Where Coriolanus Sabotages Himself

Coriolanus by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a tragedy (spoiler right out of the gate!) and I really don't like tragedies. Whatever sympathetic magic it is that works on some people, giving them a does of catharsis or some pleasing schadenfreude, it just doesn't work for me. Teaching Othello to my students year after year, period after period, was a kind of torture--he made the same stupid mistake every time we read it, and the sweet Desdemona died every. single. time. Brutal. Depressing. Discouraging. I hate that story.

(That experience will probably be my villain origin story. I'm gonna go around rewriting the ends of all the Shakespearian tragedies, giving each one an implausible happy ending, thereby incurring the wrath of literature lovers everywhere and making my name a hiss and a byword.)

Anyway, the point is that I actually liked this play. Or I should say, probably, that I liked this story. I didn't expect to. I expected to hate it and curse it like I do the other tragedies. (Still hated the end, of course. But if I squint I can pretend the last page is missing and everything turned out great.) I'm still sorting out why.

The intro discusses the fact that this is seldom performed, being staged far less often than many of his other plays, and one reason is that there is almost no one to root for. The characters aren't very sympathetic, especially the MC. Coriolanus is selfish and proud and eventually turns traitor; his mother is a hardcore stage mom (I picture a tough-talking Diana Rigg in this role); the common folk are ungrateful; the patrician leaders are all self-serving; and the enemies are... well, not Roman. And while that's all kinda true, I still feel like they're all interesting and well-drawn.

One of the most interesting themes in this play addresses the question asking what political leaders and the people owe one another. I kinda side with the people here, not trusting Coriolanus to protect their rights, but I get it that they aren't crediting his heroism that saved them from death and slavery. At the same time, Coriolanus and the other leaders are proud of what they do for the city, but then treat the people--the overwhelming majority of Rome--like they're nobody and unimportant. Coriolanus is the worst about this. My dude, they support you. They do all the work. They are Rome. What a jerk.

But my favorite part is where he's questioning the utility or necessity of the tradition where a hero standing for public office must go out to the people, acting humble, showing off his scars earned in their defense, begging for their support, and he just doesn't want to do it. He wonders to himself if respecting old norms and customs without thinking about whether they should still have a place in modern life risks filling their culture up with meaningless or even harmful traditions:

Why in this wolfish toga should I stand here,
To beg of Hob and Dick that does appear
Their needless vouches? Custom calls me to't.
What custom wills, in all things should we do't
The dust on antique time would lie unswept
And mountainous error be too highly heaped
For truth to overpeer.

In a culture (I mean English culture, but it could just as fittingly apply to Roman culture) that has such reverence for custom, it's refreshing to see someone questioning the continuation of some random old tradition. It's unfortunate it's in Coriolanus's mouth, though; he's not a good spokesman for mixing things up.

Coriolanus is a hero; nevertheless, he's exiled because he refuses to satisfy the people that, once in office, he won't take away their rights; he defects to Rome's main enemy, who happily put him in front of troops to go fight Rome; he defeats his own homeland for them; but then he concludes a peace treaty (at the request of his family); this infuriates the Volsces people, who kill him.

Tragedy.

Aufidius, who plays Hector to Coriolanus's Achilles, Salieri to Coriolanus's Mozart, is an interesting character, and I wish he got a little more attention, a little more time on stage. Ultimately, after the events here, his people get swallowed up by Rome, but in the course of this story, he's probably the most honorable character. He never stopped fighting for his people, and he sure was able to think outside the box. I'd like to see his story.

In any case, it's an entertaining play, despite my misgivings about sad endings. Or maybe I just liked it because the introduction said I wouldn't. Maybe.

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