speak volumes in a mouth like his for the keenness of his affection. To express the bliss that he feels in the salute of reunion, this hero-lover can find analogues only in his banishment and his vengeance:
O, a kiss
Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!
Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
I carried from thee, dear: and my true lip
Hath virgin’d it e’er since.
(V. iii. 44.)
This woman, then, with her love and sweetness, that strike such responsive chords in the rude breast of her lord, is apparently well fitted to smooth the harshness of his dealings with his fellow-men: and this would seem all the more likely since her gentleness is not of that flabby kind that cannot hold or bind, but is strengthened by firmness of will and largeness of feeling.
All the same, she exerts no influence whatever before the very end on her husband’s public life or even on his general character, because she has no interest in or aptitude for concerns of his busy, practical career. She has chosen her own orbit in her home, and her love has no desire to step beyond. We have seen that, according to Plutarch, Volumnia was entrusted with the selection of her son’s wife. This Shakespeare omits, perhaps as incongruous with the spontaneousness of the relation between his wedded lovers, but it may have left a trace in the position he assigns to Virgilia. The mother-in-law has and claims the leading place; and, as Kreyssig remarks, with a woman of the daughter-in-law’s steady inflexibility, collisions more proper for comedy than for tragedy must inevitably ensue, unless there were a strict delimitation of spheres. Volumnia continues to be prompter and guide in all matters political. She has all the outward precedence. On his return from Corioli, her son gives her the prior reverence and salutation, and, only as it were by her permission, turns to his wife. When the deputation of ladies appears in his presence before Rome, he seems for a moment to be surprised out of his decorum, and his first words of passionate greeting are for Virgilia; but he presently recovers, and, with a certain accent of reproof, turns on himself:
You gods! I prate,