INTRODUCTION.

THE earliest notice of the play of Coriolanus is its entry on the books of the Stationers' Company, November 8, 1623, in a list of such of Shakespeare's plays 'as are not formerly entered to other men.' In the folio of 1623, in which the play was first printed, it introduces the third group-the tragediesin the classification of the plays there adopted into comedies, histories, tragedies. A new paging (1-30) commences with Coriolanus. The play that precedes it, Troilus and Cressida, does not appear in the table of contents, and is in part unpaged, having evidently been inserted by after-thought between Henry VIII, the last of the histories, and Coriolanus.

In the construction of this drama, Shakespeare has closely followed North's Plutarch, first published in 1579. Plutarch, a Greek rhetorician who lived in Rome towards the end of the first century of our era, wrote in his own language his famous Parallel Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans. Jaques Amyot, Bishop of Auxerre, working on an early Latin version, rendered Plutarch into French about the year 1567, and this Sir Thomas North turned into English. The translation of this delightful book was thus one of the first-fruits of the great revival of letters in the sixteenth century, when an enthusiastic band of translators did so much, in this and similar work, to lay the foundations of modern literature.

To North's Plutarch we owe likewise the plots of Julius Cæsar, Antony and Cleopatra, and, in part, Timon of Athens. Fulius Cæsar is the first of the series, and may safely be assigned to 1600-2. Malone has adduced evidence to show that Coriolanus must have been written after the publication of Camden's Remains Concerning Britain, etc., in 1605; for in this work, rather than in North, he found the source of the apologue of Menenius. In the Remains, under the head of 'Wise Speeches,' it is thus

narrated of the Emperor Adrian IV, and with such particularity of detail as is observed by Shakespeare: All the members of the body conspired against the stomach, as against the swallowing gulf of all their labours; for whereas the eyes beheld, the ears heard, the hands laboured, the feet travelled, the tongue spake, and all parts performed their functions; only the stomach lay idle and consumed all. Hereupon they jointly agreed all to forbear their labours, and to pine away their lazy and public enemy. One day passed over, the second followed very tedious, but the third was so grievous to them all, that they called a common council. The eyes waxed dim, the feet could not support the body, the arms waxed lazy and could not lay open the matter. Therefore they all with one accord desired the advice of the heart. Then Reason laid open before them,' etc. This version of the fable seems to have led the poet to make 'the counsellor heart,' as one of the citizens calls it, 'the seat of the brain' where Reason presides.

Antony and Cleopatra, which was entered on the Stationers' Registers in 1608, closely resembles Coriolanus in style and versification, and there is nothing to forbid our concluding that they were written about the same time. Internal evidence certainly goes to show that the composition of Coriolanus belongs to that advanced period of the poet's career when his powers had reached their fullest maturity. During an earlier period his art had drawn from the chronicles of Holinshed the materials for that dramatised history of the English king-plays, to which we can all trace our liveliest impressions of the national life. But Plutarch, as a philosophic moralist, was essentially a biographer, strongly attracted by the individual characters of men; and thus fell in with that profoundly tragic stage of the poet's development when, with enlarged experience, deeper emotions, and a keener interest in the problems of destiny, he pondered the conflict and entanglement which may envelop in tragic gloom even a noble nature, mastered by inherent weakness and adverse circumstances.

The legend of Coriolanus belongs to that period of Roman history which follows the expulsion of the kings. The nobles, freed from the restraints of monarchical rule, formed an exclusive oligarchical caste; the commons, on whose scanty resources the wars against Tarquin had told severely, were ground down under the harsh laws of debt, made entirely in the interest of the dominant class. Though often deceived by false promises of redress, they continued to fight the

national battles, till, driven to take a desperate resolve, they left the city to its haughty oppressors, and retired to a hill between the Anio and the Tiber. Thereupon the senate deputed 'certain of the pleasantest old men' to treat with the seceders. One of the party, Menenius Agrippa, won them to reason with his 'notable tale,' and the result was a compromise. Debtors were to find immediate relief, and in future the commons were to be protected by tribunes elected by themselves. The scene of this plebeian triumph was renowned in history as the Mons Sacer, the 'Holy Hill.'

