In Shakespeare’s Rome, Cantor examines the political settings of Shakespeare’s Roman plays, Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra, with references as well to Julius Caesar. Cantor shows that Shakespeare presents a convincing portrait of Rome in different eras of its history, contrasting the austere republic of Coriolanus, with its narrow horizons and martial virtues, and the cosmopolitan empire of Antony and Cleopatra, with its “immortal longings” and sophistication bordering on decadence.
In Shakespeare’s Rome, Cantor examines the political settings of Shakespeare’s Roman plays, Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra, with references as well to Julius Caesar. Cantor shows that Shakespeare presents a convincing portrait of Rome in different eras of its history, contrasting the austere republic of Coriolanus, with its narrow horizons and martial virtues, and the cosmopolitan empire of Antony and Cleopatra, with its “immortal longings” and sophistication bordering on decadence.
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Overview
In Shakespeare’s Rome, Cantor examines the political settings of Shakespeare’s Roman plays, Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra, with references as well to Julius Caesar. Cantor shows that Shakespeare presents a convincing portrait of Rome in different eras of its history, contrasting the austere republic of Coriolanus, with its narrow horizons and martial virtues, and the cosmopolitan empire of Antony and Cleopatra, with its “immortal longings” and sophistication bordering on decadence.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226469003 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 07/05/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 655 KB |
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CHAPTER 1
The Republican Regime
i
We are introduced to the Republican regime in Coriolanus in a moment of crisis. Faced with open rebellion against their authority, the city's rulers must give an account of themselves:
I tell you, friends, most charitable care Have the patricians of you. For your wants, Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them Against the Roman state, whose course will on The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs Of more strong link asunder than can ever Appear in your impediment. For the dearth, The gods, not the patricians, make it, and Your knees to them (not arms) must help.
[I.i.65–74]
Menenius begins his defense of patrician rule sensibly, from our point of view, by assuring the plebeians that the Senate does care about them. We would expect him to continue with detailed evidence of the Senate's care, perhaps an explanation of the measures being taken to alleviate the famine in Rome, at least a declaration of the Senate's intention to do something about the problem. But Menenius says nothing of the kind, and the ease with which he dismisses the "wants" of the plebeians leaves us wondering in what way the Senate can care about them, especially if it claims to be unmoved by their "suffering in this dearth." In lines 67–72, Menenius creates a powerful image of the Senate's utter indifference to the demands of the plebeians. As he pictures it, the "Roman state" is not rooted in the soil of the Roman people, deriving its power from them, but is instead raised far above them, as high as the heavens, and seems to have a motive force of its own, sufficient to crush any number of its citizens who might get in its way. Whatever Menenius' notion of the state may be, it seems to fly in the face of all our ideas of the proper relation of a government to its people.
Given our bewilderment at his reasoning with the plebeians, we must question whether Menenius is talking about a "state" in our modern sense at all. In view of the way he speaks of the Roman gods, for example, he apparently knows nothing about our idea of "state" being clearly separate from "church," a distinction that reflects the modern belief in dimensions of life beyond the political. From our standpoint, we cannot help being struck by the way Menenius indiscriminately mixes religion and politics in his address to the plebeians. He identifies rebellion against the "Roman state" with impiety to the Roman gods, and moreover speaks as if the state and the gods were on the same level. This attitude is common among Shakespeare's Romans, who repeatedly assume that the gods take a particular, almost proprietary, interest in their city's affairs (I.vi.6–9, III.i.288–92, IV.vi.36). In reproaching the tribunes for their part in banishing Coriolanus, Menenius finally equates respect for the gods with civic justice:
Sicinius. The gods be good unto us!
Menenius. No, in such a case the gods will not be good unto us. When we banish'd him, we respected not them; and, he returning to break our necks, they respect not us.
