And this is more or less the attitude of the rest. But Coriolanus reverses the sequence, and gives his chief homage precisely to the most restricted and elementary, the most primitive and instinctive principle of the three. He loves Rome indeed, fights for her, grieves for her shames, and glories in her triumphs; but he loves the nobility more, and would by wholesale massacre secure their supremacy. He loves the nobility indeed, but when they, no doubt for the common good, suffer him to be expelled from Rome, they become to him the “dastard nobles”; and he makes hardly any account of his old henchman and intimate Menenius, and none at all of his old comrade and general Cominius. But he loves his family as himself, and though he strives to root out its claims from his heart, the attempt is vain. He may exclaim:
Out, affection!
All bond and privilege of nature, break!
(V. iii. 24.)
I’ll never
Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand,
As if a man were author of himself
And knew no other kin.
(V. iii. 34.)
But it is mere histrionic make-believe and pretence: at the first words of Virgilia he cries: