William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus

Like the Empire State Building from a mid-Manhattan block, we never see all of Shakespeare. Each generation of play- and moviegoers gets to know him through a kind of mini-canon, twelve or so plays out of his few dozen, usually dominated by one that becomes the play for its age. The play of the 1990s was Hamlet, not only because it was a perennial favorite on New York stages but because a series of star-driven films (Mel Gibson, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh) introduced the King of Denmark to us as the personification of the Sensitive Nineties Guy. In the early oughts, the play to beat was King Lear, a pyrotechnic display of a mad old man exposed to the elements and punished for his sins against the young, which resounded with playgoers awash in headlines about manmade environmental disaster.

Some may say it’s too early to call, but I’m going to forecast that Coriolanus will be the play of this decade. It’s an unlikely pick, but it’s already shown signs of renewal in the form of a well-received 2011 film directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes. Set in the early days of Roman democracy, the play tells the story of a brave warrior, Caius Martius, who is rechristened Coriolanus after he conquers the city of Corioles in a bloody war. It follows him from battle back home, where his ambitious mother talks him into making a bid to parlay his glory into a political career. The citizens of Rome mistrust Coriolanus, though, calling him “chief enemy to the people” and arguing that he does not deserve to be repaid for his wartime exploits with political power—he already “pays himself with being proud.” They’re right: Coriolanus is proud of his battle wounds and wants nothing to do with “the many-headed multitude.” Those who stayed safe at home while he was at war now celebrate his victories as their own, and his refusal to make nice not only offends the populace but reveals that our hero, even as an aspiring senator, is profoundly anti-democratic. 

Coriolanus turns off modern audiences, particularly American ones, because it passes no apparent judgment on this sentiment; Shakespeare’s ability to evade being pinned down to a pat moral reads to us, now, like a tacit support of Coriolanus’s biases. We hear his enemies criticize him, but he also gets his say, and his soliloquies seem to ask us...