[Scene VII.]
Auffidius with his Lieutenant Beeching (Falcon Sh.): It is perhaps noteworthy that both in I, x. and here Aufidius is represented in conversation with his inferiors. The dishonourable envy he there displayed has now become as dishonourable a jealousy.
at end For examples of this omission of the after prepositions in adverbial phrases see Abbott, § 90.
darkned W. A. Wright: The Folios have ‘darkned,’ and this was, no doubt, the pronunciation of the word. It appears to have been the custom so to shorten the participles of verbs ending in a syllable of which the final letter is a liquid.— Case: See II, i, 283, where, however, the word is used with a deeper significance, and Ant. & Cleo., III, i, 21-24: ‘Who does i' the wars more than his captain can
Becomes his captain's captain; and ambition,
The soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss
Than gain which darkens him.’
your owne W. A. Wright: That is, your soldiers.—Case: I think ‘your own men,’ in view of what precedes. Some, however, including Mr Craig, understand ‘your own action in making him joint commander.’ It might possibly also refer to Coriolanus, who owned his position to Aufidius, and this would agree better with the passage from Ant. & Cleo. cited above. In this case ‘darken'd’ would be best rendered by ‘eclips'd,’ cast into the shade.
He beares himself . . . be amended MacCallum (p. 616): It is said that for his revenge Coriolanus condescends to fawn upon Aufidius and the Volscians. This is not very plausible. His speech of greeting certainly shows no servile propitiation, and, according to Tullus, it is conspicuously absent in his subsequent behaviour. [The present lines quoted.] And elsewhere Tullus complains that his guest has ‘waged him with his countenance,’ [V, vi, 45]. The only ground for saying that he paid court to the Volces is alleged in Tullus' speech that just precedes this accusation of haughtiness to himself, [V, vi, 27-30]. But the speaker is an enemy, and an enemy who has to account for the disagreeable circumstance that his own adherents have gone over to his rival, and who, moreover, at the time is looking for a plea that ‘admits of good construction.’ There is nothing that we see or hear of Coriolanus elsewhere that supports the charge. more proudlier Malone: We have already had in this play ‘more worthier,’ [III, i, 146], as in Timon, IV, i, 36, we have ‘more kinder’; yet the modern editors read here ‘more proudly.’ [See Text. Notes; and for other examples, Abbott, § 11.]
Changeling Case (Arden Sh.): Here, in sense, shifter, inconstant, turn-coat, as in 1 Henry IV: V, i, 76, ‘Of fickle changelings and poor discontents,’ etc. The expression is found in various places in North's Plutarch, e. g., Alcibiades (ed. 1612, p. 210): ‘But he that had inwardly seene his naturall doings, and goodwill indeed lye naked before him, would certainly have vsed this common saying, This woman is no changeling’; and Agesilaus, p. 620: ‘For he was no changeling, but the selfe same man in state and condition that he was before he took his iourny.’ See also Gabriel Harvey, Trimming of Thomas Nash (ed. Grosart, iii, 16), ‘For indeed I saw you to be no changeling.’
either haue borne . . . left it soly Malone: The old copy reads, have borne, which cannot be right. For the emendation [had borne] now made I am answerable. [Pope should have, at least, half the credit, see Text. Notes.—Ed.]— Steevens: I suppose the word had, or have, to be alike superfluous, and that the passage should be thus regulated: ‘—but either borne
The action of yourself, or else to him
Had left it solely.’—
Abbott (§ 479) gives Malone's regulation of these lines as an example wherein the final -ion is pronounced as a dissyllable in ‘commission,’ adding that the original Folio text is the better, since it avoids the necessity of laying two accents on ‘commission,’ qualifying his preference somewhat by remarking that the Folio ‘is, however, not of much weight as regards arrangement.’—Ed.
I vnderstand thee well . . . our account Craig (Arden Sh.): What did Aufidius mean by this? After a very careful study of the Life of Coriolanus, in North, I am inclined to think that this is the explanation: The passage in Shakespeare's mind seems to have been that wherein it appears, that when the ambassadors came from Rome the first time to treat of peace, Coriolanus demanded that the Romans should ‘restore unto the Volsces, all their landes and citties they had taken from them in former warres; and, moreover, that they should geve them the like honour and freedome of Rome, as they had before geven to the Latines.’ He gave them thirty days for answer and ‘departed his armie out of the territories of the Romaines,’ and the relation goes on: ‘This was the first matter wherewith the Volsces (that most envied Martius glorie and authoritie) dyd charge Martius with. Among those Tullus was chief; who though he had receyved no private injurie or displeasure of Martius, yet the common faulte and imperfection of man's nature wroght in him, and it grieved him to see his own reputation blemished,’ etc. A little later it continues: ‘From hence they derived all their first accusations and secret murmurings against Martius. For private captaines . . . gave it out that the removing of the campe was a manifest treason,’ etc.—MacCallum (p. 619): This is, no doubt, suggested by the incident of the thirty days' truce, of which Plutarch makes so much and which Shakespeare totally suppresses. But the vague reference becomes all the more pregnant when we are to understand that Coriolanus has, at unawares and against his purpose, granted some little concessions to the victims of his wrath. That Aufidius' statement has some foundation is made probable by the words of the Antium Lord, who is no enemy to Marcius, but reproaches Tullus with his murder and reverently bewails his death: ‘What faults he made before the last, I think,
Might have found easy fines,’ V, vi, 79.
Faults, then, from the Volscian point of view, he has committed in the opinion of a sympathetic and impartial onlooker, which means that as a Roman he has shown forbearance.
What I can vrge against him Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.): This scene is adroitly fashioned to reveal Aufidius as entirely changed in mood toward Coriolanus since his last appearance. He is now secretly eager to urge anything against him there can possibly be made to urge. Thus the impending fall of Coriolanus is seen before the Fourth Act closes as hanging upon the hatred of the most powerful man among his new allies. The occasion to get the better of him, for which he hopes, is thus darkly shown to be looming up.
he hath left vndone Leo (Coriolanus): Aufidius hints at the conquest and demolition of Rome and the massacre of the inhabitants, and his words signify, ‘He has not yet done it, and I doubt whether he will do it.’ Afterwards he says, ‘When, Caius, Rome is thine, thou art poor'st of all; then shortly art thou mine.’—Beeching (Falcon Sh.): What this was is never explained. The withdrawal from Rome furnished a better accusation.—E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): It is difficult to say what charges Aufidius now means to bring against Coriolanus. He has not yet betrayed Antium by sparing Rome. In V, vi. no other definite accusation is made against him, though certain unspecified ‘faults before the last’ are mentioned in V, vi, 79. [That which Coriolanus has left undone is, in the eyes of Aufidius, a due and proper recognition of all that has been accorded him by his quondam foe. Aufidius returns to this in V, vi, 25-45, and it is, I think, evident that his plan for the destruction of Coriolanus is here suggested; but the betrayal of the Antiates by Coriolanus causes Aufidius to drop the personal element, and merge it in the more serious charge of treason.—Ed.]
When ere we come . . . carry Rome W. S. Walker (Crit., iii, 213): Query? ‘When we come t' our account.
Sir, I beseech you
Think you he'll carry Rome?’
Or, omitting Sir, ‘When e'er we come, &c.—'Beseech you,’ &c.
