Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

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Sc. 22 Enter Gower

GOWER

Now our sands are almost run;

More a little, and then dumb.

This my last boon give me,

For such kindness must relieve me,

That you aptly will suppose

What pageantry, what feats, what shows,

What minstrelsy and pretty din

The regent made in Mytilene

To greet the King. So well he thrived

That he is promised to be wived

To fair Marina, but in no wise

Till he had done his sacrifice

As Dian bade, whereto being bound

The int’rim, pray you, all confound.

In feathered briefness sails are filled,

And wishes fall out as they’re willed.

At Ephesus the temple see:

⌈An altar, Thaisa and other vestals are revealed⌉

Our king, and all his company.

⌈Enter Pericles, Marina, Lysimachus, Helicanus, Cerimon, with attendants⌉

That he can hither come so soon

Is by your fancies’ thankful doom.

⌈Gower stands aside⌉

PERICLES

Hail, Dian. To perform thy just command

I here confess myself the King of Tyre,

Who, frighted from my country, did espouse

The fair Thaisa

⌈Thaisa starts⌉

at Pentapolis.

At sea in childbed died she, but brought forth

A maid child called Marina, who, O goddess,

Wears yet thy silver liv‘ry. She at Tarsus

Was nursed with Cleon, whom at fourteen years

He sought to murder, but her better stars

Bore her to Mytilene, ’gainst whose shore riding

Her fortunes brought the maid aboard our barque,

Where, by her own most clear remembrance, she

Made known herself my daughter.

THAISA

Voice and favour—

You are, you are—O royal Pericles! She falls

PERICLES

What means the nun? She dies. Help, gentlemen!

CERIMON Noble sir,

If you have told Diana’s altar true,

This is your wife.

PERICLES Reverend appearer, no.

I threw her overboard with these same arms.

CERIMON

Upon this coast, I warr’nt you.

PERICLES ’Tis most certain.

CERIMON

Look to the lady. O, she’s but o’erjoyed.

Early one blustering morn this lady

Was thrown upon this shore. I oped the coffin,

Found there rich jewels, recovered her, and placed her

Here in Diana’s temple.

PERICLES May we see them?

CERIMON

Great sir, they shall be brought you to my house,

Whither I invite you. Look, Thaisa is

Recovered.

THAISA O, let me look upon him!

If he be none of mine, my sanctity

Will to my sense bend no licentious ear,

But curb it, spite of seeing. O, my lord,

Are you not Pericles? Like him you spake,

Like him you are. Did you not name a tempest,

A birth and death?

PERICLES The voice of dead Thaisa! THAISA That Thaisa

Am I, supposed dead and drowned.

PERICLES ⌈taking Thaisa’s hand⌉ Immortal Dian!

THAISA Now I know you better.

When we with tears parted Pentapolis,

The King my father gave you such a ring.

PERICLES

This, this! No more, you gods. Your present kindness

Makes my past miseries sports; you shall do well

That on the touching of her lips I may

Melt, and no more be seen.—O come, be buried

A second time within these arms.

⌈They embrace and kiss⌉

MARINA (kneeling to Thaisa) My heart Leaps to be gone into my mother’s bosom.

PERICLES

Look who kneels here: flesh of thy flesh, Thaisa,

Thy burden at the sea, and called Marina

For she was yielded there.

THAISA ⌈embracing Marina⌉ Blessed, and mine own! HELICANUS ⌈kneeling to Thaisa⌉

Hail, madam, and my queen.

THAISA I know you not.

PERICLES

You have heard me say, when I did fly from Tyre,

I left behind an ancient substitute.

Can you remember what I called the man?

I have named him oft.

THAISA ’Twas Helicanus then.

PERICLES Still confirmation.

Embrace him, dear Thaisa; this is he.

Now do I long to hear how you were found,

How possibly preserved, and who to thank—

Besides the gods—for this great miracle.

THAISA

Lord Cerimon, my lord. This is the man

Through whom the gods have shown their pow’r,

that can

From first to last resolve you.

PERICLES (to Cerimon) Reverend sir,

The gods can have no mortal officer

More like a god than you. Will you deliver

How this dead queen re-lives?

CERIMON I will, my lord.

Beseech you, first go with me to my house,

Where shall be shown you all was found with her,

And told how in this temple she came placed,

No needful thing omitted.

