Coriolanus – I just saw Coriolanus recently – the Ralph Fiennes one. Having not been introduced to the play except by my brother’s continual love of the Bard, I decided we should just go ahead and watch it. Also, obvious spoilers – not that the play hasn’t been around for nearly four hundred years, but you get the picture.
Most scholars consider Coriolanus one of the lesser plays – mostly, this is due to the lack of soliloquies he gives as to his motivation. In the film, he only does this a few times, and NOT in the most straightforward ways. What we do know, however, is thus: Caius Martius remains a man of war. He does not care for civic life or home life, nor does he have much time for compliments or flattery. His mother Volumnia, an advocate for warfare and great honor, encourages his glories to Rome. She, more muse than Caius’ own wife, desires to see him rise in the ranks in glory worthy of his accomplishments. That, however, is easier said than done (actually, the movie emphasizes her role moreso than in the play; she’s a minor character at best in the original text. Intentional? Probably).
A lion of the State, they send him into battle to secure new territory and repel invaders for Rome. He lives by one principle: honor. We see this in his constant conflict with the Volscians and their leader, Titus Affidius, who wage war as constant enemies on the opposite side. They call it a blood fued, and their men have to drag the two of them away from single combat before they kill themselves. Still, Caius Martius becomes victorious in the conflict depicted therein; thus, does he gain the title of “Coriolanus”, appended to his name. Not that he cares; he won’t even do public speaking unless forced, and refuses to boast.
His accomplishments in warfare (even to the brink of madness) proves to be his undoing. Many see him as the perfect candidate for consul, yet he finds no pleasure in securing the favor of the populace; why should, in his words “Break ope the locks o’ the senate and bring in. The crows to peck the eagles“? He is a man of high birth and high class. He can’t talk to the people, nor show him all the battle scars he bears for the state; why should he, anyway? Well, two tribunes make fit to see that Coriolanus never becomes consul. They rile up the people, and eventually banish him from Rome.
Their confidence was misplaced. Coriolanus fights not for state but battle honor; he goes to his enemy, Affidius, and offers his life. Instead of killing him, Affidius recruits the man in a bid to take Rome. These are two men who understand the ties that bind them: honor, combat, the constant struggle of life and death. Together, they bring terror and destruction to the Empire.
Many of Coriolanus’ former friends and relatives plead with him to stop, but to no avail. However, a visit from his mother breaks him down and finally brings an end to the war. Affidius sees this as a mortal betrayal of their common bond; he pleads for peace, while both remain men of war (or maybe he just gave into women – possible interpretation there). In a surprise to no one, Coriolanus remains honor-bound to the end, and dies in bloody combat.
Now, the modern mind would say: Coriolanus was made that way by nurture. His mother always glorified combat, and so he too became a man of strife and violence. That, however, betrays his unique nature. He will not submit; it is not how he was raised, but how he is. A man focused on and living by one principle can only live by that principle:
Must I go show them my unbarbed sconce?
Must I with base tongue give my noble heart
A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do’t:
Yet, were there but this single plot to lose,
This mould of Marcius, they to dust should grind it
And throw’t against the wind. To the market-place!
You have put me now to such a part which never
I shall discharge to the life.
He resents the lifestyle of compromise – he should not have to change his ways to appease the masses whose whims change by the minute. Does he think he is innately superior, or that he must repress his true nature to gain the support of the populace? That’s the eternal question at the heart of this play, and Shakespeare does not offer you a heavy-handed answer. If you think in terms of politics, it appears a fable about the necessary qualities of successful leaders, or a negative criticism of the common man, or a demonstration of how democracies keep their leaders in check, or how one cannot live by one principle in absence of all others. Perhaps it shows how people can manipulate a man whose vision only extends to one idea, as his friends, family, and enemies manipulate him to their own purposes. You could also take it as a frivolous piece of entertainment. There’s no consensus, and probably never will have one. Its complexities reach beyond a simple answer.
Shakespeare wrote for a popular audience; perhaps he placed the subtext in the play, but we don’t know for sure. We could prattle upon this for days, really, and this is one of the more mediocre plays in the Shakespeare canon (even if many say it achieved a kind of formal perfection in tragedies. It’s one of the latest ones written).
So…name a video game that even comes close to this. Can you think of one? I certainly can’t.
I know, I know: they haven’t been around long enough yet to make an evaluative judgment, although that hasn’t stopped the gaming public at large to declare their own personal hobby became an “art form” at some point or another. Still, Shakespeare was respected as a famous playright even in his own day, if not to the bardolatrous heights of the Victorian era. Do you think any video games will reach this level of “art”, so to speak? Most of such games come with their own morals and meanings attached in the most heavy-handed way possible. What’s Bioshock about? Duh, objectivism is bad! What’s Hotline Miami about? Killing people in video games isn’t a great thing to do! What about Spec Ops: The Line? Take a dash of Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse now, throw in a dash of Dubai, some feeling bad about war and you’ve got art and a video game literary Renaissance! Think about this moral quandary, young video gamer, with zero context as to the previous great works of civilization describing human nature’s complexisties without prescribing it, and see that these are art!
It’s almost as benign and shortsighted as John Dennis’ evaluation of Coriolanus:
The Good must never fail to prosper, and the Bad must be always punish’d. Otherwise the Incidents,and particularly the Catastrophe which is the grand Incident, are liable to be imputed rather to Chance that to Almighty Conduct and to Sovereign Justice. The want of this impartial Distribution of Justice makes the Coriolanus of Shakespear to be without Moral…. [Aufidius] not only survives, and survives unpunish’d but seems to be rewarded for so detestable an Action by engrossing all those Honours to himself which Coriolanus before had shar’d with him…. The Good and the Bad then perishing promiscuously in the best of Shakespeare’s tragedies, there can be either none or very weak Instruction in them.
And many of our video games today, those with “meaning”, do much the same – they present their own license for poetic justice, even if they don’t intend it. They provide easy answers suitable to the moral code of our day without truly engaging humanity on its own terms. The framework’s been set, and nothing can be found outside of it. Isn’t that an interesting contrast?
More about this peculiar subject later! I’ve been writing quite a bit about video games and art, and the first part is certainly to come!
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That was a particularly rigorous Monday Update, but hey, who said you didn’t get some variety on this blog?
