It was even before his accession that we detected, in Hamlet, the first glance in the direction of James. The accentuation of Hamlet's relations with the players is not without its acknowledgments and appeal to the Scottish monarch. In Measure for Measure the stress laid upon the Duke's doubly careful watch over all that transpires in Vienna during the apparent neglect of his absence was undoubtedly intended to excuse James's somewhat cowardly desertion of London, immediately after his coronation, for the whole time the plague raged there. We find this feeling again in Coriolanus, and again in The Tempest, which was written for the wedding festivities of the Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, and which contains, under cover of the sagacious Prospero, many subtle and dainty, but utterly undeserved, compliments to the wise and learned King James. There is a striking analogy between the relations of Molière to Louis XIV. and those of Shakespeare to his king. Both great men had the religious prejudices of the people against them; both, as poets of the royal theatre, had to make some show of subservience, but Molière could feel a more sincere admiration for his Louis than could Shakespeare for his James.
In an otherwise masterly review of The Tempest in the Universal Review for 1889, Richard Garnett has called Coriolanus a reflection of a Conservative's view of James's struggle with the Parliament. This is an exaggeration, which leads him to raise the question as to whether the play owed its origin to the first conflict with the House, or the second in 1614. He pronounces for the latter, and thus arrives at an opinion, held by himself alone, that Coriolanus was Shakespeare's last work.
The argument on which he bases this view proves, on closer inspection, to be entirely worthless. Some lines in the fifth Act (sc. 5) run as follows:
"Think with thyself
How much more unfortunate than all living women
Are we come thither."
In the older editions of North's translations of Plutarch (1595 and 1603) it stands thus: "How much more unfortunately than all the women living," the form unfortunate of the tragedy not appearing until the edition of 1612. This circumstance was detected by Halliwell-Phillips, and led him and Garnett to the conclusion that Shakespeare used the edition of 1612, and cannot therefore have written his drama before that year. When we consider how very slight the deviation is, and how it was practically necessitated by the metre, we see what a poor criterion it is of the date of production. Moreover, precisely the opposite conclusion might be drawn from a comparison of North's translation with other details of the play. In the fourth Act (sc. 5) we find, for example:
"——For if
I had feared death, of all men i' the world
I would have Voided thee; but in mere spite
To be quit of those my banishers
Stand I before thee here."
In the 1579 and 1595 editions of North it stands thus: "For if I had feared death, I would not have come thither to have put myself in hazard, but prickt forward with spite"
In all later editions the italicised words are omitted, "with desire to be revenged" being substituted in their stead. According to this method, a very much earlier date might be assumed for Coriolanus, but both arguments are equally worthless.
We have, therefore, no occasion to abandon 1608 on that ground, and we have certainly no need to do so for the sake of a fanciful approximation of the position of Coriolanus to that of James at the dissolution of Parliament in 1614.
Thus much, at any rate, can be declared with absolute certainty, that the anti-democratic spirit and passion of the play sprang from no momentary political situation, but from Shakespeare's heart of hearts. We have watched its growth with the passing of years. A detestation of the mob, a positive hatred of the mass as mass, can be traced in the faltering efforts of his early youth. We may see its workings in what is undoubtedly Shakespeare's own description of Jack Cade's rebellion in the Second Part of Henry VI, and we divine it again in the conspicuous absence of all allusion to Magna Charta displayed in King John.