PERICLES

Pure Diana,

I bless thee for thy vision, and will offer

Nightly oblations to thee.—Beloved Thaisa,

This prince, the fair betrothed of your daughter,

At Pentapolis shall marry her.

(To Marina) And now this ornament

Makes me look dismal will I clip to form,

And what this fourteen years no razor touched,

To grace thy marriage day I’ll beautify.

THAISA

Lord Cerimon hath letters of good credit,

Sir, from Pentapolis: my father’s dead.

PERICLES

Heav’n make a star of him! Yet there, my queen,

We’ll celebrate their nuptials, and ourselves

Will in that kingdom spend our following days.

Our son and daughter shall in Tyrus reign.—

Lord Cerimon, we do our longing stay

To hear the rest untold. Sir, lead ’s the way.

Exeunt ⌈all but Gower⌉

GOWER

In Antiochus and his daughter you have heard

Of monstrous lust the due and just reward;

In Pericles, his queen, and daughter seen,

Although assailed with fortune fierce and keen,

Virtue preserved from fell destruction’s blast,

Led on by heav’n, and crowned with joy at last.

In Helicanus may you well descry

A figure of truth, of faith, of loyalty.

In reverend Cerimon there well appears

The worth that learned charity aye wears.

For wicked Cleon and his wife, when fame

Had spread their cursed deed to th’ honoured name

Of Pericles, to rage the city turn,

That him and his they in his palace burn.

The gods for murder seemed so content

To punish that, although not done, but meant.

So on your patience evermore attending,

New joy wait on you. Here our play has ending.

Exit

ADDITIONAL PASSAGES

Q gives this more expansive version of Marina’s Epitaph (18.347):

’The fairest, sweetest, best lies here,

Who withered in her spring of year.

She was of Tyrus the King’s daughter,

On whom foul death hath made this slaughter.

Marina was she called, and at her birth

Thetis, being proud, swallowed some part o‘th’ earth;

Therefore the earth, fearing to be o’erflowed,

Hath Thetis’ birth-child on the heav‘ns bestowed,

Wherefore she does, and swears she’ll never stint,

Make raging batt’ry upon shores of flint.’

CORIOLANUS

FOR Coriolanus, Shakespeare turned once more to Roman history as told by Plutarch and translated by Sir Thomas North in the Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans published in 1579. This time he dramatized early events, not much subsequent to those he had written about many years previously in The Rape of Lucrece. Plutarch gave him most of his material, but he also drew on other writings, including William Camden’s Remains of a Greater Work Concerning Britain, published in 1605, for Menenius’ fable of the belly (I.I) Though he needed no source other than Plutarch for the insurrections and corn riots of ancient Rome, similar happenings in England during 1607 and 1608 may have stimulated his interest in the story. The cumulative evidence suggests that Coriolanus, first printed in the 1623 Folio, is Shakespeare’s last Roman play, written around 1608.

In the fifth century BC, following the expulsion of the Tarquins, Rome was an aristocratically controlled republic in which power was invested primarily in two annually elected magistrates, or consuls. For many years the main issues confronting the republic were the internal class struggle between patricians and plebeians, and the external struggle for domination over neighbouring peoples. Among the republic’s early enemies were the Volsci (or Volscians), who inhabited an area to the south and south-east of Rome; their towns included Antium and Corioli. According to ancient historians, Rome’s greatest leader in campaigns against the Volsci was the patrician Gnaeus (or Caius) Marcius, who, at a time of famine which caused the plebeians to rebel against the patricians, led an army against the Volsci and captured Corioli; as a reward he was granted the cognomen, or surname, of Coriolanus. After this he is said to have been charged with behaving tyrannically in opposing the distribution of corn to starving plebeians, and as a result to have abandoned Rome, joined the Volsci, and led a Volscian army against his native city.

This is the story of conflict between public and private issues that Shakespeare dramatizes, concentrating on the later part of Plutarch’s Life and speeding up its time-scheme, while also alluding retrospectively to earlier incidents. He increases the responsibility of the Tribunes, Sicinius Velutus and Junius Brutus, for Coriolanus’ banishment, and greatly develops certain characters, such as the Volscian leader Tullus Aufidius and the patrician Menenius Agrippa. The roles of the womenfolk are almost entirely of Shakespeare’s devising up to the scene (5.3) of their embassy; here, as in certain other set speeches, Shakespeare draws heavily on the language of North’s translation.

