Page:Coriolanus (1924) Yale.djvu/176

164 found for doubting that the play is wholly Shakespeare's. The text, then, as we have it, would seem to represent a theatre manuscript fully completed by Shakespeare and doubtless occasionally acted by his company, but lacking evidence of the careful revision, abridgment or amplification which popular plays usually received.

Our actual knowledge of the production of Coriolanus in any form begins with 1682, when Nahum Tate adapted the tragedy for the Theatre-Royal under the title, The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth: or, The Fall of Caius Martius Coriolanus. Tate attempted to inject contemporary interest into the work by giving it an application to the political troubles of the last years of Charles II. 'Upon a close view of this Story,' he says, 'there appear'd in some Passages no small Resemblance with the busie Faction of our own time. And I confess, I chose rather to set the Parallel nearer to Sight than to throw it off at further Distance.'

Through his first four acts Tate follows Shakespeare with reasonable fidelity. The lines are mainly Shakespeare's, though frequently refashioned, and the chief alteration, apart from very drastic cutting, is the quite new presentation of Valeria as 'an affected, talkative, fantastical Lady' after the Restoration mode. The fifth act is almost pure Tate. It develops Aufidius' Lieutenant (Coriolanus IV. vii.) as a melodramatic villain and renegade under the name of Nigridius, makes Aufidius an unscrupulous though unsuccessful lover of Virgilia, and closes in a riot of horror. In the final scene at 'Corioles' Menenius, Virgilia, and young Martius are all horribly slain, as well as Nigridius, Aufidius, and Coriolanus, while Volumnia goes furiously mad. It is pleasing to remark that Tate's version does not appear to have been a success.