“He hath
deserved worthily of his country: and his ascent is not by such easy degrees as
those who, having been supple and courteous to the people, bonneted, without
any further deed to have them at all into their estimation and report: he hath
so planted his honours in their eyes, and his actions in their hearts, that for
their tongues to be silent, and not confess so much, were a kind of ingrateful
injury; to report otherwise, were a malice, that, giving itself the lie, would
pluck reproof and rebuke from every ear that heard it.”
It’s typical
of Shakespeare to put so beautiful an encomium into the mouth of a character who
is nearly anonymous and neither patrician nor hero. Of course, Coriolanus, by the
standards of Hamlet and Lear, is relatively tight-lipped, though we remember
his nastiest lines: “You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate / As reek
o’th’rotten fens . . . I banish you!” Coriolanus is proud, disdainful and
bitter, a gifted soldier but a self-hobbled politician. In modern parlance, he
lacks “people skills.” When the army commander Cominius praises him and his men
cheer, Coriolanus replies:
“No more, I
say! For that I have not wash’d
My nose that
bled, or foil’d some debile wretch.—
Which,
without note, here’s many else have done,—
You shout me
forth
In
acclamations hyperbolical;
As if I
loved my little should be dieted
In praises
sauced with lies.”
Simply as
language, apart from any dramatic impact, this is ravishing. Perhaps out of
sheer politeness, perhaps hoping to curry favor, certainly in the spirit of competitive metaphor-making, Cominius replies:
“Too modest
are you;
More cruel
to your good report than grateful
To us that
give you truly: by your patience,
If ’gainst
yourself you be incensed, we’ll put you,
Like one
that means his proper harm, in manacles,
Then reason
safely with you.”
I would
advise new or reluctant readers of Shakespeare to simply let the language flow
over them. Don’t fret first time around over philosophy, history or even plot, if you find it confusing. In Pale Fire, with a title
borrowed from Timon of Athens,
Nabokov has John Shade say: “First of all, dismiss ideas, and social
background, and train the freshman to shiver, to get drunk on the poetry of
Hamlet or Lear, to read with his spine and not with his skull.” Crazy Kinbote
asks: “You appreciate particularly the purple passages?” Shade replies: “Yes,
my dear Charles, I roll upon them as a grateful mongrel on a spot of turf
fouled by a Great Dane.”
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