0:08

Hello, my name is David Runtzman and this

0:10

is Past, Present, Future. Today's

0:13

episode is the first in our new series

0:15

of the history of ideas. And

0:18

for this series I'm going to be talking

0:20

about the great political fictions, novels and

0:22

plays about politics, but

0:24

about a lot else as well. I'm

0:27

starting with Shakespeare and

0:29

Coriolanus. Past,

0:32

Present, Future is brought to you in partnership

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with the London Review of Books where you

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can read some amazing writing about politics and

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writing about writers, including some

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great writing about Shakespeare. To

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1:03

On the previous series of history

1:05

of ideas, when I was talking

1:07

about works of political philosophy or

1:09

the most recent one, Great Political

1:11

Essays, I was basically talking about

1:13

arguments and trying to

1:15

make sense of arguments. And

1:17

the way I tried to do that was

1:19

to find the story in the argument or

1:21

behind the argument. With

1:23

the essays it was to turn them into a sort

1:26

of journey or adventure so that you

1:28

could see the twists and turns along the way. You

1:31

could see the author trying to work

1:33

out what happens next. But

1:35

I can't do that with this series

1:37

because these literally are stories. I'm going

1:40

to be talking about great novels, great

1:42

plays, fictions, made up

1:44

stories. And there

1:46

is always a temptation, I think, with

1:48

works of political fiction, novels

1:50

about politics, plays about politics,

1:53

to try to find the argument behind

1:55

the story, to assume that the author

1:57

must be trying to make a point.

2:00

trying to smuggle in a

2:03

manifesto commitment, trying to

2:05

take a side, and that

2:07

in these novels, if you look hard enough,

2:09

you can find out what the author really

2:11

thinks, the argument behind the

2:13

story. And I'm going to

2:15

try and resist that temptation because I think

2:18

usually it's wrong. These

2:20

aren't arguments. They are stories.

2:23

And to paraphrase Susan Sontag, there is

2:25

a danger of overinterpreting them, of looking

2:28

too much for the meaning, when really

2:30

the meaning, the arguments, are there to

2:32

serve the form. Yes, all of the

2:34

things I'm going to be talking about

2:36

will have political arguments in them, but

2:39

they're likely to be being said

2:41

by fictional characters in particular situations.

2:44

And the arguments are there to make

2:46

sense of the situation. The situation is

2:48

not there to provide a vehicle for

2:51

the argument. That's at least what

2:53

I'm going to try to do, though I have

2:55

a feeling probably along the way, I will find

2:57

myself thinking that there is an

2:59

argument at work. But let's see how we get

3:01

on. And I'm really determined not to do it

3:03

today, because the

3:05

temptation is perhaps most strong with

3:08

Shakespeare, for obvious reasons, to

3:11

try and work out what

3:13

Shakespeare think about this, whose

3:15

side was he on? What

3:17

were his political commitments? And the reason

3:19

it's so tempting is because Shakespeare is

3:21

so famous. He is

3:24

so ubiquitous. He's everywhere. He's everywhere, not

3:26

just in British culture,

3:28

even Western culture, in global culture. He's

3:31

embedded in the English language. But

3:34

also he's so mysterious. In

3:36

many ways, he's so obscure, we don't

3:38

know that much about Shakespeare. His

3:41

life is clouded in mystery, to the

3:43

point that people still argue about who

3:45

he really was, was Shakespeare, really Shakespeare.

3:48

And most of the evidence for him, the

3:50

man, is in the plays. And

3:53

the plays are very political. Shakespeare,

3:56

like everyone, I guess, but certainly he's

3:58

no exception, he lives. lived in an

4:01

intensely political world at an

4:03

intensely political time, the

4:05

late 16th, early 17th century in

4:08

England. This was an age

4:10

of kings and queens, of

4:13

court politics, of dynastic

4:15

struggles, of

4:17

rumours of invasions and actual invasions

4:20

of terrorism, of

4:22

insurrection and rebellion, and the

4:24

endless struggle for legitimacy. Even

4:26

kings and queens have

4:28

to have people believe in them if they're going to

4:30

stay in power. Heavy is

4:33

the head that wears the crown. Shakespeare's

4:36

plays are about all of those things,

4:38

particularly the history plays, particularly the tragedies.

4:40

They are about kings

4:42

and queens, and court politics,

4:44

and dynastic struggles, and rumours

4:47

of insurrection and rebellion, and all

4:49

the twists and turns, and the

4:51

endless, endless, ceaseless struggle for

4:54

legitimacy. I am king because... because

4:56

what? Because I was born king,

4:59

really? So, given how political

5:01

it all is, and given the real

5:03

politics that lay behind... Shakespeare's

5:06

life, Shakespeare's world. It

5:08

is very tempting to want to know whose side is he on.

5:11

Is this play actually about

5:13

Shakespeare and his queen, his

5:15

king? Is he involved in

5:17

court politics, or at least is he

5:19

saying something about the sort of censorship

5:21

that he's subject to because of court

5:23

politics? Is he maybe on the

5:26

side of the people? Was he a popular playwright?

5:28

I mean, this is popular entertainment at

5:30

the time of popular tumult. Maybe secretly

5:33

Shakespeare was with the people, or

5:35

maybe he wasn't. Particularly

5:38

as he got older, got more prosperous, became a

5:40

landowner. Maybe he was on the side of the

5:42

elite. Maybe actually he was sucking up to the

5:44

people in power. Maybe he

5:46

was an authoritarian. Maybe he

5:48

was a conservative. I do

5:50

get the impulse to know what Shakespeare

5:53

thought, but you can't really

5:55

get it from the plays, and

5:58

both the impulse, but also trap is

6:01

perhaps most present with the play

6:03

that I'm talking about today, because

6:05

it is perhaps the

6:08

most political of Shakespeare's

6:10

plays, Coriolanus, written

6:13

sometime between 1605

6:16

and 1608. So this is relatively late

6:18

in Shakespeare's life and career. It's

6:21

the last of his tragedies. It's

6:23

the final tragedy. And one of

6:25

the reasons it seems particularly amenable

6:27

to that kind of what's the

6:29

meaning behind the form? What did

6:31

he actually think? Political

6:34

interpretation is threefold. First

6:36

of all, it's not actually about

6:38

kings and queens and court politics

6:40

and dynastic struggles, because this

6:43

one, unlike all the plays about the

6:45

kings and the queens and about the

6:47

emperors and the empresses, the Henrys, the

6:49

Julius Caesars, the would be emperors, Anthony

6:52

and Cleopatra, this one is

6:54

set in the early years of

6:56

the Roman Republic. So it's a republic, not a

6:58

monarchy. There is no king, they got rid of

7:00

their kings. There is no king, there is not

7:02

yet and won't be for a long, long time

7:04

an emperor. This is a city state, a republic.