[V.iv.30–34]
To Menenius, the gods themselves are apparently political beings who treat the specifically political actions of their worshipers as signs of respect or disrespect, and reward or punish them accordingly. The connection made in Rome between injustice and impiety clearly heightens what is at stake in the politics of the city, heightens the "Roman state" itself, in Menenius' metaphor, until it seems to encompass even the sky. Taken in all seriousness, Menenius' image of the plebeians lifting their staves skyward would lead to the assertion that the horizon of Rome and the horizon of heaven are coextensive, or, to put it differently, in Shakespeare's Rome even the gods are in some sense included within the precincts of the city. Clearly this aspiration to totality on the part of the Roman community goes beyond the claims of the modern state as we conceive it.
Examining the status of the gods in Coriolanus, then, one realizes that the play does not portray a state in the moderm sense, but rather a city in the ancient sense, a polis. The clearest indication of this fact is the presence of a civic religion in Shakespeare's Rome, but there are other important ways in which the community portrayed in Coriolanus differs from a modern state, and we must bear them in mind to avoid analyzing the play with concepts foreign to its subject matter. For example, with our notion of representative government, we think that rulers should reflect the values or opinions of those they rule, more generally that a government should take its character from the society out of which it arises. But in the classical understanding of the polis, the regime (politeia) has a formative role, and is itself the primary factor in shaping or giving character to the community it rules. Some such notion of rule is necessary to make sense out of Menenius' two-fold claim that the Senate can care for the plebeians and at the same time disregard their wants. He must believe that the patricians understand what is in the interest of the plebeians better than the plebeians themselves do, but he leaves it to the less politic and more outspoken Coriolanus to give a direct statement of the patrician position to the plebeians:
your affections are A sick man's appetite, who desires most that Which would increase his evil.
[I.i.177–79]
Because Coriolanus believes the plebeians are utterly incapable of comprehending political realities in Rome (I.i.190–96), he feels the Senate should treat them like children, restraining their desires against their will:
Let them not lick The sweet which is their poison.
[III.i.156–57]
Clearly, for Coriolanus, ruling does not involve representing the will of those ruled but in fact opposing it. We may find this view distasteful, but we must make an effort to understand it in order to avoid simply remaking Shakespeare's Rome in our minds on the model of a modern state. Perhaps what is most needed at the start of any study of Coriolanus is a frank admission of how alien the political world presented in the play is to us.
The most important point to glean from the statements by Menenius and Coriolanus concerning rule in Rome is that an authoritative idea of the good prevails in the city, a notion of what the good life for man is that is actively supported by the regime. This point becomes explicit in the elaborate oration Cominius delivers in praise of Coriolanus before the assembled citizenry of Rome, a speech which reveals the one trait the city encourages above all others:
It is held That valor is the chiefest virtue, and Most dignifies the haver; if it be, The man I speak of cannot in the world Be singly counterpois'd.
[II.ii.83–87]
This speech is carefully phrased to stress that Cominius is expressing one city's opinion ("It is held," "If it be ..."). Another city might well hold justice, for example, or piety to be the "chiefest virtue," in which case Coriolanus would not be regarded as the highest human type. But in Rome he is the man everyone looks up to, and as such becomes the authoritative type in the city, the model for imitation. The admiration Rome bestows upon him is the city's way of directing its citizens (above all, its youth) to the cultivation of martial virtue. As Cominius points out, in the heat of battle, Coriolanus can "by his rare example" make even "the coward / Turn terror into sport" (II.ii.104–5).
As one reads on in Cominius' speech, and finds Coriolanus called "a thing of blood" (l.109) and then "a planet" (l.114), one might begin to feel that in his concern that "the deeds of Coriolanus ... not be utter'd feebly" (ll.82–83), Cominius is getting carried away with his own rhetoric. There is unquestionably something hyperbolic about Cominius' speech. But that is just the point: Rome's praise of its military heroes is one-sided and exaggerated. The city does not, and could not, honor all forms of human excellence equally, but has instead singled out the courageous warrior for public esteem. Cominius' speech culminates in a direct tribute to Coriolanus' spiritedness and his consequent indifference to the demands of his body:
then straight his doubled spirit Requick'ned what in flesh was fatigate, And to the battle came he, where he did Run reeking o'er the lives of men, as if 'Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we call'd Both field and city ours, he never stood To ease his breast with panting.
