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The Tragedy of Coriolanus

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The Tragedy of Coriolanus Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: Coriolanus The Tragedy of Coriolanus oriolanus can be dated any time between at which time it was listed among plays formerly 1579, the publication of North’s Plutarch, acted at Blackfriars. It is assumed, e.g. by Parker,1 and the play’s publication in the First that Shakespeare wrote and produced the play CFolio, 1623. for the Blackfriars theatre in 1608, but other commentators have pointed out that the stage in Publication the indoor Blackfriars theatre was much smaller than at outdoor theatres such as the Globe and Coriolanus is one of eighteen plays in F1 which would thus have presented difficulties in staging 2 had not previously been published. It was entered the large crowd scenes and the battle scenes. into the Stationers’ Register on 8 November 1623 alongside other plays as “not formerly entred to other men”: Sources Mr Blounte Isaak Jaggard. Entered for their Bullough notes that North’s edition of Plutarch Copie vunder the hands of Mr Doctor Worral (1579) provides almost all the material for the and Mr Cole, warden, Mr William Shakspeers play. Some material may have been taken from Comedyes Histories, and Tragedyes soe manie Livy, either from the Latin text or perhaps using of the said Copies as are not formerly entered to Philemon Holland’s translation of 1600. other men,. vizt. Comedyes. The Tempest. The Bullough notes that Menenius’s Fable two gentlemen of Verona. Measure for Measure. (1.1.95–154) on the importance of the belly The Comedy of Errors. As you Like it. All’s well that ends well. Twelft night. The winters tale. was commonplace, occurring in a wide range Histories. The thirde parte of Henry the sixt. of sources. Most notably the fable is reported Henry the eight. Coriolanus. Timon of Athens. in North’s Plutarch (1579), but it also occurs in Julius Caesar. Tragedies. Mackbeth. Anthonie many other sources: Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie and Cleopatra. Cymbeline. (composed c. 1581, published 1595), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (6, 86),3 Aesop’s Fables (available in The play is called The Tragedy of Coriolanus on Caxton’s 1484 translation or through Camerarius), the title page and the running title is The Tragedie John of Salisbury’s Policraticon (1159), Averill’s of Coriolanus. It occupies the first position in the A Marvellous Combat of Contrarieties (1588), tragedies, after Troilus and Cressida and before Holland’s Livy (1600) and Camden’s Remains of a Timon of Athens. Greater Worke concerning Britaine (1605). Camden, whose version was derived from John of Salisbury’s Policraticon (VI, 24.) is widely cited Performance date as a source, but the echoes are slight. In fact, there are only two possible allusions to Camden, but There are no contemporary performances neither reference is compelling. Firstly, we have recorded. The earliest known performance was the use of ‘gulf’ (95) for belly, which is paralleled staged at at Drury Lane in 1669 by Killigrew, © De Vere Society 1 Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: Coriolanus elsewhere both in Shakespeare (Macbeth 4.1. 24: Style and Versification ‘Maw and gulf of the ravin’d salt-sea shark’) and in Spenser (The Shepherdes Calender Sept., 184: ‘a Chambers asserts that Coriolanus should be placed wicked wolfe that with many a lambe had glutted between Antony & Cleopatra and Pericles (both his gulfe.’). Secondly, where Camden lists both the entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1608) on the parts of the body and their activities, Shakespeare grounds of verse. Wells and Taylor reach similar ignores the names of the parts of the body and conclusions from their analyses of colloquialisms. simply lists their separate activities. Overall, These conclusions are questionable, as the the similarities are not close and do not require following analyses will show. If an exception is to the conclusion that this passage in Coriolanus is be made for one play on grounds other than verse, dependent on Camden. It has also been suggested then the entire process of attempting to date this that Camden’s Remaines was used for two small play or indeed any play in this way should be references in King Lear, but Muir rejects these.4 doubted. As Shakespeare does not appear to allude to this a) Unsplit lines with pauses: Chambers text anywhere else, Gillespie is very skeptical as provides relevant figures in his second volume to whether Shakespeare ever consulted Camden’s (Table V; compare Table 6 pp. 486–7). He defines Remaines. a split line of poetry as one divided between two or more speakers. Assuming the accuracy of Orthodox Date the figures, the notion that “the evidence of the style and metre puts Coriolanus between Antony Edmond Malone (in 1778) first suggested that and Cleopatra and