7:07

So the struggle that's going on here is

7:10

neither court nor dynastic. It's more raw

7:12

than that. In some ways, it's more timeless

7:14

than that. It is the

7:17

struggle between the elite, the patricians in

7:19

this case, the Roman Senate, the landed

7:21

elite, and also the military elite. And

7:23

the people, the masses, the plebs, as they

7:26

were called, the plebeians, that

7:28

conflict is central

7:31

to Coriolanus. And

7:33

so because it feels quite binary,

7:35

and it isn't clouded by the question

7:37

of kings and queens

7:39

and the complexity of court

7:41

politics and intrigue, maybe

7:44

this is the play where Shakespeare, not

7:46

least because he might be freer here, no one's

7:48

going to read this play and think, is he

7:50

talking about our king? Or was he talking about

7:53

our queen? Because there aren't any. Maybe

7:55

Shakespeare was freer in this play to say

7:58

whose side he was on. And

8:02

secondly, this is the play that probably

8:04

of all of them is most subject

8:06

to endless repeated political interpretations in the

8:09

way it's produced, because it looks like

8:11

a play about military power, about

8:14

elite rule, and about

8:16

the endless struggle between the few and

8:18

the many, those at the top

8:20

of the state and the mass, the

8:23

menial part of the state, for

8:25

power. That timeless

8:27

quality means it's endlessly adaptable to

8:30

different situations. The question of military

8:32

rule, of elite rule, of popular

8:34

resistance is ever present and perhaps

8:37

increasingly acutely present in

8:40

modern politics, in 20th century politics. So Coriolanus

8:42

is the play more than any of the

8:44

others that gets staged in

8:46

ways that reflect the political

8:49

circumstances of the time and the place in

8:51

which it's happening. In

8:53

Nazi Germany, Coriolanus was very popular

8:56

because it was the play that could be the

8:58

vehicle for some kind of statement about the necessity

9:01

of military rule, of strong leadership.

9:05

After the war, the Americans in

9:08

occupied Germany banned it. On

9:10

the grounds it was too dangerous. This was

9:12

a dangerous play. The implication being this play

9:15

maybe was on the side of even

9:17

seeking to legitimate a

9:19

form of elite military rule

9:23

at the same time because the play

9:25

is also about popular resistance to that

9:27

rule. In East Germany,

9:30

Bertolt Brecht put on

9:32

productions of Coriolanus, which emphasized the ways

9:34

in which actually it's a play on

9:37

the side of the people. The people

9:39

do resist elite rule.

9:41

They do, in the end,

9:44

defeat their would-be tyrant Coriolanus.

9:47

A recent film version of Coriolanus

9:50

directed by starring the English

9:53

actor, Ray Fiennes, was

9:55

released in 2011 and

9:57

it was set in the recent Balkans. of

10:00

mythical Balkans, but recognizably the

10:02

Balkans-Balkan War. This is

10:05

politics about men in uniform, and

10:07

men in uniform, and how you

10:09

either allow or resist them when

10:12

they seek to gain power, is

10:15

a theme that cuts across 20th,

10:18

21st century politics. So you can do

10:21

very political interpretations of Coriolanus,

10:23

and it feels like it

10:25

runs with the flow of

10:28

the text. And

10:30

thirdly, it is a play that has a

10:32

lot of political arguments in it. The

10:36

characters try and make their case

10:38

not in the veiled language of

10:40

court intrigue, but with direct appeals

10:43

across class divides. It looks like

10:45

a play potentially about class, in

10:48

which the elite, the patricians, the

10:51

gentry, make their case to the people,

10:53

and the people push back. And

10:56

on both sides, it comes

10:58

sometimes not quite as a manifesto,

11:00

but certainly as a political commitment

11:02

seeking to persuade the other side.

11:05

So maybe these arguments, because they

11:07

really are arguments, are

11:10

Shakespeare's arguments. Except they're

11:12

not. They really aren't. They can't

11:14

be read that way, because Shakespeare

11:16

isn't saying them. The

11:18

characters in the play are saying them, and the

11:21

characters in the play are saying them because

11:24

the circumstances in which they

11:26

find themselves require the argument,

11:28

not because it's a

11:31

good argument. I'm just going to

11:33

give one example, perhaps the most celebrated example in

11:35

the play. It's quite early on. There's

11:38

a character called Menenius, who

11:40

is an ally of a

11:42

friend of Coriolanus. And just to be

11:45

clear upfront, Coriolanus, the

11:47

central character at the start of the play,

11:49

he's not called Coriolanus, he's called Marsius. And

11:51

he gets given the name Coriolanus because of

11:53

a great military victory over the rival tribe

11:55

that the Romans are fighting at this point

11:58

called the Volskins. stronghold

12:01

of the Volsians called Corioli. Coriolanus

12:04

gets a great victory, so he gets

12:06

the name of the place that he

12:08

won, and that's his appellation, his honorific.

12:10

I'm just going to call him Coriolanus

12:12

throughout for simplicity. It gets too confusing

12:15

otherwise. So

12:17

Menenius is a friend of the person who's

12:19

going to be Coriolanus, but he's

12:21

also a patrician. He's on the side of the elite.

12:23

And early on in the play, there's quite a

12:26

lot of back and forth between him

12:28

and various representatives of the people, the

12:30

plebs, the ordinary people. And

12:32

it's an extremely tense time in Rome

12:35

because people are hungry. There's

12:37

not enough food, and

12:39

the ordinary people are potentially on

12:41

the brink of revolt because they

12:43

believe that the patrician elite are

12:45

hoarding the food, hoarding the corn.

12:48

And the food needs to be distributed, and

12:51

they are powerless to get the food. And

12:53

Menenius tries to explain to the

12:56

representatives of the people why they

12:58

are wrong to think of his

13:00

side, his class, the posh ones,

13:03

as the enemy here, simply because

13:05

they are holding on to the food. And he

13:07

does it by way of an analogy of the

13:09

body politic. There have been

13:11

many analogies of the body politic throughout the

13:14

history of political thinking. This

13:16

one is a bit unusual. Normally,

13:18

when people talk about the body politic, the idea is,

13:20

and it's certainly true in this case, Menenius wants to

13:23

make this point too, to suggest that we're all in

13:25

it together. We are a single body. So you can't

13:27

take as a part of you. One

13:29

part of the body fights another part of the body.

13:31

It's bad for everyone. And you can't chop bits off.

13:34

You can't expel this bit of the body or that bit

13:36

of the body because the body will die if you chop

13:38

off the limbs or the head or rip out the heart.

