This post is provoked by the release of Ralph Fiennes's film version of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. No, I haven't seen it because it has only opened 'over there' and has yet to appear 'over here' but not seeing something is no bar to me pontificating remarking on the subject. I have never acted in or worked upon this play but it is one of my favourites. James Bowman at The American Spectator has seen the film and his review is available. I will confine my opinions to the play itself.
For those unfamiliar with it let me explain that it features one of Shakespeare's many 'Tragic Heroes' and it is important to understand this theatrical device upon which WS relied in plays like Othello, Lear, Anthony & Cleopatra and so on. The idea is as old as ancient Greece and is based upon the notion of a flawed hero. A 'great man', a leader of men, capable of inspiring love and devotion through his personal courage and virtue - but! Ah, yes, the 'but'! Through these men runs a fault line, sometimes more than one, and then "events, dear boy, events" play upon those weaknesses and ultimately destroy them. So it is with Coriolanus. He is a young man, an aristocrat, in ancient Rome where class divisions run deep - well, where do they not? He is immensely brave on the battlefield, and immensely proud off it. He despises the plebs particularly when they appear en masse in the form of a mob. It is difficult when analysing WS's plays to avoid the conclusion that Shakespeare, himself, detested and distrusted mobs of which he must have observed some from time to time in London. However, in this play his hero has yet another fault line running through him - anger. He simply cannot restrain it.
I would suggest that his other fault, if fault it be, is honesty. Coriolanus simply finds it excruciatingly difficult to be anything other than honest and if that means brutal honesty, then so be it. Needless to say, the other characters in the play, just like us, praise honesty as a virtue - up until the time someone tells them, and us, some home truths! Suddenly, truth is downright uncomfortable and unwanted and the anger and resentment it provokes is unleashed on the truth-teller. So it is with Coriolanus.
Like all of the great Shakespearean 'Tragic Heroes', Coriolanus is very difficult to pull off successfully. Unlike Lear where at least you have the manifest hardships he suffers to help swing an audience round to sympathy, in Coriolanus it is mostly the arrogant, proud and angry young man that you remember and his virtues can easily be missed. Even so, it is a great play and I do hope that Fiennes has pulled it off.
Look, will you stop it! I'm still trying to catch up on the reading list concerning recent conflicts, now you're adding the Bard too? (there's only so many hours in the day you know).
OK, I know I was supposed to have read it all at school but there always seemed to be better things to do (drinking, girls, etc. and that was before I even started Grammar school).
Coriolanus? Now if you want a real tortured hero, with virtues and faults aplenty, that I can relate to, why not Captain Carrot? (Guards. Guards - Terry Pratchett). I like to think of Sam Vimes as my role model (smoking, drinking, no L&T in my BLT sandwich and a thorough understanding of economics [check out his economic theory of boots]) although from personal experience I feel I have more in common with Rincewind. Then of course there is my 'Beau Ideal' Granny Weatherwax (whilst I been privileged to meet many handsome, intelligent, independent, capable ladies through the years they all fall short - they all refuse to wear the big boots and pointy hat :-( )
(Sorry but if you can't follow the classical allusions then that shows a gap in your obviously in-depth education doesn't it? ;-) )
OK, I admit it, I'm Nakulturny but I know all the words to 'Bat Out of hell' does that count? (I'll just go stand in the corner shall I?)
Posted by: Able | Wednesday, 14 March 2012 at 16:09
"You common cry of curs...!"
I really liked Coriolanus when I did it for A levels several hundred years ago. It has a really simple plot, without all that impersonation and cross-dressing for comic effect, which I am too dull-witted to follow without expert and patient help.
I seem to remember that the Greek term for "tragic flaw" was hamartia. Coriolanus was also a bit of a mummy's boy, wasn't he, deep down?
Contempt for the mob is something we need to see more of in our politicians.
Posted by: Whyaxye | Wednesday, 14 March 2012 at 18:25
Able, you have just written my life story!
"OK, I know I was supposed to have read it all at school but there always seemed to be better things to do (drinking, girls, etc. and that was before I even started Grammar school)".
I blame that little (or not so little) Josephin B**** who sat across the aisle from me!
It's a terrific play, 'W', and you're right, his monstrous mother drives him to destruction. She is one of the best female roles for an older woman in all of Shakespeare. I gather she is played in the film by Vanessa Redgrave.
Posted by: David Duff | Thursday, 15 March 2012 at 08:43