The Tragedy of Coriolanus

Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: 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

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. Perhaps the play was simply 1 above). No clear correspondence therefore unrevised. emerges between the assumed dates of the plays and the incidence of feminine endings. External allusions

f) Lines with light and weak endings: lines Some lines in Coriolanus which have been taken that end with monosyllabic functional words have to refer to contemporary events. also been advanced as a sign of earlier or later composition. Light endings are pronouns such a) Corn riots: Coriolanus complains that as ‘I’, ‘thou’, ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘them’ and auxiliaries the people want “corn at their own rates” (I. such as ‘do’, ‘have’, ‘may’, ‘shall’. Weak endings 1. 187). Many commentators see the Corn are conjunctions (‘and’, ‘or’) or prepositions (‘at’, Riots in Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and ‘by’, ‘from’). However, King Lear would appear, Leicestershire in 1607/8 (reported by Stow in on this basis, to be a very early play and Julius Bullough, V, 559) as awakening Shakespeare’s Caesar would come some time after Troilus, interest in the story of Coriolanus. But corn Measure for Measure and Othello. Furthermore, shortages were frequent in late Elizabethan and we can scarcely base our dating of Coriolanus on early Jacobean life: Chambers refers to riots in the difference between the 1% and 3% incidence Stratford in the 1590s due to corn shortages, and of the combined totals of two features such as “Wm Shackespere” was found guilty of hoarding light and weak endings. There is thus no clear 10 quarters (presumably of malt) at Stratford on correspondence between assumed dates of plays 4 February 1597.4 Thus this allusion would have and the increased incidence of light and weak been topical throughout the 1590s and 1600s. endings. b) The Great Frost: many commentators g) Changes in linguistic preference: doth/ believe that Shakespeare was referring to the does: Waller argues that Shakespeare’s linguistic Great Frost of 1607, at 1.1.169: habits changed in observable patterns throughout his career. His increasing use of ‘does’ and ‘has’

. . . You are no surer, no, in the play, but not in Plutarch). They had similar Than is the coal of fire upon the ice personalities: impatient, uncooperative, faithful Or hailstone in the sun. to friends, implacably resentful to enemies. In Plutarch there is no reference to the sea, whereas However, there were other severe frosts: Stowe in our play there are three such references. People reports in his Annals (sig 3V3) that in December 7 thronged to see Drake’s procession in the streets. 1598 the Thames was frozen over. Nor is it necessary In general, this is not very convincing. There to accept this as a reference to a particularly severe were many street processions in Elizabethan and frost, merely that the commoners are changeable. Jacobean times.8 Drake never held authority such Thus it forms no basis for dating Coriolanus. as did Coriolanus. We might wonder how many c) Myddleton’s project for supplying water members of an Elizabethan audience would have to London (1609–12): We find at 3.2.82: compared a military hero with a naval one. The references to the sea perhaps tell us more about To say he’ll turn your current in a ditch Shakespeare’s own maritime interests than about And make your channel his? Coriolanus. G. B. Harrison believes this refers to Myddleton’s Oxford may have consulted Plutarch in project for bringing clean water into London. In Amyot’s French translation, an expensive copy of fact, Myddleton took over the project to construct which he had bought in 1569. a 3.8-mile aqueduct from Islington, from the It may be seen in MacLure (84) that William City of London, whose representatives had been Barlow, Bishop of London, preached a sermon considering doing it since 1596. The City already at St Paul’s, shortly after Essex’s execution in had 400 miles of wooden piping, with elaborate February 1601. Barlow specifically compared the water wheels under London Bridge.6 It is less Earl of Essex to Coriolanus, who might ‘make a likely that Shakespeare is referring to Myddleton’s fit parallel for the late Earle, if you read his life.’ aqueducts, than to some other arrangement, Oxford had been one of the peers who tried and 9 possibly agricultural, since a “ditch” is referred convicted Essex of treason. to rather than a pipe. In a predominantly rural society, water-rights were essential for summer Conclusion crops. The reference is timeless. d) Mulberries: Volumnia mentions mulberries At most, we can say that the play was composed at 3.2.79 (“Now humble as the ripest mulberry between 1579 and 1623; that is, after the / That will not hold the handling”) which led publication of North’s translation of Plutarch’s Malone to wonder if there was a reference to Lives in 1579 and before the appearance of the James I’s edict (January 1608/9). This is possible First Folio. There is no reference to the play before if we can be sure that the play was composed at 1623. Almost all commentators are agreed that this time, but mulberries were well known in this tragedy should be ascribed to c. 1608, yet Elizabethan England; Shakespeare mentions there is nothing that directly points to this date, them in Venus and Adonis line 1103 (1593) and in and very little circumstantial evidence to support Midsummer Night’s Dream at 3.1.170 and again it. at 5.1.149 (Q1, 1600). Chambers observes that Conventional attributions may well represent attempts to find such concrete evidence for dating mis-dating. The slight references to frosts, are far-fetched. mulberries and corn riots are not sufficient to fix any date. Arguments from style suggest that Oxfordian Date it should be associated with the later plays, but none of the criteria is very convincing for fixing an absolute date. An alternative explanation, that Oxfordians have suggested various dates Coriolanus was never staged in the playwright’s between 1581 and 1603. Clark proposes a date lifetime and remained unrevised at his death, after 1581 and sees Drake returned from his must remain as a possible interpretation for circumnavigation of the world, as Coriolanus. the versification in the play. Barlow’s sermon Drake’s symbol was a drum (mentioned nine times comparing Essex to Coriolanus in February 1601