13:41

And normally in these analogies, the

13:43

rulers or the elite, the people in power are

13:46

presented as essential to the function of the body

13:48

because they are the head, the

13:50

decision making organ, maybe the

13:52

soul. If it's a

13:54

more spiritual version of this, the thing that gives

13:57

it life and animation, maybe the heart, the

13:59

thing that gives it life. at courage. In

14:01

this version, Menenieux says, we are

14:03

the stomach of the state. Or

14:06

some people could, this is the belly

14:08

politic analogy, not the body politic. We

14:11

are the stomach. So it

14:13

might look like we're holding onto the food in the

14:15

same way that when someone eats, the food winds up

14:17

in their stomach. We are the stomach. But

14:20

anyone who understands how the body works knows that

14:22

the stomach is there to distribute the

14:24

food through the body. It passes through the

14:26

stomach and it gives energy and life to

14:28

the different parts of the body. And there

14:31

is no other way for the food to

14:33

get around. You can't directly give the food

14:35

to the leg or the arm or even

14:37

the head. It might go in at the

14:39

head, but it has to pass through the

14:41

stomach. We, the patricians, the Senate, the elite,

14:44

we hold the food because we are the

14:46

stomach so that we can distribute it. Not

14:48

because we're greedy, the stomach isn't greedy. It's

14:50

just doing its job. And as Menenieux says,

14:52

the stomach isn't left with the food. Once

14:55

the food has passed out of the stomach, his

14:58

word for it is the stomach is left with

15:00

the chaff, the rubbish. We

15:02

are just the conduit through which the

15:04

life of the state flows. That's Menenieux's

15:06

argument. So you can't attack us. It'd

15:09

be like attacking your own stomachs for

15:11

having food in them. You

15:13

would die that way. You need the stomach

15:17

to enjoy the benefits of the food. So

15:19

that's the patrician argument against

15:21

the people. Don't rebel, don't fight back, don't

15:24

even complain that you're hungry because you might

15:26

be hungry now, but without us, you would

15:28

actually die of starvation. Is

15:31

that what Shakespeare thought? It

15:33

seems very unlikely. It's what Shakespeare thought

15:35

because if you read the

15:38

play, if you watch the play, it becomes

15:40

pretty clear that Shakespeare has put this argument

15:42

in the mouth of Menenieux, designed

15:44

to be a bad argument. This

15:47

is not meant to be persuasive. It's

15:49

an idiotic argument. It doesn't work. This

15:52

analogy doesn't work. The

15:54

people are starving and

15:56

Menenieux says to them, don't worry

15:58

about the fact that you're starving. loving, don't attack

16:01

us. Yes, we're holding on to the

16:03

food, but only to pass it on to you, because

16:05

it's going to be digested by us and somehow

16:08

then it will end up with you. The

16:10

people want actual food. It

16:13

can't be digested by anyone else. And

16:15

as the argument progresses, it becomes more and

16:18

more absurd. And there are two signals of

16:20

that. One is because the representatives

16:22

of the people are completely unpersuaded by it, they

16:24

call it out for the rubbish it is. Menenius

16:27

doesn't make

16:30

a more persuasive version of the argument, he just

16:32

starts abusing them. And he says, we're the stomach,

16:34

you're the big toe of the state, you're nothing.

16:38

And he also says to them, and this

16:40

is a deliberately bad pun, to

16:42

let the audience know, you can't take this

16:44

seriously. He says, I want you to go

16:47

away and digest my argument. Which

16:50

isn't just offensive, it's ridiculous. The

16:52

people want food and Menenius is

16:54

saying, well, yes, we have the

16:57

food. But what I'm going to

16:59

give you instead of the food is a set

17:01

of words to persuade you that actually you don't

17:03

need the food now. And what I'm

17:05

going to give you is the words to digest

17:07

in place of the food. Happy

17:10

with that? No,

17:12

they want the food. And

17:14

it doesn't end with either side winning

17:17

this argument, they just get more and

17:19

more abusive. It ends when Coriolanus appears

17:22

on the scene and says to

17:24

Menenius, oh, for God's sake, shut up, stop

17:26

trying to persuade these people of this. It's

17:29

beneath us trying to engage them in

17:31

rhetorical justifications for what we do. We

17:33

are the elite, we do what we

17:36

do. We protect them, we look

17:38

after them, we fight for them. And

17:41

they should just accept it. Once we

17:43

get into the business of trying to

17:45

justify ourselves through words, we're playing their

17:48

game. That's not our game. We

17:50

don't lower ourselves to justify

17:53

ourselves to these people. And

17:56

Menenius exists in this play

17:58

to provide a contrast with Coriolanus. because

18:00

Coriolanus won't do that. He won't

18:02

even offer any kind of political

18:05

justification for his power. His power

18:07

is meant to speak for itself,

18:09

particularly through military prowess, courage, the

18:12

wounds that he's accumulated, military victory.

18:15

Compared to Coriolanus, Menenius is a

18:17

politician. He's not a very good

18:20

politician, but he's trying to

18:22

make the case. He doesn't just tell the

18:24

people to get lost. He

18:26

tries and fails to come up with an argument

18:28

for them. Yet compared to

18:30

the people that we're going to meet,

18:32

who are the elected representatives of the

18:34

people, the tribunes to characters called Sesinius

18:36

and Brutus, who are cynical

18:39

and devious and genuinely manipulative and

18:41

skillful in their way with how

18:43

they use words. Menenius

18:46

is not a politician at all. Compared

18:48

to Coriolanus, he's a politician. Compared

18:51

to the actual politicians, he's just an

18:53

amateur fool. He

18:56

can't do it. He doesn't know how to do it.

18:58

He doesn't know how to use words. Coriolanus

19:01

refuses to use words. The

19:03

tribunes know how to use words. And between

19:05

them is this character who is neither one

19:07

thing nor the other. So

19:10

the temptation here is to think, right?

19:12

So Menenius is a kind of holding

19:15

character between the people who are the

19:17

central struggle, struggling agents in

19:19

this story. Coriolanus,

19:22

all action, no words. The

19:25

tribunes, the representatives of the plebs, all

19:28

words and no action. And Coriolanus, when he

19:30

deigns to speak to them, one of the

19:32

charges he throws at them is you don't

19:34

do anything, you people. Basically, you are just

19:36

politicians. I fight, you talk. I've

19:38

got nothing to say to you because you have nothing to

19:40

back your words up with. So

19:43

the temptation is to think Menenius

19:45

is eventually or quite quickly irrelevant

19:48

to the central struggle. And

19:50

in the central struggle, you do have to pick a side. In

19:53

this play, you are being presented with these

19:55

two alternative versions of what Rome is or

19:57

what politics is. elite,

20:00

military, aristocratic rule,

20:03

popular, devious, in this

20:06

case, resistance. But

20:09

it isn't like that, and it's not as

20:11

simple as that, partly because a lot of

20:13

the action in the play takes place between

20:15

those two poles. It's not

20:17

a direct confrontation. Rarely does

20:20

Coriolanus and his plebeian

20:22

enemies, rarely do

20:24

they come into conflict directly. Most

20:27

of it is mediated by other characters, not

20:30

just Menoneus. But also

20:32

because Coriolanus, the character himself, is

20:35

not just engaged in a single

20:37

fight against his working class plebeian,

20:39

whatever you want to call them,

20:42

even democratic, enemies. He

20:45

fights two kinds of enemies throughout

20:47

this play, and the play is

20:50

about essentially the tragedy of

20:52

Coriolanus being unable to

20:55

fight them both at the same time. That is

20:57

his tragedy in the sense that

20:59

he is trapped because he can win one

21:01

battle, but it requires that he loses

21:03

the other, or he can win the other battle, but

21:06

that means he's going to lose the first one. Who

21:09

are these two enemies? One

21:11

lot are just the rival tribes that

21:13

the Romans fight against. In this case,

21:15

it's a tribe called the Volskins. This

21:17

is really local politics. This is Rome,

21:20

not as a world-conquering power, but trying

21:22

to establish a foothold on

21:24

the mainland of Italy. The people that they're fighting

21:26

against, I think they were 10 or 15 miles away. This

21:30

is neighbor-to-neighbor war. These people are

21:33

very like each other. In

21:35

this contest where Coriolanus' job as

21:37

the great warrior hero is to

21:39

go out and defend Rome against

21:42

the next tribe along and basically kill them,

21:45

he's a killing machine, as he's called

21:47

in the play, he's a thing of blood. In

21:50

a lot of productions of Coriolanus, he's covered in

21:52

blood the whole time, or most of the

21:54

time. He's a killing

21:56

machine who kills rival tribes. That's

21:59

his job. But those enemies are

22:01

a kind of mirror of him. They

22:04

are like him, so it's soldiers fighting

22:06

soldiers. In this case, the general of

22:08

the Volskins is a character called Ophidias,

22:11

who is Coriolanus' great rival

22:14

and not his equal, because every time

22:16

they meet in battle Coriolanus beats him,

22:18

because Coriolanus is the ultimate warrior champion.

