We learn at the close of the First Act the temper of the rival at whose hearth Coriolanus will stand in the fifth scene of the Fourth Act, and by whose friends and with whose assent Coriolanus will be assassinated in the last scene of the play. At the close of the First Act, Aufidius says—

"Nor sleep, nor sanctuary,

Being naked, sick; nor fane, nor Capitol,
The prayers of priests, nor times of sacrifice,
Embarquements all of fury, shall lift up
Their rotten privilege and custom 'gainst
My hate to Marcius. Where I find him, were it
At home, upon my brother's guard, even there,
Against the hospitable canon, would I

Wash my fierce hand in 's heart."

In this way Shakespeare's plays, as those of any good dramatist needs must, abound in artistic foreshadowings and preparations for

events to come.

The Second Act tells of the return of Coriolanus to Rome, and his election to the Consulship by voice of the Senate; by the voices also of the people, so contemptuously sought that, although given, yet with incitement from the tribunes, they are, at the close of the act, on the point of being revoked by the unstable crowd. In this act also, in the midst of the picturing of the proud spirit of Coriolanus, Shakespeare gives a central place to the ties of home. Volumnia is abroad, proud of his new achievements, to receive her son; impatient to meet him, as she tells her tidings of his triumph. "Good ladies, let's go.Yes, yes, yes, the senate has letters from the general, wherein he gives my son the whole name of the war." Virgilia is with Volumnia, and she is silent, anxious still with dread of hurt to him she loves; and when Coriolanus enters, after short putting aside of the praise showered on him, all his care is for his mother and his wife, who meet him. Giving a hand to each, it is between his wife and mother that he goes forward to the Capitol.

In the Third Act he and the tribunes who direct the people come into conflict, and this act ends with his banishment. When his stubborn spirit is shown in action, and the kindly old Menenius labours in all ways to pour oil over the stormy waters, and seeks to persuade Coriolanus to bear himself mildly, the influence of the mother over the son is made the foremost feature of the scene. Preparing for what is to follow, the Act opens with note of the Volsces again making head. Coriolanus, in his high-handed dealing with the people, misses his mother's approbation,

"I muse my mother

Does not approve me farther."

The fierce warrior bears his mother's rebuke as if he were a child

still at her knee.

to obey his mother.

His spirit of scorn breaks out while he is trying "Pray be content," he had said to her,

"Mother, I'm going to the market-place;

Chide me no more."

"I banish you," was his proud answer to the sentence of the people as he turned his back on Rome.

The Fourth Act shows Coriolanus followed out of Rome's gates by his old friend Menenius, his old general Cominius, and his wife and mother; the Volscians ready for a new attack. Then Coriolanus, seeking vengeance by alliance with the enemies of Rome, stands at the hearth of Tullus Aufidius, his enemy as well as Rome's. That Aufidius received him cordially was due to two causes. The deep underlying sense of a great gain to be won, by the aid of Coriolanus himself as an ally in war against the Romans, would make such alliance welcome to the Volscian state; and a mere surface sense of the bold trust in his own generosity that prompted his enemy to put himself thus in his power, would stir for a time in Aufidius an answering emotion, altogether real and for the moment strong, though with no deep roots from which it could draw long continuance of life. It was planted rather in the soil of an old hatred which had lost all generosity of emulation, and in which the new emotion, however natural and honest, could not be sustained. The haughty spirit of Coriolanus would also make it difficult for any hatred in a rival's mind to remain long asleep. In the Fourth Act, while there is pale fear in Rome, the alliance of Coriolanus with the Volscians is established; but the last words express the danger from Aufidius, who says

"When, Caius, Rome is thine,

Thou'rt poor'st of all; then shortly thou art mine."

In the Fifth Act Coriolanus has Rome at his feet. His old general, Cominius, has pleaded to him in vain. His old family friend, Menenius, persuaded to try his skill, and with a shrewd intention, after his own mind, of speaking to him when he has dined, is struck to the heart with a cold "Away!" followed by the declaration, "Wife, mother, child, I know not."

But when wife, mother, and child come, it is in vain that he

cries,

"Out, affection!

All bond and privilege of nature break!

