Then, after engineering the disavowal of the elected candidate, Brutus calculates

And here are his final instructions for the behaviour of the people at the trial:

The suggestion for these proceedings comes, as we saw, from Plutarch; but in this one respect his tribunes are by no means so wily. They contrive a dilemma in which Coriolanus will have either to humble or to compromise himself; but though they would prefer the latter alternative, they do nothing to bring it about.

Yet with all their activity in the matter, they are meanly desirous of evading responsibility and saving their own skins.

And parallel with this is the crowning vulgarity of their triumph:

This is perhaps the supreme instance of their headstrong, testy and inconsiderate violence, for, as we shall see, it embitters the wavering Marcius and drives him to alliance with the foe. But the same violence has abundantly appeared before. The rest do all in their power to appease the tumult and procure a hearing for Sicinius, he uses the opportunity to add fuel to the fire and deserves Menenius’ rebuke:

When Brutus proceeds in the same way, Cominius interrupts:

Menenius has to admonish them:

And again:

They do yield at last, but clearly the game they were playing in unreflecting impatience was most hazardous for the populace itself. Indeed, even when they have accepted more moderate counsels, the expulsion of Coriolanus seems an act not only of ingratitude but of recklessness. Their low cunning has attained an end, good perhaps in itself for the party they represent, but even for that party of insignificant advantage in view of the wider issues. Volumnia’s taunt is very much to the point:

For after all, the pressing need in that period of constant war, as Plutarch and Shakespeare imagine it, was defence of the whole state, the plebs as well as the senate, against the foreign enemy, and the danger of an invasion was one of the ordinary probabilities of the case. Most men who had any sense of proportion would, in the circumstances, pause before they banished the sword and soldiership of Rome. No doubt the tribunes were to be excused for not foreseeing the renegacy of Coriolanus; when it is announced as a fact Menenius can hardly credit it.

It is less excusable that they should neglect the danger of a new attack from the Volsces, for though Cominius, as we saw, makes a similar error, he does so when Marcius is still on the side of the Romans. Menenius’ exclamation, when the invasion actually takes place and when the news of it is first brought to Rome, describes a situation, the possibility or probability of which every public man should have anticipated.

This, though of course an understatement, for in point of fact Aufidius did not wait for Marcius’ banishment, is at any rate the least that was to be expected. But the tribunes, with a sanguine and criminal shortsightedness that suggests a distinguished pair of British politicians in our own day, refuse to admit as conceivable a fact the likelihood of which the circumstances of the case and recent experience avouch.

Besides, the Volscians were not the only jealous neighbours the young republic had to guard herself against.

But their reception of the unwelcome tidings is a new instance of the ignoble strain in the tribunes’ nature. The first effect they have on Brutus is to enrage him against the informant: “Go see this rumourer whipp’d”; and Sicinius seconds the humane direction, but improves on it that the public may be duly cautioned against telling unpalatable truths: “Go whip him ’fore the people’s eyes.” Menenius may well remonstrate:

This is not merely an illustration of their habitual touchiness and irritability at whatever thwarts them. Once more we think of the words of the messenger in Antony and Cleopatra when he fears to report the worst: “The nature of bad news infects the teller”; and of Antony’s reply: “When it concerns the fool and coward.” There is beyond doubt more than a spice of folly and cowardice in the self-important quidnuncs, with their purblind temerity and shifty meanness. We are very glad to hear in the end of Brutus being mishandled by the mob and very sorry that Sicinius goes free: but at least he has had his dose of alarm and mortification, and in the future his influence will be gone; which is well. Yet they are not bad men. They are very like the majority of the citizens of Great and Greater Britain, and no inconsiderable portion of those who govern the Empire and its members. They have a certain amount of principle, shrewdness, and, if the test of misfortune comes, even of proper feeling. They would have made very worthy aldermen of a small municipality. But measured against the greatness of Rome, or even of Coriolanus, they are as gnats to the lion.

