Coriolanus (Shakespeare)

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Coriolanus by James Caldwell and Gavin Hamilton .

Coriolanus (English. The Tragedy of Coriolanus ) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare . The piece takes place at the beginning of the 5th century BC. In Rome and Antium and tells the story of the Roman patrician and war hero Coriolanus , who turns against his own people. Shakespeare probably completed the work around 1608. The first mention is in the Stationers' Register entry for the First Folio of November 8, 1623. The first known performance was an adaptation of 1719. The first known faithful performance was a production by David Garrick on November 11, 1754 at Drury Lane Theater .

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The location of the play is early Rome at the time of the establishment of the tribunes (representatives of the people). The plebeians revolt because the patricians hoard grain while the common people starve. The patrician Menenius then describes the parable of the stomach, which is active for the whole body; the patricians also gathered grain and distributed it throughout the city. The patrician general Caius Marcius announces the senate resolution that the plebeians may elect five tribunes to represent their interests in the state. Then a messenger announced that the Volscians wanted to go to war against Rome. A part of the Roman army under Cominius moves against the Volscians led by Aufidius on the battlefield, the rest under Marcius and Lartius besieged the Volsc city Corioli . During the siege, Marcius was trapped alone in the Volscerstadt, but he was able to open the city gate, whereupon the Romans conquered Corioli. The wounded Marcius now rushes to the battlefield and leads the Romans to victory here too - he is named Coriolanus for his bravery in conquering the city.

In order to become consul, the proud and arrogant-looking patrician Coriolanus appears reluctantly in front of the people on Rome's marketplace, but ultimately succeeds. The tribunes Brutus and Sicinius, fearing that Coriolanus will abolish their office if he becomes consul, persuade the plebeians to withdraw their consent. Coriolanus then insults the tribunes. On the urgent advice of his mother Volumnia, he goes to the market square again to reconcile himself with the plebeians. However, provoked by Sicinius, he lets himself be carried away to tirades against the tribunes and plebeians, who then demand his banishment for life. He leaves Rome voluntarily after saying goodbye to his wife Virgilia.

Coriolanus now seeks out his former enemy Aufidius and allies himself with the Volsk general to fight against Rome. Led by Coriolanus, the Volsci army stands before Rome. In vain does his old friend Cominius come to him from the city, who is indomitable. The eloquent Menenius is also sent away. His mother, his wife and his son suddenly appear in the Volsk camp. Volumnia kneels before him and asks him for peace - knowing that this will mean the end of her son. In a completely unexpected U-turn, Coriolanus declares that he is ready to make peace. In the Volscian city of Antium, Aufidius then calls Coriolanus a traitor and weakling; Again he lets himself be carried away to verbal attacks, whereupon the conspirators of the Volsker general incite the people against the Roman and stab him.

Literary templates and socio-cultural references

Transfer of Plutarch's parallel biographies from Thomas North, 1579

As in the other Roman dramas, Shakespeare used Plutarch's parallel biographies (around 110 AD) in the English translation by Sir Thomas North from 1579 as the main source ; only for his elaboration of the "Fable of Belly and Limbs" (I, i, 85-152) does Shakespeare apparently also use the version of this story in Livius in Philemon Holland's transmission of 1600 and William Camden's Remains of a Greater Work Concerning Britain of 1605 back. In Plutarch's model, in the saga of Coriolanus, as in other parts, a Greek and a Roman personality are juxtaposed; in this case the Greek equivalent of Coriolan is the Athenian general and politician Alkibiades , who was also in conflict with his hometown, which Shakespeare in turn dealt with thematically in his tragedy Timon of Athens (around 1607 and 1608).

According to the findings of modern historical research, Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus never actually lived, but only existed from the beginning as a legend or legend , whose origins lie in a family legend of the Roman family of Marcier . The legendary figure of Coriolanus has been characterized in fundamentally different ways since antiquity: On the one hand, he was seen as a hero who embodied the highest virtues of ancient Rome and in whose fate the ingratitude of the fatherland was expressed towards his savior; on the other hand, he was portrayed as an arrogant despiser and ultimately a traitor to his own people.

