wars to seem the same you are not how is it less or worse that it shall hold companionship in peace with honor as in war since that to both it stands and like requests so you pretend certain kinds of things in war why not do it here in peace and now moving over to about line 73 I prithee now my son go to them with this banach in my hand and thus far having stretched it here be with them by me bussing the stones kneel or remember the passage we just looked at he made Tarquin kneel 14 such business action is eloquence in the eyes of the ignorant more learner than the ears here we're obviously speaking in a coded way about actors on the stage and Groundlings and the audience as well as about about what actions why it might have meant in ancient Rome waving the head which off thus correcting thy stout heart now humble as the ripeness mulberry that will not hold the handling say to them thou art their soldier being bred in Broyles at his battles has not the soft way which thou dost confess were fit for thee to use remember who else hadn't had exactly said that didn't have a soft way of speaking because it was soldier it's a fellow yes exactly what thou wilt frame thyself forsooth hereafter there's so far as thou has power and person so she devises for him and acting scheme a scheme of performance of dissimulation action is eloquence and he really is disconcerted by this come-come will prompt says cominius Volumnia i prithee now sweet son as thou has said my praises may be first a soldier so to have my praise for this it's never gonna be enough it's never gonna be enough perform a part though hast not done before and so this this this escalating language of the theatre perform a part will prompt you action is eloquence and so forth is bringing to the surface of this language of the theatre here changes the rules but also we see in present time not as recounted by somebody else we see the present moment well I must do it away my disposition and possess me some harlots spirit now the harlot here is not a prostitute but a vagabond of a certain kind my throat of war be tuned returned which quired with my drum into a pipe small as an eunuch now if you know the early plays of Shakespeare you could go all the way back to Richard the thirds opening soliloquy in in that play in which he talks about how the the the marshal marches again are now turned into two dancing measures and the pipe and the lute have replaced somehow the language the drama and the war small as a eunuch what's a eunuch again and emasculated the male who's been castrated and whose voice in case of a castrato especially a masculine a young whose voice has not changed into a pipe sorry is a eunuch of a musical instrument according to the note in this edition it says it's a small fleet shaped musical instrument my goodness okay make sure but you know I don't know I'm just reading it there yeah i does not doesn't save her in my note the other scholars have a view about this never and then we have to look it up we'll have to look it up and see whether that's the case the the piping voice here now again remember we're we have a male actor playing Coriolanus talking to a male actor boy actor playing Volumnia talking about the transformation of the male voice into a piping voice which hasn't changed yet like the voice of a eunuch or the virgin voice that baby is lawlessly that sentence means that that law baby is asleep that that so the the these this is the voice of a eunuch or a woman here the smiles of knaves tint in my cheeks and schoolboys tears here they are again here are those tears schoolboys tears take up the glasses of my sight a bigger is tongue make motion through my lips and my armed knees which bowed but in my stirrup the only time I bent my knees was when I was riding a horse bend like his that have received it alms like becoming a bigger here again I will not do it list I sir cease to honor my known truth and by my body's action teeth by mind a most inherent baseness at the choice then to beg of thee tis my more dishonour than thou love then come all to ruin let thy mother rather feel thy pride mises so is such a contemporary notion then fear thy dangerous stoutness for i mock at death with as big as hard as thou do has that list I mean you can see this in the novels that Philip Roth that I value this was mine thou sucked it from me but o thy pride thyself so again she's taken all the manhood is herself I was the value one you got it from my nursing breast but oh that is own thy pride myself pray be content mother I am going to the marketplace chide me no more I'll mountebank their love so it's a mountebank it's a charlatan is especially kind of a snake oil salesman it's a kind of a charlatan who was in business to make money from false products and things like that the mountebank their loves cog their hearts from them and come home beloved of all the trades in Rome now what does that mean what's trades mean here the workers yes exactly all those common those artisans the the shoemaker and the cobbler and all those people who show up the beginning of scenes in Romeo and Juliet or here in Julius Caesar I'm going to prostitute myself in front of these unworthy people for you look I am going commend me to my wife I'll return consul or never trust what my tongue can do in the way of flattery further so still