{"id":8976,"date":"2014-02-27T13:39:12","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T18:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=8976"},"modified":"2014-02-27T15:50:18","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T20:50:18","slug":"coriolanuss-lonely-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/02\/coriolanuss-lonely-love.html","title":{"rendered":"Coriolanus’s Lonely Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019d never read or seen\u00a0Coriolanus<\/em> before a group of friends and I went out to see Tom Hiddleston as the eponymous lead in an NT Live broadcast<\/a>. \u00a0During intermission, one of my friends leaned across our block of seats to say, \u201cI\u2019ve guess this is the methadone to my\u00a0House of Cards<\/em> addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Coriolanus<\/em>, the title character is a great general, but flounders when his friends try to elevate him as a Roman Consul. \u00a0His apparent arrogance and disdain for the ordinary people of Rome, who he would prefer to serve only in battle, causes the tribunes of the Populares<\/a>\u00a0to seize on his tactless, unfiltered contempt to build up their own support and expel him from the city. \u00a0Their scheming had something of the same character as Frank Underwood\u2019s soliloquies, but, in this production, our sympathies weren\u2019t expected to be with the master manipulators, but the artless idealist.<\/p>\n

But Kate Havard of\u00a0<\/a>First Things<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>thinks it\u2019s a mistake to grant Coriolanus the voices and praise the city denied him. \u00a0She writes:<\/p>\n

Coriolanus didn\u2019t die for Rome\u2019s sins. But there\u2019s a moment early on in Josie Rourke\u2019s production of\u00a0Coriolanus\u00a0<\/em>that might make you wonder if she thinks he did. In it, the Romans take their bloodied hero (played by Tom Hiddleston), crown him with a thorny garland, and hoist him up above them. He looks rather Christ-like, sitting up there, even if the Christ imagery doesn\u2019t make much sense\u2026<\/p>\n

Suffice it to say: Coriolanus probably ranks rock bottom on a list of \u201cShakespeare\u2019s Most Christ-like Heroes.\u201d He hates most people. He has no real allegiance to anything other than himself, quickly turning on the Romans. He is willing to burn his city to the ground, with his mother, wife, and child inside it. He is not any kind of savior at all\u2026.<\/p>\n

Coriolanus may have little loyalty to Rome, but he is the perfect Roman, and in this play, that means he is utterly self-denying. A thoughtful audience will be as impressed by Coriolanus\u2019 martial virtues as they are aware that those virtues come with a cost. When Coriolanus is portrayed limping around in pain or embracing his family or weeping, his decision to march on Rome becomes inexplicable. Rourke won\u2019t let him be the creature Shakespeare made: beautiful and terrible and heartless. She insists that he must have a heart. For if Coriolanus is so great\u2014and he is\u2014mustn\u2019t he also be good, as we commonly understand it?<\/p>\n

Not in ancient Rome: What makes Coriolanus the greatest man in Rome makes him the greatest threat to Rome. His strength makes attachment to the city unnecessary. Rourke tries to humanize Coriolanus, but in doing so she makes him an easily manipulated strongman without any of the greatness.<\/p>\n

Go on, read the whole thing, it\u2019s excellent<\/a>. \u00a0I\u2019ll wait.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But I can\u2019t quite bring myself to agree with Kate\u2019s complaint. \u00a0I disagree with her claim that Coriolanus \u201chas no real allegiance to anything other than himself\u201d as much as I disagree with the angry citizen in the opening scene who says that, although Coriolanus appears to serve the city, \u201cHe pays himself with being proud.\u201d \u00a0But this production\u00a0did<\/em> earn the title of Kate\u2019s essay \u201cCoriolanus Alone\u201d<\/a> by undercutting the relationships would show that Coriolanus does have a heartfelt allegiance to honor.<\/p>\n

The text of the play tells us that Coriolanus and his enemy Aufidius share a brotherhood of warriors. \u00a0Both are swift to praise the other, even as they both long for the opportunity to confront and conquer each other in battle. \u00a0When Coriolanus is exiled, he seeks out Aufidius and offers him his loyalty or his life, whichever Aufidius prefers to take. \u00a0The camp of his enemy is the only place Coriolanus is certain he can live out his vocation to war honestly.<\/p>\n

But it all goes awry with the bizarrely erotic staging of Aufidius\u2019s welcome. \u00a0He paws at Coriolanus\u2019s head, kisses him passionately, and clownishly can\u2019t keep his hands off him. \u00a0The show isn\u2019t presenting us with a noble vision of homosocial love \u2014 Coriolanus looks perplexed, and, in the background of the scene, Aufidius\u2019s servants are openly contemptuous or confused by their master\u2019s behavior. \u00a0This directorial choice robs the scene of the character of a homecoming and means that Aufidius and Coriolanus are never completely united as two men with a shared love.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how we wind up with a Coriolanus alone, since, with this diminution of Aufidius, no one remaining in the cast has a love of something greater than themselves, and Coriolanus, isolated by his devotion, draws our sympathies. \u00a0The plotting Tribunes are openly contemptuous of the people they serve, expertly manipulating them (We will be there before the stream o\u2019 the people;\u00a0And this shall seem, as partly \u2019tis, their own,Which we have goaded onward), Coriolanus\u2019s friend Menenius (played by\u00a0Sherlock<\/em>\u2018s Mark Gatiss) wins the love of the audience with his witty putdowns of all the other characters, and Coriolanus\u2019s mother, at first seeming a slave to duty, like her son, tells him to put aside his honor in order to win glory as a consul. \u00a0They have skills, but seem indifferent about to what use those skills will be put.<\/p>\n

As such, Coriolanus emerges as the only character to cling to some kind of vocation. \u00a0Coriolanus dies in a tragedy of his own making, but it is tragic because we can more easily imagine an appropriate use for his gifts than for the those of the rest of the company. \u00a0He has chosen a telos<\/em>\u00a0that isn\u2019t worthy of the fervor with which he pursues it, but he earns our sympathy, because we would long to see that devotion and dying to self devoted to some other good.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

DarwinCatholic is praying a novena for Ordering Lives Wisely by St. Thomas Aquinas, that will end on Ash Wednesday. \u00a0If you\u2019d like to join her and me, you can\u00a0find the prayers here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019d never read or seen\u00a0Coriolanus before a group of friends and I went out to see Tom Hiddleston as the eponymous lead in an NT Live broadcast. \u00a0During intermission, one of my friends leaned across our block of seats to say, \u201cI\u2019ve guess this is the methadone to my\u00a0House of Cards addiction.\u201d In\u00a0Coriolanus, the title […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":8978,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[51,46],"class_list":["post-8976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviewsrecommendations","tag-at-the-theatre","tag-sacrifice"],"yoast_head":"\nCoriolanus's Lonely Love<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'd never read or seen\u00a0Coriolanus before a group of friends and I went out to see Tom Hiddleston as the eponymous lead in an NT Live broadcast. 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