'In Praises Sauced with Lies'

One of my favorite characters in all of Shakespeare has no name and does little but speak. The impression he leaves on the reader is entirely a matter of words. In Act II, Scene 2 of Coriolanus he is identified only as “Second Officer.” He praises the title character, who is not present, not in verse but in prose:

“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.”