22:22

He never quite manages to kill him, but

22:24

he humiliates him. Nonetheless, they

22:26

are very like each other. They

22:29

are similar characters doing similar things,

22:31

trying to communicate through force of

22:33

arms. And as many people

22:35

have noted about this play, in

22:38

this relationship Coriolanus and his mortal

22:40

enemy, the man he's meant

22:42

to kill, that relationship is

22:45

quite close to love in

22:48

the sense that it's clearly sexual.

22:50

It's not just homoerotic. Coriolanus

22:54

thinks about the man that he wants to kill

22:57

as though he were his lover. I'll just give one

22:59

example. Late on in the play, he

23:02

recounts the kind of dreams that he has

23:04

about Ophidias. This man that he keeps nearly

23:06

killing and not quite killing. And

23:09

he says in his dreams, I quote,

23:13

we have been down together, unbuckling

23:15

helms, fisting each other's

23:18

throats. That's the relationship he

23:20

dreams of with Ophidias. And you don't

23:22

need a degree in

23:25

psychoanalytical literary theory to know what

23:27

he's talking about there. This is

23:29

sex and death as being pressed

23:32

right up against each other in the mirror so

23:34

that you almost can't tell which is which. Coriolanus

23:38

versus Ophidias, the Romans versus

23:40

the Volskins. These

23:43

are people fighting mirror images of

23:45

themselves. They are fighting themselves. And

23:48

one of the reasons that Coriolanus loves

23:50

Ophidias is that he is in love with

23:52

himself, the mirror of himself. The

23:56

relationship with his other enemies who are the people

23:59

of Rome. The plebs is

24:02

nothing like that. They aren't the mirror of

24:04

Coriolanus. They are the inversion of

24:06

Coriolanus. They are the upside-down version. He

24:09

doesn't see himself in them. He sees

24:11

the opposite of himself in them. So

24:13

he is action, not words. They are

24:15

words, not action. He is alone. They

24:17

are many. Their representatives

24:19

speak for the mass, and he has

24:21

all these terms for the masses, the

24:23

musty-fusty masses. They lack action.

24:26

They lack the ability to act. They

24:28

can only speak through their

24:30

representatives. There's a lot of play

24:32

with body politic language where the

24:35

tribunes are described as the tongues of the people.

24:38

Then at one point Coriolanus says, why don't you deal

24:40

with their teeth? He

24:43

hates them. He hates Ephesias too, but he

24:45

loves them as well. He just hates the

24:47

plebs because they are the opposite of him.

24:51

His problem is that if he

24:53

defeats one of these enemies, he falls into

24:55

the hands of the other. So he goes

24:57

out and defeats the Volscians, which

24:59

makes him a hero of Rome, which

25:01

means he is now a part of Rome. After

25:03

all, he's been fighting the Volscians, not just for

25:05

his own sake, but to defend his city, and

25:08

his city is in part its people. So

25:11

when he comes back, he has done it

25:13

for them. However much he might want

25:15

to think, they are nothing to do with him.

25:17

They have a claim on him because

25:20

he has defeated their enemy. And

25:23

if he rejects them, as he does, and I'll

25:26

do the plot in a second, if he

25:28

rejects the people of Rome, the only place

25:30

for him to go is into the hands

25:32

of their enemies. He has to go over

25:34

to the other side. If

25:37

he wins one of these contests, he's

25:39

trapped by the other. If

25:41

he escapes that trap, he

25:43

falls into the trap of the contest that he's

25:45

just won. And that is his tragedy. So

25:48

let me just try and describe how it happens. This

25:50

is the sequence, greatly

25:52

condensed. In this

25:54

play, Rome is in a febrile

25:56

state because the people are starving, and

25:58

there's a lot of clapping. class tension. But

26:02

then it emerges that the Volskins

26:04

are coming again and a battle has to

26:06

be fought. And Rome unites as it always

26:08

does when it's under threat and it calls

26:10

for its hero Coriolanus, Marshes, becomes

26:12

Coriolanus. Go and defeat these people.

26:15

Everyone wants it and he does what he's asked to

26:17

do. He is a killing machine. He

26:20

kills a lot of them and he

26:22

comes back wounded, heroic, triumphant.

26:26

And he needs his reward for what

26:28

he's done. And the reward for this

26:30

is understood to be anointed

26:33

consul, the ultimate power

26:35

position in the Roman Republic, although it's in

26:38

theory balanced, but the consul is at the

26:41

top. To become a

26:43

consul and it will

26:45

be by acclimation. I mean, he

26:47

is the savior of the state.

26:49

There's no competitor. There's no rival

26:51

for this role. It's Coriolanus. It's

26:53

our God. All

26:55

they ask of him is that he

26:57

ask for it. That's all he has to do. It's

26:59

just is there for him, this ultimate

27:02

triumph to conquer Rome as well as

27:04

Rome's enemies. He just has to ask

27:06

for it. And he has to

27:08

ask the people because the people are part of

27:10

Rome. That is the minimal hold they have over

27:12

him and they will give

27:14

it to him. It's completely clear they will give it to

27:16

him. They worship him because he saved

27:19

them, but he can't ask

27:21

for it. And the reason

27:23

he can't ask for it is he can't

27:25

lower himself even to that level, nevermind to

27:27

the level of making a political argument using

27:29

a metaphor of the body politic, merely

27:33

showing them that he needs their

27:36

acclimation is too much for him. He

27:38

tries and the words

27:40

stick in his throat. They say to him, all you

27:42

have to do is show them your wounds. He is

27:44

so aloof. He

27:46

is so in his own mind removed from all

27:48

of that. Even the act of

27:51

taking his wounds and using

27:53

them as evidence of his loyalty to the

27:55

state makes

27:58

him sick. He can't do it. The

28:00

words stick in his throat and then the

28:02

real words come out and he expresses his

28:04

contempt for the people. When God did and

28:06

he is Goded by the tribunes, they spot

28:08

the way they can get him because they

28:10

don't want him to be consul. In fact,

28:12

they think this man is a danger to

28:14

the people of Rome because he is a

28:17

would-be tyrant. They use

28:19

his inability even to ask

28:22

to persuade the people that he

28:24

has contempt for them because he does. And

28:26

then Corallanus says, the only

28:28

way I want to communicate with the masses is

28:30

for them to see who they really are by

28:33

looking at my face because if they look at my

28:35

face, they will see my disdain

28:37

for them and my disdain for them is

28:39

justified. They are the plebs. So

28:42

I want them to know who they are

28:44

by communicating with me simply by recognizing I

28:46

will have nothing to do with them. And

28:49

the tribunes turn that attitude into evidence of

28:51

the fact that this man cannot be trusted

28:54

as an inch and he is

28:56

exiled. And when he is exiled,

28:59

and there's nothing he can do about being exiled

29:01

because he is just one man among all the

29:03

others. He goes over to

29:05

the other side. So he goes over to the

29:07

Volskins and he says, we will get our revenge

29:09

now. I will lead you against Rome. And

29:12

because he's the killing machine and when he

29:14

picks up his sword, no one can resist.

