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Coriolanus, Antitheatricalism, and Audience Response

Robert Ormsby

Shakespeare Bulletin, Volume 26, Number 1, Spring 2008, pp.

43-62 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/shb.2008.0035

For additional information about this article

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Coriolanus, Antitheatricalism, andAudience Response

RobeRtoRmsby

University o Toronto

I

Coriolanus engages perormance by voicing many o the same biasesthat motivated sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers hostile totheatre. These include a concern or the relation between theatre and

society; anxiety about both the dangerously aective power that theatreexercises over audiences and the anarchic power exercised by audiences;and a xation on the role that the body plays in mimetic processes. Co-riolanus oregrounds these issues in the heros relationships to the Romanand Volscian people, which unold in a series o markedly perormativeencounters.

The overwhelming aspects o perormance are described in the ostageevents surrounding Coriolanus victory procession, where the heros Ro-

man audience is rapt by the sight o the conquering general, and respondto him in this political ceremony As i that whatsoever God, who leadshim, / Were slily crept into his human powers, / And gave him graceulposture (TLN 113840; 2.1.215-17).1 But the relationship betweenperormance and society, and the elision o perormative and politicalpower are even more pronounced when ocused upon Coriolanus dis-played body in the scar ceremony, where the trajectory o power turnsin the plebeian audiences avor. The Third Citizen asserts the peoples

democratic voice: For, i he show us his wounds, and tell us his deeds,we are to put our tongues into those wounds, and speak or them; so ihe tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell him our noble acceptance othem (TLN 139296; 2.3.59). The comment suggests the plebeians de-manding a role in the ceremony that treats Coriolanus body as a symbolic

Shakespeare Bulletin 26.1: 4362 2008 The Johns Hopkins University Press.
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RobeRtoRmsby44

vehicle or Roman democracy, a role they perorm in Act Three, wherethe stage-managed events see Coriolanus removed rom Rome. Thus theplay portrays social perormance as a powerul political phenomenon, butat the same time it suggests a danger to the actor, and treats the onstageaudiencethose within the ctional world o the play who witness socialperormanceswith a measure o distrust.

As Jonas Barish remarked in his survey o antitheatrical prejudice sometime ago, the attitudes towards perormance represented in Coriolanushave deep roots in Western culture.2 Others have argued that similarattitudes in act continue to maniest themselves in critical discourseabout theatre and drama: not only do theatre historians demonstrate a

preerence or printed language over enacted perormance by neglectingthe aective, overwhelming aspects o theatre, they have also ignoredthe crucial role that audiences play in shaping theatrical events.3 In theeld o early modern English drama studies, Keir Elam has persuasivelyargued that, while late Twentieth-Century Shakespeare scholarsspe-cically New Historicistshave turned, like semioticians beore them,towards a study o the body in perormance, their conception o the bodyhas become bookish:

What happens, then, to bodies in the Shakespeare Corp is that theybecome part o a great chain o beings, linked through textual relationsin the corpus, the vast open book o the world. The early modern bodyturns out to be more bookish than corporeal, its readability guaranteedby the act that it is already constituted by the play o discourses andintertexts. (In What Chapter? 15253)

Elam asserts that because the primary intertexts o Shakespeares bodies

are ound to be medical treatises. . . . Shakespeares bodies are no longersigniers but symptoms, and the study o their place in the drama isnot, in act, a semiotics but a symptamotology . . . or semeiotics, thebranch o medical sciences relating to the interpretation o symptoms(153). One implication o this situation is that the symptamotologicalreadings Elam describes do not necessarily rely upon sustained analyseso the exchange between actors and audience, they only require literaryintertexts. Elam discerns another implication in what he regards as the

semeiotic habit o collapsing the distinction between the two bodies,the represented body o the dramatis persona and the body natural othe actor, namely a return to a Puritan aesthetic, or anti-aesthetic, o thedrama as pathology (153). He continues, The enemies o the theatrein early modern England also saw the actors body as moral and medi-
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coriolanus,antitheatRicalism,andaudienceResponse 45

cal symptoms. . . . And, like some contemporary critics, they eliminatedany distinction between the body represented and the (perormers) bodyrepresentational (153). Put another way, by treating theatrical and socialperormance as identical, both historicist semeioticians and early modernantitheatricalists take a very narrow view o what Elam elsewhere callstheatres iconic identity, or the oten exact similarity between signier andsignied (Semiotics 2223).

