Mojo, The Bard, & Me

The glorious gods sit in hourly synod about thy

particular prosperity, and love thee no worse

than thy old father Menenius does!

Menenius Agrippa

Coriolanus                                          Act V, scene ii    Line 68

Here we are back at Coriolanus. We were just here the day before yesterday, weren't we?. Today’s line is quite near the end of the play. Coriolanus is back at the gates of Rome heading up an enemy army of Volscians who are getting ready to sack Rome. Menenius, his old advisor, and I guess you’d call him a friend, has come out to talk to Coriolanus and hopefully talk him out of sacking Rome. Today’s line is the first words he says to Coriolanus upon meeting him. He’s obviously trying to kiss some butt here telling him that the gods are shining down on him and they love him as much as he, Menenius does. Spoiler alert: Coriolanus doesn’t buy it and tells Menenius to go pound sand. Well what did you expect? Coriolanus fought hard for Rome and for his efforts he got banished because he refused to act humble. I think I’d tell Menenius to go pound sand too.

I guess we could compare this to the post of two days ago when Coriolanus was being told what to do by his mother. He didn't tell her to pound any sand. He listened to her. And second spoiler alert: His mother's going to be the next one to come out and ask Coriolanus not to sack Rome. Think he'll listen to her? I'm not going to tell you. Here's a link to the Act V scene iii if you want to find out.

And here's my little guys acting out the scene again. They're really good at Coriolanus scenes because it's their favorite play. That's Menenius on the left in the red hat. You can see that the fellow playing Coriolanus is pretty much ignoring him at this point. A few minutes later he lays into Menenius and tells him to get lost. They're pretty convincing.