and inevitability which has made it unsympathetic to the general English taste, for among us it is surely the least popular of Shakespeare's great plays. In France, on the contrary, it is said to be the most popular; probably not for the same reason. Beyond the fact that Coriolanus is a familiar and traditional hero of the French theatre, the concentrated and controlled dramatic action which distinguishes Shakespeare's Coriolanus from his other great dramas appeals directly to the French palate. Since, however, this only means that Coriolanus is an unusually well-constructed play, it cannot account for the general reluctance of English people to admit it to their affections. The reason, one imagines, is that it is too Roman. An English audience, and English readers, for that matter, like to surrender themselves to their heroes. They can idolise Brutus as an eloquent Hampden, and sympathise with an Antony lost in the embraces of his serpent of old Nile. A martyr for political liberty, a martyr for love, these are intimate and comprehensible to us; but a martyr to the aristocratic idea is not. He is an alien; there is too much of the British constitution in our blood for him to warm it.

In other, and more familiar terms, Coriolanus is an unsympathetic hero, and all the characters of the play, save one, to whom we shall return, strike chill upon the general heart. Volumnia is altogether too much like that forbidding Spartan mother who haunted our schooldays with her grim farewell, 'Return with your shield or upon it';

Menenius is too cynical, too worldly-wise to move us humanly in his discomfiture; Brutus and Sicinius arouse neither sympathy nor disdain; and the emotion we feel at the knightly generosity of Aufidius is dashed too soon by his confession that, if he cannot overthrow Coriolanus by fair means, he will by foul. Coriolanus himself we cannot like, any more than a schoolboy can like Themistocles. One may despise one's country, one may hate one's country, but one may not lead an enemy against her. These are primitive ethics, no doubt, but they are profound, and though they may be alien to æsthetic criticism, they have their roots deep in the human heart. The writer who ignores them deliberately imperils the universality of his appeal.

We can see clearly enough why Coriolanus should be that among Shakespeare's greater plays which is most neglected by the public, and therefore the least familiar to the stage. It is not so easy to understand why it should have been so neglected by the critics, unless perhaps they are not quite so immune from the effects of instinctive sympathy as in theory they ought to be. By the critics I mean the true literary critics, not the textual 'philologers.' These have been busy enough, sometimes to good effect, as with the whole line which they have neatly restored from North's Plutarch, but at least as often in a spirit perhaps best described as one of slight impatience with poetry. This is, however, not the occasion to catalogue the things they have done which they ought not to

have done; but only to try to show that they have also left undone a few things that they ought to have done. Far from me at this moment the desire to shiver a lance in open battle with the editors; I only crave their leave to ride to the rescue of an all but vanished lady to whom they have had no time to stretch out a helping hand.

All that needs to be premised is the simple fact that Coriolanus was first printed in the Folio of 1623, and that we have no other authority for the text. On the whole we may say that the Folio text is careless enough, although I believe that— obvious misprints apart-it is at least as near to Shakespeare's original as most modern recensions, which take us as much farther away by some of their readings as they bring us nearer to it by others. The most persistent weakness of the Folio Coriolanus is the haphazard distribution of lines among the speakers. One of the most palpable of these blunders has been rectified by common consent. In Act III. (Sc. 1, 1. 237) when Menenius is trying hard to persuade Coriolanus to moderate his contemptuous language towards the plebs, the Folio gives him these impossible words:

'I would they were barbarians, as they are Though in Rome litter'd: not Romans, as they are not

Though calved i' th' porch o' th' Capitol.'

It is as certain that Menenius did not speak them as it is certain that Coriolanus did. They have

been properly restored to the hero.

The Folio Coriolanus then, although the true and authentic original, is far from impeccable.

So much by way of preamble to the attempt at

rescue.

Of all the characters in Coriolanus one alone can be said to be truly congenial; and she is the least substantial of them all. Virgilia, Coriolanus's wife, though she is present throughout the whole of four scenes, speaks barely a hundred words. But a sudden, direct light is cast upon her by a phrase which takes our breaths with beauty, when Coriolanus welcomes her on his triumphant return as My gracious silence!' Magical words! They give a miraculous substance to our fleeting, fading glimpses of a lovely vision which seems to tremble away from the clash of arms and pride that reverberates through the play. Behind the disdainful warrior and his Amazonian mother, behind the vehement speech of this double Lucifer, the exquisite, timid spirit of Virgilia shrinks out of sight into the haven of her quiet home. One can almost hear the faint click of the door behind her as it shuts her from the noise of brawling tongues. Yet in her presence, and in the memory of her presence, Coriolanus becomes another and a different being. It is true we may listen in vain for other words so tender as My gracious silence!' from his lips. A man who has one love alone finds only one such phrase in a lifetime. But in the heat of victorious battle, when Coriolanus would

clasp Cominius in his arms for joy, he discovers in himself another splendid phrase to remember his happiness with Virgilia.

'Oh! let me clip ye

In arms as sound as when I woo'd, in heart As merry, as when our nuptial day was done And tapers burned to bedward.'

And even in the anguish of the final struggle between his honour and his heart, when his wife comes with his mother to intercede for Rome, it is in the very accents of passionate devotion that he cries to Virgilia,

'Best of my flesh!

Forgive my tyranny; but do not say
For that, "Forgive our Romans." Oh! a kiss
Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!
Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
I carried from thee, dear, and my true lip
Hath virgin'd it e'er since.'

In the proud, unrelenting man of arms these sudden softenings are wonderful. They conjure up the picture of a more reticent and self-suppressed Othello, and we feel that, to strike to the heart through Coriolanus's coat of mail, it needed an unfamiliar beauty of soul, a woman whose delicate nature stood apart, untouched by the broils and furies of her lord's incessant battling with the Roman people and the enemies of Rome.