Mother Power

I spent about a month avoiding Coriolanus, because Acts I and II are not what you'd call transcendent. In fact, I have a note in the margin somewhere in Act II that says something like, "This is like watching CHEESE MELT in iambic pentameter" -- it was that dull. (Remember my post about notes in the margins? Did you think they were clever notes, like "lovely chiasmus!" or "echoes of Ovid"? Because they are not.) But I am here to tell you that it gets much better after Act II has dragged to its soporific close.

From the get-go, Coriolanus has no truck with the commoners. When he returns victorious from battle he is supposed to let them admire him so he can be consul, but he just can't hack it. One of his companions extracts a promise from him to try it again, mildly, but a few dozen lines later Coriolanus is howling. "Nay, temperately, your promise," urges Menenius. Coriolanus spits back: "The fires i' the lowest Hell fold in the people."

Not so much with the populism. In consequence he is exiled. In a twist whose plausibility I am still debating, he surfaces next at his arch-enemy's house and says, "Hey! How about if I help you conquer Rome?" The arch-enemy thinks this is an awesome idea. They march on Rome.

The most interesting character in the play is Volumnia, Coriolanus' mother. She is a force to be reckoned with: "Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me," she tells him. (A little-known advantage of breastfeeding.) When the enemy army is at the gates of Rome and Menenius has been unable to dissuade Coriolanus from proceeding with the attack, she goes out with his wife and son. He had steeled himself against their supplication but he cannot resist. "I prate, / And the most noble mother of the world / Leave unsaluted," Coriolanus says as he kneels before his mother and reneges on his promise to fight with the Volsces. He was willing to abandon his obligations as a Roman citizen and soldier, but not his obligations as a son. I'm still chewing on that one.

I'm also launching into Timon of Athens, which Wikipedia tells me is "generally regarded as one of his most obscure and difficult works." Onward.