Your knees to me? to your corrected son?
Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach
Fillip the stars; then let the mutinous winds
Strike the proud cedars ’gainst the fiery sun:
Murdering impossibility, to make
What cannot be, slight work.
(V. iii. 56.)
Not only then is Coriolanus in other respects a singularly noble personality, but even his pride is certainly not devoid of ethical content when it embodies the consciousness of the city republic, the governing estate, the organised family, with all their claims and obligations. These are the constituent elements that have supplied matter for his self-esteem, and all of them are formative, and capable, as we saw, of producing such a lofty, though limited moral character as that of Volumnia. Yet it is precisely to them, or at least to the way in which they are mingled in his pride, that Coriolanus’ faults and misfortunes may be traced.
CHAPTER VI
THE DISASTERS OF CORIOLANUS
AND THEIR CAUSES
Feeling for his country, feeling for his caste, feeling for his family thus form the triple groundwork of Coriolanus’ nobleness, but they fail to uphold it in the storm of temptation. As furnishing the foundations of conduct they have dangers and defects, inherent in themselves, or incident to their combination, and these it is to which the guilt and ruin of Coriolanus are due.