degenerate Rome. For this, Plutarch is certainly not responsible, for although he is not in his heart very favourably disposed towards the "common people," as North calls them, he does justice on various occasions to their military courage and even to their civic virtues, noticeably at the time of their withdrawal to the "Holy Hill," when they offered "no creature any hurt or violence, nor made any show of actual rebellion." Here they remained for four months. Right and reason were on their side, and they dishonoured their cause by no act of violence or excess of any kind. To these oppressed and proud plebeians, opposing a passive and what may be called a conservative resistance to the despotic measures of the patricians, with a moderation derived from a sense of their strength and the rightfulness of their cause, it is impossible to refuse our esteem, nay more, our admiration. Nothing could less resemble a vulgar street riot than this orderly retreat to Mons Sacer of four thousand resolute men, ready to suffer anything rather than submit to tyranny. By the firmness of their attitude they compelled the senate to give way, for the land was lying uncultivated, and the inaction of four thousand valiant defenders, as Plutarch acknowledges them to be, left Rome exposed to the attacks of her foes. The chatter of poor old Menenius, and his wonderful fable, had but slight effect upon the seceders, who were only induced to return to their homes, as mentioned in a former chapter, after obtaining the privilege of appointing tribunes "to defend the poor people from violence and oppression.' This aspect of the plebeians of the Roman Republic in its young days, this grave, political, warlike, and wholly estimable side of their nature, does not appear in "Coriolanus." According to his invariable custom, Shakespeare took no heed of what he considered to be a mere historical peculiarity, a local and temporary exception; he depicts the plebeians, in the early times of liberty, in conformity with the general type he had conceived of the populace, a type belonging to no especial date or nationality, but eternally and everlastingly true, and as applicable to ancient Rome as to Paris or London in modern times,-to the Republic and the Empire, as to periods of absolute or constitutional monarchy, or as to our own democratic days. The dominant features of Shakespeare's plebeians, as of all his sons of the people, are stupidity, inconstancy, and cowardliness. They are always blundering, always incapable of any political idea, and impressionable as wax in the hands of their demagogues. To these vices must be added their feeble negative good-qualities, which may be summed up shortly by saying that they are even sillier than they are wicked. If "Coriolanus" were an historical or political drama, and if the struggle between the plebeians and the patricians were what Shakespeare intended to depict, as has so often been foolishly said, it must be allowed that he has scarcely carried out his purpose in a satisfactory manner; for no attempt is made to give to each of the rival pretensions of the two hostile factions whatever portion of truth it may contain, or even to state clearly what they are. This contest between two political ideas, brought into harmony by a chorus of old men endowed with rather greater wisdom than Menenius Agrippa, would have furnished a magnificent subject to the Sophoclean drama. Nor would a poet, who like Corneille was fond of political dissertations, have failed to put an eloquent vindication of the rights of the people into the tribune's mouth. But Shakespeare leaves all this side of the matter entirely in the shade. The plebeians would appear to have no solid foundation for their grievances, nor are we even able to perceive what benefit they expect from the establishment of the tribuneship, nor why, when their petition is granted them, it should throw them into such a rapturous state, shouting with joy, and throwing their caps "as they would hang them on the horns o' the moon." But the truth is, that the interest of "Coriolanus" is anything but of a political or historical order; it is on the character of the hero, on the development of his nature, that the poet has concentrated all the effort of his genius: he pictures him as a giant of passion and pride, towering over the heads of all who surround him, who, with the single exception of his mother, are utterly insignificant, weak, and contemptible. Without going so far as to say, with Hallam and Gervinus, that there was no other possible treatment of the subject, it is enough to state that this is the manner in which Shakespeare has treated it, and which is fully in accordance with the admiration for great personalities and stronglymarked characters which his writings so often testify. He has sacrificed in one huge holocaust nearly all the other personages of the drama, that he might add to the colossal proportions of the patrician and warrior. To form any notion of the distance that separated Coriolanus from the plebeians, of the remote spot whence he surveyed them and was dismayed, as it were, at their smallness, we must turn to mediæval times, and picture to ourselves a knight equipped for battle giving orders from horseback to his churls and serfs: his intense contempt is simply inconceivable at a time when all citizens were on a footing of military equality. But in fact we are not in Rome at all, we are in the full stream of chivalry, with the warlike nobles on the one side and on the other the peasants that dig the ground. These flights of fancy in the Shakespearian drama rather interfere with our comprehension of the logical sequence of the facts: it is difficult to understand, if we * Kreyssig, "Vorlesungen über Shakespeare," Vol. I., p. 471. stop to consider, how such utterly contemptible creatures as the plebeians and their tribunes are represented to be, should all at once become powerful enough to dictate laws to the nobles, and to banish their great enemy. But the vigour of the poetry carries the reader along with it, and leaves no time or space for the cold objections of historical accuracy. "Coriolanus is, at one and the same time, the play in which Shakespeare has borrowed from the historian the greatest number of details which he reproduces with peculiar exactitude, and also that in which he has most widely departed from the spirit of historical truth. The part played by the plebeians in "Coriolanus" must therefore be regarded merely as a representation of the populace in general; and it is, moreover, the best portrait of the kind given by Shakespeare, the shadows are not painted in so deep a hue as elsewhere, and one or two redeeming features possible to the picture are pleasantly brought forward. But, to begin with, the people are stupid. When Coriolanus, their mortal enemy, politically speaking, enters Rome as the conqueror of the Volscians, the dazzled multitude intoxicated with the pomp and grandeur of the sight, welcome him with every token of joy: "All tongues speak of him, and the bleered sights ... Stalls, bulks, windows, In earnestness to see him." (Act II., Sc. 1.) The people are utterly wanting in penetration. They let themselves be deceived by the apparent kindliness of Menenius Agrippa, who, as we have seen, was as haughty a patrician as Coriolanus himself. "Worthy Menenius Agrippa," exclaims a delighted citizen, "one that hath always loved the people." j come so. The people are not inherently envious, but they beUntil perverted by the sophistries of their leaders, the superior rights conferred by merit and by birth are instinctively recognized by them, which is the best point about them in Shakespeare's drama. The false theory of the natural equality of all men is not originally an article of their creed, but is a lesson they learn from their masters, a lesson only too well understood and too quickly accepted. As Saint-Just said to the Convention after the fall of the Girondins, " You would have no man either virtuous or famous; to a free people and a national assembly it is impossible to admire any one." That doctrines so flattering to the inherent vanity of mankind should have a rapid success is inevitable; and when once they have penetrated the masses, the jealous spirit of democracy imposes its own level upon all that would soar above it; and everything that is mediocre, at times even everything that is shameful, bids for success by outdoing all rivals in whatever is base and mean. One of Coriolanus' most stinging taunts refers to this ignoble tyranny from below : "Your virtue is, To make him worthy, whose offence subdues him, And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness, These are striking words, the truth of which may well |