To be full quit of those my banishers,
Stand I before thee here.
(IV. v. 86.)
This argument is no doubt of the same precarious kind as the other; still in degree it is stronger, for the persistence of spite is much more distinctive than the disappearance of a suffix.
In any case this verbal detail is a very narrow foundation to build a theory upon, which there is nothing else to support, except one of those alluring and hazardous guesses that would account for the play in the conditions of the time. This, too, as in the previous case, may be reserved for future discussion. Meanwhile the dating of Coriolanus, subsequently to 1612, is not only opposed to internal evidences of versification and style, but would separate it from Shakespeare’s tragedies and introduce it among the romantic plays of his final period.
If, however, we turn to the supposed allusions that make for the intermediate date of 1608 or 1609, we do not find them much more satisfactory.
Thus it has been argued that the severe cold in January, 1608, when even the Thames was frozen over, furnished the simile:
You are no surer, no,
Than is the coal of fire upon the ice.
(I. i. 176.)