© De Vere Society 4 Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: Coriolanus appears to be the only contemporary reference to in February 1601: Alan Nelson, Monstrous the Roman soldier and might be considered as a Adversary, (2003: 397). possible date for composition, as Jorgenson has argued. Other Works Cited Notes Barroll, J. L., Politics, Plague and Shakespeare’s Theatre, [Appendix 5 considers the date of Coriolanus], 1. Parker (87–8) makes the following comment: 1991 “The possibility (I would even say likelihood) Bliss, L. (ed.), Coriolanus, New Cambridge that Coriolanus was composed from the start Shakespeare, CUP, 2000 with the newly acquired Blackfriars in mind Brockbank, J. P. (ed.), Coriolanus, London: Methuen and subsequently annotated for what would Arden, 1976 amount to a try-out in that house rather than Bullough, G., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of the Globe throws certain aspects of its tone, Shakespeare, vol. V, London: Routledge, 1964 dramatic technique, and stage directions into Chambers, E. K., William Shakespeare: A Study of new relief.” Facts and Problems, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon 2. These points have been made by Allardyce Nicholl, Press, 1930 ‘“Passing over the Stage”’ Shakespeare Survey Clark, E. T., Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays, 12, 1959, 47–55 and by Joseph Weixlmann, New York, 1974 edn “How the Romans Were Beat Back to Their Gillespie, S., Shakespeare’s Books: A Dictionary of Trenches”, Notes & Queries, 21, 1974, 133–4. Shakespeare’s Sources, London: Athlone Press, They suggest that mass entrances were made 2001 through the theatre yard (as happened in the Harrison, G. B., “A Note on Coriolanus” in J. G. 2006 production at Shakespeare’s Globe, McManaway et al., John Quincey Adams London). Memorial Studies, 1948 3. There is no specific debt to Dionysius of Jorgensen, P. A., “Shakespeare’s Coriolanus: Halicarnassus (fl. 10 BC) whose Roman Elizabethan Soldier”, PMLA, lxiv, 1949, 221– Antiquities was originally composed in Greek 35 and translated into Latin in 1480 and 1549. MacLure, M., The Paul’s Cross Sermons,[contains This work was not available in English until Bishop Barlow’s 1601 sermon], 1958 Spelman’s 1758 translation. Muir, K. (ed.), King Lear, London: Methuen Arden, 4. C.f. Muir’s introduction, (page xxxvi, note) Arden 1952 2 edition, Macbeth (1952). Parker, R. B. (ed.), Coriolanus, Oxford: OUP, 1994 5. Chambers, W. S., II, 99–101, Chambers describes Schoenbaum, S., Shakespeare’s Lives, Oxford: OUP, how, after the wet summers of 1594–6, there 1970 was a dearth of corn and how the Privy Council Shaheen, Naseeb, Biblical Allusions in Shakespeare’s tried to ensure that grain was not hoarded. Plays, Newark, University of Delaware Press, Shakespeare breached this order. 1999 6. See the entry for Hugh Myddleton in the DNB Spenser, Edmund, The Shepheardes Calender and Colin and A. S. Hargreaves “New River” The Clout (1579), edited by Nancy Jo Hoffman, Oxford Companion to British History. Ed. John Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Cannon. OUP, 2009. 1977 7. For details about Sir Francis Drake, Clark quotes Waller, F. O., “The Use of Linguistic Criteria Darcie’s The True and Royall History of the in Determining the Copy and Dates of Famous Empress Elizabeth (1625). Darcie’s work Shakespeare’s Plays”, Pacific Coast Studies was a translation of William Camden’s Annales in Shakespeare, ed. W. F. McNeir and T. N. (1615). Drake’s Drum has passed into folklore, Greenfield, 1960 e.g. in the poem of Sir Henry Newbolt (died Wells, S. & G. Taylor, eds, The Complete Oxford 1938). Shakespeare, Oxford: OUP, 1986 8. See William Leahy, Elizabethan Triumphal Wells, S. & G. Taylor, William Shakespeare: a textual Processions (2005) for how the common companion, Oxford: OUP, 1987 people reacted to some of Elizabeth’s stately Wiggins, Martin (ed.) British Drama 1533–1642: A ceremonies. Catalogue, Volume V: 1603–1608. Oxford, 9. Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford “served as the OUP, 2015 senior of the twenty-five noblemen” as Essex Wilson, J. D. (ed.), Coriolanus, New Cambridge and Southampton were tried for treason Shakespeare, CUP, 1960