I do not have space here to investigate the contradictions o the el-egant paradox Elam nds in drama critics . . . ally[ing themselves] withdrama-haters (In What Chapter? 154), nor do I intend to contest orarm the accuracy o his arguments regarding such a large eld o schol-

arship, except to remark that symptamotological readings o early modernliterature and culture have shown ew signs o disappearing in the decadesince Elam published his comments.4 Instead, I wish to examine howearly modern English antitheatricalism can help re-invigorate a sense otheatres corporeality by ocusing on antitheatrical constructions o theaudience. In particular, I shall concentrate on how the antitheatrical (oranti-audience) rhetoric o tract writers, Elizabethan civic ocials and,indeed, playwrights themselves was concerned not simply with the vast

open book o the world, but with the dangers inherent in the live trans-action between perormers and spectators. I shall subsequently discussCoriolanus in light o these descriptions, ocusing on how the drama placesthe protagonists body at the centre o the phenomenal, lived experienceo perormative exchange, an exchange it depicts as prooundly unstable.I shall argue that Coriolanus depiction o the audience as an active agentin constructing the bodys meaning in social perormance is not onlyconsistent with contemporary antitheatrical sentiment, but that, even

more than such sentiment, the plays dramatization o the engagementbetween the actors presenting body and the onstage audience oers animage o perormative corporeality that can serve as a counterbalance tooverly bookish readings o early modern theatre.

II

While Elam may be right to suggest that New Historicists have con-structed non-corporeal or bookish and legible bodies that sustain a great

chain o interpretive being, the antitheatrical rhetoric o late sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century tracts, civic authorities, and playwrightsconsistently deends social and textual order by emphasizing those perni-cious aspects o live perormanceincluding the role o the audience

which rustrate or conound the rational, stable legibility o social and
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cosmological hierarchies. However, to note such consistencies amongstexponents o antitheatrical sentiment is not to suggest that these writersrepresent a homogenous and sustained Puritan attack on the theatre;their comments refect a wide range o ideological and political motiva-tions. These authors include one-time playwright Stephen Gosson, whoeventually became a member o the Anglican establishment; AnthonyMunday and William Rankins, who were both practicing dramatists, wereboth possibly writing against their proession or the city o London, and

were both probably merely opportunistic antagonists o the theatre; theo-logian John Rainoldes, whose criticisms orm an academic debate withellow scholar William Gager; London mayor John Spencer, whose let-

ters asking the Privy Council to close the theatre refect his own businessinterests and real political strie in the city; I.G., whose precise identityand motivations, beyond reuting Thomas HeywoodsApology for Actors,remain unclear; and a series o playwrights who appended commentaryto their own (and others) printed dramas, ostensibly in deense o their

works poor reception in perormance.5 Rather than claiming transhis-torical unanimity o belie and motivation or their writing, my discus-sion o these commentators is meant to elucidate a series o tropes that

these authors drew on repeatedly in the last two decades o the sixteenthcentury and the rst two decades o the seventeenth century, tropes thatdepicted the audiences role both in constructing perormative meaningand in causing real social disruption.

I, as Laura Levine argues, anxiety about the cross-dressed male per-ormers gender drove the nave epistemology at the heart o (6) anti-theatricalist pamphleteers didacticism, these same writers locate a urtherthreat to their aith in a pure reerentiality (4) in the destabilizing

reception in the theatre. They depict theatre audiences comprised o thesocially and mentally unt whose judgments are mutable and harmul:the vulgar sort who run madding unto playes (I.G. 58); the commonpeople whose rebuking o manners in that place is neyther lawull norconuenient, but to be held or a kinde o libelling and deaming (Gos-son, Plays ConfutedD1r); and the rude multitude who are moued with

