ABSTRACT
The play is first of a trilogy, consisting of “Coriolanus,” which Shakespeare wrote, and “Timon of Athens” and “Pericles,” of his retouching; three political antiquities submitted to a new-born United Kingdom and infant British Empire. Now Coriolanus was hearty in his cursing of the common run of curs, and Shakespeare eggs him on with sheer delight, in the denunciation of ignorance, stupidity, fickleness, and abject cowardice, of mob leaders conspiring to oust sane national government. And so the Tribunes of the People, Sicinius and Junius Brutus, brought him to trial as a public enemy, the Patrician party rabbited, and Coriolanus was banished. If people want to be unreasonable, there is no stopping them; but really the bear and the storm are public benefactors. Religion and politics may be a comfort to us, but in the days of “The Winter’s Tale” Heresy and Treason were evil ghosts which haunted every fireside.
