Resistance is futile...

I've meant to write a lot, but with the escalating job, the stamina just hasn't been there.

I'm working on the scene where Menenius begs Coriolanus to spare Rome. I'm trying to figure out exactly what is going on between him and the guards that are blocking his way.

Menenius flips into prose in the middle of the argument with the guards. One of the guards flips into prose first, and essentially calls Menenius a liar. From that point on, the poor guy just can't get his verse groove back.

I think, too, that there's something physical going on in that scene that really sets M. off. Here he is, begging the guy who is stomping all over Rome, for mercy, even if it's a guy he's known since he was a little baby, and probably dangled on Menenius's knees and all that stuff, and he spends half his speech time lighting into the guards, or asking Coriolanus to light into the guards...

Still pondering Virgilia's silence, too. Virgilia's silence still is shouting at me, and it strikes me as coming from a place of strength rather than a place of submissiveness. On the surface, it would seem that Volumnia rules Virgilia like she does everything else, but is it really that simple? Because in the one scene where there is a contest of wills (Get out of the house with your friend, girl!) it is Virgilia who quietly wins her way.

Both Volumnia and Viriglia have an incredibly strong sense of "duty above all else," but it seems that Volumnia sees her duty as being to Rome first and then family (a more masculine sense of duty), while Virgilia sees her duty is to her family first, and then Rome (a more feminine sense of duty).

Coriolanus: First Impressions, Act 1

I feel like I'm reading the comment section of the Huffington Post...

Except that people are much witter and much better spoken.

Anyone who thinks trickle-down economics is new needs to read the opening act of Coriolanus. Seriously.

I tell you, friends, most charitable care
Have the patricians of you. For your wants,
Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well
Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them
Against the Roman state, whose course will on
The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs
Of more strong link asunder than can ever
Appear in your impediment. For the dearth,
The gods, not the patricians, make it, and
Your knees to them, not arms, must help. Alack,
You are transported by calamity
Thither where more attends you, and you slander
The helms o' the state, who care for you like fathers,
When you curse them as enemies.

Then the parable about how you have to feed the belly before the belly can feed the body....

It'll be interesting doing this during this particular election year. Wonder if that's why they chose it?

Just about everyone talks a lot about how proud Martius (aka Coriolanus) is. Not judging. Not judging. It's against the code to judge. He does like his single-handed battles, though.

Finding a lot interesting in Coriolanus's wife, too, especially in contrast to his mother. There's something deep going on there. But I think that will have to wait for thoughts on Act II or later.