coached by them mildly mildly and so forth he goes off to violate everything that he thinks he was taught so that the we've talked here about the trajectory of desire and how you never achieve your desire in this case what he never achieves is pleasing his mother he never finally met the the image that he has created of himself in order to be the person that she wants him to be or to be the thing that she wants him to be never ultimately matches up with that with with her that this this is deferred and deferred and deferred and deferred until that scene that we talked about before and I'd like to move to that that that other Ville of Nghia is seen now while we're still thinking about her the scene in act 5 scene scene 3 when you may remember he has he has fled Rome in order to flee these human connections that he wants to be a mad the lonely dragon and his fan author of himself as if and had no other kin that roam and mother which are the same thing for him are that which he feels he must banish because he feels banished by them and he goes over to the side of the enemy and begins to fight against them and the only weapons that they have to recuperate him are is this same structure of the old father Menenius the mother and child both of whom come as embassies to him and he says no Kamini asyou know he was a kind of nothing titleist again he doesn't want any names he wants to be a nothing he is nothingness is more powerful than any human nests will be until the mother the third member of this embassy comes to see him and this is in act 5 scene 3 the about line 130 where he is about to leave the mother and that the mother wife and children who have come to him in a cluster here not of a woman's tenderness to be requires nor child nor a woman's face to see I have sat too long and he rises they go not from us thus and then she goes on in this long speech which I won't read all of this to talk to to to talk about what happens if you reverse the picture his repetition will be dogged with curses the name you will reap and she uses that word name whose repetition will be dogged with curses and this that's why I want you to notice the word cur before that now he's the dog whose Chronicle thus written and here's this is if he's got an ambition it's for this it's for history he's chronicled us writ the man was noble but with his last attempt he wiped it out destroyed his country and his name remains to the ensuing a jab horde speak to me son thou hast affected the fine strains of Honor to imitate the graces of the gods to tear with thunder the wide cheeks of the air why does not speak thinks out it honorable for a nobleman still to remember wrongs daughters speak you he cares not for your weeping speak thou boy there's no man in the world more bound to his mother yet here he lets me pray like one in the stocks again remember with Kent this is a punishment for it for ignoble people thou has never in thy life showed God your mother any courtesy when she pour him fond of no second brood has clocked thee to the wars and safely home Loudoun with honor say my requests unjust and spurn me back but if it be not so thou art not honest and the gods will plague thee that thou restraints from me the duty which to a mother's part belongs he turns away so she's describing the stage I mention down ladies let us shame him with our knees to his surname Coriolanus longs more prod that his belongs more proud than pity to our prayers down an end this is the last so we will home to Rome the rhyme is deliberate here and die among our neighbors nay behold us this boy that cannot tell what he would have but kneels and holds up hands for fellowship come let us go this fellow had a volscian to his mother his wife is in coral ease and his child like him up by chance yet give us our dispatch send us away I am hushed to until our city be afire and then I'll speak a little and hear the famous stage direction holds her by the hand silent Oh mother mother what have you done behold the heavens do oak the gods looked down in this unnatural scene they laugh at what's unnatural about it she's kneeling she's kneeling to him you have oh my mother mother oh you have won a happy victory to Rome but for your son believe it Oh believe it most dangerously you have with him prevailed if not most mortal to him what but happy victory to Rome what is happy I mean here lucky fortunate exactly we remember where we saw that word again describing a victory to Rome in the last play that we looked at was in octavius's final speech when he's talking about the happy again happy victory versus the mortal glory of the Dead and Antony and Cleopatra here that this notion of a happy victory and the mortal loss is here repeated by Coriolanus here happy victory not most mortal to him and you may remember that there's a moment in this play when a Phidias says to himself in fact he says it on the next page here I am glad though has set by mercy and by honor at difference indeed he says this Assad's a crucial moment out of that I'll work myself a former fortune this is that same split mercy and honor the public and the private the inside and the outside the family and even the state because the state here becomes part of the family it's the story of Rome as homes and of the Volumnia as the figure of Rome as of alumna here surely reminding