I've got two worlds by't. -O my gentle brothers, Сут. Arv. Ay, my good lord. Did you e'er meet? And at first meeting lov'd; Continu'd so, until we thought he died. Cor. By the Queen's dram she swallow'd. Cym. O rare instinct! When shall I hear all through? This fierce abridgment 23 Hath to it circumstantial branches, which Distinction should be rich in. Where, how, liv'd you? And when came you to serve our Roman captive? How parted with your brothers? how first met them? Why fled you from the Court, and whither? These, And your three motives to the battle,24 with I know not how much more, should be demanded; See, From chance to chance: but nor the time nor place And she, like harmless lightning, throws her eye And smoke the temple with our sacrifices. [To BELARIUS.] Thou art my brother; so we'll hold thee ever. Imo. You are my father too; and did relieve me, To see this gracious season. Save these in bonds: let them be joyful too, For they shall taste our comfort. Imo. My good master, Happy be you! Cym. The forlorn soldier, that so nobly fought, He would have well becom❜d this place, and grac'd The thankings of a king. 23 Fierce seems to be here used in the sense of excessive or extreme. So, in Timon of Athens, we have "fierce wretchedness;" and in Ben Jonson's Poetaster, fierce credulity." See, also, page 147, note 10. 24 Your three motives" means "the motives of you three." So, in Romeo and Juliet, "both our remedies means "the remedy for us both." 25 Such was the form often used; of course, for interrogatories. It occurs twice in The Merchant of Venice, near the close. The soldier that did company these three - That I was he, Speak, Iachimo: I had you down, and might Iach. [Kneeling.] I am down again: Post. Kneel not to me: The power that I have on you is to spare you; Cym. Nobly doom'd! We'll learn our freeness of a son-in-law ; Pardon's the word to all. Arv. As you did mean indeed to be our brother; Joy'd are we that you are. You holp us, sir, Good my lord of Rome, Post. Your servant, Princes. Call forth your soothsayer: as I slept, methought Appear'd to me, with other spritely shows 26 Luc. Sooth. Here, my good lord. Philarmonus, Read, and declare the meaning. Sooth. [Reads.] Whenas a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embrac'd by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopp'd branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate, and flourish in peace and plenty.29 26 Spritely shows are groups of sprites, ghostly appearances. 27 "Whose containing means, evidently, "the contents of which." 28 A collection is a corollary, a consequence deduced from premises. So in Hamlet: "Her speech is nothing, yet the unshaped use of it doth move the hearers to collection." 29 Coleridge remarks upon this strange "label" as follows: "It is not Thou, Leonatus, art the lion's whelp; [To CYMBELINE.] The piece of tender air, thy virtuous daughter, Which we call mollis aer; and mollis aer We term it mulier :- To POSTHUMUS.] which mulia I divine Unknown to you, unsought, were clipp'd about Cym. This hath some seeming 80 Well, Cym. Sooth. The fingers of the powers above do tune His favor with the radiant Cymbeline, Cym. Laud we the gods; And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils easy to conjecture why Shakespeare should have introduced this ludicrous scroll, which answers no one purpose, either propulsive or explicatory, unless as a joke on etymology." My own opinion, both of the label and of the Soothsayer's interpretation of it, has been already expressed. In the last two speeches we taste Shakespeare again. 3 The original has "My peace." The change is Hanmer's. "We will begin by peace," or with peace, is a fitting response to the Soothsayer's prophecy of "peace and plenty." To all our subjects. Set we forward: let Friendly together: so through Lud's-town march: Our peace we'll ratify; seal it with feasts. Set on there! never was a war did cease, Ere bloody hands were wash'd, with such a peace. [Exeunt. INTRODUCTION TO CORIOLANUS. THIS HIS play was first printed in the folio of 1623, and is among the worst specimens of printing in that volume. The text as there given abounds in palpable corruptions; which, by a long toil of critical learning and sagacity, have in some good measure been removed or relieved; but still there are divers passages that seem to defy the resources of corrective art. Collier's famous second folio has furnished more of valuable aid in this than in any other play of the series. In a number of places the text, as here printed, will be found to differ from any hitherto given; though there are but two or three instances in which I have ventured on any changes of my own. These are remarked in the notes; as are also a number of changes proposed by Walker and Lettsom, besides two or three by Dr. Badham, which I have admitted with little scruple. Coriolanus is not heard of at all through any notice or allusion made during the author's life: in fact, we have no contemporary note of reference to it whatever, save in an elegy on Richard Burbadge, 1619, where we learn that the hero's part was sustained by that cele brated actor and old associate of the Poet. Nor does the piece itself contain a traceable vestige of allusion to any known contemporary events. So that we have absolutely no guidance to the date of the composition except in marks of style, cast of language, and complexion of imagery and thought; in all which respects it clearly falls among the very latest of the Poet's writing. Certainly no play of the series surpasses it in boldness of metaphor, in autocratic prerogative of expression, or in passages marked by an overcrowding of matter or an over-compression of language. The strength of civil wisdom, also, the searching anatomy of public characters and motives, the wide and firm grasp of social and political questions, in short, the whole moral and political climate of the piece, -all concur with the former notes in marking it off to the Poet's highest maturity of thought and power. With the style so intensely Shakespearian, with the Poet's most peculiar mental and lingual idiom carried to so high a pitch, I can well conceive that the transcriber or the printer must have had his skill and patience sorely tried; especially considering how hardly legible the Poet's handwriting appears to have been; and I suspect that all this may go far to account for the badness of the printing. Nor In Coriolanus, as in the other Roman plays, the historical matter was drawn from Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch. does the Poet's borrowing from this source stop with incidents or with lines of character: it extends to the very words and sentences of the old translator, and this sometimes for a considerable space together; as in the scene of the hero's flight to Antium, and his reception by Aufidius; also in the visit of the Roman ladies to the Volscian camp, and the interview of Volumnia and her son. The events of the drama as related in the old Greek's Life of Coriolanus extend over a period of about four years, from the popular secession to the Sacred Mount, B.C. 494, to the hero's death, B.C. 490. The capture of Corioli is now reckoned to the year B.C. 493. The severity of criticism applied in recent times has made rather sweeping work with the dim heroic traditions of old Rome; insomuch that the story of Coriolanus has now come to be generally regarded as among the most beautiful of the early Roman legends. With these questions, however, Shakespeare of course did not concern |