vnconstant motions, whereby manie-times they like o that which ismost hurtul (Munday D6r). Playwrights, too, in prologues, commenda-tory verses, and epistles to their dramas, portray audiences at the publicplayhouses as ignorant and prone to the worst sort o theatrical enter-tainment because they lack sound critical aculties. At dierent times,Ben Jonson laments spectators who are tickle[d] by plays wherin . . .the concupiscence o dances and antics so reigneth, as to run away rom
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Nature (The AlchemistTo The Reader 7, 56) and the rout who areso delighted by quaking Custards with erce teeth arighted (VolponePrologue 22, 21). Similarly, John Webster and Thomas Dekker dismiss,respectively, those ignorant asses who come to that playhouse (78,7) and the spectators who . . . Applaud, what their charmdsoule scarce

vnderstands (Prologue 36).The impression that dramatists insults about audiences bad judgment

in particular are an aspect o what Joseph Lowenstein labels an emergingpossessive authorship in early modern England, a proprietary attitudeexemplied by (but not exclusive to) Jonsons eorts to control all as-pects o dissemination and reception (123) o his work, is reinorced by

playwrights recognition o the spectators power to mistake and alter anauthors meaning. Seen in this light, Jonsons Prologue in Poetaster, cladin armor specically to protect himsel against the base detractors andilliterate apes, / That ll up rooms [the boxes at the Blackriars theatre]in air and ormal shapes (Induction 7071) is an acknowledgement o

what Cynthia Marshall, in relationship to Coriolanus, calls the audiencesscopic or evaluative unction in helping to constitute theatrical meaning(108). This evaluative unction relies on aesthetic distance and on a sense

o the perormance rame, that agreement (conscious or unexpected)between perormers and spectators which distinguishes ritual, entertain-ment, and ordinary lie rom each other (Schechner and Schuman 218& 21718), and which transorms stage action into art.John Fletchersecho oPoetasters Prologue in his epistle to The Faithful Shepherdess, in

which he regrets the plays poor reception by the audience members whoever had a singuler guit in dening dramatic genre and who began tobe angry when they deemed his play to be insuciently pastoral (To the

Reader 5 & 9) implicitly invokes the perormance rame, as does FrancisBeaumonts repetition o this charge in his commendatory verses to theplay, in which he laments the audience, Whose very reading makes versesenceles prose (To My Friend 34). Both depict the audience alteringthrough interpretation the playwrights meaning by responding negativelyto the presentation o [stage action] within the rame o perormanceexpectations regarding the genre o the pastoral when audience membersexperience aesthetic distance rom the action being ostended or presentedin a showing situation by the actors (Carlson 7).

Furthermore, antitheatrical rhetoric o the era is pathological notsimply to the degree that it portrays the actors body inected by uncleanperormance, but also in its depictions o audiences diseased by the spec-tacles they witness. This language o inection diminishes the rational,
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purposeully reerential or semiotic unction o theatre. For instance,when Gosson writes o those impressions o mind [that] are secretlyconveyed over to the gazers, which the plaiers do countereit on thestage (PlaysConfutedG4r), or Munday alerts his readers to the theatreswanton wives ables that are taken out o the secret armorie oVenus(G8v), or Rankins inveighs against the theatres inchanting Charmes, andbewitched wyles (E1v), they appeal to that world view whose meaning-ulness derives rom its rationally structured cosmological hierarchy bydescribing how theatres occult power dees such rational universal order.

The mystery o this theatrical corruption, which pamphleteers describeas entering the spectators bodies directly like a pathogen, involves what

Marshall, again in reerence to Coriolanus, reers to as the audiences em-pathic unction, where the aesthetic distance between spectacle and spec-tator necessary to create rational meaning collapses and the perormancerame disappears (108). When Gosson remarks that vice is learned withbeholding, sense is tickled, desire pricked (Plays ConfutedG4r), whenMunday describes the theatres lthie inections that bring womensbodies into sicknes, and their soules to the state o euerlasting damna-tion (E1v), and when Rankins contends that [the] pleasure [o theatres

spectacles] as poison spreddeth it sele into the vaines o their beholders(F1r) they depict theatrical rapture that eliminates aesthetic distance.

This empathic or inectious contact does not allow audience membersrationally to evaluate theatrical perormance, nor even to experience stageaction as theatre, because the perormance rame has vanished. Instead,by working directly upon their senses and attacking the audiences actualbodies, the poisonous spectacles eliminate the distinction between thereal and the ctional, and, by experiencing physically the corruption o

such perormance, the audience members are unable to contemplate theirproper places in the cosmological hierarchy that should ideally underwritetheir responses to these displays.