Coriolanus is an austere play, gritty in style, deeply serious in its concern with the relationship between personal characteristics and national destiny, but relieved by flashes of comedy (especially in the scenes in which Coriolanus begs for the plebeians’ votes in his election campaign for the consulship) which are more apparent on the stage than on the page. Though Coriolanus is arrogant, choleric, and self-centered, he is also a blazingly successful warrior, conspicuous for integrity, who ultimately yields to a tenderness which, he knows, will destroy him. Coriolanus is a deeply human as well as a profoundly political play.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

VOLUMNIA, Coriolanus’ mother

VIRGILIA, his wife

YOUNG MARTIUS, his son

VALERIA, a chaste lady of Rome

CITIZENS of Rome

SOLDIERS in the Roman army

Tullus AUFIDIUS, general of the Volscian army

His LIEUTENANT

His SERVINGMEN

CONSPIRATORS with Aufidius

Volscian LORDS

Volscian CITIZENS

SOLDIERS in the Volscian army

ADRIAN, a Volscian

NICANOR, a Roman

A Roman HERALD

MESSENGERS

AEDILES

A gentlewoman, an usher, Roman and Volscian senators and nobles, captains in the Roman army, officers, lictors

The Tragedy of Coriolanus

1.1 Enter a company of mutinous Citizens with staves, clubs, and other weapons

FIRST CITIZEN Before we proceed any further, hear me speak.

ALL Speak, speak.

FIRST CITIZEN You are all resolved rather to die than to famish? ALL Resolved, resolved.

FIRST CITIZEN First, you know Caius Martius is chief enemy to the people.

ALL We know’t, we know’t.

FIRST CITIZEN Let us kill him, and we’ll have corn at our own price. Is’t a verdict?

ALL No more talking on’t, let it be done. Away, away. SECOND CITIZEN One word, good citizens.

FIRST CITIZEN We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good. What authority surfeits on would relieve us. If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome we might guess they relieved us humanely, but they think we are too dear. The leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance; our sufferance is a gain to them. Let us revenge this with our pikes ere we become rakes; for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.

SECOND CITIZEN Would you proceed especially against Caius Martius?

⌈THIRD CITIZEN⌉ Against him first.

⌈FOURTH CITIZEN⌉ He’s a very dog to the commonalty.

SECOND CITIZEN Consider you what services he has done for his country?

FIRST CITIZEN Very well, and could be content to give him good report for’t, but that he pays himself with being proud.

⌈FIFTH CITIZEN⌉ Nay, but speak not maliciously.

FIRST CITIZEN I say unto you, what he hath done famously, he did it to that end—though soft-conscienced men can be content to say ‘it was for his country’, ‘he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud’—which he is even to the altitude of his virtue.

SECOND CITIZEN What he cannot help in his nature you account a vice in him. You must in no way say he is covetous.

FIRST CITIZEN If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations. He hath faults, with surplus, to tire in repetition.

Shouts within

What shouts are these? The other side o’th’ city is

risen. Why stay we prating here? To th’ Capitol!

ALL Come, come.

Enter Menenius

FIRST CITIZEN Soft, who comes here?

SECOND CITIZEN Worthy Menenius Agrippa, one that hath always loved the people.

FIRST CITIZEN He’s one honest enough. Would all the rest were so!

MENENIUS

What work’s, my countrymen, in hand? Where go you

With bats and clubs? The matter. Speak, I pray you.

⌈FIRST CITIZEN Our business is not unknown to th’ senate. They have had inkling this fortnight what we intend to do, which now we’ll show ’em in deeds. They say poor suitors have strong breaths; they shall know we have strong arms, too.

MENENIUS

Why, masters, my good friends, mine honest

neighbours,

Will you undo yourselves?

⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN

We cannot, sir. We are undone already.

MENENIUS

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. Alack,

You are transported by calamity

Thither where more attends you, and you slander

The helms o’th’ state, who care for you like fathers,

When you curse them as enemies.

⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN Care for us? True, indeed! They ne’er cared for us yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich; and provide more piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there’s all the love they bear us.

MENENIUS Either you must

Confess yourselves wondrous malicious

Or be accused of folly. I shall tell you

A pretty tale. It may be you have heard it,

But since it serves my purpose, I will venture

To stale’t a little more.

⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN Well, I’ll hear it, sir. Yet you must not think to fob off our disgrace with a tale. But an’t please you, deliver.

MENENIUS

There was a time when all the body’s members,

Rebelled against the belly, thus accused it:

That only like a gulf it did remain

I‘th’ midst o’th’ body, idle and unactive,

Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing

Like labour with the rest; where th’other instruments

Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,

And, mutually participate, did minister

Unto the appetite and affection common

Of the whole body. The belly answered—

⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN

Well, sir, what answer made the belly?

MENENIUS

Sir, I shall tell you. With a kind of smile,

Which ne’er came from the lungs, but even thus—

For look you, I may make the belly smile

As well as speak—it tauntingly replied

To th’ discontented members, the mutinous parts

That envied his receipt; even so most fitly

As you malign our senators for that

They are not such as you.

⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN Your belly’s answer—what?

The kingly crowned head, the vigilant eye,

The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,

Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter,

With other muniments and petty helps

In this our fabric, if that they—

MENENIUS What then?

Fore me, this fellow speaks! What then? What then?

⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN

Should by the cormorant belly be restrained,

Who is the sink o’th’ body—

MENENIUS Well, what then?

⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN

The former agents, if they did complain,

What could the belly answer?

MENENIUS

I will tell you,

If you’ll bestow a small of what you have tittle—

Patience—a while, you’st hear the belly’s answer.

⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN

You’re long about it.

MENENIUS Note me this, good friend:

Your most grave belly was deliberate,

Not rash like his accusers, and thus answered:

‘True is it, my incorporate friends,’ quoth he,

‘That I receive the general food at first

Which you do live upon, and fit it is,

Because I am the storehouse and the shop

Of the whole body. But, if you do remember,

I send it through the rivers of your blood

Even to the court, the heart, to th’ seat o’th’ brain;

And through the cranks and offices of man

The strongest nerves and small inferior veins

From me receive that natural competency

Whereby they live. And though that all at once’—

You my good friends, this says the belly, mark me—

⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN

Ay, sir, well, well.

MENENIUS ’Though all at once cannot

See what I do deliver out to each,

Yet I can make my audit up that all

From me do back receive the flour of all

And leave me but the bran.’ What say you to’t?

⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN

It was an answer. How apply you this?

MENENIUS

The senators of Rome are this good belly,

And you the mutinous members. For examine

Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly

Touching the weal o’th’ common, you shall find

No public benefit which you receive

But it proceeds or comes from them to you,

And no way from yourselves. What do you think,

You, the great toe of this assembly?

⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN

I the great toe? Why the great toe?

MENENIUS

For that, being one o‘th’ lowest, basest, poorest

Of this most wise rebellion, thou goest foremost.

Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run,

Lead’st first to win some vantage.

But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs.

Rome and her rats are at the point of battle.

The one side must have bale.

Enter Martius

Hail, noble Martius!

MARTIUS

Thanks.—What’s the matter, you dissentious rogues,

That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,

Make yourselves scabs?

⌈FIRST⌉ CITIZEN

We have ever your good word.

MARTIUS

He that will give good words to thee will flatter

Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs

That like nor peace nor war? The one affrights you,

The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,

Where he should find you lions finds you hares,

Where foxes, geese. You are no surer, no,

Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,

Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue is

To make him worthy whose offence subdues him,

And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness

Deserves your hate, and your affections are

A sick man’s appetite, who desires most that

Which would increase his evil. He that depends

Upon your favours swims with fins of lead,

And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust

ye?

With every minute you do change a mind,

And call him noble that was now your hate,

Him vile that was your garland. What’s the matter,

That in these several places of the city

You cry against the noble senate, who,

Under the gods, keep you in awe, which else

Would feed on one another?

(To Menenius) What’s their seeking?

MENENIUS

For corn at their own rates, whereof they say

The city is well stored.

MARTIUS

Hang ’em! They say?

They’ll sit by th’ fire and presume to know

What’s done i’th’ Capitol, who’s like to rise,

Who thrives and who declines; side factions and give

out

Conjectural marriages, making parties strong

And feebling such as stand not in their liking

Below their cobbled shoes. They say there’s grain

enough!

Would the nobility lay aside their ruth

And let me use my sword, I’d make a quarry

With thousands of these quartered slaves as high

As I could pitch my lance.