people of that that the mother the the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus who was the figure of Rome but here it's its history its chronicle its Fame which is the other to the merciful and the mortal and yes please or basically state his position and that is that he recognizes that by being the literary leader of the Volscians that Coriolanus has actually out Shaun him does several remarks all the way along and he suddenly realizes that if he takes it he actually conquers Rome he will he will place himself as a secondary position and that by entering this resolving the issue he actually gives an opening for all phidias to take control again I'm sorry it's courtliness who Coriolanus settling the war right yes yes exactly he has given absolutely that's really right opening right right so that the mercifulness here the non war likeness the the reversal of the previous position is the one that will allow a Phidias to recapture the top at least among the Volscians no that's that's that's that is what he's saying precisely but but i what i wanted also to underscore was the idea that mercy and honour are in a Phineas's view at odds with one another the fact that he speaks this as an aside here is an indication as with edgar speaking to us in an aside and King Lear as with Yago speaking to us in Assad's in in Othello that we may take this to be a kind of truth that is this is a kind of reading of the scene it's that's going on yes I'm going to sneak in a couple of quick ones I'm probably being dumb about this but I'm wondering what it is that Coriolanus is afraid of when he he says most dangerously you have with him prevailed because he does he does come in with the citizens and says in a very sort of you know way I am returned your soldier and just quickly and the lumina from the play from the text how do our way to think that she feels about Coriolanus is death how JEWS because at the beginning of the play remember if he dies with honor she tells the Delian that's just fine by her that's a and I wondered if she would regard his death as a death as an honorable death and therefore go home singing what evidence do we have in the play other than the evidence that you yourself cited I've learned that that chicks if Shakespeare wants us to know something you'll tell us a need and the lumina doesn't say anything after that last speech that's about it well this this extraordinarily powerful gesture of reaching across the abyss that we see in almost all of these tragedies we see it with with Antony and Cleopatra dying in separate places and reaching for I am dying Egypt dying we see you know this Lear twice the the you do me wrong to take me out of the grave and again this feather stir as she lives this attempt to reach across the abyss here those were death and life abysus and so is the the moment at the end of Hamlet but but here too there's an attempt to make a human connection as against the political the mortal whatever and the the extraordinary power of that moment is that he does understand it he does understand the complicated 'no sup by reaching across to her now whether she's satisfied or not i think with you that this is this is left as a matter of theatrical interpretation because we we can only extrapolate from what she has said and what she has not said and there would be more than one way of play I mean I read the scene rather broad here Justin in order to underscore certain moments that that that that are full of irony but there would be ways of doing it that would be more tender and less ironic than then what I did presumably yes but she does how to push his buttons she she knows where they are and she works against him she's like the stereotypical mother my son the doctor it's her pride that she's menteng by his successes but she's the one who's ambitious right and so she works him for her goal for her ends and I think at the end when she is silent it's because there is no more but she is she has achieved her aim of saving room which was her latest plan and then there that's all that she cares about okay hasn't she also got what she wants because we're led to believe at the end of the play his memory yeah he shall have a noble man right I know so maybe she's got what she wants in that regard but I die in this moment when Coriolanus surrenders to her yeah it seems to me that's that's inevitable that's in other words that's what he's always done well that's why I wanted to read those two scenes with you together that in the case of his making himself a candidate and remember this comes out of the Candide or white garment that you wear that you did wear in ancient Rome in order to announce your candidacy that it's again the idea that a candidate is candid that is white and we're wearing white and pure is may have a certain irony today but but but the idea is precisely that the the eloquent action is of openness and of see these are the wounds I got for you and and my wounds speak to you and so forth that they that this this desire to to expose him is just exactly what he doesn't want now whether she's gotten what she wants or whether there is no getting what she wants is another question yes okay yeah the motif of monster plays a lot to that the same way it doesn't a fellow yep with like him saying Oh monstrous monstrous great and so on I mean it's