Учебное пособие 4 unit I. The renaissance 1485-1649

CORIOLANUS
In Coriolanu
s Shakespeare explores the conflicts between public and
private life, between personal needs and those of the community, and
between the pressures of individual honour and family ties. Previously a
respected Roman general, Coriolanus has been banished from the city as a
result of political unrest within the state. To satisfy his desire for vengeance
against those he feels have betrayed him, he has joined with his former
enemy, the Volscian leader Tullus Aufidius, and is preparing to fight against
Rome. Coriolanus rejects the pleas of friends sent from Rome to persuade
him to change his course of action, and believes himself capable of operating
independently of and unaffected by others. However, in Act 5, Scene 3, his

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mother, wife, and young son are sent to plead with him on behalf of Rome,
and Coriolanus’s pride is finally overcome, ultimately leading to his
downfall.
Shakespeare’s last tragedies,
Coriolanus
and T
imon of Athens
, both set in
classical times, were written in 1607 and 1608 and first published in the 1623
Folio. Because their protagonists appear to lack the emotional greatness or
tragic stature of the protagonists of the major tragedies, the two plays have an
austerity that has cost them the popularity they may well merit. In
Coriolanus
Shakespeare adapts Plutarch’s account of the legendary Roman hero Gnaeus
Marcius Coriolanus to the tragedy of a man who is arrogant and rigid, even in
his virtue “too noble for the world.” If Coriolanus in his integrity refuses to
curry favor with the populace, he also reveals his contempt for the citizenry.
The isolating pride of this great but flawed individual prevents him from
finding any comfortable place in the community. Finally, he is banished from
Rome, and he seeks revenge against the city. Eventually his wife, mother,
and young son are sent to plead with him to spare Rome, an action that
reveals the relatedness to his others he would deny. The play powerfully
explores the conflicts between public and private life, between personal
needs and those of the community, and between the pressures of individual
honor and family ties and national ties.
TIMON OF ATHENS
T
imon of Athens,
written about 1608 and first published in the 1623 Folio,
is a bitter play about a character who reacts to the ingratitude he discovers by
hating all of humanity. Through his generosity to friends and flatterers,
Timon bankrupts himself and then finds these same people unwilling to assist
him in his poverty. His withering misanthropy follows. As in T
he Merchant
of Venice,
Shakespeare explores the relationships between financial ties and
ties of friendship. Shakespeare probably found some of the material for his
play in Plutarch’s Lives, where anecdotes about Timon appear in the life of
Marc Antony and the life of the Greek politician and general Alcibiades. He
perhaps also found material in a dialogue, Timon, the Man-Hater, by the
Greek writer Lucian, which had been adapted into an anonymous English
play, Timon, and probably performed around 1602 in one of the London law
schools, known as Inns of Court.

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