Coriolanus

[sophia_sol]

Last night I started watching that new production of Coriolanus that Hadley Fraser’s in, because Coriolanus is one of those plays I don’t know enough about so I thought I should give it a try - and then I discovered I’d somehow missed that Tom Hiddleston’s in the lead role??? wow I’m really impressed that either a) the internet managed to keep this a secret for this long or b) I’m that oblivious. I was willing to bet it was the latter. (I was right.)

Tonight I finished watching! And then I was all HUH.

Going into this play the only thing I knew about it was that it had the gayest speech in the entirety of Shakespeare - and dudes, it's true, that speech is pretty damn gay. It's an odd experience, watching a shakespeare play that I don't actually know anything about. For the most part shakespeare is part of popular culture, such that you at least know SOMETHING of it when going in - and heck, when I saw Hamlet the first time I knew pretty much ALL of it already going in without ever having read it or studied it or seen a single bit of it before. But Coriolanus? Nothing. It's just...not a popular play.

And it's really frustrating! Because it means I don't have any previous knowledge of various interpretations to hang my understanding of the play on! I like knowing what other people think about things - because at the very least, even if I strenuously disagree, I at least know where I stand in relation to other interpretations. I have a lens through which to approach the work and say "yes" or "no" or "hmmm" to. But here? I am as a blank slate - and a bit of googling around has only turned up some shallow newspaper reviews, nothing really interesting or thoughtful.

and okay to start off with, for this particular production, I was really impressed - the acting was all excellent, the staging was really interesting, I liked how they did pretty much everything. Tom Hiddleston was magnetic as usual and Hadley Fraser was also fantastic. And I liked that this production cast some women and people of colour - including some cross-gender casting.

but the play itself...idk! I think most of my trouble is that I'm having trouble parsing the character of Aufidius. What are his motivations in everything he does? He's rather opaque! (unless I'm just being particularly slow in understanding.) Coriolanus himself is rather clearer - even though he doesn't ever have a proper soliloquy to explain his thoughts like most Shakespeare leads. But what the heck's going on with Aufidius? As near as I can tell from the text I THINK Aufidius was planning from the beginning to use Coriolanus and then kill him - that his welcome's not in earnest. But idk, maybe I'm reading things wrong.

When figuring out what points an author is trying to make, it's always instructive (if they're writing historical fiction) to go back to the historical details and see what the author changed. I don't know how complete or trustworthy the wiki article on the historical Coriolanus is, but it seems to be saying that Coriolanus was never personal best enemies (nemesis!) with Aufidius and in fact met him for the first time after being exiled. So Shakespeare is emphasizing the importance of the relationship between these two men.

maybe I should just go read through the Aufidius/Martius tag on ao3. Gay fanfiction always has the best Shakespeare meta, right? Right. (OOH IS THERE ANY SLINGS & ARROWS FIC INVOLVING CORIOLANUS? RECS PLS IF YES)

(and if you have any other thoughts/meta/scholarly analysis to send my way on the subject of Coriolanus, please do!)

Comments

[seekingferret]

I wrote Slings and Arrows fic that touches on Coriolanus, even though I haven't read the play since college and didn't have particularly strong memories of it when I was writing the fic:

Anna in the Jungle

[sophia_sol]

Huh! Those bits of the fic had passed me by when I read it before - it's interesting now to reread the paragraphs that refer to Coriolanus with new familiarity with the play. Thanks for linking!

[reconditarmonia.livejournal.com]

me: "OH BOY I CAN TELL YOU ALL ABOUT WHAT SHAKESPEARE CHANGED FROM HISTORY -- down, girl, you wrote your essay on the plebeian protest part, not Aufidius." *sheepish* Sorry. Here's the bit in Plutarch:

There was a man of Antium, called Tullus Aufidius, who, for his wealth and bravery and the splendour of his family, had the respect and privilege of a king among the Volscians, but whom Marcius knew to have a particular hostility to himself, above all other Romans. Frequent menaces and challenges had passed in battle between them, and those exchanges of defiance to which their hot and eager emulation is apt to prompt young soldiers had added private animosity to their national feelings of opposition. Yet for all this, considering Tullus to have a certain generosity of temper, and knowing that no Volscian, so much as he, desired an occasion to requite upon the Romans the evils they had done...

(the really homoerotic speech is original to Shakespeare, AFAIK)

[sophia-sol.livejournal.com]

OH THAT IS FASCINATINGGGG. Thank you for sharing!

(and also I WOULD NOT OBJECT to hearing more about the plebeian protest if you care to share! :D)

[reconditarmonia.livejournal.com]

So basically it's reasonably popular conjecture that Shakespeare wrote the play in 1608 or 1609 (the broadcast's giving the date of 1605-1610 is not wrong, but that's more of a "we know it couldn't have been earlier or later because Menenius's speech comes from a 1605 document and people were referring to the play in print by 1610"). 1607 was the Midland Revolt, a popular rebellion against enclosure of the commons - I don't know how much you know about enclosure but, while it did have real economic benefits, it was seen (not always incorrectly) as causing a loss of arable land (Utopia has a quotation about sheep devouring men in relation to arable land being converted to pasture, which isn't accurate for the most part but which does reflect views), high grain prices (which may sound familiar), and depopulation (Coriolanus is the only Shakespeare play to use "depopulate").

As for the changes from the Plutarchan source, Shakespeare's riot conflates two separate ones in Plutarch, one of which is pre-war against usurers and government support of usury, and one of which is a post-war food riot. Now, we know that Shakespeare didn't shy away from the issue of usury (MoV, ToA) but he makes it a throwaway line. Also, in Plutarch, with the food riot being after the war, the inability to cultivate the fields during wartime is the reason for the grain shortage, but pre-war in Shakespeare, the blame gets cast on upper-class hoarding and no one really denies it. Some of the methods of Shakespeare's rioters are also absent from Plutarch but congruent with Elizabethan and Jacobean anti-enclosure riots and food riots, such as the petitions that the citizens mention having sent a couple of weeks before they rose, and the desire to set (and pay) what they consider a fair price for grain. Coriolanus's appeal for the people's vote is also treated as much more of a formality in Shakespeare than Plutarch.