30. All places yeelds to him, etc.] Coleridge (Notes on Coriol.): I have always thought this, in itself so beautiful speech, the least explicable from the mood and full intention of the speaker of any in the whole works of Shakespeare, I cherish the hope that I am mistaken, and that, becoming wiser, I shall discover some profound excellence in that in which I now appear to detect an imperfection.— Verplanck, in answer to the foregoing remark, says: ‘I cannot perceive the difficulty; the speech corresponds with the mixed character of the speaker, too generous not to see and admire his rival's merit, yet not sufficiently magnanimous to be free from the malignant desire of revenging himself upon his rival for that very superiority.’—MacCallum (p. 657): Here there are puzzling expressions in detail, but they have, on the whole, been satisfactorily explained, and it is not to them that Coleridge refers. (Of these, the most perplexing to me is the distinction Shakespeare makes between ‘the nobility,’ on the one hand, and ‘the senators and patricians’ on the other. What was in his mind? I fail to find an explanation even on trying to render his thought in terms of contemporary arrangements in England. ‘Peers,’ ‘parliament men,’ and ‘gentry’ would not do.) It strikes one indeed as a series of disconnected jottings that have as little to do with each other as with the situation and attitude of Aufidius. First he gives reasons for expecting the capture of Rome; then he enumerates defects in the character of Coriolanus that have led to his banishment with a supplementary acknowledgement of his merits; next he makes general reflections on the relation of virtue to the construction put upon it, and on the danger that lies in conspicuous power; thereafter he points out that things are brought to naught by themselves or their likes; and finally, he predicts that when Rome is taken he will get the better of his rival. Is there here a mere congeries of thoughts as one chance suggestion leads to another with which it happens to be casually associated, or does one continuous thread of meaning run through the whole? I would venture to maintain the latter opinion with more confidence than I do if Coleridge had not been so emphatic. In the first place, we have to remember what goes before. The report of the Lieutenant confirms the jealousy of Aufidius, who is further embittered by the thought that he is losing credit, but reflects that he can bring weighty charges against Coriolanus. Thereupon the Lieutenant meaningly rejoins: ‘Think you he'll carry Rome?’ It is a contingency to be reckoned with, for clearly, if Rome falls, any previous mistakes or complaisances alleged against the conqueror will find ready pardon. So Aufidius discusses the matter in the light of these two main considerations: (1) that he must get rid of his rival, and (2) that his rival may do the state a crowning service. He admits that Coriolanus, what with his own efficiency, what with the friendliness of one class in Rome and the helplessness of the remainder, is likely to achieve the grand exploit. How then will Aufidius' chances stand? Formerly Marcius deserved as well of his own country when he had overthrown Corioli, yet that did not secure him. What qualities in himself discounted his services to Rome, and may again discount his services to Antium? Pride of prosperity, disregard of his opportunities, his unaccommodating peremptory behaviour—all of these faults which, in point of fact, afterward, contributed to his death—brought about his banishment, though truly he had merit enough to make men overlook such trifles. This shows how worth depends on the way it is taken, and how ability, even when of the sterling kind that wins its own approval, may find the throne of its public recognition to be, more properly, its certain grave. Thus likes counteract likes; the greater the popularity, the greater the reaction; the greater the superiority, the more certainly it will balk itself. So, and this is the conclusion of the whole matter, even when Marcius has won Rome by a greater conquest than when he won Corioli, the result will be the same. His proud, imprudent, and overbearing conduct will obscure his high deserts. These will be construed only by public opinion, and the very prowess in which he delights will rouse an adulation, which, when he is no longer required, will swing round to its opposite. So his success will correct itself. His very triumph over Rome will be guarantee for Aufidius' triumph over him. If this amplified paraphrase give the meaning, that meaning is coherent enough and is quite suitable to the mood and attitude of the speaker.—E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): Surely Coleridge is right. The speech is out of keeping with Aufidius' mood in this scene. Perhaps the explanation is that it is not wholly dramatic; for once the dramatist, not the puppet, speaks. On the eve of the catastrophe Shakespeare pauses to sum up his hero's career so far.—Gordon: Why this distinction, it is often asked, between the nobility, on the one hand, and the senators and patricians on the other? They were clearly one group. The reason, I imagine, is in North's Plutarch, in such a sentence as this: ‘For they did ground this second insurrection against the Nobility and Patricians,’ &c. Shakespeare may have thought that they were in some way distinct.
loue him too Capell: ‘Too’ has not its ordinary signification of likewise, but is to be understood as if it came before ‘love him’; both ‘senators and patricians love him,’ for they, and they only, were the Roman nobility.
the Aspray Pope: The Osprey, a kind of eagle, ossifraga.—Theobald: Though one's search might have been very vain to find any such word as ‘Aspray,’ yet I easily imagined something must be couch'd, under the corruption, in its nature destructive to fish, and that made a prey of them, and this suspicion led me to the discovery. The Osprey is a species of the eagle of a strong make that haunts the sea and lakes for its food, and altogether preys on fish. It is called the Aquila Marina, as also Avis ossifraga; thence contracted first, perhaps, into Osphrey, and then, with regard to the ease of pronunciation, Osprey. Pliny gives us this description of its acute sight and eagerness after its prey: ‘Haliæetus, clarissima oculorum acie, librans ex alto sese, viso in mari pisce, præceps in mare ruens, et discussis pectore aquis, rapiens.’ It may not be disagreeable to go a little farther to explain the propriety of the Poet's allusion. Why will Coriolanus be to Rome as the Osprey to the fish: ‘he'll take it By sovereignty of nature’? Shakespeare, 'tis well known, has a peculiarity in thinking, and, whenever he is acquainted with nature, is sure to allude to her most uncommon effects and operations. I am very apt to imagine, therefore, that the poet meant Coriolanus would take Rome by the very opinion and terror of his name, as fish are taken by the Osprey through an instinctive fear they have of him. ‘The fishermen’ (says our old naturalist, William Turner) ‘are used to anoint their bait with osprey's fat, thinking thereby to make them the more efficacious; because when that bird is hovering in the air, all the fish that are beneath him (the nature of the eagle, as it is believed, compelling them to it) turn up their bellies and, as it were, give him his choice which he will take of them.’ Gesner goes a little farther in support of this odd instinct, telling us, ‘that while this bird flutters in the air, and sometimes, as it were, seems suspended there, he drops a certain quantity of his fat, by the influence whereof the fish are so affrighted and confounded that they immediately turn themselves belly upward; upon which he sowses down perpendicularly like a stone, and seizes them in his talons.’ To this, I dare say, Shakespeare alludes in this expression of the ‘Sovereignty of Nature.’ This very thought is again touched by Beaumont and Fletcher in their Two Noble Kinsmen, a play in which there is a tradition of our author having been jointly concerned: ‘—But, oh Jove! your actions,
Soon as they move, as Asprays do the fish
Subdue before they touch,’ [ed. Brooke, I, i, 149].
For here again we must read Ospreys.—Langton: We find in Drayton's Polyolbion, Song xxv, [ll. 134-138], a full account of the osprey, which shows the justness and beauty of the simile: ‘The Ospray oft here seen, though seldom here it breeds,
Which over them the fish no sooner do espy,
But (betwixt him and them, by an antipathy)
Turning their bellies up, as though their death they saw,
They at his pleasure lie, to stuff his glutt'nous maw.’
[This reference first appears in the Variorum 1773, and was doubtless furnished Johnson by his well-loved friend, Bennet Langton.—Ed.]—Steevens: So in The Battle of Alcazar, 1594: ‘I will provide thee of a princely osprey,
That as she flieth over fish in pools,
The fish shall turn their glistering bellies up,
And thou shalt take thy liberal choice of all,’ [ed. Dyce, ii, 110].
Such is the fabulous history of the osprey. I learn, however, from Mr Lambe's notes to the ancient metrical legend of The Battle of Flodden, that the osprey is a ‘rare, large, blackish hawk, with a long neck and blue legs. Its prey is fish, and it is sometimes seen hovering over the Tweed.’—Harris: The osprey is a different bird from the sea-eagle, to which the above quotations allude, but its prey is the same. See Pennant's British Zoölogy, 46 Linn. Syst. Nat. 129. [See also Willughby, Ornithology, Bk ii, p. 59.—Ed.]
whether 'was Pride . . . the warre Johnson: Aufidius assigns three probable reasons of the miscarriage of Coriolanus: pride, which easily follows an uninterrupted train of success; unskilfulness to regulate the consequences of his own victories; a stubborn uniformity of nature, which could not make the proper transition from the casque or helmet to the cushion or chair of civil authority, but acted with the same despotism in peace as in war.
To faile For other examples of the infinitive indefinitely used for forms of the gerund, see Abbott, § 356; compare ‘Too proud to be so valiant,’ I, i, 283 ante. Both Browne (p. 17) and Abbott (§ 283) quote the present line as an example wherein, metri gratia, the diphthong ai is to be resolved into two sounds.
Which . . . From Badham (Criticism Applied to Sh., p. 8): The words ‘not’ and ‘from’ should be the last syllables of lines 43 and 44. or whether Compare I, iii, 65, 66; see, if needful, Abbott, § 136.
Not . . . one thing W. A. Wright: ‘Not to be other than one thing,’ but, like Cæsar, ‘constant as the Northern star,’ and like him, ruined by his obstinacy.
the same austerity and garbe W. A. Wright: That is, the same severe and unbending demeanour. Another instance of the figure hendiadys. For ‘garb’ see Hamlet, II, ii, 390, ‘Let me comply with you in this garb.’ And Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, IV, iv, ‘His seniors give him good slight looks After their garb.’
