That pages blushed at him, and men of heart
Looked wond’ring each at others.
CORIOLANUS
Hear’st thou, Mars?
AUFIDIUS
Name not the god, thou boy of tears.
CORIOLANUS Ha?
AUFIDIUS
No more.
CORIOLANUS
Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart
Too great for what contains it. ‘Boy’? O slave!—
Pardon me, lords, ’tis the first time that ever
I was forced to scold. Your judgements, my grave lords,
Must give this cur the lie, and his own notion—
Who wears my stripes impressed upon him, that
Must bear my beating to his grave—shall join
To thrust the lie unto him.
FIRST LORD
Peace both, and hear me speak.
CORIOLANUS
Cut me to pieces, Volsces. Men and lads,
Stain all your edges on me. ‘Boy’! False hound,
If you have writ your annals true, ‘tis there
That, like an eagle in a dove-cote, I
Fluttered your Volscians in Corioles.
Alone I did it. ‘Boy’!
AUFIDIUS
Why, noble lords,
Will you be put in mind of his blind fortune,
Which was your shame, by this unholy braggart,
Fore your own eyes and ears?
ALL THE CONSPIRATORS
Let him die for’t.
ALL THE PEOPLE ⌈shouting dispersedly⌉
Tear him to pieces! Do it presently!
He killed my son! My daughter! He killed my cousin
Marcus! He killed my father!
SECOND LORD
Peace, ho! No outrage, peace.
The man is noble, and his fame folds in
This orb o’th’ earth. His last offences to us
Shall have judicious hearing. Stand, Aufidius,
And trouble not the peace.
CORIOLANUS ⌈drawing his sword⌉
O that I had him with six Aufidiuses,
Or more, his tribe, to use my lawful sword!
AUFIDIUS ⌈drawing his sword⌉
Insolent villain!
ALL THE CONSPIRATORS Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him!
Two Conspirators draw and kill Martius, who falls. Aufidius ⌈and Conspirators⌉ stand on him
LORDS
Hold, hold, hold, hold!
AUFIDIUS
My noble masters, hear me speak.
FIRST LORD
O Tullus!
SECOND LORD (to Aufidius)
Thou hast done a deed whereat
Valour will weep.
THIRD LORD ⌈to Aufidius and the Conspirators⌉
Tread not upon him, masters.
All be quiet. Put up your swords.
AUFIDIUS My lords,
When you shall know—as in this rage
Provoked by him you cannot—the great danger
Which this man’s life did owe you, you’ll rejoice
That he is thus cut off. Please it your honours
To call me to your senate, I’ll deliver
Myself your loyal servant, or endure
Your heaviest censure.
FIRST LORD Bear from hence his body,
And mourn you for him. Let him be regarded
As the most noble corpse that ever herald
Did follow to his urn.
SECOND LORD His own impatience
Takes from Aufidius a great part of blame.
Let’s make the best of it.
AUFIDIUS
My rage is gone,
And I am struck with sorrow. Take him up.
Help three o’th’ chiefest soldiers; I’ll be one.
Beat thou the drum, that it speak mournfully.
Trail your steel pikes. Though in this city he
Hath widowed and unchilded many a one,
Which to this hour bewail the injury,
Yet he shall have a noble memory. Assist.
A dead march sounded. Exeunt
bearing the body of Martius
THE WINTER’S TALE
THE astrologer Simon Forman saw The Winter’s Tale at the Globe on 15 May 1611. Just how much earlier the play was written is not certainly known. During the sheep-shearing feast in Act 4, twelve countrymen perform a satyrs’ dance that three of them are said to have already ‘danced before the King’. This is not necessarily a topical reference, but satyrs danced in Ben Jonson’s Masque of Oberon, performed before King James on 1 January 1611. It seems likely that this dance was incorporated in The Winter’s Tale (just as, later, another masque dance seems to have been transferred to The Two Noble Kinsmen). But it occurs in a self-contained passage that may well have been added after Shakespeare wrote the play itself. The Winter’s Tale, first printed in the 1623 Folio, is usually thought to have been written after Cymbeline, but stylistic evidence places it before that play, perhaps in 1609-10.
A mid sixteenth-century book classes ‘winter tales’ along with ‘old wives’ tales‘; Shakespeare’s title prepared his audiences for a tale of romantic improbability, one to be wondered at rather than believed; and within the play itself characters compare its events to ‘an old tale’ (5.2.61; 5.3.118). The comparison is just: Shakespeare is dramatizing a story by his old rival Robert Greene, published as Pandosto: The Triumph of Time in or before 1588. This gave Shakespeare his plot outline, of a king (Leontes) who believes his wife (Hermione) to have committed adultery with another king (Polixenes), his boyhood friend, and who casts off his new-born daughter (Perdita—the lost one) in the belief that she is his friend’s bastard. In both versions the baby is brought up as a shepherdess, falls in love with her supposed father’s son (Florizel in the play), and returns to her real father’s court where she is at last recognized as his daughter. In both versions, too, the wife’s innocence is demonstrated by the pronouncement of the Delphic oracle, and her husband passes the period of his daughter’s absence in penitence; but Shakespeare alters the ending of his source story, bringing it into line with the conventions of romance. He adopts Greene’s tripartite structure, but greatly develops it, adding for instance Leontes’ steward Antigonus and his redoubtable wife Paulina, along with the comic rogue Autolycus, ‘snapper-up of unconsidered trifles’.
The intensity of poetic suffering with which Leontes expresses his irrational jealousy is matched by the lyrical rapture of the love episodes between Florizel and Perdita. In both verse and prose The Winter’s Tale shows Shakespeare’s verbal powers at their greatest, and his theatrical mastery is apparent in, for example, Hermione’s trial (3.1) and the daring final scene in which time brings about its triumph.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
LEONTES, King of Sicily
HERMIONE, his wife
MAMILLIUS, his son
PERDITA, his daughter
PAULINA, Antigonus’s wife