CHAPTER III
THE GRAND CONTRAST.
SHAKESPEARE’S CONCEPTION
OF THE SITUATION IN ROME
It is difficult to describe with any certainty the reasons for Shakespeare’s variations from Plutarch in his treatment of the people. They may, like some of those already discussed, be due to the dramatic requirement of compression. They may be due to the deliberate purpose of exonerating the hero. They may, and this is more likely, have arisen quite naturally and unconsciously from Shakespeare’s indifference to questions of constitutional theory and his inability to understand the ideals of an antique self-governing commonwealth controlled by all its free members as a body. In any case the result is a picture of the primitive society, from which some of Plutarch’s inconsistencies, but with them some of the most typical traits, have been removed. The grand characteristic which the Tudor Englishman rejects, or all but rejects, is the intuitive political capacity which Plutarch, perhaps in idealising retrospect, attributes to all classes of citizens in the young republic, and which at any rate in after development formed the distinctive genius of the Roman state. He has indeed an inarticulate sense of it that enables him to suggest the general impression. He could not but have a sense of it; for few men have been so pentrated with the greatness of later Rome as he, and he seems to have felt, as the shapers of the tradition and as Plutarch felt, that such a tree must have sprung from a healthy seed. So when we examine what his story involves, we have evidence enough of a general spirit of moderation, accommodation, compromise, that flow from and minister to an efficient practical patriotism; an ingrafted love of the city; and a conviction of the community of interests among high and low alike. Mr. Watkiss Lloyd puts this with great emphasis, and on the whole with great truth.
Rome is preserved from cleaving in the midst by the virtues of the state, the reverence for the political majority which pervades both contending parties. The senate averts the last evil by the timely concession of the tribunitian power first, and then by sacrifice of a favourite champion of their own order, rather than civil war shall break out and all go to ruin in quarrel for the privilege and supremacy of a part. Rather than this they will concede, and trust to temporising, to negociating, to management, to the material influence of their position and the effect of their own merits and achievements, to secure their power or recover it hereafter. Among the people, on the other hand, there is also a restraining sentiment, a religion that holds back from the worst abuses of successful insurrection and excited faction. The proposition to kill Marcius is easily given up. Even the tribunes are capable of being persuaded to forego the extremity of rancour against the enemy of the people and of their authority, when he is fairly in their power, and commute death for banishment; and, the victory achieved, they counsel tranquility, as Menenius, on the other hand, softens down; and all goes smoothly again like a reconciled household, after experience of the miseries of adjusting wrongs by debate and anger.
Similarly the interests of the country are supreme when Coriolanus, with his new allies, advances to the attack:
Some impatience of the people against the tribunes is natural, but the tribunes with all their faults, take their humiliation not ignobly, and the nobles never for a moment dream of getting a party triumph by foreign aid. The danger of the country engrosses all, and at last Volumnia presses upon her son the right and the noble, and employs all the influences of domestic and natural affection—but all entirely to the great political and national end,—and is as disregardful of the fortunes or interests of the aristocratical party, which might have hoped to seize the opportunity for recovering lost ground, as she is apparently unaware, unconscious, regardless of what may be the consequences personally to her much loved son.
And Mr. Lloyd clinches his plea by his estimate of the catastrophe.
In the concluding scene we appear to see the supremacy of Rome assured.... In the senate house of the Volscians is perpetrated the assassination, from the disgrace of which the better spirit of the Romans preserved their city: Aufidius and his fellows with equal envy and ingratitude take the place of the plotting tribunes, and the senators are powerless to control the conspirators and mob of citizens who abet them.
They are, in short, in comparison with Rome self-condemned; and this becomes more manifest if we contrast the finale of the play with the concluding sentences in Plutarch, which Shakespeare leaves unused.
Now Martius being dead, the whole state of the Volsces hartely wished him alive again. For first of all they fell out with the Æques (who were their friendes and confederates) touching preheminence and place: and this quarrell grew on so farre betwene them, and frayes and murders fell out apon it one with another. After that, the Romaines overcame them in battell, in which Tullus was slaine in the field, and the flower of all their force was put to the sworde: so that they were compelled to accept most shameful conditions of peace, in yelding them selves subject unto the conquerors, and promising to be obedient at their commandement.
It is at first sight rather strange that Shakespeare should give no indication that the Volscians, first by condoning Tullus’ crime, the breach of friendship from desire for pre-eminence, then by repeating it as a community, prepare the way for their own downfall. Perhaps he felt that no finger-post was necessary, and that all must see how in the long run such a state must inevitably succumb to the greater moral force of Rome.