Pericles” is not borne out by Coriolanus should be dated to 1609. Malone what Chambers himself offers. The difference of quoted Camden as a source and saw references seven percentage points between the incidence to the Great Frost, the Corn Riots, and James I’s of unsplit lines with pauses in Coriolanus (37) order on 19 January 1607/8 to expand the growing and those in Antony (44) must surely indicate a of mulberries at about this time. Schoenbaum different positioning. (1970: 169) was very dismissive of his efforts: Some very odd conclusions are drawn: for example, Coriolanus apparently shares more When he can find no evidence, [Malone] features with Macbeth than with King Lear. No throws up his hands in despair and assigns a play to a year simply because that year would clear correspondence therefore emerges between otherwise be blank and Shakespeare must have assumed dates of plays and the use of unsplit lines been continuously employed. Such is the case with pauses. with Coriolanus. b) Full lines split between different speakers: Most commentators, however, have followed the incidence of lines divided between two speakers Malone’s ‘lucky guess’ and accepted a date may be significant chronologically. If so, almost between 1607–09. Chambers asserts that “there every play by Shakespeare would fall between is practically no concrete evidence as to date.” On Antony and Pericles. No clear correspondence the grounds of style, metre and mislineations as therefore emerges between assumed dates of plays well as of source material with those of Antony and the use of split lines. and Cleopatra, Chambers also accepts 1608. J. D. Wilson accepts a date c. 1608 based on similarity c) Prose as a proportion of a play: a further of style. Using some slight historical allusions and distinction cited as evidence of the development analysis of verse and style, Wells & Taylor opt of Shakespeare’s style lies in the increasing use for 1608. Brockbank, Parker and Bliss settle for of prose in his plays. However, a major difficulty 1607–9. J. Leeds Barroll argues for a later date c. exists in deciding just which scenes use prose and 1610, based on the references to drought both in which are in verse, since editions vary enormously. the play and in reports about James’s Progress that Again, conclusions are unsatisfactory. On this year. Leeds Barroll makes it contemporaneous basis, Romeo and Juliet becomes a later play than with Cymbeline. Wiggins dates this play to 1608. Macbeth and Troilus, while Antony emerges as an early play, coming, with many others, before © De Vere Society 2 Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: Coriolanus Pericles. No clear correspondence is therefore (for ‘doth’ and ‘hath’) and his increasing use demonstrated between the assumed dates of plays of contractions show that his language was and the use of prose. becoming less formal and more colloquial. This d) Use of rhyme compared with use of of course does not indicate any absolute date, but blank verse: another suggested dating tool is the that Coriolanus comes late in the canon. While decreasing use of rhyme. Again this is not fully the King James Bible in 1611 used only the archaic conclusive, merely showing that the Roman plays forms ‘hath’ and ‘doth’ (probably because the style use very little rhyme. By this unreliable standard, was established in Tyndale’s partial translations Coriolanus appears as the last play, having the 1526–35), the preference for ‘does’ and ‘has’ in least amount of rhyme. Only two out of 29 scenes Coriolanus may simply reflect the tendencies of (7%) end with a rhyming couplet, compared with the compositor(s) in the printing house. six out of 38 (16%) in Antony and Cleopatra. It h) Use of colloquialisms: Wells and Taylor might be that this indicates that Coriolanus was have argued that Shakespeare increasingly not revised, or at least not performed in the poet’s used colloquialisms in his plays and that their lifetime. At any rate, no clear correspondence incidence is thus an index of relative dating. emerges between assumed dates of plays and the Their method was first to decide whether certain decreased use of rhyme. elisions were colloquial. The results gave a number e) Lines with feminine endings: another of colloquialisms per 1,000 words, with Hamlet contention is that Shakespeare increasingly having only 0.5, Pericles 4, The Tempest 10, allowed iambic pentameters an extra syllable: the Antony 11, Cymbeline 11 and Coriolanus 15. The so-called feminine ending, where the final syllable conclusion to be drawn from these figures is that is not stressed. The outcome of this study is not Coriolanus was Shakespeare’s last play, later than very satisfactory. No commentator would place The Tempest and not contemporary with Pericles. Richard III after King Lear or Pericles, which is It is very doubtful whether such data can supposed to be the same year as Coriolanus (see be relied upon.
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