Page:Coriolanus (1924) Yale.djvu/177

The Tragedy of Coriolanus On November 11, 1719, the Drury Lane Theatre produced an adaptation of Coriolanus by John Dennis, which was printed in 1720 with the title, The Invader of his Country: or, The Fatal Resentment. This bad play appears to have been acted but three times. Dennis prefaced the printed edition with an indignant letter in which he expostulated against the unfairness with which the management of the theatre had treated him; but the cast, headed by Barton Booth as Coriolanus and Mrs. Porter as Volumnia, was an excellent one, and the failure of the piece to please is well accounted for by the dulness of the adaptation. The play contains extremely few lines recognizable as Shakespeare's, far fewer than Tate's revision, though it shows less than Tate's originality in inventing new plot devices. Dennis opens with the battles at Corioli and closes with a scene in which Coriolanus slays Aufidius and dies in spectacular combat with four Tribunes of the Volsci to an accompaniment of shrieks and lamentations from Volumnia and Virgilia. The most interesting scene is that of the consular election, where adherents of the candidates, Coriolanus and Sempronius, respectively, act out a lively imitation of an English electoral rally.

The theme of the play was next brought upon the English stage by James Thomson, author of the Seasons, whose Coriolanus was acted at Covent Garden some five months after the poet's death. Thomson's play is independent of Shakespeare's and follows different sources in its treatment of the legend: ignoring Plutarch, Thomson goes to the Roman historians, Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, for his material. Consequently some of the characters appear with different names. Aufidius is called Attius Tullus, Coriolanus' mother Veturia, and his wife Volumnia. The mere fact that such alterations were possible shows how