The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 47

_Cor_. Like a dull actor now, I have forgot my part, _and I am out_, _Even to a full disgrace_. Best of my flesh, Forgive my tyranny; but do not say, For that, Forgive our Romans.--O, a kiss Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!

Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip Hath virgin'd it e'er since.--You G.o.ds! I prate, And the _most n.o.ble mother of the world_ Leave unsaluted: Sink, my knee, t'the earth; [_Kneels_.]

Of _the deep duty_ more _impression_ show _Than that of common sons_.

_Vol_. O, stand up bless'd!

Whilst, with no softer cushion than the flint, I kneel before thee; and unproperly _Show duty, as mistaken_--

[Note it--'as mistaken,' for this is the kind of learning described elsewhere, which differs from received opinions, and must, therefore, pray in aid of similes.]

--and improperly Show DUTY, as mistaken all the while Between the child and parent.

[And the prostrate form of that which should command, is represented in the kneeling mother. The Poet himself points us to this hieroglyphic. It is the common-weal that kneels in her person, and the rebel interprets for us. It is the violated law that stoops for pardon.]

_Cor_. What is this?

Your knees to me? to _your corrected son_?

_Then_ let the pebbles on the hungry beach Fillip the stars; _then_ let the _mutinous_ winds Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun; _Murdering impossibility, to make What cannot be, slight work_.

_Vol_. Thou _art my warrior; I holp to frame thee_.

[But it is not of the little Marcius only, the hero--the Roman hero in germ--that she speaks--there is more than her Roman part _here_, when she adds--]

_Vol_. This is a poor epitome of yours, Which _by the interpretation_ of _full time_ May show, _like all, yourself_.

[And hear now what benediction the true hero can dare to utter, what prayer the true hero can dare to pray, through this faltering, fluctuating, martial hero's lips, when, 'that whatsoever G.o.d who led him' is failing him, and the flaws of impulse are swaying him to and fro, and darkening him for ever.]

_Cor._ 'The G.o.d of soldiers _With the consent of_ SUPREME JOVE,'--[the Capitolian, the G.o.d of state]--'inform _Thy thoughts_ with n.o.bLENESS;'--[_inform thy thoughts._]

'that thou may'st prove _The shame_ unvulnerable, and stick i'the wars Like a great sea-mark, _standing every flaw_, And saving those that eye thee.'

[But _this_ hero's conclusion for himself, and his impulsive nature is--]

'Not of a woman's tenderness to be, Requires nor child, nor woman's face to see.

I have sat too long.'

But the mother will not let him go, and her stormy eloquence completes the conquest which that dumb rhetoric had before well nigh achieved.

Yes, Menenius was right in his induction. His abstraction and brief summing up of 'this Volumnia' and her history, is the true one. She is very potent in the business of the state, whether you take her in her first literal acceptation, as the representative mother, or whether you take her in that symbolical and allusive comprehension, to which the emphasis on the name is not unfrequently made to point, as 'the nurse and mother of all humanities,' the instructor of the state, the former of its n.o.bility, who _in_-forms their thoughts with n.o.bleness, such n.o.bleness, and such notions of it as they have, and who fits them for the place they are to occupy in the body of the common-weal.

Menenius has not exaggerated in his exposition the relative importance of _this_ figure among those which the dumb-show of this play exhibits. Among the 'transient hieroglyphics' which the diseased common-weal produces on the scientific stage, when the question of its CURE is the question of the Play--in that great crowd of forms, in that moving, portentous, stormy pageant of senators, and consuls, and tribunes, and plebeians, whose great acts fill the scene--there are none more significant than these two, whom we saw at first 'seated on two low stools, sewing'; these two of the wife and mother--the commanding mother, and the 'gracious silence.'

'This Volumnia'--yes, let her school him, for it is from her school that he has come: let her conquer him, for she is the conserver of this harm. It is she who makes of it a tradition. To its utmost bound of consequences, she is the mother of it, and accountable to G.o.d and man for its growth and continuance. Consuls, and senators, and patricians, and tribunes, such as we have, are powerless without her, are powerless against her. The state begins with her; but, instead of it, she has bred and nursed the destroyer of the state. Let her conquer him, though her life-blood must flow for it now. This play is the Cure of the Common-weal, the convulsed and dying Common-weal; and whether the a.s.sault be from within or without, this woman must undo her work. The tribunes have sent for her now: she must go forth without shrinking, and slay her son. She was the true mother; she trained him for the common-weal, she would have made a patrician of him, but that craved a n.o.ble cunning; she was not instructed in it; she must pay the penalty of her ignorance--the penalty of her traditions--and slay him now. There is no help for it, for she has made with her traditions a thing that no common-weal can bear.

Woe for this Volumnia! Woe for the common-weal whose chiefs she has reared, whose great men and 'GOOD CITIZENS' she has made! Woe for her!

Woe for the _common_-weal, for _her_ boy approaches! The land is groaning and shaken; the faces of men gather blackness; the clashing of arms is heard in the streets, blood is flowing, the towns are blazing. Great Rome will soon be sacked with Romans, for her boy is coming home; the child of her instinct, the son of her ignorance, the son of her RELIGION, is _coming home_.

'O mother, mother!

What hast thou done?....

O my mother, mother! O, You have won _a happy victory to Rome_,-- But for your son--'

Alas for him, and his gentle blood, and n.o.ble breeding, and his patrician greatness! Woe for the unlearned mother's son, who has made him great with such a training, that Rome's weal and his, Rome's greatness and his, must needs contend together--that 'Rome's happy victory' must needs be the blaze that shall darken him for ever!

