What he
cannot help in his nature, you account a vice in him.
-Second Citizen
Coriolanus Act I,
scene i Line 38
Well since the last post on Coriolanus a few weeks ago I
have actually seen Coriolanus! The play, not the guy. Actually, the movie, not
the play. But it was still pretty good. It was a recent version starring Ralph
Fiennes in the title role, and set in modern day. Like a lot of adaptions,
especially movie adaptions, it used original Shakespeare text, but did a
liberal job of picking which of those lines to use and which to cut out. But it
did do a pretty good job of sticking to the story. And it certainly added to my
understanding of the play.
Anyway, today’s line is in the opening scene where the
citizens are setting the scene for the play, complaining about lack of food and
blaming Coriolanus. Second Citizen (an uncredited actor) is trying to defend
Coriolanus. What Coriolanus ‘cannot help in his nature’ is to be very proud of
who and what he is and refusing tell the rabble what they want to hear. He
pretty much feels he’s above them. And they’re not too crazy about that,
especially when they’re starving. I don't know why he didn’t just do a better job of seeing
that the food got spread around a little better. Was it a one percenter thing?
I’m not sure. There’s a lot of aspects to this play, and Coriolanus’s pride is
certainly one of them. But another might be the discontent of the masses
because the patricians (the one percenters) control the bread. As I said on my
previous Coriolanus post, there’s some really current themes in this one that
would make it a really good play to be studying right now.
But what about this pride thing. One could say that
Coriolanus has a right to be proud of his military service to his country. Most people probably wouldn't argue with that today. And when I google images of pride I get tons of gay pride pictures. I guess we’re also proud to be American and proud of all sorts of other stuff too. So it's okay to be proud? But wait, isn’t pride one of the seven deadly sins (I
googled it and it is). Sooooo……
Well I guess I’m
just not sure at all about this pride thing. And if you watch the play Coriolanus I think you'll conclude that Will wasn't either.
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