Obviously, Shakespeare was particularly interested in the contrast with Marc Anton , whose fate he brought into a dramatic form around the same time, also by referring to Plutarch's work. The events from the early days of Rome, which were still unknown on the Elizabethan stage at the time, with their war heroes and the rebellious masses of the people, offered more theatrical space than the previous Roman dramas. In terms of subject matter, structure and style, Coriolanus is also closely related to the satirical tragedy Timon , which Shakespeare, however, did not fully elaborate.

Plutarch's model for Shakespeare's Coriolanus provides the basic features of the course of events as well as the character dichotomy of the title character, whose cardinal virtues of courage and bravery ( virtus ) and piety ( pietas ) are in conflict with his choleric excess. In addition, Shakespeare uses Plutarch's model in the transmission of Thomas North, with only minor changes, for the climactic scene of his tragedy, in which Volumnia, as the supplicant of Rome, averts the wrath of her son who was wrongly banished from his native city. Likewise, numerous passages of his blank verse are closely based on North's expressive prose.

Despite these similarities, Shakespeare unmistakably transforms his dramatic material and re-proportions it. He gathers up the political processes that are linked to Coriolanus' fate, directs them entirely towards his protagonist and thus makes them more manageable and dramatically more effective. He divides the events in his drama into two arcs and highlights the turning point of Coriolanus' candidacy and his defeat in the consul election.

In Shakespeare's case, this central event, in contrast to his source, results directly from Coriolanus' role as a hero in the war against the Volscians and leads directly to his exile from Rome. The feudal opposition of Coriolanus to the tribunes of the people and its military rivalry with the Volscians are in Shakespeare's play at the beginning of the plot and put not only in its source in the center in the second half of the event a. At the same time, with the first persuasion scene in the Volumnia in the first arc (III, ii), Shakespeare creates a dramatic counterbalance to her pleading at the end (V, iii).

The conflicts and tensions Shakespeare's title character is exposed to are dramatically more personalized than in the original; Figures like Menenius or the tribunes, which in Plutarch's pale figures only help to give expression to the political debate as voices, are expanded into complete characters in Shakespeare's work. The protagonist's wife, Virgilia, who remains a shadowy figure in Plutarch's model, is artistically designed by Shakespeare and takes a conciliatory position between Coriolanus' claim to absoluteness and that of his mother. Moreover, in Shakespeare's tragedy, the crowd in Rome itself becomes an essential dramatic element in which the character weaknesses of his protagonist, such as his irrepressible nature and his ability to be manipulated, are reflected. By confronting Coriolanus with aspects of his own character in the personality traits of his opponents such as Aufidius and Volumnia, Shakespeare tries in his work to ensure the dramatic unity of the tragedy.

He also gives the classic conflict between the individual and the crowd a contemporary topicality through various anachronisms and stylistic nuances. The sophisticated language of Coriolanus, for example, echoes the expression of the contemporary aristocracy and the language of the plebeians is similar to that of the English craftsmen of the time, but also of the day thieves. As individuals, they are endowed with motherly wit and sometimes involuntary comedy as well as with folly and insight; under the manipulative influence of the demagogue, they become a raging pack. In this way, the tensions and conflicts inherent in Shakespeare's source are emphasized and clearly exacerbated. In explicit contradiction to Plutarch, the plebeian soldiers in Shakespeare's play are portrayed as cowardly and pathetic in contrast to the legendary war acts of Coriolanus; the hatred of the exiled Coriolanus for his hometown takes on this background in the end a much more violent form than in the source of Plutarch. While Coriolanus in Plutarch's submission only wants to restore the absolute power of the aristocracy over the people with the help of the Volscians, in Shakespeare's tragedy he is out to destroy all of Rome and let it go up in flames. With this attitude at the end, Shakespeare intensifies the depth of the fall as well as the apostasy and reversal of his protagonist.