Perhaps more signicantly, antitheatrical descriptions o audience rap-ture shit ocus away rom the spectacles on stage, making the spectatorthe agent o theatres chaotic power. Munday depicts the cognitive process

whereby the passive reception o display is transormed into the active,participatory unction o the spectators: For while they saie nought, butgladlie looke on, they al by sight and assent be actors. . . . So that in thatrepresentation o whoredome, al the people in [their] mind[s] plaie the

whores. And such as hapilie came chaste vnto showes returne adulterersrom plaies (A8rA8v). Mundays ormulation o theatre-goers inec-tion at the sight o whoredome as an instance o empathic reception,in which aesthetic distance collapses and the possibility o the specta-
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tors rationally judging the representation disappears, entails the audi-ence internalizing what it sees and then mentally competing with thoseonstage to determine who is acting. During the next three decades,critics o the theatre pursuing diverse agendas availed themselves o thistrope o perormative inection spreading through the participation othe audience, as its members became actors. John Rainoldes directlylinks disease o the spectators bodies to their histrionic corruption inhis mid-1590s academic dispute with Gager by marshalling the eruditeand historically distant evidence o Ovids account o a perormance oEuripidesAndromeda in the city o Adebra to support his position. LikeMunday, he relates that spectators did not simply judge the perormance,

but brought home rom the theatre a burning ague (Q1v). Like Munday,urthermore, Rainoldes notes that the disease subsequently maniesteditsel as an empathic response that transormed the spectators into per-ormers: The which [distemper] exciting them to say & cry aloude suchthings as were sticking reshly in their memorie, and had aected mosttheir minde. . . . So that the whole citie was ull o pale and thinne olke,pronouncing like stage-players, and braying with a loude voice (Q1v). Inhis mid-1590s letters to the Privy Council, Spencer also decries how plays

work inexorably on the audience, or move [them] wholy to imitacion,without allowing them to evaluate or avoid those vyces which they rep-resent (qtd. in Chambers 318). Yet his concern that this imitation, whichmakes actors o the audience, was the chee cause, aswell o many otherdisorders & lewd demeanors which appeer o late in young people o alldegrees, as o late stirr & mutinous attempt o those ew apprentices andother servantes (qtd. inChambers 318), reveals how the same rhetoriccould be deployed to address dire and real political circumstances (speci-

cally rioting) in London that threatened public saety.6

Two decades later,I.G. draws on the same trope inA Refutation of the Apologie for Actors, tocounter Heywood. Repeating (with slight alteration) Philip Stubbes ac-cusations rom the 1583Anatomie of Abuses he, too, treats the spectatorsas vectors o theatres pathology:

these goodly pageants being done, euery one sorteth to his mate, eachbring another homeward o their way: then begin they to repeat thelascivious acts and speeches they have heard, and thereby inect their

minde with wicked passions so that in their secret conclaues they playthe Sodomits, or worse. (63)

As in earlier accounts, I.G. attributes to the audience the power toeliminate the distinction between the ctional and the real by inecting
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their own actual minds with repetition o the lascivious acts witnessedin the playhouse.

Moreover, in extending to the audience such inectious power, play-wrights, antitheatricalist pamphleteers, and civic authorities alike ur-ther diminish theatres semiotic or signiying unction by describing theaudiences ability to impose its own real identity upon the perormancespace and thereby to displace or supersede the ctional perormancesthey witness. As early as 1579, Stephen Gosson sardonically depicts thecomedic potential o the crowds behaviour in the theatre where there is

suche heauing, and shoouing, suche ytching and shouldring, too sitte by

women . . . such smiling, such winking, and such manning them home,when the sportes are ended, that it is a right Comedie, to marke theirbehauiour, to watche their conceites, as the Catte or the Mouse . . .(School of Abuse35)