[II.ii.116–22]
Cominius' speech gives some idea of why spiritedness prevails among the Republican Romans in Coriolanus. Rome deliberately fosters the opinion that the best way of life is that of the public-spirited warrior. When he praises Coriolanus, Cominius is not speaking simply for himself but for the whole Roman community (II.ii.49–51). The style of his oration — the complicated syntax, the elevated diction and epic similes, the amplitude with which he expresses himself — serves to lift his speech above the level of merely private utterance. He talks with the dignity and measured pace of a man who knows that he has a solemn public duty to perform and fears that he may not be equal to the task (ll.82, 103). But as he rises to the occasion, one can picture his listeners nodding in agreement with his weighty statements of his grave theme. The scene has a ritual quality to it, a celebration of communal values through the praise bestowed upon one great exemplar of them.
But Rome's support for public spiritedness is not merely a matter of speeches. The sum of the honors heaped upon the military victor in the first two acts of Coriolanus shows how great a premium the Republic places upon martial valor. Caius Martius is offered a tenth of the spoils of battle (I.ix.31–36), awarded the "war's garland" (l.60), given the consul's own "noble steed" (l.61), and finally receives the name of Coriolanus (ll.62–66) as a perpetual memorial to his victory. The honors Coriolanus receives on the battlefield are, however, only the prelude to even greater honors showered upon him when he returns to Rome. The whole city turns out to welcome the hero home, as he celebrates what came to be known as a Roman triumph. Soon we learn that the Senate wishes to make him consul, and although he never achieves the office, in the ordinary course of Roman events a man with his record surely would (ll.i.221–22). For men who display public spiritedness, Rome has positions of authority to offer, rewarding their passion for honor, not only with speeches, garlands, and triumphs, but also with public offices. As we have already seen, the Republic's ability to make room at the top for its ambitious and spirited men enables the regime to draw its citizens into political life.
The Rome of Coriolanus is, then, lavish with the honors it bestows upon public service, but so far the only form of service we have seen acknowledged in the city is military. This situation is all very well for the patricians, who are trained in warfare almost from birth (I.iii.5–15), but what of the plebeians, who cannot expect to perform the wonders in battle that a Coriolanus can? Unless the patricians have a monopoly on spiritedness, the Roman regime apparently has to deal somehow with the ambitious among the plebeians to keep them attached to the cause of the city, too. The answer to this problem in Republican Rome turns out to be the tribunate, which serves more or less the same function for the plebeians that the consulship does for the patricians. Coriolanus opens with the creation of the tribunate, and when one considers how peculiar a response to the uprising this is — it is twice referred to in the play as "strange" (I.i.210, 221) — one begins to suspect the purpose of the institution. The plebeians demand grain and instead get the right to elect five officers. Evidently the patricians are more concerned about the political ambitions of the leaders of the rebellion than about the desires of the plebeian class as a whole. As is evident from the opening scene, the plebeians must be actively led in revolt. The man labeled "First Citizen" is necessary to incite the mob, to direct its fury, and to counter any objections, whether from his own ranks (the Second Citizen) or from the opposition (Menenius). His aggressiveness stamps him as the spirited member of the plebeian party, and the patricians apparently realize that they must direct their efforts at placating such men. Simply to give the grain to the plebeians might satisfy their desires for the moment, but it would also increase the authority of the inciters of the rebellion without at all satisfying their personal ambition. The creation of the tribunate, on the other hand, while it does nothing about the demands of the people at large, does appeal to the real movers of the uprising by giving them an office of their own to which they can aspire. Perhaps Shakespeare had in mind the wry comment in North's Plutarch on the filling of the newly created positions: "So Junius Brutus and Sicinius Vellutus were the first Tribunes of the People that were chosen, who had only been the causers and procurers of this sedition." In an ironic twist, the most revolutionary of Romans become the leading spokesmen for conservatism once they are given a stake in the status quo. Shortly after they have secured a change in the existing order themselves, the tribunes begin to insist on the "old prerogative" (III.iii.17) and speak in favor of "all season'd office" in Rome (III.iii.64), while attacking Coriolanus as a "traitorous innovator / A foe to th' public weal" (III.i.174–75). By creating the tribunate the city has won new defenders for itself from the ranks of its bitterest enemies.