spices of them all) not all Malone: That is, not all complete, not all in their full extent.—Steevens: So in Winter's Tale, ‘—for all Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it,’ [III, ii, 185].—Heath (p. 425): This passage as it now reads is mere nonsense. For if Aufidius knew that Coriolanus had a spice of every one of the three defects here enumerated, and that some one or other of them, he knew not which, was the principal cause of his exile, how could he be sure, and answer for it, that every one of them did not contribute in some measure towards it? I am, therefore, inclined to believe that our poet might have written, ‘(As he hath spices of them all), not gall.’ By gall I suppose is meant envy and resentment arising from it. no other purpose than to destroy it by boasting it.—Boswell: I rather understand it, ‘But such is his merit as ought to choke the utterance of his faults.’— Verplanck: I cannot understand these words [as Johnson explains them], which seem, on the contrary, to say, Some one of his faults made him feared, but such is his merit that it ought to choke and stifle the proclaiming his fault, whatever it was.—Delius: With Johnson's explanation ‘but’ is not in accord; perhaps it would, therefore, be better to read that, and thus connect the latter part with the foregoing ‘banish'd.’—Bulloch suggests that these words be transposed to follow ‘what it hath done,’ l. 55.—C. & M. Cowden Clarke (Shakespeare): We think the obscure effect here is partly attributable to the repeated use of the word ‘but’ in the speech, and partly to the mode in which ‘it’ occurs in this clause of the sentence. In the clauses ‘but he could not,’ ‘but commanding peace,’ and ‘but one of these’ the word ‘but’ is used as a particle of objection; whereas in the last clause, ‘but he has a merit,’ ‘but’ seems to be used in the sense of ‘however’ or ‘nevertheless.’ After having enumerated the faults of character in Coriolanus Aufidius ends his sentence by the admission, ‘Nevertheless, he has a merit,’ &c. It is this last clause of admission which presents the chief difficulty; and we have to bear well in mind Shakespeare's peculiarities of style when trying to discover its precise meaning. Remembering these peculiarities—his very condensed expression and elliptical construction, together with his mode of using ‘it,’ either to a just-named antecedent or to an implied particular—this clause may bear three interpretations: 1st, ‘However he has one merit, that of checking panegyric on it’ (his own merit). 2nd, ‘Nevertheless, he has merit sufficient to stifle the decree of his banishment (implied in the previous words ‘so banish'd’ and ‘rash in the repeal,’ ‘utterance’ in this case being taken to mean ‘carrying out to the uttermost’). 3d, ‘Nevertheless, he has a merit to quench what I have been uttering as to his faults’ (implied in ‘one of these, as he hath spices of them all,’ &c.). There is still a fourth interpretation that the clause will bear, which, considering the drift of the argument as carried out to the end of the speech, seems to be probably meant: ‘However, he has a merit, a merit which destroys its own power by striving to assert that power.’—Whitelaw: He did noble service as a soldier, and, though as a statesman, promoted for his service in the wars, he fell into disgrace, yet, confronted with the transcendent merit of the man (which only waits its opportunity, war, not peace), the very name of his fault must stick in the throats of his accusers.—Beeching (Henry Irving Sh.): ‘It’ may mean detraction, or some such idea supplied from ‘hated.’ If ‘it’ refers to ‘banishment,’ the sense must be ‘which ought to have choked it in the utterance.’—Deighton: Johnson's explanation seems to me to be the meaning, except that to ‘utterance’ I would give the less restricted and older meaning of publishing, displaying, not necessarily in an offensive way. The gist of the passage is that every good gift conferred upon him is counterbalanced by some weakness; he has raised himself to a high position by his valour, but his pride has marred his good fortune; he has, by his force of character, made himself master of great opportunities, but his defect of judgment has caused him to misuse those opportunities; he has the faculty of impressing men with his authority, but he cannot recognize the occasions on which that faculty should not be exercised; in every case some ‘vicious mole of nature’ counteracts the qualities which would otherwise make his character so perfect. For a very similar train of thought compare Hamlet, I, iv, 23-38.
And power . . . what it hath done Warburton: This is a common thought, but miserably ill expressed. The sense is, the virtue which delights to commend itself, will find the surest tomb in that chair wherein it holds forth its own commendations: ‘unto itself most commendable,’ i. e., which hath a very high opinion of itself.—Monck Mason (Comments, etc., p. 259): The obvious objection to Johnson's and Warburton's explanations arises from the peculiar temper of Coriolanus, which renders them totally inapplicable to him in the sense which they give them; for he was so far from boasting of his exploits himself that he could not bear to hear them extolled by others; and we find that when his archenemy, Aufidius, sums up the defects of his character, that of boasting is not upon the list. The passage, indeed, is so very obscure that I cannot but think there is an error in it, and that we ought to read, ‘But he has a merit to choak him in the utterance’ instead of ‘to choak it.’ What Aufidius means to say is: ‘That his merit was so transcendent that the recital of it excited the envy and the apprehensions of the people; and that, therefore, the power with which it was accompanied had nothing that tended more surely to its destruction than the chair from which it was applauded.’—Capell (vol. I, pt i, p. 97): The words ‘So our virtue’ and the line after them are a general reflection upon the power of opinion over the ‘virtues’ and endowments of all men, arising from the liberties which he himself had just taken with those of Coriolanus: 'tis opinion, says he, ‘the interpretation of the time, that gives them their hue, and determines the degree of their goodness; and that opinion will sink them, pronounce sentence against them, if they are too loud in their own praise and niggards in commendation of others. Such is the connection between the parts of this speech, and such the tendency of the three difficult lines that precede the four riming ones. [Capell quotes with approval Warburton's paraphrase.—Ed.]—Malone: If our author meant to place Coriolanus in this chair, he must have forgot his character, for, as Mr Mason has justly observed, he has already been described as one who was so far from being a boaster that he could not endure to hear ‘his nothings monster'd.’ But I rather believe ‘in the utterance’ alludes not to Coriolanus himself, but to the high encomiums pronounced on him by his friends; and then the lines of Horace may serve as a comment on the passage before us: ‘Urit enim fulgore suo, qui prægravat artes
Infra se positas,’ [Epist., II, i, l. 13].
A Passage in Tro. & Cress., however, may be urged in support of Warburton's interpretation: ‘The worthiness of praise disdains his worth
If that the prais'd himself brings the praise forth,’ [I, iii, 242].
Yet I still think that our poet did not mean to represent Coriolanus as his own eulogist.—Boswell: The pride of Coriolanus is his strongest characteristic. We may, perhaps, apply to him what is said of Julius Cæsar: ‘But when I tell him he hates flatterers,
He says he does, being then most flattered,’ [II, i, 207].—
Monck Mason: A sentiment of a similar nature is expressed by Adam, in the third scene of the Second Act of As You Like It, where he says to Orlando: ‘Your praise is come too swiftly home before you.
Know you not, master, to some kind of men
Their graces serve them but as enemies?
No more do yours: your virtues, gentle master,
Are sanctified and holy traitors to you, [ll. 9-13].—
Steevens: The passage before us and the comments upon it are, to me at least, equally unintelligible.—Rann: His merit is so transcendent as to be blasted by that envy which the bare recital of it creates. And, indeed, so far does the reputation of our virtues depend upon the public opinion that power, though derived from the purest source, finds not a surer instrument of destruction than the tongue of its panegyrist; a surer grave than the chair wherein its praise is sounded.— Singer (ed. i.): Well Steevens might exclaim that the passage and the comments upon it were equally unintelligible. The whole speech is very incorrectly printed in the Folio. Thus we have 'was for 'twas, [l. 39]; detect for defect, [l. 41]; virtue for virtues; and evidently, chair for hair. What is the meaning of ‘Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair’? A hair has some propriety, as used for a thing almost invisible. As in The Tempest, ‘—not a hair perished.’ I take the meaning of the passage to be: ‘So our virtues lie at the mercy of the time's interpretation, and power, which esteems itself while living so highly, hath not when defunct the least particle of praise allotted to it.’—Verplanck: The reading of the older printed copies is retained in the present edition not because it is satisfactorily explained, or likely to be the true text, but because I do not see any probable emendation or solution of the passage. It seems to me one continuous and inexplicable misprint. Singer would read ‘as a hair.’ His [interpretation] is not easily extracted even from the lines when amended as the critic proposes.—Collier (Notes & Emendations, etc., p. 362): The main difficulty [in this passage] has arisen out of the word ‘chair,’ which the old corrector informs us should be cheer, in reference to the popular applause which usually follows great actions; and, by extolling what has been done, confounds the doer. The change of ‘Lie’ to Live in l. 52 is countenanced by the word ‘tomb’ afterwards used; and the whole passage means that virtues depend upon the construction put upon them by contemporaries, and that power, though praiseworthy, may be buried by the very applause that is heaped upon it, &c.— Singer (Sh. Vindicated, etc., p. 225): To substitute live for ‘lie’ would be to destroy the meaning, according to Mr Collier's own exposition. What possible meaning can be attached to ‘a tomb so evident as a cheer’? [Singer again proposes as ‘a possible reading’ ‘evident as a hair.’—Ed.]—Anon. (Blackwood's Maga., Sep., 1853, p. 323): This passage has given a good deal of trouble to the commentators. Aufidius is describing Coriolanus as a man who, with all his merits, had failed through some unaccountable perversity of judgment in attaining the position which his genius entitled him to occupy. Our virtues, says Aufidius, consist in our ability to interpret and turn to good account the signs of the times. And power, which delights to praise itself, is sure to have a downfall so soon as it blazons forth its pretensions from the rostrum. The MS. Corrector proposes, ‘—as a cheer.’ The original text is obscurely enough expressed, but the new reading seems to be utter nonsense. What can Mr Singer mean by his reading, ‘Hath not a tomb so evident as a hair’?—Ingleby (Sh. Controversy, p. 148): One of the earliest attempts to prove the modern origin of the manuscript notes of the Perkins Folio by means of a test-word was made by Mr A. E. Brae, of Leeds. His test-word was communicated to the editor of Notes and Queries and myself in 1853, and I made it public in my Shakespeare Fabrications. [Brae's test-word was the correction cheer; Ingleby also refers to White's change of ‘evident’ to eloquent in the present line.—Ed.] But Mr Richard Garnett (Athenæum, Oct. 15, 1859) proposes to read tongue for ‘tomb,’ wondering, with the reviewer of The Athenæum, for August 20th, 1859, how a tomb can extol. Surely it is the chair which is given to extol what the man of power and virtue has done! I should not wonder if some future Perkins should adopt all three suggestions and read, ‘Hath not a tongue so eloquent as a cheer!’ I apprehend no intelligent person who reads the passage as corrected by Perkins will doubt for an instant that a cheer is there intended to be understood in the sense a shout of applause. . . . It struck Mr Brae that the word cheer was necessarily employed in a modern sense, and immediately undertook a close examination of the chronology of the word cheer and cheers, the result of which with some of the details of the investigation he communicated to me. That result was that a cheer, in the sense of a shout of applause, was not in use till the present century, and that, consequently, it is a test-word which proves the manuscript notes of the Perkins Folio to be of recent origin. Nothing that has since been written upon the subject has in the slightest degree invalidated the soundness of this criticism. In the first place, I must call attention to the distinction between the use of three cheers and a cheer, in the sense of an audible expression of applause. Supposing that it could be shown that the phrase ‘three’ cheers was employed to express shouts of applause before 1750, and which I challenge the world of letters to prove, it might still happen that a cheer was not so employed until 1800 or thereabouts, which I challenge the world of letters to disprove. To confound three cheers with a cheer would be as ignorant a proceeding as to confound the phrases ‘manning the yards’ and ‘manning a yard.’ Before 1750 I find that three cheers is a conventional phrase employed by sailors to express a naval salute. On the contrary, a cheer did not mean anything of the kind; nor do I believe that any such a term was used by sailors till it became a land expression for a shout of applause, and that it did not do till the present century. [The foregoing, as Ingleby intimates, is an amplification of his remarks on this point as given in his earlier volume, Shakespeare Fabrications, which appeared in 1859. In the present work his discussion of the chronology of this test-word occupies twenty full pages with illustrative extracts. There is, I think, no need to give even a digest of these, as the N. E. D. is now confirmatory of his contention that the word cheer, in the sense of a shout of approbation, is quite modern. Finally, the question itself is one which concerns the MS. corrections in Collier's folio more nearly than the elucidation of the present passage as it appears in the Folio. For an excellent answer to Ingleby's remarks on this particular point see The Shakespeare Mystery, Atlantic Monthly, September, 1861, pp. 364, 365.—Ed.]— Tycho Mommsen (Der Perkins Folio, p. 239): Whatever special idea the word ‘chair’ conveys in the sense of ‘Orator's rostrum,’ whence continuous praise issues (naturally nothing more than self-praise), only gives obliquely and distantly the same idea which cheer gives plainly; at the same time ‘chair’ is the more formative, and more nearly likened to a tomb, since we can think of the rostrum in the form of a pulpit. But such a weak comparison may have sufficed for the editor of the Folio—who quite misunderstood the passage—to introduce a half nonsensical word ‘chair’; just as the utterly senseless ‘unto’ seems to have sprung from the stupid idea that ‘commend’ [sic], etc., connects its objective with ‘to’ or ‘unto.’—Staunton: After ‘so hated, and so banished’ (l. 50) there is obviously a chasm which it were vain to think of filling up. The sentiment to be conveyed in ll. 51-55 was, no doubt, identical with that expressed in Hamlet, I, iv, 23, 24, 33-36. ‘So oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
. . . . . . .
Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace
As infinite as man may undergo)
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault.’
And so, proceeds Aufidius, our very virtues appear false by the misconstruction of the age, and even authority, which can exact applause, has not a more inevitable, i. e., certain, tomb for its beset actions than the very chair of triumph wherein they are extolled.—R. G. White (Sh. Scholar, p. 365): The reading of the Folio is utterly incomprehensible; but the errors which make it so are those of a compositor who sets his ‘matter’ by ear, as many of them do. ‘Chair’ and cheer were formerly pronounced alike; and I have even heard some old people call a chair a cheer. To this fact we owe the misprint of Macbeth's speech in Act V, sc. iii. This push ‘Will chair (cheere in the original) me ever, or disseat me now.’ Mr Collier's folio very properly changes ‘chair’ to cheer in this passage. But Mr Singer must pardon me for thinking his proposal deplorably tame and prosaic, even if it have any meaning at all. It is plain to me that Aufidius, after saying that ‘our virtues lie in the inter pretation of the time’ (that is, in the time's appreciation of us, not in our appreciation of the time, as the writer in Blackwood seems to think), adds that the elaborate eulogy on a great man's tomb is a testimony to his power not so eloquent as a cheer to him in his lifetime. Few who write for the press can be fortunate enough not to know many compositors who would find no difficulty in setting up ‘evident’ for ‘eloquent.’ Long since it seemed plain to me that we should read, ‘Hath not a tomb so eloquent as a cheer To extol what it hath done.’ [In the margin, against this, the former owner of the copy from which this note is taken, W. N. Lettsom, queries, ‘What is an eloquent tomb?’—ED.]—R. G. White, in his edition of this play which appeared nearly ten years later, agrees with Staunton that some lines ‘have quite surely been lost’ after ‘and so banish'd,’ l. 50. His interpretation of the present passage differs materially from that in his earlier work; he says: ‘Aufidius is impressing upon his hearers [sic] the consequences of Coriolanus’ inflexible, impracticable nature. He tells them that our virtue, i. e., our moral power, lies in our appreciation of the time, our apprehension and mastery of the situation in which we are placed; and he adds, as a corollary, that power, arrogant of commendation, has not so sure, so manifest a grave as the seat of authority to which its deeds have raised it, and which its overweening egotism is likely to use in such a manner as to alienate those to whom it owes its elevation. There is not a comparison between a tomb and a chair, but a likening of “a chair to extol,” &c., to a tomb. The allusion is to the curule chair, which is very properly made a symbol of power in the state, as in the time of Coriolanus the right of sitting in it belonged to Consuls, Prætors, Ædiles, Flamens, and, of course, to Dictators. Shakespeare had read in North's Plutarch, “There the Consul Cominius going up into his chayer of state in the presence of the army,” &c., ed. 1579, p. 242. I was once of the opinion that Shakespeare meant Aufidius to utter a thought similar to that which is expressed by Bertram in All's Well, I, ii, 48-51, “His good remembrance, sir,
Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb;
So in approof lies not his epitaph
As in your royal speech,”
and therefore conjectured that we should read, “Hath not a tomb so eloquent as a cheer”; and in Mr Collier's folio the latter word was found, but with the then incongruous “evident” left unchanged. This reading, however, although consistent with itself and appropriate to the occasion, is incongruous with the larger purpose of the speech, which is clearly indicated in the two lines ending “strengths by strengths do fail.”’—Keightley (Expositor, p. 370): I agree with Steevens in regarding this passage and the comments on it as being equally unintelligible. The meaning seems to be one which Shakespeare frequently expresses (see Tro. & Cress., I, iii.; II, iii.; III, iii.)—self-praise is no praise. ‘Unto itself commendable’ is, then, standing high in the possessor's estimation. [Which, by the way, is merely a paraphrase of Warburton's explanation.—Ed.] The sense yielded by ‘tomb’ and chair is most trivial, and I would, therefore, venture to propose, ‘Hath not a tongue so evident as a charmer's.’ Charms and spells, we know, were murmured or muttered in a low tone (‘wizards that peep and that mutter,’ Isaiah, viii, 19); and if the final letters of charmer's had been effaced—like ‘in him,’ a few lines higher—and only char left, the printer might easily have taken it for chair, and so have made ‘tomb’ to correspond. Charmer occurs in Othello, III, iv, and the poet had met with it in his Bible. I have introduced it again in Ant. & Cleo., IV, viii.—Hudson (ed. i.): We do not quite understand why a cheer should be spoken of as eloquent, and should much rather suppose ‘as eloquent as a tear’ to be the right reading. And, for aught we can see, chair might as well be a misprint for tear as evident for eloquent.—Henry Wellesley (p. 27): Warburton here seems to lose sight of the distinction between Virtue and Power; and because the tomb of Power would infallibly convey the meaning of the grave of Power, for Power ceases with life, the tomb is transferred to Virtue, whereby tomb is made to bear the less usual sense of monumental epitaph or posthumous eulogy delivered as from a chair or a rostrum. The context, however, speaks of actual power, living, and in full exercise. To any such harsh mode of interpretation I should prefer venturing to treat the whole line as corrupt, and to amend the passage thus: ‘And Power, unto itself most commendable,
Hath orators accordant as a choir
To extol what it hath done,’