While Gosson portrays a restlessly libidinous real display put on bythose in the crowd that is only coincidentally as compelling as the ctionalperormance onstage, one year later Munday depicts audience membersactively challenging the stage or control o the other spectators atten-

tion. He describes young runs and harlots, vtterlie past al shame:who presse to the ore-rount o the scaoldes, to the end to showe theirimpudencie and who aggressively assert their own real immorality: o-ten without respect o the place, and the companie which behold themthey commit that lthines openlie which is horrible to be done in secret(G3rG3v). In other words, such audience members bring their ownactual social disorder and corruption into the theatre to compete with theactors immoral shows, to be, as Munday puts it as an obiect to al mens

eies (G3r). This concern or the real moral or social disorder that isimported into theatres by the audience also animates Spencers languagein his letters to the Privy Council. The Mayor asks the Privy Council-ors to close the theatres not simply because the plays breed criminalitythrough the audiences imitation o the actors ctional vices, but alsobecause the playhouses are gathering places or a real criminal element,those theeues, horsestealers, whoremoongers, coozeners, connycatchingpersones, [and] practizers o treason who consort [at the theatres] and

make their matches to the great displeasure o Almightie God & the hurtand annoyance o hir Majesties people (qtd. in Chambers 317).Descriptions o the audiences physicality by and about playwrights,

meanwhile, can be understood as an aspect o dramatists possessiveauthorship noted above, though such accounts more specically em-
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phasize the ways that play-goers intrude upon and disrupt the ctional,signiying elements o the authors work with their own tangible corpo-reality. John Marston captures this sense o actual, bodily intrusion uponthe playwrights work when Philomuse in the Induction to What YouWillgraphically personies Censure who belch[es] out sour breath, /From Hatreds sureit on his labours ront and imagines six spectatorsdischarg[ing] / Imposthumd malice on his [the dramatists] latest scene(3133). Similarly, when the anonymous author o the epistle to Qb oTroilus and Cressida assures the reader that the play was never clapper-clawed with the palms o the vulgar and never sullied with the smokybreath o the multitude (2, 2526) he does not simply describe the

spectators intellectual misinterpretation but suggests that theatre-goerscan alter the authors work with their singular, overpowering physicalityby molesting and soiling the play with their corporeal response. Othersgo even urther in imagining the works o art and the ctional worldsthey beget as physical entities susceptible to death at the hands o theaudiences reaction: Jonsons commendatory verses to The Faithful Shep-herdess reer to the Martirdome (13) o Fletchers murdred Pom (14);Nathaniel Field claims that Fletchers art in the same play better pleases

him Then i the monster clapt his thousand hands, / And drownd thesceane with his conused cry (3334); and Walter Burre remarks thatthe ingratitude (10) o an unenthusiastic theatrical response nearlysmothered in perpetual oblivion (9) Beaumonts Knight of the Burn-ing Pestle, which Burre personies as an unortunate child (1). Whilethese gurative deaths are all meant to excuse the various plays poortheatrical reception, they nevertheless convey a sense o the physicalityo a live audiences response, a response that does not merely break the

perormance rame with a rude corporeal discharge but eliminates therame completely as the spectators overcome and murder the poem andthe spectacle onstage.

III

Coriolanus does not necessarily mount the deense that JonathanCrewe discerns in early modern English dramatists response to contem-porary antitheatrical rhetoric. Yet the play does embody . . . the suspect

or occult powers o the theatre or perormance insoar as it construes theon-stage audiences fuctuating judgment or response (Crewe 322). Thisfuctuation extends beyond scopic or evaluative judgment to include theon-stage audiences non-rational, inectious, or empathic response andis bound up with the means by which these audiences help to constitute
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RobeRtoRmsby52

the meaning o Coriolanus sel-display through particularly physical andtangible modes o reception.

