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Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1For that matter, can we be certain that such a man as Coriolanus ever existed at all? … Hector's forehead… Now, at last, Marcius' mother, Volumnia, is introduced. So is his wife, Virgilia. Virgilia is, however, a shrinking girl, much dominated by her mother-in-law, who is pictured as the ideal Roman matron. She is a most formidable creature and we cannot help but wonder if Marcius' little-boy love for her is not intermingled with more than some little-boy fear. Shakespeare makes it plain that Marcius has become something that is his mother's deliberate creation. Even when he was young, she tells her daughter-in-law proudly, all she could think of was how honor (that is, military glory) would become him. She says: To a cruel war I sent him, from whence he returned, his brows bound with oak —Act I, scene iii, lines 14-16 (An oak wreath was the reward granted a soldier who had saved the life of a fellow soldier.) Virgilia timidly points out that Marcius might have been killed, but Volumnia says, grimly: I had rather had eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action. —Act I, scene iii, lines 25-27 And when Virgilia gets a little queasy over Volumnia's later reference to possible blood on Marcius' brow, Volumnia then says, in scorn at the other's weakness: Away, you fool! It [blood] more becomes a man Than gilt his trophy ...» |
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