i. e., the credit we obtain for Virtues depends upon the opinion of the day for its value and power. And Power again, over and above the natural self-confidence, which is as an inward panegyric and commendation, never lacks the oratory of applauding multitudes to chime in with all its doings. [Wellesley, it is apparent, has failed utterly in comprehending Warburton's elucidation. There is therein nothing to suggest an epitaph or eulogy. Again, the substitution of choir for ‘chair’ is quite inadmissible, as the word for a band of singers, or a part of the church building, was uniformly spelt quire or quier until long after the time of Shakespeare. Our spelling of the word, choir, did not come into general use until toward the end of the eighteenth century.—Ed.]—Bailey (i, 99): Line 54 is to me undiluted nonsense. All the misdirected efforts of the critics have not been able to extract from it a consistent meaning, while the very difficulty of doing it proves the text to be corrupt. If we consider attentively what the speaker intended to say, we shall find it to this effect, that power, when its acts are intrinsically praiseworthy, does not meet with the slightest token of applause from the men of the time for what it has done; and to illustrate his sentiment he gives us, or designs to give us, an instance of something which notoriously makes a very faint demonstration in that way. As neither a tomb nor a chair can be considered as designating an instrument or medium for the contemporary laudation of meritorious acts of power, our task is to find two words which will denote what those words ought to denote with clearness, but do not, and, at the same time, so far resemble the actual reading as to render probable the substitution of the latter in the place of the former. The only suggestion with this view which I have happened to meet with at all entitled to serious discussion is the following, which is partly, at least, due to the Perkins folio: ‘Hath not a tone so evident as a cheer.’ There are several strong objections to a reading which, at the first glance, appears so plausible. 1. A cheer cannot, with any propriety, be called a tone. It may have a tone—e. g., it may be ironical, as the House of Commons knows, but it is not a tone itself. 2. A cheer, which must be here construed as a general term, meaning the same as cheers, is a loud demonstration of applause, whereas the strain of the passage requires a feeble one to constitute the requisite antithesis between what is merited and what the least that could be given. 3. Tone is a word never used by Shakespeare, and cheer is never used by him in the modern sense of shout of approbation. The reading which I have to propose is as follows, ‘Hath not a trump so evident as a child's To extol what it has done.’ With our modern associations the word trump, which is here the same in signification as trumpet, may not at first be consonant with our feelings; the immediate idea presenting itself may be that of the trump of the card-table, with its figurative and slang applications, rather than the trump of fame. In Shakespeare's pages the term is used solely as the equivalent of trumpet. My proposed reading, after the first shock has been overcome, will probably be allowed to convert the line into good sense with that antithetical point and that spice of sarcasm which are requisite for the force of the passage. The degeneration of trump into tomb and child's into chair, in the hands of copyists and compositors, is easily conceivable; while it exemplifies that insensibility to the meaning of the document before them into which both those classes of imitative manipulators have a perpetual tendency to fall. [Had Bailey but read with reasonable care Warburton's explanation he would, I think, hardly have made the mistake of paraphrasing l. 53, ‘power, when its acts are intrinsically praiseworthy’; and would not, assuredly, have connected both the words ‘tomb’ and ‘chair’ with the infinitive ‘To extol.’ I may freely admit that I am not yet sufficiently recovered from the ‘shock’ of Bailey's emendations to characterise them adequately; that task I gladly leave to the patient reader.—Ed.]—Halliwell: Not having met with any criticism upon this passage in the least degree satisfactory, I leave it with the same remark as Steevens, and have nothing of my own to offer.—Leo (Coriolanus, p. 125): In order to penetrate the poet's meaning and intention we must not examine a phrase, taken out of the intention of the scene, but we must feel with the acting persons, and out of this feeling we must know how they think and how they speak. And, therefore, let us now become Aufidius for a moment, and see whether it might be possible for us to think on the ‘chair,’ the sella curilis in Rome, and reflect on things which do not stand in any relation to the passionate feelings of envy and revenge which dominate us. Aufidius feels quite well that he has lost his position as the first general of the Volces, and that his glory is darkened by Coriolanus; he hates him, and has the clear intention to ruin him so clear that he knows already his way and means to do it. Though Coriolanus is hated by him and some other Volscian Generals, he is not hated by the people, and to make him so must be the first step. Aufidius knows that, though small merits are willingly acknowledged, people do not like to be reminded of great and important merits, which lay them under the obligation of gratitude, and that he who is idolized is nearest to be hated as soon as he himself mentions his deeds. ‘He has a merit (great enough) to choke it in the utterance,’ and, therefore, he provokes Coriolanus, in V, vi, and hopes that in his fury he will boast of what he has done for the Volscian people, and that the ‘fire’ of his merits will be driven out by the ‘fire’ of the people's pride. But that does not lie in the nature of Coriolanus, and by going just the contrary way, and hurting the self-love and vanity of the Volces in reminding them of the origin of his name of Coriolanus, he facilitates for Aufidius the attainment of his purpose. But that is a fact, though it is of a stirring dramatic effect (Coriolanus perishing in Antium by the same contempt of the people as in Rome) which has nothing to do with the former combinations of Aufidius. He intends to provoke Coriolanus to become his own panegyrist, and so he says: ‘Power, unto itself most commendable,
Has not a tomb so evident as a claim
To extol what it has done,’
i. e., ‘If he, who has merits, claims the extolment of his deeds, his power is lost,’ and, therefore, I propose not to read ‘chair,’ but claim.—Ibid. (Sh. Notes, p. 39): What has been written above is all very well, and when I wrote it I was fully convinced of having hit the bull's-eye; but upon mature consideration I fear that ‘chair’ is better than claim, because it gives the same sense in a more poetical form. The juxtaposition of ‘tomb’ and ‘chair’—the chair (sella curilis) having materially a greater right and chance of becoming possibly a tomb than a claim ever could—is just what a poet writes, while a scrutinizing critic afterwards alters ‘chair’ to the very correct, but very prosaical, claim. Claim says all, and, therefore, does not say enough.—C. & M. Cowden Clarke (Shakespeare): We think the passage as it stands means, ‘Our virtues lie at the mercy of popular interpretation in our own day; and power, ever anxious to exact commendation, has no tomb so sure as the pulpit of eulogium which extols its deeds.’ It must be borne in mind that here ‘chair’ is used for the public rostrum, cathedra, or pulpit, whence orations, laudatory or otherwise, were delivered to the Roman people.—P. A. Daniel (p. 63): Qy, read this passage thus: ‘so our virtue
Lives in the interpretation of the time,
And, how e'er unto itself most commendable,
Hath not a tomb so evident as a care
T' extol what it hath done.’
Mitford first conjectured that chaire should be care. Taken as a whole, however, the reading I suggest has not, I believe, been proposed before. The following passages may be quoted by way of illustration: ‘For then we wound our modesty and make foul the clearness of our deservings, when of ourselves we publish them,’ All's Well, I, iii, 5-7. ‘He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise,’ Tro. & Cress., II, iii, 149-152.—Rev. John Hunter: So whether anything will be accounted virtuous in us depends on the appropriateness of the time in which we show it. And power, which justifies itself to itself as being thoroughly deserved, has not so sure a tomb, or means of extinction, as when it is placed in a seat of dignity intended to exalt, or glorify, its achievements.—Whitelaw: Our virtues are virtues no longer if the time interprets them as none. The soldier who is all soldier is misinterpreted in time of peace; for his unfitness for peace is seen, his fitness for war is not seen. So Coriolanus— the power he had won in war but wielded in peace, conscious of having deserved well, could to itself commend itself, but the chair of authority, which irritated the people by seeming to do nothing else but commend his past exploits to them, proved just the tomb—the evident, inevitable tomb—that swallowed up the power it intended to display. So he offended the Romans when he had taken Corioli; much more will he offend the Volscians when he has taken Rome.— Schmidt (Coriolanus): Perhaps we should place a comma after ‘chair,’ and interpret ‘to extol,’ etc., If it (power) speaks in high terms of former deeds.— W. A. Wright: Though obscurely expressed, the general sense of this passage seems to be, Our reputation must be left for our contemporaries to decide. (The expression is here emphatic, for the point on which Aufidius insists is the forgetfulness of the populace and their ingratitude for past services.) The orator's chair from which a man extols his own actions is the inevitable tomb of that power, however deserving, which is the subject of praise.—Hudson (ed. ii.): I am now thoroughly satisfied that the old text is right; or that, if any change is wanted, it should be ‘Hath ne'er a tomb.’ And I am indebted for this, in the first instance, to Mr Joseph Crosby; though I since find that Staunton and Whitelaw have given substantially the same solution of the difficulty. The changes made and proposed have all proceeded upon the supposal that the construction is, ‘Hath not a tomb to extol’; whereas the construction is ‘a chair to extol,’ that is, ‘a chair that extols.’ With this key to the meaning the old text is readily seen to be right. . . . The speaker's argument is that Coriolanus, by his arrogance and tyranny in peace, will surely and speedily kill the popularity he has gained in war. And so the meaning here is that power, joined to a haughty, domineering temper, and loved and gloried in, for its own sake, hath no grave so certain, or imminent, as a chair of state bestowed in honour and extolment of its deeds. Or, to put the matter in concrete form, let Coriolanus, with his habits of military prerogative, and of lording it over all about him, be once advanced to a place of civil authority, and he will soon become an object of public hatred; so that the very seat which rewards and blazons his exploits, will be sure to prove his ruin and the tomb of his power.