The picture, then, of the people and its elect is not flattering if we follow it in detail, but a similar examination is hardly more favourable to the nobles. Of course their behaviour is to a certain extent accounted for by the peculiarity of their position. Hitherto, since the expulsion of the kings, the “honoured number” have had it all their own way in the state, and Shakespeare imputes no blame to their management, unless it be their excessive arrogance towards the populace they rule and employ. But now bad times have made that populace seditious, and they have discovered that, rightly or wrongly, they must give it a share of the power. Their pride, their traditions, the consciousness of their faculty for government, pull them one way, the necessities of the case pull them another. A dominant caste is placed in a false position when it is forced to capitulate to assailants for whom it feels an unreasonable contempt and a reasonable mistrust. When we consider the difficulties of the situation and the broad results, the patricians, as we saw, come off respectably enough, and we must give them credit for circumspection, adaptability, and civic cohesion. But in detail their attitude betrays the uncertainty and weakness that cannot but ensue in a man or a body of men when there is a conflict between conviction and expediency, and an attempt to obey them both. Their scorn of the plebeians, followed by the very brief effort for their champion and very prompt acquiescence in his expatriation, makes an unpleasant impression; and this is more noticeable in the drama than in the biography. Plutarch repeatedly states that they disagree among themselves, many of them sympathising with the popular demands and only the younger men favouring the harsh and reactionary views of Coriolanus.[260] This distinction has left no trace in the play except in the stage-direction which represents him as departing into exile escorted to the gates by his friends, his relatives, and “the young nobility of Rome”: but otherwise Shakespeare makes no use of it. Coriolanus is mouthpiece for the ideals not of heedless youth but of all the aristocracy, though most of them may be more politic than he and not so frank. Nevertheless his presuppositions are theirs, and therefore they seem temporisers and poltroons beside their outspoken advocate. Indeed, through Menenius, they admit they have been to blame:

Nor do they act very vigorously when destruction threatens Rome. They do not indeed seek to separate their cause from that of the whole community and make terms with their former friend for their own class. Beyond some naturally bitter gibes at the “clusters” and their leaders, not unaccompanied for the rest by bitter outbursts against themselves, there is no trace of the dissensions with the people which Plutarch describes. But they have no thought of organising any attempt at resistance. True, there are circumstances in Shakespeare that account for this supineness as it is not explained in his authority. It is partly due to the feeling that they are in the wrong, which Shakespeare in a much greater degree than Plutarch attributes to them. As their own words show:

And again:

Partly, too, there has been no time for preparation, for, as we have seen, the invasion is a bolt from the blue, and after it has first struck there is no convenient truce of thirty days before its recurrence. Entreaty, says Sicinius, might help

and it is the opinion of all.

Partly, too, the inertness of Rome is a tribute to the greatness of the adversary, which is enhanced beyond the hyperboles of Plutarch, and with which to inspire them the Volscians are irresistible.

But contrition, unpreparedness, despair of success hardly excuse the palsy of incompetence into which this proud aristocracy has now fallen. It does not of course sink so low as in Plutarch. Of the first of the repeated deputations he narrates:

The ambassadours that were sent, were Martius familliar friendes and acquaintaunce, who looked at the least for a curteous welcome of him, as of their familliar friende and kynesman. Howbeit they founde nothing lesse. For at their comming, they were brought through the campe, to the place where he was set in his chayer of state, with a marvelous and unspeakable majestie, having the chiefest men of the Volsces about him: so he commaunded them to declare openly the cause of their comming. Which they delivered in the most humble and lowly wordes they possiblie could devise, and with all modest countenaunce and behaviour agreeable for the same. When they had done their message; for the injurie they had done him, he aunswered them very hottely and in great choller.

This is evidently the foundation of the interviews with Cominius and Menenius respectively, and it is worth while noting the points of difference.

