So we may well believe that his soldierly spirit would respond promptly and lavishly when the Volscians rallied round him. But such appreciation, however his outstripped competitor might interpret it, would have nothing in common with the arts of the sycophant and the time-server; nor is there anything else in Coriolanus’ conduct that explains or confirms ever so slightly the charge of the interested and envious Aufidius.

On the contrary he remains true, and even too true, to his original nature. It is the outrage on his self-respect that drives him to the Volscians, and his self-respect still gives the law to his life, and would forbid all petty vices, though it enjoins heroic crime. A man like this could not be expected to palliate or overlook the profanation of his cherished dignity. The passion of pride at his ear, he sets himself to rupture all weaker ties of passion or instinct. And yet he himself is half aware of his mistake, and he has to fortify himself in his obstinate perversity. This is shown in two ways: first, he has a smothered sense of the inadequacy of his justification; and, second, he cannot with all his efforts be quite consistent in his revenge.

Of his repressed feeling that the offence does not excuse the retaliation, we have repeated confessions on his part, all the more striking that they are involuntary and perhaps unconscious. Thus, just after he has sought out the enemy of his country, he soliloquises:

Here he acknowledges that his change of sides has the most trivial occasion. Friends fall out on a dissension of a doit while foes are reconciled for some trick not worth an egg; and he applies this principle to his own case: “So with me.” After all he has infinitely more in common with the Romans than he can ever have in common with the Volscians, infinitely more reason for hating this enemy town than he can ever have for hating his own birth-place.

Or again, when on the point of dismissing Menenius, he says:

He admits, then, that his wilful oblivion is “ingrate,” and realises that pity would consider the old relations.

Or, once more, almost at the close, when he feels himself in danger of yielding to the voice of nature, he utters the truculent prayer:

which implies that he knew it was not.

On the other hand, with all his doggedness, he cannot be quite consequent in his rancour. He may lead her foes against his “thankless country” as he calls it, but he has a lurking kindliness even for the Rome he thinks he detests. As we learn from Aufidius’ speech:

This is no doubt suggested by the incident of the thirty days’ truce, of which Plutarch makes so much and which Shakespeare totally suppresses. But the vague reference becomes all the more pregnant, when we are to understand that Coriolanus has at unawares and against his purpose granted some little concessions to the victims of his wrath. That Aufidius’ statement has some foundation, is made probable by the words of the First Antium Lord, who is no enemy to Marcius, but reproaches Tullus with his murder and reverently bewails his death:

Faults, then, from the Volscian point of view he has committed in the opinion of a sympathetic and impartial onlooker: which means that as a Roman he has shown forbearance.

So much for the toll that he pays to his patriotism; but neither can he quite uproot the old associations with his class. He may denounce the “dastard nobles,” but he does concede something to Menenius, the patrician whose aristocratic prejudices are most akin to his own:

And, coming to the chief in his trinity of interests, he may seek to break all bond and privilege of nature and refuse to be such a gosling to obey instinct, but the natural instinct of the family is too strong for him; before it his resolution crumbles to pieces, though he foresees the result.

Still this collapse of Coriolanus’ purpose means nothing more than the victory of his strongest impulse. There is no acknowledgment of offence, there is no renovation of character, there is not even submission to the highest force within his experience. Our admiration of his surrender is not unmixed. It is a moving spectacle to see a man, despite all the solicitations of wrath and revenge, of interest and fear, obedient to what is on the whole so salutary an influence as domestic affection. But loyalty to this will not of itself avail to safeguard anyone from criminal entanglements, or to equip him for beneficent public action, or to change the current of his life. It may mean the triumph of a natural tendency that happens to be good over other natural tendencies that happen to be bad, but it does not mean acceptance of duty as duty, or anxiety to satisfy the claims that different duties impose. Hence Coriolanus, to the very end, leaves unredeemed his inherited obligations to Rome, while he leaves unfulfilled his voluntary pledges to his allies. Even in Plutarch’s narrative Shakespeare’s insight is not required to detect this underlying thought, but in the Comparison, which there is proof that Shakespeare had studied, it is set forth so clearly that he who runs may read.

He made the Volsces (of whome he was generall) to lose the oportunity of noble victory. Where in deede he should (if he had done as he ought) have withdrawen his armie with their counsaill and consent, that had reposed so great affiance in him, in making him their generall: if he had made that accompt of them, as their good will towards him did in duety binde him. Or else, if he did not care for the Volsces in the enterprise of this warre, but had only procured it of intent to be revenged, and afterwards to leave it of, when his anger was blowen over; yet he had no reason for the love of his mother to pardone his contrie; but rather he should in pardoning his contrie have spared his mother, bicause his mother and wife were members of the bodie of his contrie and cittie, which he did besiege. For in that he uncurteously rejected all publike petitions ... to gratifie only the request of his mother in his departure; that was no acte so much to honour his mother with, as to dishonour his contrie by, the which was preserved for the pitie and intercession of a woman, and not for the love of it selfe, as if it had not bene worthie of it. And so was this departure a grace, to say truly, very odious and cruell, and deserved no thanks of either partie, to him that did it. For he withdrew his army, not at the request of the Romaines, against whom he made warre: nor with their consent, at whose charge the warre was made.