even more it's much more controlled but the idea of he's he's got this sort of like over compensation for this kind of almost kind of a grief he doesn't have exposed he compensates for it he seems he's a lot like um Achilles in that way that he's kind of this man of sorrow that it's like this everything is like a monomania for for achieving and making a name for himself well the Achilles sitting that you mean Shakespeare's Achilles I say let's think about Shakespeare's because it's it's an interesting comparison since in both cases these are singular warriors who at a given moment declined to fight you could say that what kilise does after he is enraged by the death of Patroclus is very much like this description that we get about Coriolanus going amok here except that it is less honorable except that we have the the Myrmidon x' pulling hector through that he refuses the single fight there's never a moment in Coriolanus in which you seeing him betray his notions about battlefield decorum per se but the the idea that he by obeying his mother is betraying what she taught him you can see the double blind involved in that and the and the question really is in part whether it's that double bind so we speak that makes the hero that that there were the inability to have it either way the necessity to have it both ways the impossibility of the position that he occupies is not so different from that paradoxical notion about being your own parent about being author of yourself and having no other kin that's the monstrous position the in his lair and so forth and and the it's it is it's portrayed in the play repeatedly as monstrous the same way that this cartoon bellied speaking is monstrous - but but the alternative to the monstrosity seems to be the human and and that that that is something that this play has in common with some of the other plays that we've looked at recently and it's hard to know which which wanted to choose here yes another question sorry no I was just thinking about that image of the lonely dragon which I just love I think that that sums up his character to me so much that he is a dragon he's a machine he's a monster he's warlike breathing fire but he's also very lonely right great and I that the word lonely is a very interesting word here because it probably means more than he means to say I mean it because it could mean singular or alone or loan or something but it does carry for us also that pay foes of loneliness that I think is probably not I mean so far as when we talk about a fictional characters intention that that's probably not part of his discourse that notion of pay fossa feel sorry for me is not so much part of his his his own vocabulary but it speaks through him to us many hands many hands oh just a quick one I think it's interesting that Shakespeare denies Coriolanus heroic death I mean it's a horrible death it's a really savage death when the and similarly intros and Cressida Hector is denied the hero's death he sees Achilles strikes him when when Hector is unarmed right and then of course he's dragged around the field but but the the day I did want to say something about the death of Coriolanus because how does he die what happens to him the the conspiracies would fall upon him in it right a great group and stop him I would imagine right right so that there's the again there's this sense of of the one in the many there's the sense almost you know at the end of a Greek tragedy you go back to this moment that we discussed earlier on whether there's a homology between ancient Greek tragedy and these there there's there's often what's called the spa rag Moss that tearing a part of the hero the the the turning into fragments of the body and if that's what's going on here then it returns us to that fable of the belly again in which all the parts are out there only in this case he is the sacrificial image of that he is this like he is the literal scapegoat not a little but he's the functional scapegoat in that what happens to him enables their reunification someplace else and instead of the the body politic being pulled in various pieces he himself is cut in pieces and that that the that nobility that he achieves in death is paradoxically also the salvific moment that he couldn't achieve as a as a living figure so that they the the alumnus functions here as well like they behind mcgee when you speak excuse me of the aloneness it's his relationship with a phidias is one yes an intimacy right right and maybe we should look at those passages too because the there's the this famous moment in which he says you know i find my arms around this body that i injured and so forth where it's very much what the recruits would call a homo social moment that is a moment of male bonding of male male identification in which he feels again safe in the world of men not safe tin the world of women mother child this is the lady whole area and so forth the child of course is a boy but a boy as we've seen is either going to become a man in a monster tearing that butterfly to pieces or else he's going to remain in the cluster with the ladies but but it's precisely with ophidians that he finds his perfect partner and then that relationship itself is betrayed when it becomes competitive once again because if it is quite glad to have him when he first arrives and seems to