29:17

The tables are turned and now

29:19

Rome is on the back foot.

29:21

Great Rome faces the prospect of ruin because

29:23

Coriolanus comes at the head of a Volskin

29:25

army and he's about to

29:27

sack Rome. He is about to wreak his revenge

29:30

on the Roman people and particularly

29:32

on their representatives, the tribunes

29:34

who are not going to last long if

29:36

Coriolanus comes back into the city, but he

29:38

can't do it. So having

29:40

moved from one enemy to the other

29:42

enemy, he's now trapped

29:44

in a different way because his

29:47

family, his mother, his wife, his

29:49

son come to see him at the gates

29:51

of Rome and they beg him

29:54

not destroy the city because in destroying

29:56

the city, he will destroy them.

29:59

And they are extensi- of him. They

30:01

are in a way part of his body. His son

30:03

is an extension of his body. In this

30:06

account he and his wife are joined

30:08

together as a single body. He is

30:10

an extension of his mother's body. They are

30:13

all within the body politic, a much

30:15

more coherent body. He can't kill them

30:17

essentially without destroying himself. So

30:20

then what can he do? Now he's really trapped. The

30:23

only thing he can do is try and negotiate a

30:25

peace. The only way out for him is

30:28

having taken the Volskins back to the gates

30:30

of Rome to say to both sides, as

30:32

the one person who can defeat both sides,

30:34

I can bring you together enough of this

30:36

fighting. Let's create

30:38

a peace and I will be the person who

30:40

does it. But he can't do that either because

30:42

he's no politician. He has no idea how to

30:44

go about doing that. Soldiers can't make peace. Politicians

30:47

can make peace. Soldiers make war. Politicians

30:49

make peace. Some soldier politicians

30:51

manage to do it, but Coriolanus is

30:53

nothing like a soldier politician. The

30:57

Volskins, spotting that having promised them

30:59

victory over Rome, he's now compromising,

31:02

see him as a traitor and

31:05

they kill him. That's the

31:07

tragedy. There

31:09

is no way out. It's a tragedy.

31:12

In these tragedies, the convention is

31:15

that the central character has a

31:17

fatal flaw. So

31:19

what is Coriolanus' fatal flaw that means that

31:21

he's trapped in this way? And

31:23

the conventional answer for this play is that

31:25

it's pride. He's too proud. He can't

31:28

lower himself even to the

31:31

minimal amount required to

31:33

get the people who worship him

31:35

to feel like he's heard

31:37

their worship. He can't even do that. He's

31:40

too aloof to

31:42

debase himself in any way, which means

31:45

he is doomed if

31:47

he's going to fight a war for Rome and

31:49

yet convey to the people of Rome, he has

31:51

nothing but contempt for them. In the end, they

31:53

will reject him. And once rejected, he has nowhere

31:56

to go except to their enemies. And

31:58

once he's in the hands of their enemies, he's not going He's an

32:00

enemy of Rome and that will be ruined because

32:02

his family are still in Rome. It's

32:04

a tragedy. But

32:07

it's one of those plays, I think it's probably

32:09

true of a lot of Shakespeare's plays that has

32:12

a meta element in it in that there's a

32:14

certain amount of discussion in the play about the

32:16

characteristics of the characters in the play. And

32:19

late on, Phidias has a speech

32:21

in which he asks himself and

32:23

therefore the audience, what

32:26

is the flaw with this guy? What's wrong

32:28

with him? And

32:30

he says, well, clearly one of the things that's wrong

32:32

with him is he's too proud. And he says, that's

32:34

his flaw. But that's not the only

32:36

thing that's wrong with him. He's more complicated than that.

32:38

He's not just a prideful man. He

32:41

has other things going on. Indeed, he has other

32:43

flaws. So he says the

32:45

second thing that's wrong with Coriolanus is

32:47

he lacks political judgment. He's

32:50

actually, in his pride,

32:52

he says, I don't want to do politics, but

32:54

he's drawn into politics. It's almost impossible to avoid

32:56

it in his position. And then he does it

32:58

really badly. As badly

33:00

as Menenius, maybe even worse than Menenius,

33:04

because he can't judge the moment. He

33:06

doesn't understand about the moment. And

33:08

then his third problem is that

33:11

he is too much, or Phidias

33:13

says, he's too much one thing. He's

33:16

too true to himself. He finds

33:18

it really hard to be too faced

33:20

or multifaceted, whatever you want to call it.

33:22

The thing that you need to be to

33:24

survive in the world. He

33:27

gets trapped in a version of

33:29

himself where he thinks he has

33:31

to be consistent all the way through. And there's

33:34

an irony even in that. Here's a speech where

33:36

he says, there are three things wrong with this

33:38

guy, pride, lack of political judgment, and the fact

33:40

that he's only one thing, which

33:43

is one of three things that's wrong with him. So

33:45

he's clearly not only one thing. He

33:48

is complicated Coriolanus for all

33:50

his apparent, brutal killing machine,

33:53

thing of blood, simplicity. One

33:57

part of that complication, part of the puzzle.

34:00

with this play is the plot

34:02

has to be motivated by the fact that

34:04

Coriolanus has contempt for the people of Rome.

34:06

He says, I'm just a soldier. I am

34:09

just a killer. That's what I am. I don't

34:11

do politics. But he wants to be consul. Because

34:13

he could after all say, well, I don't want to

34:16

be consul. I don't want your rewards. You don't even

34:18

want to be called Coriolanus. I don't want any of

34:20

it. Some soldiers when they come back from the wars,

34:22

however triumphant they've been, don't try and become head of

34:24

state. They go

34:27

back to their farms or whatever. It's not

34:29

just a possibility in Rome. It's a

34:32

thing that people do, but not Coriolanus.

34:35

Actually he does want that

34:37

power as well. He wants it all, but he can't

34:39

do the thing that's required to have it all. Part

34:42

of the reason he wants it all is because of

34:44

his mother who is a terrifying character, Volumnia.

34:48

She raised him to be the killing machine. She has

34:52

indoctrinated him from a young age with the

34:54

belief that all that

34:56

matters in life is your reputation for nobility

34:59

and valor. That can only really be proved

35:01

on the battlefield. Soldering

35:03

is everything. Victory is

35:05

everything. She wants him

35:07

to be wounded. When he comes back

35:10

from one of these battles and the reporter's, your

35:13

son's been wounded, she goes, thank God. Thank

35:16

God he's wounded, not dead. But

35:18

thank God he's wounded and not wounded.

35:20

Thank God he's bleeding. It would

35:23

be awful if he came back and he wasn't bleeding. When

35:26

Coriolanus' wife says to her, but he

35:28

could have died. This is a dangerous

35:30

business. She goes, that would be fine.