Dating and text

Coriolanus , folio from 1623

There is no evidence or documentation for an exact dating of the creation of the work. However, the play must have been written after 1605, as Shakespeare's Coriolanus version of the well-known fable of the quarrel between the belly and the limbs uses details from the version of William Camden's Remains from 1605 ( terminus a quo ). Due to stylistic comparison criteria, especially with regard to the treatment of blank verse , it is generally assumed in Shakespeare research that Coriolanus was written as the last of the so-called Roman dramas by Shakespeare after Antony and Cleopatra . Additional clues for dating can be found in two works published in 1609, each parodying a striking line of the piece: Robert Armin's The Italian Taylor and his Boy and Ben Jonson's comedy The Silent Women . Since it can be assumed that such specific references were able to develop a satirical effect in contemporary audience only when the first performance of Shakespeare's tragedy does not lagged too long or the piece at the time was a success on the stage, this speaks for a generation of Coriolanus likely around 1607/1608.

In addition, one of the main themes of the play, the political-social tension between the people and the aristocracy, was very topical for contemporaries after the Midland uprisings in the early summer of 1607 and was discussed intensively. Some of the Shakespeare researchers suspect that the sympathy that Shakespeare does not show towards the fickle people despite the extremely arrogant demeanor of his hero Coriolanus, is to be understood as a reaction to the endangerment of the stability of the community that was caused by the hunger riots in central England Years 1607 and 1608 threatened. Some Shakespeare editors also see the picture "the coal of fire upon the ice" as a reference to the extremely harsh winter of 1607/1608, in which coal fires were lit in large basins on the ice cover of the Thames.

A dating of the work to around 1608, as is predominantly carried out in today's Shakespeare research, can also be corroborated by further details in the only authoritative text source of the first print in the folio edition of 1623. In addition to a division of the work into acts, some information in the stage instructions suggest that Coriolanus was probably the first play by Shakespeare that was written for a performance in the Blackfriars Theater , which was used as a winter residence by the Shakespeare drama troupe from 1608.

Coriolanus has only survived in the folio edition of 1623, in which the piece was printed under the title The Tragedy of Coriolanus . The print is based on a fairly reliable template; the exceptionally detailed stage directions suggest with great certainty that a carefully examined stage manuscript of Shakespeare or a copy of it can be accepted as a master copy. Although the text as a whole does not pose any serious problems for modern editors, a number of individual emendations are necessary, especially in the area of ​​the division of verses and the correction of a large number of obvious errors in the printing process, which are probably due to the poor legibility of the handwritten manuscript are due. For example, the typesetter read in the handwritten original, which was obviously difficult to decipher, shoot instead of shout , detect instead of defect and scale instead of stale .

Performance history

Shakespeare's differentiated character representation of Coriolanus with its neutralization of the propagandistic content of the material and his skeptical treatment of this Roman legend led in later performances of the work to attempts to rewrite or re-enact the play in a political confessional drama. Until well into the 19th century, more or less tendentious productions or arrangements of the work were performed almost exclusively.

In Nahum Tate's 1681 adaptation The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth , the final act of Shakespeare's work is transformed into a horror drama to promote the royalist propaganda of the Tories , while in John Dennis' The Invader of His Country from 1719 Coriolanus is a negative example in the face of the looming threat Invasion of the Jacobite pretender is shown. James Thomson's version, which was created in 1745 and premiered posthumously in 1749 , begins with the banishment of the hero and stylizes Coriolanus as a Roman warrior into an ideal aristocrat. A performance by David Garrick from 1754 with the essentially unadulterated original text of Shakespeare was replaced a short time later by a mixed version of Shakespeare and Thomson's text. From 1789 John Philip Kemble played the leading role in his adaptation of Shakespeare's play with great success.

In more recent performances, Laurence Olivier in particular showed an outstanding acting performance in 1938 and 1959 as the convincing tragic Coriolanus. In more modern performances of the play, however, the heroic status of the title hero is mostly "deconstructed" psychologically with regard to the mother-son relationship or through a critical presentation of his basic reactionary attitude . The Milanese production of Coriolanus by Italian director Giorgio Strehler , which was influenced by Bertolt Brecht , combined both approaches to a critical deconstruction of Shakespeare's play.