The constitutive but erratic power that antitheatricalists extend toplay-goers is borne out in Coriolanus, where the Roman and Volsce on-stage audiences are portrayed as reservoirs o political and interpretivepower and agency that requently determine the outcome o Coriolanusperormances. Famously, Stanley Fish has described the agency thatCoriolanus on-stage audiences possess as cohering in ineluctable speechact communities . . . every one o [which] exacts as the price o mem-bership acceptance o its values and meanings (How To Do Things999). However, as Coriolanus accuses the people, the values o their

speech act community are mutable: With every minute you do changea mind, / And call him noble, that was now your hate: / Him vile, that

was your garland (TLN 19395; 1.1.17981). Indeed, i these ctionalaudiences determine the success and ailure o Coriolanus perormances,their power is also unpredictable. In Act One, Coriolanus is hated by thepeople but, once victorious, is reportedly treated as a god upon his returnto Rome at the start o Act Two. At the end o Act Two, the Romanpeople rst accept Coriolanus perormance in the gown o humility, but

immediately reject him. Although the Roman people banish Coriolanuswith apparent unanimity in Act Three, in Act Four they swear they neverwanted to exile him. In the nal scene, although the Volsce people o-stage cheer the hero, once onstage and reminded by Audius o the havocthat Coriolanus had previously wreaked among them, they suddenly cryout or his death.

Furthermore, while Coriolanus refects another o Fishs contentions,that audiences respond as [I]nterpretive communities [that] are made

up o those who share interpretive strategies not or reading (in theconventional sense) but or writing texts, or constituting their proper-ties and assigning their intentions, the play also demonstrates aspects operormative reception suggested by the antitheatrical and anti-audiencerhetoric noted above which qualiy the idea o stable and unied interpre-tive communities (Is There A Text in this Class?171). Yet, whereas certaino those antitheatrical commentators acknowledge audiences scopic orevaluative unctions and others describe how audiences experience em-pathic relationships to perormance, Coriolanus dramatizes fuctuationsbetween scopic and empathic reception. In a series o complex perorma-tive interactions Coriolanus not only represents onstage audience responseshiting between an awareness o distance and a collapse o that distance,but also how their fuctuating response aects the iconic identity o bodies

within the ctional world o the play.
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Coriolanus demonstrates how aesthetic distance operates within every-day process[es] and communal ritual[s] by dramatizing the disjunctiono the social actors two bodies when onstage audiences detect the per-ormance rame surrounding such actors presenting bodies. For instance,Menenius seeks to quell the plays opening rebellion by eliding his ownphysical rame with the ctional body politic o his Belly Tale, in eectenacting a variation on the rulers two bodies. Here, the senator hopesto achieve what Harry Berger Jr., in his brilliant and explicitly antithe-atrical essay, Bodies and Texts, understands as an iconic recoding, orthe displacement o linguistic meaning onto the body, which naturalizesor represses the textuality o perormed meaning (156). Speciically,

Menenius transers the narratively disembodied body politic o the taleonto his own body, making the belly smile thus, evidently by perorm-ing some physical action which emphasizes his corporeality (TLN 110;1.1.105).7 However, his iconic recoding does not, to use Judith Butlersphrase, accumulate [ . . . ] the force of authority through the repetition orcitation of a prior, authoritative set of practices because he ails to cover[ . . . ] overthe constitutive conventions by which it is mobilized (227).Rather, his attempt to cite the prior authoritative practice o deploying

the body politic able ails because his eorts actually serve to emphasizethe textuality o his own perorming body, and to instantiate a distancebetween his actual, physical being and the ctional belly, as six lineslater the Citizens impatient listing o the body parts typically deployedin such cautionary tales suggests that, or him, the rame o Meneniussperormance is visible and explicit.

Coriolanus perormance in the ceremony to become consul in ActTwo provides another perspective on the ailure o iconic recoding. His

perormative act initially succeeds in accumulat[ing] the force of author-ity: by ollowing the convention o coming to the market-place with hisbody covered only by the gown o humility and asking or the plebeians

voices, the people elect him consul. However, the success o his act isnot necessarily determined by the extent that it draws on and covers overthe constitutive conventions by which it is mobilized. In act, the Citi-zens recognize the perormance rame rom the start o the scene andthe Third Citizen explicitly reminds the others that they are obliged toadopt an evaluative relationship to the display: We have power in our-selves to do it [elect Coriolanus consul], but it is a power that we haveno power to do . . . i he tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell himour noble acceptance o them (TLN 139196; 2.3.49). Coriolanus,too, contemptuously invokes the constitutive conventions that mobilizehis act and draws attention to how he violates those conventions: since
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robertormsby54

the wisdom o their [the peoples] choice, is rather to have my hat thanmy heart, I will practice the insinuating nod, and be o to them mostcountereitly (TLN 148891; 2.3.9496). Furthermore, he twice ex-plicitly draws attention to his own violation o these conventions, tellingone citizen I have wounds to show you, which shall be yours in private(TLN 146768; 2.3.7273) and another I will not seal your knowledge

with showing them (TLN 14991500; 2.3.104105).Yet the scenes subsequent action suggests that the provisionality o

