Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare's last plays and frankly one
of the more complex. It was based upon one of the Plutarch tales
and as such is consistent with the many uses Shakespeare made of classic
events. As Plutarch observed:
It may be observed, in general, that when young men
arrive early at fame and repute, if they are of a nature but slightly touched
with emulation, this early attainment is apt to extinguish their thirst and
satiate their appetite; whereas the first distinctions of more and solid and
weighty characters do but stimulate and quicken them and take them away like a
wind in the pursuit of honour; they look upon these marks and testimonies to
their virtue not as a recompense received for what they have already done, but
as a pledge given by themselves of what they will perform hereafter, ashamed
now to forsake or underlive the credit they have won, or, rather, not to exceed
and obscure all that is gone before by the lustre of their following actions.
Marcius, having a spirit of this noble make, was ambitious always to surpass
himself, and did nothing how extraordinary soever, but he thought he was bound
to outdo it at the next occasion; and ever desiring to give continual fresh
instances of prowess, he added one exploit to another, and heaped up trophies
upon trophies, so as to make it matter of contest also among his commanders,
the latter still vying with the earlier, which should pay him the greatest
honour and speak highest in his commendation. Of all the numerous wars and
conflicts in those days there was not one from which he returned without
laurels and rewards. … But Marcius, believing himself bound to pay his mother
Volumnia all that gratitude and duty which would have belonged to his father,
had he also been alive, could never satiate himself in his tenderness and
respect to her.
From this did Shakespeare develop his character. The more
recent version by Ralph Fiennes
presents
Coriolanus in a contemporary setting and presents him as an awkward savior of
Rome which then through a manipulation of the masses turn on him which leads to
his destruction. Coriolanus is a warrior, not a politician. The politicians
manipulate the mob, yet within the mob there are other layers of manipulators. There
are what I have called from time to time the "professional back
stabbers". This is a group of what may be genetically oriented persons
whose sole goal in life is to destroy others. Nothing personal, nothing for a
desired end, just the process of personal destruction. Washington is a current
day example of where they most congregate. Thus this class attacks Coriolanus
who appears both clueless and disinterested. Fiennes does a splendid job at
depicting this.
Now comes a version at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey.
In this presentation the Fiennes role is displaced by an actor who I would have
seen growing up on Staten Island. A big brutal thug, whose demeanor is not that
of a lost Fiennes but of some muscle in the local mob. Perhaps appropriate for
New Jersey but I fell totally missing the point. The presentation was mediocre
at best and the mob complexity was totally missing its thrust.
Yet come the NY Times and its review
. They
conclude:
If several among the other performances are wanting, the
combined effectiveness of the 25-member company is greater than the sum of its
lesser parts. The director’s decision to have the actors frequently throng the
theater’s aisles lends immediacy and a sense of speed to this resonant
production, which sprints along at a fast-paced two hours and 35 minutes,
including the intermission.
Frankly this presentation was cacophonous. It lacked any
cohesion, it spent too much time on the rabble, and the undercurrent against
the current political scene is sophomoric. As expected the Times cannot seem to
even give a recipe without making a comment on the current election. The NY
Times reviewer states:
Shakespeare’s political drama, of a candidate for high
office unsuccessfully coping with seesawing public opinion, assumes fresh
resonance in our own interesting times that witness Brexit regret overseas even
as so many American voters are voicing their own discontent over their
presumptive presidential nominees.
Yes, the mob is a key element of Coriolanus. Yes, the mob
can be manipulated. Yes, the results are tragic for all. But that is not why
Shakespeare wrote this play. At the time James I was King, and it was the James
from whence we get the so named Bible.
Shakespeare seems not to like the populous. As note by
Prescott his use of the term popular, as understood to me in relation to the
masses seemed always to end in some disaster
.
The masses can and could be manipulated. The manipulators often do so just for
the process itself without any end in mind. The tragedy here is that Coriolanus
was a good soldier who was thrown out of his ken, and at first accepted and
then destroyed by the masses, to no benefit to them.
But what most seem to miss about Coriolanus as a play and political metaphor is in the play the Tribunes manipulate the masses. In the current election cycle on the Republican side, this seems not to be the case. In fact the masses are rejecting the Tribunes. It is thus an interesting and telling drama. Can the masses be manipulated? All the time. We see it in every strategy. As one of the Democrat Tribunes states; never let a tragedy do to waste. As immoral as such a statement may be, it is echoed so many times.
Thus I would rate the Fiennes presentation as a five star one and the NJ
Shakespeare team as at best a one star! To do Shakespeare well, one must
understand the underlying human tragedy, not try to make it some anti-politician statement. Done that way it becomes just an echo from the very mob
itself, it is popular to paraphrase Shakespeare.
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