INTRODUCTION AMONG the twenty plays which are first found in the folio of 1623, Coriolanus is one of sixteen for which licence to publish was obtained by Master Blounte and Izaak Jaggard on November 8th of that year, as "Master William Shakspeers Comedyes, Histories, and Tragedyes soe manie of the said Copies as are not formerly entred to other men." In the list of sixteen plays that follows, Coriolanus heads the section of tragedies, as it also does in the "Catalogue" of contents in the folio itself. But in the folio text it is preceded by Troilus and Cressida, which, though omitted in the catalogue, seems to have been meant to come fourth in the section, and was afterwards put first, in the course of printing. Similarities of source, language, and metre, have suggested a date of composition for Coriolanus following closely on that of Antony and Cleopatra. Both plays exemplify the closepacked elliptical style of Shakespeare's late work, and also its metrical characteristics; of which those that can be numbered for comparison, and can be shown to have been used increasingly by Shakespeare, especially the overflow, the speechending within the line, the aggregate of light and weak endings, would bring the plays immediately together in the order assumed. The most favoured date is therefore the latter part of 1608, or early in 1609, because Antony and Cleopatra is usually assigned to 1608; but as, in the edition of that play in this series, reasons were given for considering 1607, or even 1606, as possible dates for its production, and for excluding 1608, the year 1607 becomes a possibility for Coriolanus as well as 1608 or later, in proportion as these reasons are valid. They are based upon the re-fashioning by Daniel of his Cleopatra, in 1607 (or between 1605 and 1607), in more dramatic form, and with new detail, suggesting Antony and Cleopatra as the model which converted him from dull recitation to representation. External evidence of a reliable kind for the date of Coriolanus is not forthcoming, except that, as Malone was the first to perceive, the language of Menenius in relating the fable of the belly appears to be indebted to the version given by Camden in his Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine, etc., 1605, as well as to that of North's Plutarch.1 Other circumstances that have been put forward as evidence of date are: (1) that there was a great frost in the winter of 1607-1608, when the Thames was frozen over and fires actually lit upon it, which, being present or fresh in remembrance, might suggest more readily sooner than later "the coal of fire upon the ice,” in I. i. 172 (Hales); (2) that there was a dearth in England in 1608 and 1609, as in the play (Chalmers); (3) that James I. encouraged the planting of mulberry trees in order to raise silk-worms in 1609, whence perhaps the simile, "Now humble as the ripest mulberry That will not hold the handling," in III. ii. 79 (Malone). The two last, which would indicate 1609 or 1610 as earliest date for the play, are especially weak, for mulberrys were not (as Malone himself points out) an absolute novelty either in England or in Shakespeare's work, and the dearth in Coriolanus is part of the original story. Malone's comparison of II. ii. 101: "He lurch'd all swords o' th' garland" with Jonson's Epicene, V. ad fin., "Well, Dauphine, you have lurch'd your friends of the better halfe of the garland," has more point. Unless the combination of lurch and garland was a commonplace, in which case the saying would surely have turned up elsewhere, it creates a strong probability of reminiscence on one side or the other; and this would be most likely in the character of a comedy, who playfully accuses his friend, and finds a striking phrase from a serious play very pat to his purpose. Epicene was acted towards the end of 1609, old style, that is, between January 4th (when a patent was granted for the Children of Her Majesty's Revels, who played it) and March 25th, 1610, which would point to 1609 for Coriolanus at latest. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps and Mr. A. B. Paton thought they had proved Coriolanus to be later than the edition of North's Plutarch published in 1612, because the word "unfortunate" is used by Shakespeare in v. iii. 97, and in the corresponding passage in North in that edition, whereas in the earlier editions of North it is "unfortunately." The obvious answer has been made that Shakespeare-who had already used North long before 1612, according to dates generally accepted-had metrical inducements to shorten the word here, and was probably the first to substitute adjective for adverb in this passage. 1See Extract on pp. lxiii, lxiv post. More over, Mr. M. W. MacCallum (Shakespeare's Roman Plays and their Background, 1910) points out his use of spite in IV. v. 84, which is North's word in the editions before 1603 only. Arguments for the late date (and also for earlier ones) have been sought by attempting to show that Shakespeare had an eye to the political situation in England and the disputes between James and his parliaments, which one is tempted to call "foul wresting and impossible construction." Dr. Brandes1 sees a help to the date in the death of Shakespeare's mother in 1608, regarding the event as an inducement to the subject of the play. Assuming the possible and desirable as fact, he says of Shakespeare: "He remembered all she had been to him for forty-four years, and the thoughts of the man and the dreams of the poet were thus led to dwell upon the significance in a man's life of this unique form, comparable to no other-his mother." According to his view, Shakespeare, hating the mob because he despised their discrimination, and above all because of the "purely physical repugnance of his artist nerves to their plebeian atmosphere... now, for the third time, finds in his Plutarch a subject which not only responds to the mood of the moment, but also gives him an opportunity for portraying a notable mother; and he is irresistibly drawn to