Let it be virtuous to be obstinate."

Coriolanus melts to tenderness at his wife's gentle reverence

"What is that curt'sy worth? or those dove's eyes
Which can make gods forsworn? I melt, and am not

Of stronger earth than others.-My mother bows,

As if Olympus to a molehill should

In supplication nod; and my young boy

Hath an aspect of intercession, which

Great Nature cries, 'Deny not.'-Let the Volsces
Plough Rome and harrow Italy; I'll never

Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand
As if a man were author of himself,

And knew no other kin."

But that is exactly what the play shows that a man cannot do. Thank God, these home-ties, of the love of His own shaping for the help of man, are stronger than all evil passions, all brute forces of the world. Coriolanus yields to them, and in so doing shows them to be stronger than death: for he knows well that by his yielding he puts his life in the hands of his enemy. He cries,

"O mother, mother!

What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope,
The gods look down, and this unnatural scene
They laugh at.-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. But let it come."

And he goes back, as by a soldier's honour he feels that he must, with Aufidius, to be murdered in Corioli, while Rome exults in her deliverance.

121

66

CHAPTER VII.

A WINTER'S TALE" AND "CYMBELINE."

"The

Tale,'

ROBERT GREENE published in 1588 a novel called "Pandosto; or, the Triumph of Time." * It has been said that it was founded on a story of the treatment of his wife by a Duke Masovius Zemovitus, of Winter's which there is an account by Tcharikovski, Archbishop of Gnesen, in the second volume of Sommersberg's "Rerum Silesiarum Scriptores." It has been suggested also that some Latin version of that story may have been seen by Lope de Vega as well as by Robert Greene, and that thus points of resemblance between Greene's "Pandosto" and Lope de Vega's El Marmol de Felisardo may have arisen. However that may be, Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale" was founded only upon Greene's novel of "Pandosto," which (after Greene's death in 1592) was reprinted in 1607 and 1609, both years being probably before that in which Shakespeare wrote the play. The popularity of Greene's story continued to the end of the seventeenth century. It was again reprinted in 1614, translated into French in 1615, again reprinted in English in 1619, and in 1629, and in 1632, and in 1636. Then it appeared as "The Pleasant History of Dorastus and Fawnia" in seven more editions before the end of the century, and yet again at the

* "E. W." ix. 268.

beginning of Queen's Anne's reign, in 1703, making the sixteenth edition; and it was again printed as a chapbook in 1735. No other novel of Greene's remained so long in demand, or has been so frequently reprinted. Next in popularity was the next novel written by Greene in euphuistic style, "Ciceronis Amor: Tullies Love," first published in 1589, which went through nine editions, the last being in 1639. The demand for it then came to an end, and it was never again printed for the public at large, because it had been read rather for its euphuism than for any story in it. "Pandosto" alone lived on, by virtue of a story which was good enough to have caught Shakespeare's fancy, and which acquired, of course, for some readers a new interest from that fact.

Shakespeare's play of the "Winter's Tale" was first printed in the folio of 1623. Dr. Simon Forman records in his diary, of which the MS. is in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, that he saw the "Winter's Tale" acted at the Globe Theatre on Wednesday, the 15th of May, 1611.

"Observe there how Leontes, King of Sicilia, was overcome with jealousy of his wife with the King of Bohemia, his friend that came to see him, and how he contrived his death, and would have had his cupbearer to have poisoned him, who gave the King of Bohemia warning thereof, and fled with him to Bohemia. Remember also how he sent to the oracle of Apollo, and the answer of Apollo that she was guiltless, and that the king was jealous, etc., and how, except the child was found again that was lost, the king should die without issue; for the child was carried to Bohemia, and there laid in a forest, and brought up by a shepherd; and the King of Bohemia's son married that wench, and how they fled into Sicilia to Leontes; and the shepherd having showed the letter of the nobleman whom Leontes sent, it was that child, and the jewels found about her, she was known to be Leontes' daughter, and was then sixteen years old. Remember also the rogue that came in all tattered, like Coll Pipci, and how he feigned him sick, and to have been robbed of all he had; and how he cozened the poor man of all his money, and after