That Shakespeare, with his patriotism and equity, perceived the double flaw in Coriolanus’ act of grace can hardly be doubted. He was the last man to put the household above the national gods, or to glorify breach of contract if only it were sanctioned by domestic tenderness. In point of fact, he does not acquit his hero on either count.

On the one hand, if Coriolanus remits the extreme penalty, he neither forgets nor forgives, and has no thought of return to the offending city or resumption of the old ties. Scarcely has he granted the ladies their boon, when he addresses Aufidius:

And his speech to the senators of Antium shows no revival of former loyalties:

The insolent announcement of the invasion carried to the gates of the capital, of the plunder that substantially exceeds the cost, of the humiliating terms imposed on his countrymen, is ample proof that in Coriolanus there is no recrudescence of patriotism.

Yet, despite his words, he has been false to the Volscians. However base were his motives, Aufidius speaks the truth when he says:

It is the opinion of the First Lord, despite his impartiality and his sympathy with Marcius:

Thus both his native and his adopted country have reason to complain. He remains a traitor to the one, while yet he breaks faith with the other.

Of course, in theory there was a middle course possible, which would have served the best interests of the two states equally. He might have used his influence to establish a lasting and intimate alliance; and this was the policy that Volumnia outlined in her plea:

But such an all-hail was not for Coriolanus to win. It is one of the charges which Plutarch brings against him in the Comparison, that he neglected the opportunity.

By this dede of his he tooke not away the enmity that was betwene both people.

But how could he, when he had no special desire for the well-being of either, and when his heart was unchanged? His family affection has got the better of his narrower egoism, but even after sacrificing a portion of his revenge, he remains essentially the man he was, and is no more capable of pursuing a judicious and conciliatory policy now for the good of the whole and his own good, than of old in the market-place of Rome.

For to the end he is imprudent, headstrong, and violent as ever. He sees quite clearly that his compliance with his mother’s prayer must be dangerous, if not mortal, to him. Dangerous it is, mortal it need not be. With a little more self-restraint and circumspection, a little less aggressiveness and truculence, he might still preserve both his life and his authority. It is his unchastened spirit, not the questionable treaty, that is the direct cause of his death. Indeed, in a sense, the treaty had nothing to do with it. In Shakespeare, though not in Plutarch, Tullus, as we have seen, when he still anticipated the capture of Rome, determined to make away with his rival so soon as that should take place; and from what we know of Coriolanus’ character, and Tullus’ comprehension of it[263] and general astuteness in management, we feel sure that the scheme was bound to succeed, if Coriolanus persisted in his old ways. Even as things have turned out, Marcius has all the odds in his favour. His triumphal entry into Antium is a repetition of his triumphal entry into Rome. When, according to the stage direction, “Drums and trumpets sound, with great shouts of the People,” the malcontents turn to Aufidius:

That is, the admiration of the populace, constrained by his prowess, is the same sort of obstacle to these factionaries as it formerly was to the tribunes; and with that, and his great services as well, he commands the situation. He needs only a minimum of skill and moderation to carry all before him. So the problem of his antagonists is the same in both cases: namely, to neutralise these advantages by rousing his passion, and provoking him to show his pride, his recklessness, his uncompromising rigour. In both cases he falls into the trap, and converts the popular goodwill to hatred by defiantly harping on the injuries he has inflicted on his admirers. He is the unregenerate “superman” to the last. The suppression of his victorious surname, the taunts of “traitor” and “boy,” drive him mad. He lets himself be transported to a bravado that must shake from sleep all the latent hostility of the Volscians.

The patient fools, whose children he had slain, are not patient now, and no longer tear their throats in acclaiming his glory. Their cries, “Tear him to pieces,” “He killed my son,” and the like, give the conspirators the cue, and Aufidius is presently standing on his body.

It is not, then, as a martyr to retrieved patriotism that Coriolanus perishes, but as the victim of his own passion. In truth, the victory he won over himself under the influence of his mother, though real, is very incomplete. His piety to the hearth saves him from the superlative infamy of destroying his country, which is something, and even a good deal; but it is not everything; and beyond that it has no result, public or personal. On the contrary, Coriolanus’ isolated and but partly justified act of clemency receives its comment from the motives that induced it, the troth-breach that accompanied it, and the rage in which he passed away. If, like his son with the butterfly, he did grasp honour at the close, it was disfigured by his rude handling. But at least he never belies his own great though mixed nature, and it is fitting that his death, needless but heroic, should have its cause in his nature and be such as his nature would select. Indeed, it is both his nemesis and his guerdon. For he would not be a Roman, he could not be a Volsce; what part could he have played in the years to come? Perhaps Shakespeare read in Philemon Holland’s rendering the alternative account that Livy gives of the final scene.

I find in Fabius, a most ancient writer, that he lived untill he was an old man: who repeateth this of him: that oftentimes in his latter daies he used to utter this speech: A heavie case and most wretched, for an aged man to live banisht.

At all events some such feeling as his regrets in this variant tradition suggest, makes us prefer the version that Plutarch followed and that Shakespeare adapted. Coriolanus deserves to be spared the woes that the future has in store. As it is, he falls in the fulness of his power, inspired by great memories to greater audacity, and, no doubt, elated at the thought of challenging and outbraving death, when death is sure to win.