be a petitioner seems to be somebody who has nothing but very poor then then of course in this the ending scene which I we really must look at it's Oh Phineas who reminds him of that very same thing that in the long passage from Volumnia that I read to you she is pointing out to him over and over again that she says to him well you can't have a surname based upon defeating Rome you can't be the Roman who kills Rome and then a Phidias will turn the tables on him and say you know what do you mean yeah well what do you want us to call you Coriolanus you you you destroyed our city this is not a compliment to us and again the city this never quite occurred to him that this is inappropriate in this other place but the the mother has already set up this template here how do you see that how would you compare a phidias and camellias say with whom he also has this moment of male bonding is also this moment of twinning between them right after the first the victory over Corelli's yes I would think that the warrior could I think you said this or sometimes I read this the warrior only knows who he is by comparing himself with someone else but also in those two saw each other as lions what greater loved and to heroes have than for somebody no but - we turns out is never a functional number in this play that that as we saw it slightly differently in that name Cleopatra that three was impossible and two was impossible and ultimately you know even if our Antony and Cleopatra themselves - had to become one so here also the very fact of the twinning between them means that one need to prevail and you remember that moment when a phidias says I'll I'll pluck him some way or guile or craft will get him the moment when he says why can't defeat him in that battlefield way so I'm going to find another way I'm gonna find a like Iago saying we work by wit and not by witchcraft and I'm gonna find a and and again just about every Shakespearean antagonist will make a claim like that Richard the third will make a similar claim that the the idea that if you can't win by Mark Marshall Hall what force on the battlefield you can win by another way Ulysses in prose and Cressida much the same kind of argument indeed you could see Menenius as a kind of figure like Ulysses in Coriolanus I think again an an older figure coming back to a politics rather than to a martial world do you have a question over there you okay right here please yes just a quick question yeah it comes up into play all the time and you've used it a number of times tonight what the nobility yes how do you define it in this context we did well mobile and nobility I mean it comes up into play all the time again that this is one of the I mean this is very deeply ironic or multivalent play a play that is hard to pin down that they he shall have a noble corpse this idea that I mean what's noble about a corpse is I mean is it that that the the only place where where where where nobility can be or is it the impossibility of I mean this precisely this term is up for grabs in the play I think and the the man who prefers a noble life before a long for example is this there's that question that is posed to the citizens at the beginning they come with me if you believe would prefer a noble life before a long that if you're willing to fight if you're willing to behave nobly it might mean dying so is nobility in fact in this this play equivalent to the other kind of mortality the dying rather than or living but what do you think I mean because it is used in all these contexts I mean it didn't you mention it earlier with the mother asking about her then and with a noble corpse and in the beginning video shoes it said I think at the end he talks about nobility of Coriolanus so I mean you know that's why it is because I mean it's it's so it's almost miss to use because it's used so often well I think is what I'm saying it slightly differently to say that it but I'm URIs right as I am there that it determines up for grabs the question what kind of a signifier it is and what it attaches to is very much that issue in this play I think that that that's that's really much the case as yes please the problem I have is that in classical literature nobility never allows somebody to be a traitor and and here here we have Coriolanus cast as a noble character but he commits the greatest sin against nobility which is being a traitor to his Gentry well absolutely the case but but for him you know I banish you the idea is that Rome has become a place of corrupt politics that the only way to breed yourself of that is to get out of Rome so to speak becomes the ultimate individual and and and there's a tension between individuality and nobility and that's I think yes I think that's the nobility here is a civic virtue or a social virtue it's a virtue that has to do with a certain set of codes and a certain whether we say it's loyalty but I think that that that the scenes that we've looked at in which he feels betrayed by his mother in which he feels jerked around by Menenius leave him unsure as to where you know what has happened to the Rome to which he thought he was going to be loyal that he has no respect for the for the citizens he these these figures who are he is parental figures both of him urged him to behave in a way that is contrary to the nature that they had