35:32

I'm completely fine with him dying. She

35:35

says, if he died, in Shakespeare's language, his

35:37

report would be my issue, meaning his reputation

35:39

would then be my son. That's what I'd

35:41

love. I'd love. It's fine. I don't mind

35:43

if it's him or his reputation. The thing

35:46

I couldn't love is him without his reputation.

35:48

But she's the one who then drives him

35:50

on and says, and you must now become

35:52

consul. It has to be greatness followed by

35:54

greatness. You must take your reward. And

35:57

he complains, I can't do it because they're going to

35:59

make me not beg, but suck

36:02

up to them a bit. And I can't do it.

36:04

You've taught me to disdain them. And

36:06

now you want me to ask them for something. And

36:09

she goes, Come on, it's just a small thing. And

36:11

it'll be worth it. Because when you have that power,

36:13

then you really can disdain them once you're consul. You've

36:15

got to do the tiny bit of politics that will

36:17

get you there. And he can't

36:19

do it. He just can't do it.

36:22

In the end, one of the things that he

36:24

rebels against is his own mother, who

36:27

thinks it ought to be possible

36:29

to transfer what

36:32

makes Coriolanus undefeatable

36:34

on the battlefield into

36:37

politics. But you can't and

36:39

he can't. And it's because she's

36:41

taught him when he's fighting to

36:44

be heedless of anything but his

36:46

honor. And

36:48

so in politics, he can't drop that

36:50

heedlessness. He is heedless again. He

36:53

tells the people what he really thinks of them. And it

36:55

leads to the great confrontation, the

36:58

point in the play where the two

37:01

sides within Rome do square up. Having

37:03

failed to ask for the consulship,

37:05

the Tribune spot their moment, which they have

37:08

effectively engineered, they've contrived it, they know Coriolanus is

37:10

going to fall into this trap. This is their

37:14

chance to persuade

37:16

the people that this man is a danger to them. He is actually

37:18

their enemy because he has contempt for them, and that they should expel

37:20

him. And so he's hauled before

37:24

a tribunal. He can't defend himself because

37:26

he's incapable of it. He can't do the

37:31

politics thing and ask for forgiveness. And

37:34

so they expel him. And in response, he says in

37:36

a three word cry, which are

37:38

the three words that electrify the

37:40

whole play forwards and backwards.

37:42

And it's right in the middle of the play when Coriolanus is

37:45

banished from the

37:48

city of Rome, he turns to

37:51

the people who have banished him and he says, I quote,

37:54

I banish

37:56

you. That is, you don't

37:58

get to throw me out. I throw

38:01

you out. You don't get

38:03

to reject me. I reject you.

38:05

No one rejects me. No one tells me

38:07

what to do. No one tells me where to

38:09

go, but I am telling you where to

38:11

go. I am pushing you away from me."

38:13

And he knows that means he has to leave

38:15

Rome. There's no way of staying in Rome

38:17

and rejecting Rome. There's no way of banishing

38:19

Rome from inside Rome. So he says,

38:21

I'm going to leave you because effectively,

38:24

he doesn't say this explicitly, I am

38:26

the body politic. I am the

38:28

only thing here that is entire and intact and

38:30

whole. At various points

38:32

in the play, he calls the

38:34

tribunes fragments or representatives of the

38:36

fragments, the unincorporate body, the bits

38:38

and pieces of the state. Everything

38:41

else is fragmentary, incoherent, it doesn't

38:43

hang together. Only Coriolanus, his body,

38:45

his courage. That's the

38:48

only thing that holds together. So if something

38:51

has to be rejected from the

38:53

body politic, his body will reject

38:55

everything else. But like

38:58

Menenius' body politic image

39:00

earlier, it's bullshit. It

39:03

just doesn't make sense. It's a cry.

39:05

It's a magnificent, the hauteist

39:08

cry of political pain in all literature.

39:11

I banish you. And

39:13

it's bullshit because he says, so I'm

39:15

going to go off and lead a

39:17

solitary life. I am the world entire

39:19

to myself. I can be true to

39:22

myself by being just myself alone. But

39:24

he doesn't. Because you can't be

39:26

Coriolanus on your own. You have to have armies

39:28

to lead. You have to have people to fight.

39:30

You have to have a political world to inhabit.

39:34

Coriolanus as Hermit just doesn't make any

39:36

sense. So he goes

39:38

off and joins the enemy. He joins

39:40

the Voskins. He can't be the world

39:42

entire. He needs a body to hook

39:45

onto. And he hooks onto the body

39:47

of his enemies, which means in the end, he

39:50

leads them against his family.

39:53

And he's not a world to himself. When

39:57

his family come to see him. at

40:00

the gates of Rome and they say to him, don't

40:03

do this. And that's more or less all

40:05

they say. As they're on their

40:07

way, as he knows they're coming, he says,

40:09

and in the side, this isn't going to work. I

40:12

am going to resist these people. And

40:14

he says, I quote, I will

40:16

be the author of myself and

40:19

have no other kin. Or rather he says, I will act

40:21

as a man who is the author of himself and have

40:23

no other kin. That is, I

40:26

have no family. I have nothing that

40:28

comes out of me that isn't part

40:30

of me and inside me. And

40:33

the second he sees them, he knows he can't

40:35

do it. He knows that it's a lie.

40:38

And the way he characterizes that

40:40

it's a lie is he says,

40:42

I'm like an actor and I have

40:44

forgotten my part and I am out. I'm

40:47

like an actor who's forgotten his lines. I

40:49

can't play this part. I can't play

40:51

the part of being authentically myself. The

40:56

authenticity for which he strives is actually

40:58

just a contrivance. It's just another contrivance.

41:00

And he realizes he lacks the words

41:03

for it. He lacks the lines. He's

41:05

forgotten his words. And

41:07

he's ruined at that point. He's ruined. Everything

41:10

that follows from that is just the

41:12

tragedy unfolding. I

41:15

banish you turns

41:17

out to be bullshit. The

41:22

other reason this play can't just be

41:24

summarized as it's about Coriolanus,

41:26

the tragic hero who had too much pride.

41:28

Is everyone in it has too much pride.

41:31

I mean, there's never been

41:33

a play with more people full of pride.