—Beeching (Henry Irving Sh.): This may mean either ‘virtues are not virtues unless acknowledged to be such by our contemporaries,’ or, more probably, ‘our virtues become vices if they are mistimed.’ Coriolanus's soldier-like virtues became vices when he recognized no distinction between what was appropriate to war and peace. [The next passage may be interpreted], ‘Power, when it is entirely self-satisfied, finds, in general, no readier grave than the right of praising itself.’ ‘Chair’ seems to mean magistrate's chair. and so ‘authority.’ The sense of the passage is that power may lose itself by being boastful; but there is very probably some corruption of the text. [Beeching, in his notes prepared for the Falcon Edition a year or so later, gives the following alternative interpretation: ‘The difficulty of this passage arises from an uncertainty whether it is said in praise or blame of Coriolanus. In the former case the sense is, “Time, the great interpreter, reveals our virtues (notwithstanding banishment, etc.); and power which appreciates its own desert will not find so conspicuous a monument as a public chair from which it may be praised.” Taken this way, the passage connects with “he has a merit,” etc., making the contrast of l. 57 sharper; and it preserves the Shakespearian sense of tomb = “monument”), as in Henry V: I, ii, 228, “Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn, Tombless, with no remembrance over them.” Also, “the interpretation of (= by) the time” is construed as the same phrase afterwards (V, iii, 76).’ Beeching then gives his former note as the interpretation in blame of Coriolanus.—Ed.]—Perring (p. 308): This can only mean that the chair of office, which silently proclaims a man's merit, is too often, if he could but foresee it, the very tomb of his power; his exaltation accelerates his precipitation; from the pinnacle to the pit is but a step.—Kinnear (p. 329): The meaning of the passage is, And power, as to itself most praiseworthy, has no tomb so certain as the pulpit to extol, i. e., for extolling what it hath done. The same public chair that pronounced the panegyric, utters the sentence of banishment or death.—G. Joicey (Notes & Queries, 28 Nov., 1891, p. 423): May not the Folio reading, ‘as a chair,’ be a mistake for ‘as such air’? Aufidius seems to mean that, since our virtues lie in the interpretation of the time, departed power has no tombstone to extol its good deeds that will stand in evidence against the erroneous judgment expressed by the passing breath of its contemporaries. Cf. the phrase ‘airy fame’ in Tro. & Cress., [I, iii, 144]; the passage in All's Well (I, ii, 48-50), ‘His good remembrance,’ &c., and the last couplet of Sonnet lxxxi. Perhaps ‘not’ is a misprint for but.—Page: Thus our very virtues are subject to the judgments passed on them by the age in which we live; and power, always ready to commend itself, finds its surest means of destruction in the pulpit from which it proclaims its own exploits. Malone objects that ‘our author’ has represented Coriolanus as not being able to hear his brave deeds mentioned, and that, therefore, he could not here speak of him as a boaster. But it is not ‘our author’ who thus speaks, but Aufidius, whose spoken opinions of Coriolanus are not always founded on knowledge or sincerity.—Cholmeley: Our reputation depends upon the view that our contemporaries take of our virtues. However laudable the great man may really be, he courts certain ruin when he takes to proclaiming his own praises. The age ‘interprets’ the eulogy and forgets the virtue.—E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): I do not think that ‘chair’ means either the chair of the panegyrist or the chair of the magistrate. ‘Not a tomb so evident as a chair’ is surely a way of saying ‘no tomb at all,’ ‘not a wooden chair, much less a sumptuous seated statue.’ Then ‘unto itself’ I take as ‘in itself,’ an odd construction, but formed from ‘to give commendation unto virtues.’ The whole passage is a general moral drawn from Coriolanus's fate in Rome, suggested by the thought of his merit just referred to in l. 50. I paraphrase: ‘Coriolanus was meritorious, but merit is as our contemporaries choose to think it. A man may have power and deserve commendation, yet, if his fellow-citizens choose, he may be blotted out, and not the slightest monument left to speak his praise.’ The kind of sentiment is that so often put in the mouth of a Greek chorus.—W. W. Skeat (Notes & Queries, 3d May, 1890): The whole sense of this passage comes out at once by simply calling to mind that chair, in Tudor English, was sometimes used in the sense of ‘pulpit.’ Milton has it so; see ‘Chair’ in the N. E. D., sect. 5. Cotgrave has: ‘Chaire, f. a Chair; also a pulpit for a preacher.’ And in modern French it still has this sense, as distinct from its doublet, chaise. And this is the solution of the whole matter. The idea might have been picked up in any church, for, indeed, the pulpit is commonly more ‘evident,’ i. e., conspicuous, than any of the fine tombs in the choir. The general sense is just this: ‘Power, however commendable it may seem to itself, can find no tomb so conspicuous, no tomb so obvious, as when it chooses for itself a pulpit whence to proclaim its own praises.’ This agrees very nearly with the explanation in the note to the Clarendon Press edition [W. A. Wright]; but it seems to be more emphatic and picturesque to explain the word as ‘pulpit’ than merely as ‘orator's chair.’—Herford (Eversley Sh.): Our reputation for virtue is in the hands of our contemporaries; and power, confident of its own merits, has no more obvious road to ruin than by proclaiming them. This, I think, the clear sense.—Verity (Student's Sh.): Aufidius has been saying that Coriolanus, in spite of his noble services to the State, has been brought down by some failing which set his fellow-countrymen against him. This leads (‘so’) to the general reflection that every man, however great, is conditioned by public opinion, and that self-laudation, above all in the highly-placed, is suicidal. [Verity cites Malone's objection to the accusation of self-praise urged against Coriolanus, and refutes it in substantially the same manner as does Page.—Ed.] The obscurity and metre of lines 51-53, the uncertainty in l. 57, and the poor rhymes in 56-59 combine to suggest that some corruption of the whole passage has taken place. But of many emendations, none is at all taking. Note that ‘the time’ is Shakespeare's constant phrase for ‘the age,’ ‘one's contemporaries.’ I do not think that it is possible to interpret, ‘Time, the great interpreter, reveals our virtues,’ as if Shakespeare had written ‘time’ alone (not ‘the time’). ‘Lie in’=‘to be in the power of, to depend on,’ is a common Shakespearian use.—Stanley Wood: The general sense of this seems to me to be as follows, A man's greatness depends not so much upon his character or his acts, as upon people's judgment of them. Coriolanus's power in Rome, intrinsically great and worthy of all praise (unto itself=in itself), has been reduced to nothing because the praises which were showered upon him by the Senate and the nobles were offensive to the people and the Tribunes, whose interpretation of his merits has prevailed. This explanation assumes that Aufidius knew what course events had taken in Rome, a reasonable assumption considering his recent association with Coriolanus.—Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.): Only let it be that the virtue or ability in us is equal to understanding the right moment, let it but co-ordinate itself with the occasion, lie in th' interpretation of the time, and then the power that is most alone in being merely to itself commendable hath no Tombe and epitaph, not a monument, as it were, so ready with praise of past achievements as it has a Chaire, or throne for them which shall be a new seat of life and honor. Aufidius is moralizing as to Martius with himself in mind. He is applying the virtue that in Martius turned banishment into a new sort of triumph for him, to his own present crisis, due to Martius, when he must await the ripe moment to turn the present obscuration, practically the Tombe, of his ability into a new exposition, or throne, of it. As Martius had the strength to strangle, as it were, in its utterance the sentence against himself, and make it recoil on those who pronounced it, so he would do. Only let his virtue come out in the interpreting of the time or right occasion, and his power, most commendable now unto itself alone, will have not dead and gone honors so obviously as a new seat of homage. This passage has generally been accounted extremely obscure and difficult. . . . To us it seems not corrupt, but introspective. It is characteristic of Shakespeare's most darkly brooding impersonations. The creature of his dramatic scheme in this case is suffering from a self-caused depreciation of himself. It stings him to mental processes born of competition with a nature his own different nature emulates, and understands while plotting to surmount.—Gordon: The meaning is, that power, which is naturally most pleasing to itself, is never so obviously near its grave as when (speech succeeding to action) the time comes to pronounce a laudation of its achievements. ‘Chair’ means a chair of state from which official pronouncements are made. Most editors that I have seen go wrong on this passage. They have a picture of self-satisfied ‘power’ openly extolling itself, and are naturally puzzled to see how this can apply to Coriolanus, who notoriously hated brag. But ‘unto itself most commendable’ does not mean that power is self-satisfied; it means that power always seems more satisfactory to the person who possesses it than to those who do not. And it is nowhere said that power extols ‘itself.’ The passage must be taken in connexion with what goes before, or the sense is lost. Aufidius has just said that no matter what your merits and achievements may be, everything depends on how your contemporaries take them. He goes on to add that there is nothing more risky for a man who has done great things than when the time comes to have them proclaimed. People may take such praise either way. If they take it one way, he's a hero, and the saviour of the state; if they take it the other, he's a traitor and a tyrant. The application to Coriolanus is plain.—S. P. Sherman (Tudor Sh.): The meaning is that we cannot be judges of our own virtues; they must be stamped with the approval of the society in which we live before they can become current. Shake speare seems much interested in what we may call the social sanctions of virtue in Tro. & Cress. In the mood of Aufidius Troilus asks, ‘What is aught, but as 'tis valu'd’ (II, ii, 52). Hector replies (II, ii, 53-56): ‘But value dwells not in particular will;
It holds his estimate and dignity
As well wherein 'tis precious of itself
As in the prizer.’
