Page:The tragedy of Coriolanus.djvu/15



the twenty plays which are first found in the folio of 1623, Coriolanus is one of sixteen for which licence to publish was obtained by Master Blounte and Izaak Jaggard on November 8th of that year, as "Master William Shakspeers Comedyes, Histories, and Tragedyes soe manie of the said Copies as are not formerly entred to other men." In the list of sixteen plays that follows, Coriolanus heads the section of tragedies, as it also does in the "Catalogue" of contents in the folio itself. But in the folio text it is preceded by Troilus and Cressida, which, though omitted in the catalogue, seems to have been meant to come fourth in the section, and was afterwards put first, in the course of printing.

Similarities of source, language, and metre, have suggested a date of composition for Coriolanus following closely on that of Antony and Cleopatra. Both plays exemplify the close-packed elliptical style of Shakespeare's late work, and also its metrical characteristics; of which those that can be numbered for comparison, and can be shown to have been used increasingly by Shakespeare, especially the overflow, the speech-ending within the line, the aggregate of light and weak endings, would bring the plays immediately together in the order assumed. The most favoured date is therefore the latter part of 1608, or early in 1609, because Antony and Cleopatra is usually assigned to 1608; but as, in the edition of that play in this series, reasons were given for considering 1607, or even 1606, as possible dates for its production, and for excluding 1608, the year 1607 becomes a possibility for Coriolanus as well as 1608 or later, in proportion as these reasons are valid. They are based upon the re-fashioning by Daniel of his Cleopatra, in 1607 (or between 1605 and 1607), in more dramatic form, and with new detail, suggesting Antony and Cleopatra as the model which converted him from dull recitation to representation.

External evidence of a reliable kind for the date of Coriolanus is not forthcoming, except that, as Malone was the first to perceive, the language of Menenius in relating the fable of