What unconsciously delighted Forrest in Coriolanus, and what he represented with consummate felicity and force of nature, was that his aristocracy was of the true democratic type; that is, it rested on a consciousness of intrinsic personal worth and superiority, not on conventional privilege and prescription. He loathed and launched his scorching invectives against the commonalty not because they were plebeians and he was a patrician, but because of the revolting opposition of their baseness to his loftiness, of their sycophancy to his pride, of their treacherous fickleness to his adamantine steadfastness. As an antique Roman, he had the resentful haughtiness of his social caste, but morally as an individual his disdain and sarcasm were based on the contrast of intrinsically noble qualities in himself to the contemptible qualities he saw predominating in those beneath him. And although this is far removed from the beautiful bearing of a spiritually purified and perfected manhood, yet there is in it a certain relative historical justification, utility, and even glory, entirely congenial to the honest vernacular fervor of Forrest.
Coriolanus, in his utter loathing for the arts of the demagogue, goes to the other extreme, and makes the people hate him because, as they say, “For the services he has done he pays himself with being proud.” At his first appearance in the play he cries to the citizens, with scathing contempt,—
“What’s the matter, you dissentient rogues,
That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,
Make yourselves scabs?
He that trusts to you,
Where he should find you lions, finds you hares;
Where foxes, geese. You are no surer, no,
Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,
Or hailstone in the sun. Hang ye! Trust ye?