give his material dramatic style." Leaving this view for later reference, there is no necessity, but a strong probability, that, having come back to North for the subject of Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare would turn over the pages of the same book for his next plot, and some think that having shown Antony as the infatuated victim of the charms and wiles of a mistress, he continued to illustrate the effects of woman's influence by selecting the story of Coriolanus, whose character for good or evil was of his mother's making, and who could no more resist her power over him than Antony could evade the "full supremacy Cleopatra. This is plausible, and if the poet required great difference of theme for his new work, it was by no means wanting. The story contracts time, scene of action and scale of events in the new play, giving it, notwithstanding some difficulties in adapting historical material, a beauty of. proportioned construction in which it is as superior to its predecessor as that exceeds it in variety of scene and character and in grandeur of scope. 1 William Shakespeare, a critical study, ed. 1902 (Translation), pp. 532, 533. The world for theatre of action, with its empire for the prize at stake, is contracted to a petty commonwealth, Rome though it be, and a neighbouring rival state. The dominion of queenmistress and that of mother are as different in essence as is the omnipresence of the one and the unobtrusiveness of the other save at decisive moments. The genial Antony, a reveller and a brawler "with knaves that smells of sweat" finds a sharp contrast in the haughty and temperate Coriolanus, whose first words in even an amiable interview with a plebeian would probably be," Breathe further off!" His situation is simpler than Antony's, and his character less complex and less in the magical light of poetry. He has no genius "that's the spirit that keeps" him, and no god whom he loves to befriend him, and to forsake him at the crisis of his fate with "music i' the air." He is eloquent in the emphasis of strong views before the senate, in profuse language of scorn or anger to the tribunes and people, and his too few and brief words to his mother, wife, and Valeria, owe a debt to imagination as well as to grace and gentleness; but it is in his pride that he endures torture, and racked pride can never speak with the spell of doubting or repentant love, or "greatness going off." The heroes meet in their valour and invincibleness in fight. Both come always from "the world's great snare uncaught," and in battle, when seconded, Coriolanus can even become the inspiring comrade-leader like Antony and Henry V. Both are great in adversity, but in different ways, and there is a magnanimity in Antony and a generous understanding of others, that lifts him higher above fate. When Coriolanus bids farewell to his mother and friends he speaks something like Antony, "'Tis fond to wail inevitable strokes," but unconvincingly, as in forced consolation, and never with the pathetic greatness of soul in : The miserable change now at my end Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts The noblest, (Antony and Cleopatra, IV. xv. 51 et seq.) Coriolanus, as drawn by Plutarch, is deprived by the loss of his father, of education and its civilising influence, so that he is unfit for society, choleric, impatient, uncivil, and unyielding. By nature he has an excellent understanding, a great heart, and temperance in everything but pride and choler. He is subject neither to love of pleasure nor love of money, and seeks only honour, cheerfully enduring all pains by which his natural valiantness-the virtue honoured in Rome above all others may be equipped to take the lead. Even his unsociableness seems qualified in some degree as we proceed, for his valour drew the young men about him, and we are told that he praised them when they did well, without envy. He seeks honour because of "the joy he saw his mother did take in him," and thought all due to her "that had been also due to his father if he had lived." This better side of Marcius Shakespeare has developed, so that in the play he is not only all that he should be to his wife, his mother, and Valeria, but as courteous and genial with his equals, as capable of winning and returning their love, as he is incomparably brave and disinterested. He has also given him an unwillingness to hear his own praise, which is pleasing, though perhaps too much a part of his pride; and, besides the freedom from flattering the people for which the young men praise him in Plutarch, he has a love of truth and hatred of promise-breaking and dissimulation, which is his noblest trait. On the other hand, his honest but narrow political views lose nothing of their hardness; his indifference to the people's sufferings becomes inhuman, and for their behoof, his incivility, impartially bestowed in Plutarch, is improved to contemptuous abuse and gratuitous insult, very liberally inferred from the original character. When he is forced to become a suitor to the people, his ill-concealed mockery is repulsive in face of their good will. The Marcius of Plutarch, who showed his wounds freely and apparently unoffendingly, might conceivably have been softened, for the moment at least, by the frank appraisal of the consulship: "The price is to ask it kindly;" or by the appeal in: "We hope to find you our friend; and therefore give you our voices heartily." Plutarch makes him choleric, but he does not mark this defect as the deciding factor in his fate. In Plutarch, on his first appearance to answer the articles charged against him, he does, indeed, as the tribunes hoped, use his wonted rough and unpleasant boldness of speech, and even begins to thunder and look grimly, which brings on the death sentence; but when he is finally called to answer, so far from breaking out into abuse upon an unexpected charge, "that he had not made the common distribution of the spoil he had gotten in the invading the territories of the Antiates," he |