Coriolanus success is governed not simply by his ability to use his bodyto cite prior authoritative practices (or his reusal to do so completely),nor simply by the Citizens strict obligation to lend him their voices but

also by the peoples insistence upon their ability to re-evaluate and towithdraw the authority they had given his display. As soon as the peoplegrant Coriolanus their voices and he retires, the Third Citizen accuratelyremarks that the would-be Consul ailed or reused to transer his verbalrequest or their voices to his bodily comportment by mocking them:He said he had wounds, / Which he could show in private; / And withhis hat, thus waving it in scorn, / I would be consul, says he . . . (TLN156568; 2.3.16264). Shortly ater this, Sicinius reminds the citizens

that Coriolanus reusal ully to transer his verbal request to his physicaldemeanor revealed the gap between his true intentions and his imperectperormance o the custom: orget not / With what contempt he worethe humble weed (TLN 162324; 21617). The Tribune subsequentlyreminds the people o their duty as an audience, as witnesses to socialperormance, encouraging them to employ their awareness o the per-ormance rame as a pretext or reusing to ratiy Coriolanus election:[tell the Senate] that / Your minds, preoccupied with what you rather

must do, / Than what you should, made you against the grain / To voicehim consul (TLN 163437; 2.3.22730). Whereas Bergers conceptiono iconic recoding and Butlers notion o a successul perormative act areounded on the assumption o the smooth conuence o linguistic andbodily meaning and on the perormers ability to suppress the conven-tions o textuality, this scene shows all parties continually and ully awareo an iconicity that reveals the ault-line between the actuality o theCoriolanus perorming body and the alterity to which it points (or ailsto). Moreover, the scene suggests that the agreement o the perormancerame is not only a matter o the perormers ostension, but also requiresan audiences perception o that agreement. Here, the perormance rame,always in plain view, is re-deployed in numerous ways as Coriolanus, thepeople, and the Tribunes all manipulate it to suit their various aims.
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coriolanus,antitheatricalism,andaudienceresponse 55

Although deciding where the perormance rame is evident may belargely the responsibility o an audience engaged in the dynamic exchange

with perormers, Coriolanus suggests that understanding when, and towhat degree, such decisions are made in the course o perormance isurther complicated by the act that audiences uctuate between the ho-mogeneity and individuality o their constituents.8 In particular, speechheadings in scenes where Coriolanus addresses himsel to hostile crowdssuggests that the onstage audiences who determine the outcome o hisperormative acts demonstrate varying degrees o what E.A.J. Honig-mann reers to on the one hand as realistic (120) individuation and onthe other as the choric or ritual unction o collective speech (121). For

instance, in the opening scene and during Coriolanus two conrontationswith the citizens in Act Three, a number o speeches assigned to Allappear to be attributed to individual actors playing individual plebeians:No more talking ont; Let it be done (TLN 15; 1.1.12); Against himfrst. Hes a very dog to the commonality (TLN 2930; 1.1.26); True,the people are the city (TLN 1910; 3.1.200201); He shall, sure ont(TLN 2004; 3.1.274); Our enemy is banished, he is gone. Hoo-hoo!(TLN 2427; 3.3.138); Come, come, lets see him out at gates, come. The

Gods preserve our noble tribunes, come (TLN 243233; 3.3.14344).The same occurs in the fnal scene, where Coriolanus presents the treatyto the Volsces and all the people air what seem to be individual grievances:He killed my son, my daughter, he killed my cousin Marcus, he killed myather (TLN 379495; 5.6.12223). Other dialogue attributed to Allin these scenes, meanwhile, indicates the possibility o collective speech.At the start o the play, all the citizens concur with the First Citizen,declaring Speak, speak (TLN 2; 1.1.3); We knowt, we knowt (TLN