The first complete translation of the work into German took place in 1777 by Johann Joachim Eschenburg ; Coriolanus was played on German stages from 1781 until the middle of the 19th century, as a rule, in fairly free classical arrangements, but remained on the repertoire for several decades. It was not until 1855 and 1864 that Emil Devrient confronted the German audience with the unadulterated Shakespeare text.

During the First World War and in the post-war period, the importance of drama for one's own national fate was discovered in the German theater scene; numerous new productions with quite contradicting interpretations of the message of the work made theater history, especially in the 1920s. The Berlin performances in 1925 and 1928, directed by Erich Engels with Fritz Kortner in the title role, deserve special mention . The portrayal of the role of Coriolanus by the renowned actor Ewald Balser in 1936/37 had a lasting influence on Brecht's development of his conception of the epic theater .

Adaptations

In his Coriolan poems, the well-known English poet and playwright TS Eliot attempts to update the material poetically; however, Eliot's poetry as a word collage remains a fragment in which the past greatness is ironically contrasted with the reality of modern military dictatorships.

Bertolt Brecht , in his adaptation of Shakespeare's Coriolanus (1951–1955), on the other hand , shifts the weight in Shakespeare's drama in favor of the plebeians, making them a positive political force.

The film adaptation of the Shakespeare play took place in 2011 under the direction of Ralph Fiennes , who also played the title role. The action has been moved to the 21st century. The 90-minute production of Korijolanusz by the independent theater company HOPPart from Budapest was an important part of the Shakespeare Festival Neuss in 2014 . The ensemble with eight men and four women around director Csaba Polgar highlighted the contempt of the oligarchs, the influence of powerful clusters, the turn-neckedness and naivety of the people. The reviewer saw it as a "glaring, evil, bitterly comical satire" that reflects the current situation in post-socialist countries.

Text output

Total expenditure
English
  • Lee Bliss (Ed.): William Shakespeare: Coriolanus. New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010, ISBN 978-0521728744
  • Peter Holland (Ed.): William Shakespeare: Coriolanus. Arden Third Series. London 2013, ISBN 978-1904271284
  • RB Parker (Ed.): William Shakespeare: Coriolanus. Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008, ISBN 978-0199535804
German
  • Roland Lüthi (Ed.): William Shakespeare: Coriolanus. English-German study edition. Stauffenburg, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 978-3-86057-560-4 .

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Shakespeare's Coriolanus in English  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Coriolanus (play)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , p. 397. See also Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 516 f. See also Hans-Dieter Gelfert : William Shakespeare in his time. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-65919-5 , p. 377. See also Michael Dobson , Stanley Wells (ed.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-870873-5 , p. 241.
  2. ↑ See Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , pp. 516-518.
  3. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , p. 396 f. See also Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 515 f. and Hans-Dieter Gelfert : William Shakespeare in his time. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-65919-5 , p. 377.
  4. ↑ See more detailed Michael Dobson , Stanley Wells (Ed.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-870873-5 , p. 241.
  5. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , p. 397. See also Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 515 f. See also Michael Dobson , Stanley Wells (Ed.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-870873-5 , p. 241.
  6. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 521 f. See also the detailed account of the stage history of Coriolanus in John Ripley: Coriolanus on Stage in England and America, 1609-1994 . Associated University Presses, London a. a. 1998.
  7. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 521 f.
  8. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare Handbook. Kröner, 5th rev. Edition, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 522. See also Ulrich Suerbaum : Der Shakespeare-Führer. Reclam, Ditzingen 2006, ISBN 3-15-017663-8 , 3rd rev. Edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , p. 402.
  9. ↑ Big gesture in the province Shakespeare Festival in Neuss shows the Hungarian production of "Coriolan" , review by Ulrike Gondorf in Deutschlandradio Kultur on July 5, 2014, accessed July 8, 2014