instilled in him the very thing that they have taught him to do and for them it's a whole progress they don't see that there's an inconsistency he became a war hero he was Brad brow was bound with the oak now it's time to become a political figure he's gonna get a different kind of wreath and so forth he he doesn't see that this is part of a consistent plan so so the the they they precisely labeled him with the name of traitor at the end of the headboard is all over at the end of the play and he again he can't see the point of view from which he looks like a traitor he's either blind to it or he sees through it but that let's just look for a second at that unmasking scene if we can or whatever it is the stripping scene tell the trader in the highest degree he hath abused your powers traitor how that is what I traitor Martius Martius I Marsha Kay is Marcia's dust now think I'll grace thee with that robbery thy stolen name Coriolanus in cariah's you lords and his estate prefer aid your business and given up for certain drops of salt what are those the tears again your city Rome I say your city to his wife and mother breaking his oath and resolution like a twist of rotten silk never admitting council of war but at his nurses tears he whined and roared away your victory that pages by pages what is meant here pages blustered him sir young boys again the page is actually a young nobleman in training but it's but it's a young boy again blush should him and men of heart look wandering each at others and now Coriolanus speaking to the gods here's now Mars name not thought the God thou boy of tears I mean it's the insults just keep on coming he he's as good in his way as as Volumnia isn't hers ha no more measureless liar thou has made my heart too grateful what contains it boy Oh slave pardon me Lords tis the first time that ever I was forced to scull this is probably true your judgments my grave lords must give this cur there it is again the law and his own notion who wears my stripes impressed upon him that he must that must bear his beating to his grave shall join to thrust the lie into him cut me to pieces both she is madmen glad stayin all your edges on me you know I'll come after me bring it on that's what this is here boy false hell you have writ your animals true tis there there like an eagle in a dovecote I fluttered revulsion Zin cariah's alone I did it boy why noble Lords will you be put in mind it is blind fortune which was your shame by this unholy braggart for your own eyes and ears then all did together let him die for it tear you into pieces here's that spark MOS do it presently right away he killed my son my daughter he killed my cousin Marcus he killed my father peace ho no outrage peace the man is noble there you are his last defenses to it sorry same upholds in this orbit the earth his last offenses to us shall have judicious hearing stand of phidias and trouble not the peace o that I had him with six o Phidias azure more his tribe to use my lawful sword insolent villain kill kill kill kill killin that's astonishing sane it's simply a wonderful scene in which he's the same character I mean this question about whether he learns anything in the course of the play it's hard to know he's still occupying that idealized persona that meant so much to him and that so many moments in the play have tried to strip away from him whether it's a noble death or not it's hard to say but it's certainly a moment of refusal to compromise refusal to be stained by what he thinks is stained and he goes to his death in a way the same figure that we met at the Beeman having gone through all these experiences but it's much in the same way that we could say that that Lear is stronger at the end of the play than at the beginning and indeed this kill kill kill kill kill him that we heard that line in King Lear it's the the the the this iteration of the word the reduction we think of the middle of a fellow where where he is reduced to speaking words that have no syntax that there is nose noses ears and lips and so forth this this is repetition of a word that is in the place of language here kill kill kill kill kill and then stick with me for one more moment thou has done a deed where at valour will weep so look at what's happened to those tears valour will weep tread not upon me and masters I'll be quiet put up your swords my rage is gone there's no region less last paragraph High Atlas okay though in this city have widowed and on childhood many a one putting himself here which to this hour be well the injury yet he shall have a noble memory assist that is help me carry them out the noble memory ladies and gentlemen is you the noble memory here is history Chronicle poetry theater and this this is this is another one of these moments at the ends of these plays in which the both the question of what nobility is and the question of how memory changes as well as transmits history becomes an issue for theater rather than for chronicle we'll talk next Oh after Thanksgiving I guess about Pericles a romance a very different kind of play a play much much more like a fairy tale and I hope you like it I do have a good holiday everybody

Channel: CosmoLearning

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Length: 111min 1sec (6661 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 18 2015