Shakespeare
plucked an obscure Roman general from Plutarch and made him a
principled but uncompromising hero. As the RSC brings the play back, its
brutal statement on class divide and conviction politics has never hit
harder
The
Romans liked to commemorate their military victories with a showy
gesture. Why just win a battle if you could also perform that victory
with a triumphal procession, a few days of gladiatorial games, or a
brand new name? The emperor Claudius – after he added Britain to the
Roman Empire – was voted an additional title by his obedient Senate. He
didn’t use it, according to the historian Cassius Dio. He preferred to
pass it on to his son, who was thenceforth known as Britannicus.
Nominative acquisition obviously ran in the family, because Claudius’s
brother had been named Germanicus, after an earlier generation of family
victories.
The
more obscure figure of Gaius (or Caius or Cnaeus) Marcius is usually
known to us by his toponym: Coriolanus. He lived (perhaps – his life is
not well-attested) at the start of the fifth century BCE and acquired
his name after acts of incredible bravery in the Roman attack on the
Volscian city of Corioli. His story – a man of military prowess and
political principle whose refusal to compromise entails his eventual
downfall – was interesting enough to capture the attention of the Roman
historian Livy, the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the
biographer Plutarch.
But
Coriolanus is best known to modern audiences as the flawed hero of the
eponymous play, which forms the potent conclusion to Angus Jackson’s
Rome season for the Royal Shakespeare Company. What made Shakespeare
choose the story of this relatively obscure Roman general from
Plutarch’s book of Parallel Lives? Plutarch wrote biography for moral,
didactic purposes, and paired the biographies of Roman and Greek figures
to further illuminate both. So Alexander the Great was matched with
Julius Caesar, but only the latter caught Shakespeare’s eye. Plutarch
had been translated from Greek into French by Jacques Amyot, and then
from French into English by Thomas North, and it was this version that
Shakespeare was using: a translation of a translation.
And
Plutarch wasn’t completely reliable. He lived almost 600 years after
Coriolanus, and was using other histories that were themselves 100 years
old. He was also writing about a foreign country. Scholars have
speculated that the reason Shakespeare was more drawn to the stories of
Romans than Greeks is because Plutarch was writing for a Greek audience.
He included more detail in the biographies of the Romans because their
society was less familiar to his readers.
People want politicians who hear their concerns. The sense of a disconnect from ordinary people has dogged Theresa May
Certainly
the detail gives the story a real sense of drama: Plutarch tells us
that Gaius Marcius (not yet Coriolanus) was so brave in one early battle
that he was given an oak wreath to wear. This, Plutarch says, is
bestowed by law on a man who saves another citizen’s life in conflict.
But why oak leaves? Plutarch goes on to explain that it was either in
honour of the Arcadians (who had once been described by an oracle as
“acorn-eaters”); or it was because there were always oak trees to be
found nearby; or because the oak tree was sacred to Jupiter. In other
words, Plutarch has an answer for the anthropologists, the rationalists
and the god-fearing.
In
common with most ancient biographers and historians, Plutarch’s
historical methodology may look a bit vague to us. But Shakespeare
didn’t particularly need accuracy to create drama. He needed a setting
and strong characters, and Coriolanus’s story resonates with them: the
ambitious young soldier, the articulate widowed mother, the old senator
with a nice line in homely allegory.
It’s
intriguing to see what Shakespeare took from Plutarch and what he chose
to omit. The early years of Coriolanus are jettisoned: the play jumps
straight into the action. There is famine, and the plebs blame Caius
Marcius for keeping the price of corn too high. “You are all resolved
rather to die than to famish?” is the third line of the play. The
conflict that will animate the action – between the principled,
inflexible Coriolanus and the increasingly angry citizens – is
immediate.
This
famine does appear in Plutarch’s biography, but it doesn’t receive so
much prominence. The citizens have other reasons for their discontent: a
plague that has struck the nearby town of Velitrae, meaning that they
may be sent there to repopulate it, and the issue of debt relief. But
which is more compelling: someone who is starving and angry about it, or
someone who is starving, and might have to move to Velitrae, and would
also like their debts forgiven?
One
striking feature of the play is how closely the speeches are modelled
on the versions we can read in our ancient sources. Menenius Agrippa
pleads with his fellow citizens to learn to appreciate the role the
patrician class plays in society. He tells them a hoary old fable about
the limbs of the body going into revolt about the belly, because it
takes all the nourishment but does nothing useful. Not fair, he
explains: the belly receives all the nutrition and sends it to the right
places. This speech appears in Livy, Dionysius and Plutarch. Obviously
Shakespeare was more of a fan of it than Livy, who snarkily describes it
as “prisco … horrido” – primitive and rough.
Coriolanus
lived in a time of remarkable political evolution: Rome had just become
a republic. Instead of a king, the city now had two consuls – each man
elected for the year – both of whom had the capacity to veto the other’s
decisions. The power of no always trumped the power of yes. But these
powerful roles were limited to those of patrician class, who were
allowed to stand for election. Plebeian citizens had no such
opportunity, and were only starting to make themselves heard through the
tribunes, who stood up for plebeian interests but had less potestas –
power – than the consuls.
Coriolanus
is a play that speaks to our contemporary politics better than most,
particularly with its emphasis on a class divide that has ossified into
social immobility. In 450BCE, 43 years after the events of the play, the
Romans passed a law forbidding intermarriage between the patrician and
plebeian classes. It is interesting to note two features of this law:
first, intermarriage must have happened occasionally before 450 or there
would have been little reason to ban it. And second, social division
was solidifying over time, rather than the other way round. Not all
movement is progress.
As
for Coriolanus himself, he is a compelling figure: a man whose courage
is never in question and whose principles are the very foundation of his
existence. It’s a stark contrast with modern politicians who are often
criticised for altering their views depending on the current political
climate. When asked, focus groups routinely say they want politicians
who listen to their concerns. The sense that she is disconnected from
ordinary people has dogged Theresa May not least in times of crisis. Her
inability to talk to people was compared unfavourably with the Queen
after the fire at Grenfell Tower.
But
we are also profoundly intolerant of politicians who change their minds
(an occasional consequence of listening). May was punished for
reversing her position on an early election, having repeatedly stated
that she would not go to the polls. Is there something to be said, then,
for a politician who sticks to principles regardless of the pain it
might cause him? Conviction politicians have a huge impact today, partly
because they can get their message out via social media, and partly
because any shift in position is now seized upon as the worst kind of
hypocrisy. But it is a risky strategy for the politician: Livy finds one
early source who believed Coriolanus lived into ripe old age, but it’s
not a view shared by any other historian.
No comments:
Post a Comment