MENENIUS

Nay, these are all most thoroughly persuaded,

For though abundantly they lack discretion,

Yet are they passing cowardly. But I beseech you,

What says the other troop?

MARTIUS

They are dissolved. Hang ’em.

They said they were an-hungry, sighed forth

proverbs—

That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat,

That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent

not

Corn for the rich men only. With these shreds

They vented their complainings, which being

answered,

And a petition granted them—a strange one,

To break the heart of generosity

And make bold power look pale—they threw their caps

As they would hang them on the horns o’th’ moon,

Shouting their emulation.

MENENIUS

What is granted them?

MARTIUS

Five tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms,

Of their own choice. One’s Junius Brutus,

Sicinius Velutus, and I know not. ’Sdeath,

The rabble should have first unroofed the city

Ere so prevailed with me! It will in time

Win upon power and throw forth greater themes

For insurrection’s arguing.

MENENIUS This is strange.

MARTIUS (to the Citizens) Go get you home, you fragments.

Enter a Messenger hastily

MESSENGER Where’s Caius Martius?

MARTIUS Here. What’s the matter?

MESSENGER

The news is, sir, the Volsces are in arms.

MARTIUS

I am glad on’t. Then we shall ha’ means to vent

Our musty superfluity.

Enter Sicinius, Brutus, Cominius, Lartius, with other Senators

See, our best elders.

FIRST SENATOR

Martius, ’tis true that you have lately told us.

The Volsces are in arms.

MARTIUS They have a leader,

Tullus Aufidius, that will put you to’t.

I sin in envying his nobility,

And were I anything but what I am,

I would wish me only he.

COMINIUS

You have fought together!

MARTIUS

Were half to half the world by th’ ears and he

Upon my party, I’d revolt to make

Only my wars with him. He is a lion

That I am proud to hunt.

FIRST SENATOR Then, worthy Martius,

Attend upon Cominius to these wars.

COMINIUS (to Martius)

It is your former promise.

MARTIUS Sir, it is,

And I am constant. Titus Lartius, thou

Shalt see me once more strike at Tullus’ face.

What, art thou stiff? Stand’st out?

LARTIUS No, Caius Martius.

I’ll lean upon one crutch and fight with th’other

Ere stay behind this business.

MENENIUS O true bred!

⌈FIRST⌉ SENATOR

Your company to th’ Capitol, where I know

Our greatest friends attend us.

LARTIUS (to Cominius) Lead you on.

(To Martius) Follow Cominius. We must follow you,

Right worthy your priority.

COMINIUS

Noble Martius.

⌈FIRST⌉ SENATOR (to the Citizens)

Hence to your homes, be gone.

MARTIUS Nay, let them follow.

The Volsces have much corn. Take these rats thither

To gnaw their garners.

Citizens steal away

Worshipful mutineers,

Your valour puts well forth. (To the Senators) Pray follow.

Exeunt all but Sicinius and Brutus

SICINIUS

Was ever man so proud as is this Martius?

BRUTUS He has no equal.

SICINIUS

When we were chosen tribunes for the people—

BRUTUS

Marked you his lip and eyes?

SICINIUS

Nay, but his taunts.

BRUTUS

Being moved, he will not spare to gird the gods.

SICINIUS Bemock the modest moon.

BRUTES

The present wars devour him! He is grown

Too proud to be so valiant.

SICINIUS Such a nature,

Tickled with good success, disdains the shadow

Which he treads on at noon. But I do wonder

His insolence can brook to be commanded

Under Cominius.

BRUTUS Fame, at the which he aims—

In whom already he’s well graced—cannot

Better be held nor more attained than by

A place below the first; for what miscarries

Shall be the general’s fault, though he perform

To th’ utmost of a man, and giddy censure

Will then cry out of Martius ‘O, if he

Had borne the business!’

SICINIUS

Besides, if things go well,

Opinion, that so sticks on Martius, shall

Of his demerits rob Cominius.

BRUTUS

Come,

Half all Cominius’ honours are to Martius,

Though Martius earned them not; and all his faults

To Martius shall be honours, though indeed

In aught he merit not.

SICINIUS Let’s hence and hear

How the dispatch is made, and in what fashion,

More than his singularity, he goes

Upon this present action.

BRUTUS Let’s along. Exeunt