41:35

It's dripping off the walls. They all have

41:37

it. His mother is the

41:40

most prideful person imaginable. She's

41:43

haughty, disdainful. She's probably

41:45

more disdainful than Coriolanus is. She

41:49

is unbelievably

41:52

aloof. And yet, unlike

41:54

Coriolanus, she also is so prideful

41:57

that she thinks she can politically manipulate

42:00

any situation and she's wrong. Aphidias

42:03

is an incredibly prideful

42:05

man. He is haunted by the

42:08

fact that Coriolanus keeps beating him,

42:10

his brother, his lover, whatever it

42:12

is. This man who is like him

42:14

is better than him. He can't bear it. It

42:17

drives him mad. When Coriolanus

42:19

comes over to his side, he gets the thing

42:21

he's always wanted. This man, the killing machine, he

42:24

can use him to conquer Rome and that's the

42:26

thing that will fulfill him. He can lead the

42:28

Volskins against their mortal enemies, the

42:30

Romans. But he can only do it

42:32

with his mortal enemy, which is intolerable to him. He

42:35

can't bear that either and he gets more

42:37

and more angry and upset that it's Coriolanus

42:39

who's leading the Volskins against the Romans. When

42:42

he gets his opportunity at the end of the play

42:44

to kill Coriolanus, he takes it. He

42:47

doesn't even think about it. This man has

42:49

to die all the way along. He knows this man has

42:51

to die because he has wounded

42:53

his pride. Menenius

42:55

is proud, the friend

42:58

who thinks that he can persuade

43:00

people. He can't persuade the plebs

43:02

of anything, but nor

43:04

can he persuade Coriolanus. So the play begins

43:06

with Menenius making a bad argument. It

43:09

ends with him making a bad argument

43:11

before Coriolanus' family beg him not

43:14

to sack Rome. Menenius says,

43:16

look, I know this guy. He's

43:19

one of us. I've known him for a

43:21

long time and more to the point he knows me, so

43:24

I will go and persuade him. He

43:26

won't be able to resist my pleas

43:28

not to destroy Rome. He

43:30

goes and Coriolanus can resist him without even having

43:33

to think about it. Nothing, Menenius

43:35

says, has any impact on

43:37

Coriolanus. He has nothing to say. He

43:39

is the empty vessel in

43:41

this play. The

43:43

tribunes are full of pride. The tribunes who

43:46

are devious politicians also think that

43:49

they know best. They

43:51

are wishful apart from anything else. So

43:53

they think they are the master manipulators

43:55

and they think they trap Coriolanus. They

43:58

draw him into... Being

44:01

unspeakably contemptuous to the people so that they

44:03

can say to the people look This is

44:05

what this man is they can actually give

44:07

the people what Coriolanus says He wants to

44:09

give to the people which is a

44:11

clear view of his disdain for them And

44:14

they use that to persuade the people to reject him

44:17

and when Coriolanus is banished They don't care that he

44:19

says I banished you because they know it's bullshit. He's

44:22

got nothing They are many and he

44:24

is one he can go and be a hermit. He can

44:26

go and do what he likes they win He loses it's

44:29

their triumph And then when they hear

44:31

in act four and act five That

44:34

this man that they have banished is

44:36

coming back at the head of

44:38

their enemies and their enemies army

44:41

To destroy them their

44:43

responses. It's not true It

44:46

just can't be true. Like we we're the

44:48

people who set this scene up But we're the

44:50

ones who control this situation where

44:52

the politicians He's not

44:54

going to be leading the enemy against us and they're

44:56

told no he's coming and he's laying waste to Roman

44:58

farms He's killing Roman

45:00

families and he's coming for you and they go

45:02

no, he's not I mean because that wouldn't make

45:04

sense right that would that would mean We'd

45:07

won but actually we'd lost but that's not

45:09

how it works because we're the people who

45:11

end up on top I mean, we're not

45:13

you know, we're the plebs right but

45:17

no one gets the better of us in the end and Shakespeare

45:20

there is mockery of these men

45:23

and their vanity their pride their

45:26

stupidity essentially He

45:28

puts into the mouth of

45:30

Mena Neas The other

45:33

great cry of pain in this

45:35

play the great political shriek When

45:39

the Tribune say to Mena Neas, we

45:41

don't buy your arguments You're always

45:43

talking rubbish in any way like no one takes

45:45

you seriously. You're a you're an arrogant man. You're

45:47

a vain man You're a

45:49

foolish man, whatever Mena Neas says

45:51

to them. Oh my god, you know, like You're

45:54

those things those things that you say

45:56

I am that's what you are you

45:59

say I'm out arrogant, you're arrogant, you say that I'm

46:01

full of puffed up pride, you're full of puffed

46:03

up pride. And he says to them, this is

46:06

the great cry, oh that

46:09

you could turn your eyes toward

46:11

the napes of your necks and

46:13

make but an interior survey of

46:15

your good selves, i.e. God,

46:18

I wish you could see yourself like

46:20

other people see you, they see through

46:22

you, you're just looking out from inside

46:24

your stupid little heads and you see

46:26

me as the vain arrogant one, oh

46:29

my god that's who you are, god I wish

46:31

you could see yourselves as I see you, god

46:33

I wish you could see yourselves as everyone sees

46:35

you. But they don't,

46:38

not only do they not do it when

46:40

Menenius tells them to do it, they don't do

46:42

it at any point in the play, they

46:45

don't lose, they do

46:47

win, Coriolanus ends up dead, he doesn't come

46:49

for them, if he'd got into the city

46:51

he would have cut their throats. But

46:54

in the end the Volskins cut his

46:56

throat and the tribunes live

46:58

to fight another day and their wishful

47:01

thinking goes on and Shakespeare allows that, not

47:03

because he's on the side of the tribunes,

47:05

not because he's on anyone's side but because

47:07

he knows that these cries of pain, these

47:10

desires for it to make sense, I want

47:12

people to see you for who you are,

47:14

I want the essence to come through, I

47:16

want politics to make sense because people are

47:19

as they should be seen and they are

47:21

seen as they are, it doesn't happen, you

47:24

never get there. In the

47:26

end it's all a charade, it's

47:29

all an act. The

47:31

only person probably that you can say is

47:33

not full of

47:35

pride is Coriolanus' wife,

47:37

Vigilia, who is a

47:40

fairly meek and in some

47:42

ways minor character in this play, she

47:44

seems terrified understandably of

47:46

her mother-in-law and terrified

47:48

understandably of her husband and possibly even

47:50

terrified of her infant son who's being

47:52

brought up to be like a mini

47:54

mee Coriolanus, a little mini killing machine.

48:00

them when they go to beg him not to take

48:02

his revenge on Rome. She hasn't

48:04

got much to say, and she does

48:06

the thing in the end that Coriolanus

48:08

always aspires to do but never manages,

48:10

which is simply to communicate through action.

48:13

She has almost no words, but she, and it has

48:15

to be said his mother and his son, kneel

48:18

before him. And in

48:20

the act of kneeling before him, they break him. He

48:23

can't go on once they've kneeled before him. And she,

48:25

because, Virgilia the wife, because

48:27

she doesn't really have a side to

48:29

her, there is a integrity

48:32

to that. She maybe is the one

48:34

person who is intact in this play

48:36

in the sense that her

48:38

actions and her words, or in this case, her

48:40

absence of words, cohere. But

48:43

the tribunes win and she loses. So

48:46

at the end of the play, they have got

48:48

their enemy dead. And

48:51

she's lost her husband. Nobody

48:54

wins. It's a tragedy. So

48:58

what does it all mean? I'm not

49:00

going to say there's a political message

49:03

here because there isn't a

49:05

political message in that sense. It's about what

49:09

it is to live in a political world about

49:11

which there can't be a message. There can only

49:13

be a description. It's definitely,

49:15

as I think is probably true at

49:18

all Shakespeare show not tell.