Later in the play (III, iii, 95ff.) Ulysses and Achilles discuss the same point. [Further]: A person who possesses power, though it merit commendation, cannot more speedily terminate its effectiveness than by praising what he has accomplished by it.—Deighton: It is doubtful whether this means ‘our virtues depend (for their efficacy) upon the way in which they are regarded by those among whom we live’ or ‘our virtues depend (for their efficacy) upon the manner in which we interpret, and adapt ourselves to, surrounding circumstances.’ The latter view agrees better with the explanation I have given of ll. 50, 51 [q. v.], but it is doubtful whether ‘the interpretation’ can mean ‘the interpretation we put.’ If the reading of ll. 51-55 is genuine, the meaning probably is, ‘and power (i. e., a man in high position), however much it may consider itself deserving of praise, has no such certain grave of its reputation as a chair from which it pronounces its own eulogy.’—Case (Arden Sh.): I am inclined to interpret this passage in close connection with the beginning of the speech, and to regard it as a general reflection referring quite as much, or more, to the Tribunes as to Coriolanus, to whom it is always confined. Aufidius has declared that the people will recall Coriolanus as eagerly as they expelled him, and after a digression as to the causes of his overthrow and a tribute to his merit, he proceeds to this effect. Thus the light in which our virtues are regarded depends upon the time (the fluctuation of popular opinion which then denounced Coriolanus and will now acclaim him), and power, however self-justified, finds a grave in the very seat of authority whence it extols its actions. What Aufidius describes had, in fact, happened in the last scene, when the grave of their power opened before the Tribunes at the very height of their self-congratulations, and ‘the interpretation of the time’ begins to change rapidly under the face of circumstances. So, too, the proverbs that follow refer to the former reverse and that in progress; perhaps also to the final reverse of all, but Aufidius does not take up that subject till he has ended his reflections and prepared to go. Then, still thinking first of Coriolanus's triumph, he says, ‘When, Caius, Rome is thine,’—Tucker Brooke (Yale Shakespeare): Power, though (when considered absolutely) most worthily attained, is never so near its grave as when the successful man, seated in the chair of authority, seeks to justify the means by which he has risen. [I am somewhat loath to add any words of mine to this long note. I wish, however, to call attention to the Text. Notes, wherein it will be noticed how negligible has been the influence of any of the proposed alterations of the original, on subsequent texts. Singer's alteration, hair, had but one follower, who later recanted, and Collier's MS. correction, cheer, but two— Collier himself and White in his second edition. As to the many interpretations and paraphrases of this passage as in the Folio it may, I think, be said that no elucidator has materially bettered that issued originally by Warburton nearly one hundred and eighty years ago.—Ed.]
One fire driues out one fire; one Naile, one Naile Malone: So in King John, ‘And falsehood, falsehood cures, as fire cures fire,’ [III, i, 277]. Again in Two Gentlemen, ‘Even as one heat another heat expels, Or as one nail by strength drives out another,’ [II, iv, 192]. Again in Jul. Cæs., ‘As fire drives out fire, so pity, pity,’ [III, i, 171].—Anders (p. 83) compares ‘And as out of a planke a nayle a nayle doth drive So novell love out of the minde the auncient love doth rive,’ Brooke, Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Iuliet, 207, 208.
Rights by rights fouler Warburton: This has no manner of sense. We should read ‘Right's by right fouled. Or, as it is commonly written in English, foiled, from the French fouler, to tread or trample under foot.—Heath (p. 426): Mr Warburton ought at least to have given us the English word foiled, for fouled is certainly not English.—Johnson: I believe ‘rights,’ like ‘strengths,’ is a plural noun. ‘Rights by rights founder.’ That is, by the exertion of one right another right is lamed.—Capell: The first two of these rimes have no sort of connexion with what goes before, and but little with what comes after them, but they have some. Aufidius is ruminating how he shall get rid of Marcius, and his reverie breaks out into saws, as Shakespeare's age would have called them; after which he apostrophizes his competitor, bidding him expect a like issue in the contention between them with that express'd in those saws. The contested word, ‘fouler,’ signifies more boisterous; and ‘rights,’ legal rights, and the claims of them, which are often urg'd boisterously enough.—Monck Mason (Comments, etc., p. 260): I think the present reading affords as good sense as any of the proposed amendments. ‘Right's by right fouler’ may well mean, ‘That one right or title, when produced, makes another less fair.’ All the short sentences in this speech of Aufidius are obscure, and some of them nonsensical. [It will be noticed that the reading which Mason commends is that of Pope; it is to be feared that he had not examined the original, and so was unaware that he was commending and explaining Pope and not Shakespeare.—Ed.]—Malone (Variorum of 1821): There can, I think, be no doubt that these words relate to the rivalship subsisting between Coriolanus and Aufidius, and not to the preceding observations concerning the illeffects of extravagant encomiums. It is manifest that Aufidius would never represent his own cause or rights as fouler, or less worthy than the rights of Coriolanus, and that what he here means to say is, ‘As one fire cures another fire, and one nail by strength drives out another, so the rights of Coriolanus shall yield to be over powered by my rights, and his strength be subdued by mine’; and this meaning is furnished by the word founder, which, I am confident, was intended by the author, and is now placed in the text instead of ‘fouler,’ the original corrupted reading. Though a strenuous advocate for adhering to the ancient copies, except in cases of manifest errors of the press, I have not hesitated to admit this emendation, the text being certainly corrupt; the change so slight as the substitution of two letters for one; and the word now adopted so little dissimilar from the corrupted reading that they might easily have been confounded both by the eye or the ear. Thus one part of the line corresponds and is in opposition with the other; and, instead of no sense, a clear and consistent meaning is obtained. [It is to be deplored that Malone hesitated to admit that this emendation is Johnson's, and not his own. It is hardly credible that Malone was unaware of this; Johnson's note is given in both the Variorum of 1773 and of 1778, as well as in his own edition.—Ed.] This verb [founder] is used precisely with the same metaphorical signification in a passage in Henry VIII., which fully supports the present emendation in this point, ‘All his tricks founder; and he brings his physic After his patient's death,’ [III, ii, 40]. The notions suggested in the text were extremely familiar to Shakespeare, and occur in various places in his works. Thus in Venus & Adonis, ‘Strong-tempered steel his stronger strength obeyed,’ [l. 111]. Again in Henry V: ‘Think we King Henry strong And, princes, look you strongly arm to meet him,’ [II, iv, 48]. Again in King John, ‘Controlment for controlment; so answer France,’ [I, i, 20]. Again in Venus & Adonis, ‘The iron bit he crusheth 'tween his teeth, Controlling what he was controlled with,’ [ll. 269, 270]. Again, in Richard III, ‘rights for rights Hath dimm'd his infant morn to aged night,’ [IV, iv, 15. Malone concludes this rather long note with a verbose repetition of his reluctance to admit innovations into the original text, urging as an extenuating reason that, as his predecessors had frequently done so, he feels that he should, at least, be accorded a like privilege where the text is manifestly corrupt.—Ed.]—Steevens: ‘Rights by rights fouler.’ Thus the old copy. Modern editors, with less obscurity, ‘Right's by right fouler,’ &c., i. e., what is already right, and is received as such, becomes less clear when supported by supernumerary proofs. Such appears to me to be the meaning of this passage, which may be applied with too much justice to many of my own comments on Shakespeare. Dr Warburton would read fouled. There is undoubtedly such a word in Sidney's Arcadia, ed. 1633, p. 441, but it is not easily applicable to our present subject, ‘Thy all-pervading eye foul'd with the sight.’ The same word likewise occurs in the following proverb, ‘York doth foul Sutton,’ i. e., ‘exceeds it on comparison, and makes it appear mean and poor.’— Ritson: I am of Dr Warburton's opinion that this is nonsense; and would read, with the slightest possible variation from the old copies, ‘Rights by rights foul are,’ etc.—Boswell: I should not consider myself as dealing fairly by the reader if I had not laid before him Mr Malone's emendation and the reasons he has assigned for it; although I can by no means acquiesce in either the one or the other.— Singer: I could wish to read, ‘Rights by rights foiled,’ &c., an easy and obvious emendation. [Singer wrongly assigns the reading, founder, to Malone, and quotes in full Steevens's explanation as though it applied to the Folio reading, which, as will be noticed, Steevens distinctly hesitated to attempt on account of its obscurity. His interpretation refers to Pope's amendments in the line. As to Singer's reading, foiled, it will be seen that Hanmer anticipated him.—Ed.]