Shakespeare developed the two tribunes into important characters from the barest hints in Plutarch, revealing a sound grasp of the active role the plebeians played in the politics of Rome. Shown basking in the affection and admiration of their fellow plebeians (IV.vi.20–25), Sicinius and Brutus evidently take great pride in their newly found position in the community. Like many of the patricians, the tribunes want to be honored and are willing to do public service to attain distinction. What makes them appear a good deal less impressive than a Coriolanus is a certain pettiness, a lack of grandeur in their goals. With their narrower perspective, they take the day-to-day affairs of the city more seriously than Menenius thinks fit, in part because they are concerned about appearing important in the eyes of their fellow plebeians:
You are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs. You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a forset-seller, and then rejourn the controversy of threepence to a second day of audience.
[II.i.68–72]
Menenius is making fun of the tribunes' exaggerated conception of their own role in the city, which leads them to mimic the demeanor of graver magistrates in Rome. From the standpoint of a patrician concerned with the fate of the city as a whole, a "controversy of threepence" will inevitably appear trivial and somewhat comic. Perhaps Rome is fortunate, however, that somebody is willing to take an interest in such matters, even if the result is to leave them "the more entangled" (l. 77). Since the tribunes are ambitious only "for poor knaves' caps and legs," they are content with their somewhat limited office in the city. As a consequence, the Roman Republic can offer an active political life to both plebeians and patricians, involving its citizens in activities that give their public spiritedness a chance to develop.
While the city is working to cultivate spiritedness, it also is striving to keep the force of eros in check, to channel it in "legitimate" directions. Love occurs in Coriolanus only in the context of marriage, that is, in a lawful form over which the city can maintain control. The marriage of Coriolanus and Virgilia illustrates the austere Roman ideal of love, a partnership in which the clear subordination of the wife's interest to the husband's reflects the more basic subordination of the love as a whole to the good of the city. Virgilia must be content to stay at home while her husband goes off to war (I.iii.71–75): her love must not in any way interfere with the needs of Rome. Moreover, the restraint of eros in Republican Rome is evident from the play's emphasis on marital fidelity. Virgilia is compared to Penelope (I.iii.82), the model of that virtue, and her husband is no less faithful to his marriage vows:
Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip Hath virgin'd it e'er since.
[V.iii.46–48]
Finally, two scenes in Coriolanus showing three generations of Romans together in one family unit (I.iii and V.iii), indicate the purpose of love and marriage in Rome. The family is the institution by means of which Rome can use even the force of eros for the good of the city, by directing it toward the goal of generation. In the Roman Republic, generation is presented as a matter of framing warriors (V.iii.62–63), and therefore as an extension of the city's own goal of encouraging spiritedness. The model of motherhood in Coriolanus seems to be Hecuba suckling Hector (I.iii.40–41), and what Coriolanus took in at his mother's breasts was the same "valiantness" (III.ii.129) that is held to be the "chiefest virtue" in Rome. One would think that the realm of love, marriage, and the family would be a source of private interest even in the Roman Republic, but at least at first sight the city seems able to make eros serve spiritedness, and thus in turn the common good.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Shakespeare's Rome"
by .
Copyright © 1976 Paul A. Cantor.
Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Shakespeare’s Rome RevisitedPart One. Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and the Revaluation of Roman Values
Chapter One. Shakespeare’s Tragic City: The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic
Chapter Two. “The Roman Caesar with Christ’s Soul”: Shakespeare and Nietzsche on Rome and Christianity
Part Two. Further Explorations of Shakespeare’s Rome
Chapter Three. Beasts and Gods: Titanic Heroes and the Tragedy of Rome
Chapter Four. Shakespeare’s Parallel Lives: Plutarch and the Roman Plays
Chapter Five. Shakespeare and the Mediterranean: The Centrality of the Classical Tradition in the Renaissance
Chapter Six. Antony and Cleopatra: Empire, Globalization, and the Clash of Civilizations
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index