The tribunate was instituted 494 B.C. But soon after the Volscians made war on their old rivals, the Romans, capturing, among other Latin towns, Corioli and Antium. The latter they made their capital. In this extremity a deliverer appeared in Caius Marcius, a youthful noble descended from King Ancus Marcius. While yet a mere stripling, he had fought like a hero: 'Tarquin's self he met, and struck him on his knee.' He won the oaken crown for his rescue of 'an o'er-pressed Roman' at the great fight by Lake Regillus. In these Volscian wars, however, he now completely eclipsed his early renown; and, for the unparalleled feat of capturing Corioli, he received the title Coriolanus. His popularity was now unbounded.

The hero of the Volscian wars soon experienced the fickleness of popular favour. Through his impolitic speech and haughty bearing, he was rejected as a candidate for the consulship, the usual reward of such services as his. Some time after, in the midst of a great dearth, the result of long protracted warfare, certain corn ships arrived from Syracuse, bearing relief to the famished citizens. The senate was debating how best to distribute the corn, when Coriolanus, resenting the previous concession of tribunes, and the growing power of the people, spoke with such insolent bitterness of the commons as to raise a fierce popular clamour against him. On being brought to trial for his conduct, he was deserted by the selfish nobles, and condemned. Cherishing a cruel resentment and a boundless revenge, he turned his back on the ungrateful city, and in mean disguise sought his implacable enemy, Tullus Aufidius, the Volscian general. By him he was received with open arms, and suffered to lead the Volscians against Rome. Resistance to this mighty leader was vain, and the city was on the brink of ruin. Old friends among the patricians, even solemn pontiffs and augurs, visited the victor's camp, and entreated him to stay his conquering march. He received them unmoved. Then

a procession of noble women of Rome approached, headed by his aged mother and his wife and children. His mother's entreaties prevailed with him, as with the deepest anguish of soul he exclaimed: 'O, my mother! you have won a happy victory for your country, but mortal and unhappy for your son: for I see myself vanquished by you alone."

The Volscian army retired from Rome; but Aufidius, still the deadly foe of Coriolanus, watched his opportunity, and contrived to excite the people against him. In the tumult which ensued, the exile fell; and thus were fulfilled the ominous anticipations with which he had yielded to the entreaties of his mother.

The legend has been altered and condensed in the play, with a view to dramatic effect and concentration of interest. Whereas in the story an interval of six years elapses between the secession and the fall of Coriolanus, in the play the incidents occur in the progress of one campaign. The rebellious attitude of the plebs, the apologue of Menenius, the distribution of the corn, the odium incurred by the pride of Marcius and his glorious conduct of the Volscian warthese are all crowded into the First Act. The dramatic situation is thus at once strikingly outlined, and the characters set in effective contrast. All the tragic elements of the play are here unfolded to view-the growling discontent of the mob, stung at once by want and the selfish tyranny of their oppressors, the contemptuous reproaches of Marcius, the bitter hatred these engendered in the hearts of the tribunes, and the equally intense hostility of 'the fell Aufidius,' disgraced as he had been by his discomfiture in a personal encounter with his rival. In the Second Act the hero of Corioli finds in the consulship the reward he had so gloriously won; and there is nothing to mar the effect of the generous panegyric pronounced by his comrade in arms, the brave Cominius, save the envious plottings of the tribunes to ruin one whom they regard as the arch-enemy of their order. Their bitter hate, coupled with the but too-pronounced faults of their victim, prepare us for the crisis of the plot as it is developed in the Third Act. Here the victorious general, as often happens, prudent and self-possessed in the field, proves to be deficient in that politic moderation and wise restraint so indispensable to civic rule. Coriolanus is him

self his greatest enemy, and the tribunes win an easy victory. The moral declension of his nature is rapid in the Fourth Act. There the unwonted calm and reticence of the farewell interview with mother and friends, as, 'like to a