William Shakespeare - 14 - Coriolanus - bbc radio collection torrent

So our virtues
Lie in the interpretation of the time:
And power, unto itself most commendable,
Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair
To extol what it hath done.
One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail;
Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail.


...aetherial rumours
revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus...


The last tragedy written by Shakespeare (c.1608) This is the 2003 bbc radio collection production with Samuel West and Susannah York.

Coriolanus is yet another tragedy of the individual pitted against the mass. Perfect for war (an efficient killer) but socially unhuman, the main interest of the play is the hero himself, an almost superhuman presence charged with pride, contempt and martial virtue to the point of self-destruction and psychic disintegration.

The political context is the disappearance of the heroic ethic as the State becomes increasingly enmeshed in class conflict, a money economy and political extremism. Both the Roman Republic and 17C Stuart England were headed for political failure, civil war and social upheaval.

Left and Right have claimed the play. (Shakespeare notoriously being a black hole of interpretation) And very curiously the French Republic banned it in the 1930s as a 'fascist' work. Kindly seed