[242] It was edited for the Shakespeare Society in 1842 by Dyce, who owned the manuscript.
[245] Mr. George Wyndham in his introduction to his edition of North’s Plutarch, i. pp. xciii-c, gives an excellent criticism of the relations of Shakespeare’s play to Plutarch’s life of Antonius.
[246] See the whole of Coriolanus’s great speech on offering his services to Aufidius, the Volscian general, IV. v. 71-107:
My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done
To thee particularly and to all the Volsces,
Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may
My surname, Coriolanus . . . to do thee service.
North’s translation of Plutarch gives in almost the same terms Coriolanus’s speech on the occasion. It opens: ‘I am Caius Martius, who hath done to thyself particularly, and to all the Volsces generally, great hurt and mischief, which I cannot deny for my surname of Coriolanus that I bear.’ Similarly Volumnia’s stirring appeal to her son and her son’s proffer of submission, in act V. sc. iii. 94-193, reproduce with equal literalness North’s rendering of Plutarch. ‘If we held our peace, my son,’ Volumnia begins in North, ‘the state of our raiment would easily betray to thee what life we have led at home since thy exile and abode abroad; but think now with thyself,’ and so on. The first sentence of Shakespeare’s speech runs:
Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment
And state of bodies would bewray what life
We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself . . .
[249] See p. 172 and note 2.
[250] In I. i. 136-7 Imogen is described as ‘past grace’ in the theological sense. In I. ii. 30-31 the Second Lord remarks: ‘If it be a sin to make a true election, she is damned.’
[251a] See p. 255, note I. Camillo’s reflections (I. ii. 358) on the ruin that attends those who ‘struck anointed kings’ have been regarded, not quite conclusively, as specially designed to gratify James I.
[251b] Conversations with Drummond, p. 16.