His pride consists in the inflexible
sternness of his will; his love of glory is a determined desire to
bear down all opposition, and to extort the admiration both of
friends and foes. His contempt for popular favour, his unwillingness
to hear his own praises, spring from the same source. He cannot
contradict the praises that are bestowed upon him; therefore he is
impatient at hearing them. He would enforce the good opinion of
others by his actions, but does not want their acknowledgements in
words.
Pray now, no more: my mother,
Who has a charter to extol her blood,
When she does praise me, grieves me.
His magnanimity is of the same kind. He admires in an enemy that
courage which he honours in himself: he places himself on the hearth
of Aufidius with the same confidence that he would have met him in
the field, and feels that by putting himself in his power, he takes
from him all temptation for using it against him.
In the title-page of Coriolanus it is said at the bottom of the
Dramatis Personae, 'The whole history exactly followed, and many of
the principal speeches copied, from the life of Coriolanus in
Plutarch.' It will be interesting to our readers to see how far this
is the case. Two of the principal scenes, those between Coriolanus
and Aufidius and between Coriolanus and his mother, are thus given
in Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, dedicated to Queen
Elizabeth, 1579.
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