The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0426 Tuesday, 9 May 2006
From: Joseph Egert <
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Date: Monday, 08 May 2006 19:11:03 +0000
Subject: 17.0406 Characters
Comment: RE: SHK 17.0406 Characters
L.Swilley notes:
>Coriolanus' flaw is his conviction that
>the citizens should have no voice in the polity; they are, he
>maintains, curs that must be muzzled and whipped into submission, or
>at least treated as soldiers in his army where the governed have, of
>necessity, no voice in military decisions...[L]ike her son,
>[Volumnia] has denied her aristocratic
>beliefs and argued for the salvation of her "inferiors." Both mother
>and son have lost or have never known the aristocratic principle of
>"noblesse oblige.")
The flaw, by patrician lights, was not conviction but the failure to mask
it. Such conviction, as Nietzsche clearly understood, remains the heart
and soul of patrician class identity at all times in every clime--with
emphasis on their "noblesse" and secondarily on "oblige". To Volumnia and
the Mother Macbeths like her, dissimulation constituted just one more
military tactic against the class enemy within. Coriolanus' weak attempt
at accommodating her hypocrisy, i.e., baring his wounds to woo the "mob",
cannot withstand tribune provocation: the true patrician heart is exposed
instead. Marcus insists on remaining lord and owner of his mama-moulded
face with its fly-tearing teeth. He will not deny his own brittle
integrity until late in the drama. Volumnia never denies her aristocratic
beliefs: the salvation of her "inferiors" is a mere collateral gain of
minimal interest to her.
L. Swilley's concluding remarks on backstories and on what constitutes
valid interpretation are directly on point, as are Bruce Young's
ever-thoughtful balanced arguments. What indeed are the centuries of
scholarship and criticism if not an ongoing effort to fill in the
backstory of Shakespeare's creative life and times, to unravel his sacred
texts and flesh out their incarnations?
Joe Egert
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