In the first place single individuals are substituted for an unspecified number. Just in the same way the final deputation consists of “Virgilia, Volumnia, leading young Marcius, Valeria, and Attendants,” without any of “all the other Romaine Ladies” that accompany them in Plutarch. In the last case it is the members and the friend of Coriolanus’ family, in the previous cases it is his sworn comrade Cominius and his idolatrous admirer Menenius who make the appeal: and this at once gives their intercessions more of a personal and less of a public character. One result of this with which we are not now concerned, is that the rigour of Coriolanus’ first two answers is considerably heightened; but at present it is more important to observe that the impression of a formal embassy is avoided. Cominius and Menenius strike us less as delegates from the Roman state, than as private Romans who may suppose that their persuasions will have special influence with their friend. There is nothing to indicate that Cominius was official envoy of the republic, and we know that Menenius went without any authorisation, in compliance with the request made by Sicinius and Brutus in the street. Shakespeare’s senate is spared the ignominy of the recurring supplications to which Plutarch’s senate condescends. If these are not altogether suppressed, the references to them are very faint and vague.

And also the suppliants bear themselves more worthily. Menenius is far from employing “the most humble and lowly wordes” that could possibly be devised or “the modest countenaunce and behaviour agreeable for the same.” Cominius indeed tells how at the close of the interview, we may suppose as a last resort, he “kneeled before” Coriolanus, but there was no more loss of dignity in his doing so, consul and general though he had been, than there was afterwards in Volumnia’s doing the same; and his words as he repeats them do not show any lack of self-respect.

Still the inactivity, the helplessness, the want of nerve in the Roman nobles in the hour of need are somewhat pitiful. It was the time to justify their higher position by higher patriotism, resourcefulness and courage. They do not make the slightest effort to do so. Remorse for their desertion of Coriolanus need not have lamed their energies, since now they would be confronting him not for themselves but for the state. Even their “instant armies” might do something if commanded and inspired by devoted captains. At the worst they could lead their fellow-citizens to an heroic death. One cannot help feeling that if a Coriolanus, or anyone with a tithe of his spirit, had been among them, things would have been very different. But while they retain much of the old caste pride, they have lost much of the old caste efficiency.

Thus Shakespeare, when he comes to the concrete, views with some severity both the popular and the senatorial party. They show themselves virulent and acrimonious in their relations with each other, yet inconsequent even in their virulence and acrimony: then, after having respectively enforced and permitted the banishment of their chief defender, they are ready to succumb to him without a blow when, it has well been said, he returns not even as an émigré using foreign aid to restore the privileges of his own order and the old régime, but as a barbarian bringing the national foe to exterminate the state and all its members. And we cannot help asking: Is this an adequate representation of the young republic that was ere long to become the mistress of the world? We must look steadily at those general aspects of the story which we have noticed above, as well as at the doings of the persons and parties amidst which Coriolanus is set, if we would get the total effect of the play. Then it produces something of the feeling which prompted Heine’s description of the ancient Romans:

They were not great men, but through their position they were greater than the other children of earth, for they stood on Rome. Immediately they came down from the Seven Hills, they were small.... As the Greek is great through the idea of Art, the Hebrew through the idea of one most holy God; so the Romans are great through the idea of their eternal Rome; great, wheresoever they have fought, written or builded in the inspiration of this idea. The greater Rome grew, the more this idea dilated: the individual lost himself in it: the great men who remain eminent are borne up by this idea, and it makes the littleness of the little men more pronounced.[261]

The Idea of Rome! It is the triumph of that which yields the promise and evidence of better things that the final situation contains. The titanic intolerance of Coriolanus after being expelled by fear and hatred from within, has threatened destruction from without, and the threat has been averted. The presumptuous intolerance of the demagogues, after imperilling the state, has been discredited by its results, and their authority is destroyed. The Idea of Rome in the patriotism of Volumnia has led to her self-conquest and the conquest of her son, and is acclaimed by all alike. Thus we have borne in upon us a feeling of the majesty and omnipotence of the Eternal City, and we understand how it not only inspires and informs the units that compose it, but stands out aloft and apart from its faulty representatives as a kind of mortal deity that overrules their doings to its own ends, and against which their cavilling and opposition are vain. What Menenius says to the rioters applies to all dissentients:

This, then, is the background against which are grouped with more or less prominence, as their importance requires, Coriolanus’ family, his associates, his rival, round the central figure of the hero himself.