Yet he storms again, with something like his old patrician fierceness; and yet not that, the tone is altered; he is humbler and tamer than he was, and he says himself, 'It is the first time that ever I have learned to scold'; but he is stung, even to boasting of his old heroic deeds, when Aufidius taunts him with his un-martial, un-_divine_ infirmity, and brings home to him in very words, at last, the Poet's suppressed verdict, the Poet's deferred sentence, GUILTY!--of what? He is but A BOY, his nurse's boy, and he undertook _the state_! He is but A SLAVE, and he was caught climbing to the imperial chair, and putting on the purple. He is but 'a _dog_ to the commonalty,' and he was sitting in the place of G.o.d.

Aufidius owns, indeed, to his own susceptibility to these particular and private affections. When Coriola.n.u.s turns to him after that appeal from Volumnia has had its effect, and asks:--

'Now, good Aufidius, Were _you in my stead_, say, would _you_ have heard A mother _less_, or granted _less_, Aufidius?'

He answers, guardedly, 'I was moved _withal_.' But the philosopher has his word there, too, as well as the Poet, slipped in under the Poet's, covertly, 'I was _moved_ with-_all_.' [It is the Play of the Common-weal.] And what should the single private man, the man of exclusive affections and changeful humours, do with the weal of the whole? In his n.o.blest conditions, what business has he in the state?

and who shall vote to give him the out-stretched wings and claws of Volscian armies, that he may say of Rome, _all's mine_, and give it to his wife or mother? Who shall follow in _his_ train, to plough Rome and harrow Italy, who lays himself and all his forces at his mother's feet, and turns back at her word?

_Aufidius_. You lords and HEADS of the STATE, perfidiously Has he betrayed _your business_, and given up For certain drops of salt, _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 Counsel of the war_, but _at his nurse's tears_ He whined and roar'd away your victory, That pages blushed at him, and men of heart _Looked wondering at each other_.

[There is a look which has come down to us. That is Elizabethan. That is the suppressed Elizabethan.]

_Cor_. Hear'st thou, _Mars_?

_Auf_. Name not _the G.o.d_ thou _Boy_ of tears.

_Cor_. _Ha_!

_Auf_. No MORE. [You are no more.]

_Cor_. Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart Too great for what contains it. _Boy? O Slave_!

.... Boy? False _hound_!

[These are the names that are flying about here, now that the martial chiefs are criticising each other: it is no matter which side they go.]

'_Boy? O slave_!

... Boy? False hound! ['He is a very dog to the commonalty.']

Alone I did it. BOY?

But it is Volumnia herself who searches to the quick the principle of this boyish sovereignty, in her satire on the undivine pa.s.sion she wishes to unseat. It is thus that she upbraids the hero with his un_manly_, ungracious, ign.o.ble purpose:--

'Speak to me, son.

Thou hast affected the fine strains of HONOUR, To imitate the graces of the G.o.ds; To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air, And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?

Think'st thou it honourable for a n.o.bLE MAN Still to remember wrongs?

For that is the height of the scientific affirmation also; the other was, in scientific language, its 'antic.i.p.ation.' He wants nothing of a G.o.d but an eternity, and a heaven to throne in (slight deficiences in a G.o.d already). 'Yes, mercy, if you paint him truly.' 'I paint him in character.'

n.o.bILITY, HONOUR, MANLINESS, HEROISM, GOOD CITIZENSHIP, FREEDOM, DIVINITY, PATRIOTISM. We are getting a number of definitions here, vague popular terms, scientifically fixed, scientifically cleared, destined to waver, and be confused and mixed with other and fatally different things in the popular apprehension no more--when once this science is unfolded for that whole people for whom it was delivered--no more for ever.

There is no open dramatic embodiment in this play of the true ideal n.o.bility, and manliness, and honour, and divinity. This is the false affirmation which is put upon the stage here, to be tried, and examined, and rejected. For it is to this Poet's purpose to show--and very much to his purpose to show, sometimes--what is not the true affirmation. His method is critical, but his rejection contains the true definition. The whole play is contrived to shape it here; all hands combine to frame it. Volscians and Romans conspire to p.r.o.nounce it; the world is against this 'one man' and his part-liness, though he be indeed 'every man.' He himself has been compelled to p.r.o.nounce it; for the speaker for the whole is the speaker in each of us, and p.r.o.nounces his sentences on ourselves with our own lips. 'Being gentle wounded craves a n.o.ble cunning,' is the word of the n.o.ble, who comes back with a Volscian army to exhibit upon the stage this grand hieroglyphic, this grand dramatic negative of that n.o.bility.

But it is from the lips of the mother, brought into this deadly antagonism with the manliness she has trained, compelled now to echo that popular rejection, that the Poet can venture to speak out, at last, from the depths of his true heroism. It is this Volumnia who strikes now to the heart of the play with her satire on this affectation of the graces of the G.o.ds,--this a.s.sumption of n.o.bility, and manliness, and the fine strains of _honour_,--in one who is led only by the blind demon G.o.ds, 'that keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,'--in one who is bounded and shut in after all to the range of his own poor petty private pa.s.sions, shut up to a poverty of soul which forbids those a.s.sumptions, limited to a nature in which those _strictly_ human terms can be only affectations, one who concentrates all his glorious _special_ human gifts on the pursuit of ends for which the lower natures are also furnished. Honour, forsooth! the fine strains of honour, and the graces of the G.o.ds. Look at that Volscian army there.

'To tear with thunder _the wide cheeks o' the air, And yet_ to charge thy sulphur with a bolt That should but rive an oak.

_Why dost not speak_?'

He can not. There is no speech for that. It does not bear _review_.