A To Z Blogging Challenge 2022: Shakespeare - C Is For Coriolanus

 

John Phillip Kemble as Coriolanus. Public Domain

Coriolanus, written some time between 1605 and 1608, is one of Shakespeare’s lesser performed plays, possibly because the hero is so hard to like. Of course, there is also the Scottish Play, but Macbeth is a baddie from soon after he hears he is going to be king. Coriolanus isn’t a villain. He just isn’t someone you would want to hang out with. It has also been banned in its time for various reasons.

I do have a soft spot for it, because I was in a production of it at university, playing the role of Third Citizen, a character described by Harley Granville Barker in his Prefaces To Shakespeare, as “a man who likes the sound of his own voice.”

Coriolanus is based on a story from Plutarch’s Lives, about a general, Caius Marcius Coriolanus, who started off as a hero of Rome and ended up exiled and fighting against Rome with the Volscians, their enemies. His mother and his wife came into his camp to persuade him not to attack. He agreed reluctantly not to do it, and was, of course, killed. 

Shakespeare’s Coriolanus has been brought up by his mother, Volumnia,  to have contempt for the lower classes. She is all too enthusiastic about his fighting and coming home with scars to show off. His wife, Virgilia, is not crazy about what he is doing, and their young son looks like he is growing up to be just like Dad, something Virgilia knows, but there is not much she can do about it with Volumnia in charge. 

He goes into battle against the Volscians, who are led by Tullus Aufidius. He wins, but shows more admiration for his enemy than for the lower classes of his own people. When they throw him out of Rome, he has nowhere else to go but to his admired enemy. He doesn’t know anything but fighting. 

When his mother, Volumnia, comes out to talk him out of attacking Rome, it’s one last thing she does that is not for his best interests, but which he is going to do because his mother asks it. He pays with his life when Aufidius finds out. 

I’ve seen it a couple of times. There is a film with Ralph Fiennes, done in modern dress, in which Coriolanus is pretty scary. You can understand why he isn’t popular. 

In our production, the aristocratic characters wore Roman dress(I was in the battle scene as a standard bearer, wearing Roman armour). The rest of us were in more or less modern dress. One of the lecturers, who directed the play, had a theory based on a picture from Elizabethan times showing actors in both Roman and contemporary dress. 

Most recently, I saw the National Theatre production in National Theatre Online, with Tom Hiddleston, best known these days as Marvel’s Loki, in the title role, with Mark Gatiss, actor and writer known for quite a few episodes of Doctor Who, and in Horrible Histories, as Menenius, Coriolanus’s elderly mentor and father figure. I thought Gatiss rather too young for the role, but he did it brilliantly.

Deborah Findlay, who played as Volumnia was also excellent; in her last scene, Volumnia’s pride and haughtiness is gone. She knows she was wrong and that it’s thanks to what she has done over the years that her son will die now. But she has to speak; it’s the only way Rome will survive.

This Coriolanus is an idiot. When he is told to do some things which might help him get the sympathy of ordinary Romans, he complains loudly and you can see the Senators cringe and shake their heads at his naïveté. 

Yet I, personally, felt for him in the scene where he has been made welcome by Aufidius and is being hugged by his former enemy, and the look on the hero’s face is “Oh, God! What have I done?”

A wonderful production! Unfortunately, the National Theatre has taken it off and it doesn’t seem to be available for purchase online. There are some clips on YouTube, plus a video “The Coriolanus Watch Along” in which Tom and some of his co-stars chat about it with the director. 

If you can see the Ralph Fiennes version, do so. It’s well worth a watch.

There is also a BBC radio version with Diana Rigg as Volumnia. 

Check it out here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p078q3q9

Also, check out the Wikipedia entry here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolanus - there is an impressive list of actors who have played the role in modern times, including Laurence Olivier.