—Knight: Malone substitutes founder, and the emendation has provoked three pages of controversy amongst the commentators. We may understand the meaning of the original expression if we substitute the opposite epithet, fairer. As it is, the lesser rights drive out the greater—the fairer rights fail through the fouler. In Taming of the Shrew, fouler is not used in the sense of more polluted; we have, ‘The fouler fortune mine, and there an end,’ [V, ii, 98. As the perspicacious reader may see for himself Malone's appropriation of Johnson's emendation so far from provoking controversy, was greeted with complete silence by Steevens and Ritson. Boswell merely remarks faintly that he does not ‘acquiesce.’—Ed.]—Delius: The verb ‘fail’ belongs to ‘rights’ as well as to ‘strengths’—Rights weaken other rights, the first ones become weaker or worse, and strengths weaken other strengths. Thus ‘fouler’ is to be understood, not the emendation founder which Malone places in the text. Other emendations are equally unnecessary.—Collier (Notes and Emendations, etc., p. 362): Most editors have seen that ‘Rights by right fouler’ must be wrong, and have proposed various changes, though none so acceptable as that given [by the MS. Corrector, suffer]. The last couplet requires no elucidation when suffer is substituted for ‘fouler,’ an error that may, in part, have been occasioned by the letter f having been employed instead of the long ſ. It is difficult to say how far some independent authority may, or may not, have been used in this emendation.—T. Mommsen (Der Perkins Folio, p. 103): The commentators have rightly been doubtful of the extraordinary construction as well as the extraordinary choice of the word foul; the aphorism lacks a verb. At the same time objection may be taken to [the MS. correction] suffer on the ground that it is too weak a word. If the spelling in the original manuscript were a half French form, ſoufer, then the misprint fouler is not far out.—Singer (Sh. Vindicated, etc., p. 225): For ‘rights by rights fouler’ I substitute ‘rights by rights foil'd are,’ which, as anciently written, might easily be mistaken for ‘fouler.’ The passage may then be found to convey the sense of the poet without any violent departure from the old text.—Dyce: That a verb lies concealed under the corruption ‘fouler’ is indubitable; as to the word I have introduced [falter], it was frequently spelt ‘faulter’ (so in Shelton's Don Quixote, pt first, p. 372, ed. 4to, ‘who when they perceiue their Ladies to faulter,’ &c.), and therefore might easily have been mistaken for ‘fouler.’ [Kinnear likewise makes the same suggestion.—Ed.]—C. & M. Cowden Clarke (Shakespeare): ‘Fouler’ has been changed under the idea that a verb is required in this place, but it appears to us that Shakespeare, in this line as elsewhere, makes one verb do double duty in a sentence; and here the meaning is, ‘Rights by rights fouler do fail, strengths by strengths do fail.’ See a very similar passage in Timon, IV, iii, 28, ‘This much of this will make black, white; foul, fair; wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant’; where the verb ‘make’ before ‘black’ gives ‘make’ to be understood as repeated before ‘foul,’ ‘wrong,’ ‘base,’ ‘old,’ ‘coward,’ thus doing multiplied duty in the sentence. In the present passage the word ‘fouler’ bears the sense of less fair or more unfair, as Shakespeare more than once uses the common expression ‘foul play’ for unfair practice, and uses the word ‘foully’ for unfairly in All's Well, V, iii, 154, ‘I am afeard the life of Helen, lady, Was foully snatched.’—Schmidt (Coriolanus): Certain editors have altered ‘fouler’; but why should Shakespeare not have said that wrong comes to pass through wrong, and often the better through the worse?— Whitelaw: ‘Fouler’ has been altered in a variety of ways, but may, after all, be right, and is at least as good as the conjectures. The meaning seems to be, ‘Rights yield to rights—often the fairer to the fouler—when strength yields to strength. It is the superior strength not the better right that wins.’ Aufidius (as in I, ii.) confesses his own baseness.—Hudson (ed. i.) accepts Collier's MS. cor rection as ‘seeming, on the whole, preferable to the others; though founder strikes us as a very plausible emendation.’ [Hudson, following his predecessors, gives it to Malone. In his ed. ii. Hudson adopts the original text, whereon he has this note: ‘The meaning of this line expressed in full, probably is that the better rights succumb to the worse, and the nobler strengths to the meaner, the sense of fail being anticipated in the first clause, and that of fouler continued over the second. Here, as elsewhere, Aufidius is fully conscious of the foulness of his purposes. The only thing he cares for is to get a sure twist on his antagonist. . . . Dyce observes “That a verb lies concealed under fouler is undubitable.” But this is far from being indubitable to me; I believe the old text to be right.’— Halliwell: The only emendations worth noting are founder, suggested by Johnson, and falter, proposed and adopted by Dyce. On the whole I prefer the first suggestion, believing that Shakespeare intended something more intensitive than faltering.—R. G. White: I accept here, though not with entire confidence, Mr Dyce's emendation as the best of the many that have been proposed for this passage. The extreme corruption of this play warrants, in fact, requires, unusual freedom of conjecture in regulating the text. [White in his enumeration of the various readings assigns to Malone the emendation founder.—Ed.]—W. A. Wright: By taking ‘right’ in the sense of legal claim, title, ‘fouler’ as simply equivalent to less fair, worse, the sense of the passage may very well be, ‘just titles have to yield to those that are worse in point of law.’ Shakespeare uses ‘foul’ for bad more than once, ‘fouler’ for worse. See Tam. of Shrew, V, ii, 98. So also ‘foulest’ for worst in Tro. & Cress., I, iii, 359, ‘Let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares.’—Rolfe: The Folio reading makes sense, indeed, but it is clear that ‘rights by rights’ is the full counterpart in the antithesis to ‘strengths by strengths,’ and that a verb is required to balance ‘fail.’ Falter, proposed by Dyce, seems to us the best of the various emendations.—Wordsworth (Historical Plays, i, 127): If I might venture to add one more to the many corrections offered on the reading of the Folio, ‘fouler,’ I would suggest ‘foul, and,’ i. e., become weak and corrupt. ‘A foul’ in rowing is when one boat knocks against another; and if this is done in a race, a fresh start is rendered necessary. Shakespeare might have picked up the word from barge-men on the Avon. [This last supposition is quite impossible; ‘foul,’ in the sense suggested by Wordsworth, is unknown before the middle of the nineteenth century.—Ed.]—Page: Taking the passage as it stands the verb ‘fail’ must be understood from the end of the line, ‘better rights give way to worse ones’; but this interpretation does not preserve intact the antithetical reasoning of the lines.—Beeching (Henry Irving Sh.): The principle here laid down is more general [than as given by Wright]. ‘One nail drives out another nail,’ not a worse nail a better one. We have, therefore, adopted Dyce's emendation.—E. K. Chambers (Warwick Sh.): Aufidius continues in an excited strain, ‘Reputations rise and fall, each pushing another out of the way. So may I push away Coriolanus.’ The excitement is shown by the rhyme, so rare in this play. Clearly a verb is wanted, and neither Dyce's nor any other of the numerous emendations proposed is as good [as Johnson's].—Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.): The forcing of rights is under discussion here, hence the fitness of fouler rights, more violence causing rights first established to be superseded. So strength, that placed the first, by other strengths is made to faile. He is thinking of himself as made to faile, adopting these proverbs to the force Martius has applied to meet the situation, and which he now proposes to apply himself to force the situation Martius has forced, and so force it out again.—A. E. Thiselton (Notes & Queries, 3 March, 1900, p. 164): It seems probable that ‘fouler’ represents ‘foulter’ in the manuscript. The latter word may be found in Florio's Montaigne, Bk ii, ch. viii, ‘If you be wise, the horse gro vne-old betimes cast off Lest he at last fall lame, foulter, and breed a scoffe.’ [This word does not appear to be known to any of the lexicographers or compilers of dialect dictionaries. I am inclined to think it a misprint for the form faulter, given by Dyce for falter.—Ed.]—Case (Arden Sh.): The Folio reading is not indefensible because an awkward ellipse of some word like grow or become is conceivable; but founder, as the nearest suggestion, is here adopted because the idea of complete overthrow is needed. The fire, the nail, strengths are each totally overpowered; so too must rights be, and not merely weakened.—Gordon: These general reflections close, according to Shakespeare's habit, in a proverbial couplet. All the proverbs convey one meaning: that power falls by stirring up inevitably another power to oppose it. So Coriolanus has fallen once, at the height of his achievement, by the opposition of the people; so he will fall again, at the height of his new achievement, by the opposition of Aufidius.—Deighton: Rights give way to other and better rights; power, however great, has to yield when it meets greater power. [As Deighton adopts Dyce's conjecture in his text, the foregoing is an explanation and justification of Dyce rather than an attempt to explain Shakespeare's text. I cannot convince myself that any change in the Folio is either necessary or desirable. As the Cowden Clarkes so ably demonstrate, this elliptical form of expression is eminently characteristic of Shakespeare, particularly in the later plays; besides, the sentiment is also characteristic of Aufidius. In I, x. he had declared that nothing should restrain him in the satisfying of his hatred for Marcius. The rights of host to guest, the prayers of priests which ordinarily restrain fury, shall be by him disregarded. For Aufidius to make such a general statement that rights falter or founder by other rights is both inconsistent to the situation and weakening to his character.—Ed.]