49:21

But one of the things that this play

49:23

is about as so much of Shakespeare is

49:26

the theatricality of life. This

49:28

is a theatrical production, a

49:31

staged account of

49:33

the way in which life itself, public

49:36

life, but also many aspects of private life in

49:38

so far as such a thing existed in

49:41

certainly in Republican Rome. It was a

49:43

remote idea, but life

49:46

itself is a production

49:48

of that kind. It involves characters playing parts. And

49:50

in this play, as in other Shakespeare's plays, he

49:52

does that meta thing of having characters in a

49:54

play talk about what it is to be a

49:57

character in a play. I

49:59

have forgotten my part. But, and I am

50:01

out, is what Coriolanus says not long

50:04

before he dies. It

50:06

is a performance. It's a

50:08

performance about the performativity of

50:10

political life, which sounds

50:12

awful and deeply off-putting, and

50:15

yet the genius

50:17

of Shakespeare, unparalleled in the history

50:19

of writing about anything,

50:22

is that he makes this meta theatrical

50:25

version of theatricality seem natural. So

50:27

even when these characters are doing

50:30

it, it doesn't feel like

50:32

that itself is a contrivance. It's

50:35

part of who they are, which

50:37

makes it both moving and

50:39

baffling. But

50:42

there probably is, because this is

50:44

the most political of his plays, a political,

50:47

I don't know what the word I want

50:49

here is, lesson, moral, hint

50:52

of something here, which

50:54

is that to

50:56

be a character in life or on the

50:59

stage is to be

51:01

a combination of performance and essence.

51:03

Those two things have

51:05

to go together to make a character. It

51:07

can't just be performance, nothing behind it. It

51:10

can't just be essence, because the only way you get

51:12

to see the essence is through the performance. There's

51:15

no way to access the essence of a person, except

51:18

through how they appear. But

51:21

there are various ways in which the relationship

51:24

between performance and essence can come undone. So

51:26

it comes undone with Coriolanus, the man, because

51:29

he wants to bring them together. He

51:32

wants to make the performance reflective of

51:34

the essence, and it can't be done.

51:38

If you collapse them into each other, in

51:40

the end you end up trapped. You are

51:42

unable to function in a world that requires

51:44

some distance between essence and performance. When Ophidia

51:47

says he can only be one thing, he's

51:49

kind of saying, the

51:51

only part he can play is the man

51:53

who's not capable of playing parts, which

51:56

is why he's doomed. In

51:58

the case of the Tribunes, the gap is too. too wide. They

52:01

are playing with words because

52:04

they think that words can manipulate any

52:07

situation to produce the outcome they want.

52:09

And it doesn't really matter who they

52:11

are. They are, to use a word

52:13

that Shakespeare would be familiar with,

52:15

but is completely anachronistic in relation to

52:19

what was actually going on in Republican Rome,

52:21

they are the Machiavellian characters. They

52:24

are the manipulators. But

52:26

there is a form of manipulation where

52:28

you lose touch with your essence. And

52:30

though they survive, they survive

52:32

both as objects of ridicule, certainly for

52:34

the audience, I think. But also they

52:37

survive in a way that makes it

52:39

clear their own survival is not in

52:41

their hands. So maybe they won this

52:43

one, but they can't conclude

52:45

from it that they were the masters of

52:47

the situation because they were all performance and

52:51

no essence. But

52:53

also in this play, I think there's that suggestion that

52:55

all of us in political

52:57

life, in our personal

52:59

lives, which have politics of a kind

53:02

in them, in how we function among

53:04

other human beings, we're all

53:06

tempted to those great cries

53:08

of pain where we want to

53:11

get to the essence. We want

53:13

to assert our essential character or

53:15

our essential qualities against a world

53:18

that seems so fake and

53:20

so determined to see us not as we

53:22

are, as what they

53:24

imagine us to be. So the two

53:27

great cries of pain, I banish you

53:29

and though it's a bit

53:31

more Shakespearean, oh, that you could turn

53:34

your eyes toward the napes of your necks,

53:36

ie, oh, that you could just see yourself

53:38

as I see you, you could see yourself

53:40

who you really are because you are self

53:42

deceived, you bastards, you

53:44

manipulative bastards. Can't you see that

53:47

you're manipulative bastards? Those

53:49

two cries of pain are universal. They're everywhere

53:51

in a political world. They're everywhere in our

53:54

world. What is Twitter

53:56

when it's not people sucking up to each other,

53:58

but people screaming at each other? that I

54:00

banish you, you don't banish me, you

54:03

don't throw me out of your tribe, I throw

54:05

you out of my tribe, and if my tribe

54:07

is a tribe of one, so

54:10

what? I'm me, you don't get

54:12

to tell me who I am, and God I wish

54:14

you could see yourself for who you are, I'm going

54:16

to retweet all these other people who have seen through

54:18

you, so you get to see who you are and

54:20

the response from the people on the other end is,

54:22

you don't get to tell me who I am, I

54:24

banish you. Those are

54:26

the great cries of political pain,

54:29

because the world of politics is the

54:31

world in which there is no essence

54:34

without performance, so you can't be essentially

54:36

yourself, you just can't, but

54:38

the desire is always there, and

54:41

the great temptation that I think this play is not

54:43

warning against because it's not a moral play and it

54:45

doesn't have a moral, but it's a tragedy, so it's

54:47

meant to improve us in some way, the

54:49

great temptation I think this play is warning

54:52

against is the feeling that if we can

54:54

just get to scream I banish you at

54:56

our enemies, or if we can just take

54:59

the manipulative bastards and shout at

55:01

them, God you should see how

55:03

you look to me, because that's

55:05

who you really are, we're being

55:07

true to ourselves, there's something essential

55:09

in those great shrieks of pain,

55:13

of political rage and

55:15

angst and frustration, it's

55:18

a primal cry of what's buried deep

55:20

inside us, so that when we do

55:22

it, when we say

55:24

you don't banish me, I

55:27

banish you, we are whatever

55:29

the costs at least being true

55:31

to ourselves, and

55:33

I think something that

55:35

this play suggests is

55:37

that when we scream I banish

55:40

you, we're not being true

55:42

to ourselves, we are

55:44

collapsing in on ourselves. Next

55:52

week in this series I'm going to

55:54

be talking about Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan

55:57

Swift, and coming up, Shillers,

55:59

Maria Stuart, Turgenev's

56:01

Fathers and Sons. This

56:04

month we're doing the first four episodes

56:06

of this series, it's a 12-part series

56:08

in total. The rest of

56:10

it will be coming out over the summer because

56:12

we've got other series coming up too. And

56:16

in March, twice a week, I'm

56:19

going to be bringing you with

56:21

Gary Gerstle a history of the

56:23

ideas behind American presidential elections from

56:26

1800 to 2024. The

56:29

big elections in between, did ideas shape

56:32

them? Did they change the world of

56:34

ideas? And what does it mean for

56:36

American politics today? There's lots

56:39

of other exciting things coming up on past,

56:41

present, future. We're going to have series about

56:43

the history of bad ideas. Leah

56:45

Ippey and I are going to be talking about

56:47

the history of freedom. We're going

56:49

to be launching a newsletter to go

56:51

with these podcasts and specifically guides to

56:53

these series, to things you can read,

56:55

things you can watch, writing from

56:57

me and other contributors. We're

57:00

going to give you a lot more information about all of

57:02

this and how you can join in. In

57:04

the meantime, as always do please follow us

57:06

on Twitter, even though Twitter is where people

57:08

banish each other, at

57:11

PPF ideas. And

57:13

please join us not just next week, but

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for everything that's coming up. This

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57:23

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57:40

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