12; 1.1.9) and Come, come (TLN 50; 1.1.46). Similarly, ater theyhave deeated the Volsces, all the Romans cry Martius, Martius (TLN794; 1.10.40.1) and in Act Three all the citizens afrm their Tribunes

judgments against Martius, shouting Down with him, down with himtwice (TLN 1891, 1948; 3.1.185, 229), No, no, no, no, no! (TLN 2015;3.1.282), To throck, to throck with him! (TLN 2356; 3.3.76), and Itshall be so, it shall be so! (TLN 2407; 3.3.120). In the fnal scene, allthe Volsce conspirators call out Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him (TLN 3804;5.6.131) to which the Volsce Lords reply Hold, hold, hold, hold (TLN3807; 5.6.132). Though it is impossible to know or certain whether Allindicates that such lines are delivered in unison, the repetition o phrasesand words in these utterances does suggest a choric collectivity.
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RobeRtoRmsby56

While the fuctuation between individual and choric speech points toan instability in audience composition, more importantly, it is linked tothe alternate production and diminution o meaningul response. Therst seven utterances noted above, though they are brie, achieve somedegree o discursive complexity through dierentiation; the separate anddistinct clauses within each speech attributed to All represent a rela-tive range o meaningul dialogue. In the second set o utterances notedabove, whether the words are spoken by individuals simultaneously, inunison, or as overlapping dialogue, there is little or no dierentiationbetween the individual phrases and words within the collective speeches;the repetition o short phrases or single words narrows the semantic range

in these speeches and suggests that at such moments the complexity andcontradictory nature o the crowds evaluative unction is less importantthan their singularity o purpose, their unied volition. This movementaway rom articulate and articulated individual speech and towards col-lective identity nds its most powerul expression in those moments inthe play where crowds convey a sense o their cohesive will in wordlessshouting. For instance, in his account o Coriolanus victory procession,during which Romes variable complexions were unied, all agreeing /

In earnestness to see the conquering hero (TLN 113132; 2.1.2089),Brutus describes the almost supernatural bearing that Coriolanus pos-sesses, As i that whatsoever God, who leads him (TLN 1138; 2.1.215)

was causing the people to create a pother when trying to catch sighto him (TLN 1137; 2.1.214) . The Messenger, similarly, does not alludeto the reerential quality o Coriolanus display and Romes reception ohim in the procession. Rather, he stresses the overwhelming, i not super-natural, eect that Coriolanus presence has on the renzied crowd: The

nobles bended / As to Joves statue, and the commons made / A shower,and thunder with their caps and shouts (TLN 119597; 2.1.26163).Similarly, during the rst-act battle, the Romans all shout and wave theirswords, take him [Coriolanus] up in their arms, and cast up their caps (TLN69596; 1.8.76.13), and ater the people exile Martius, They all shout,and throw up their caps (TLN 2425; 3.3.136.3). Whereas Meneniusown physical body disrupted his attempt to suppress the textuality ohis perormance in the opening scene, and whereas Coriolanus reused

wholly to transer his verbal request to his bodily comportment whensoliciting the citizens votes, these moments demonstrate the peoplesphysicalitythe thunder o their shouts, their waving swords, their cast-up capssuperseding the relatively complex discursive unction theirresponse serves elsewhere. In each case, the crowds do not evaluate the
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situation they are witnessing beyond basic expressions o unied celebra-tion, nor do they indicate that they have any sense o separation romthese situations. Instead, their responses, which are vocal and physicalbut non-verbal, represent a collapse o distance that coincides with thecollective celebrations.

O the three scenes noted above, the greatest collapse o distance occursduring the battle episode. Here, the soldiers act o liting Coriolanus intheir arms is a realization o the Third Citizens remark that the peopleare to put their tongues into [Coriolanus] wounds and speak or them.However, unlike the citizens suggestion that the plebeians should servean evaluative unction by metaphorically using their tongues to speak

or the heros wounds, the soldiers raising o Coriolanus in celebrationis a literal act o physical union. The celebratory act may convey meaningbut, rather than recognizing any rame around Coriolanus perormance(i.e. his stirring speech that inspires the soldiers) that separates him romthem, the soldiers are moved by his call to Wave thus . . . / And ollowMartius (TLN 69394; 1.8.7576) and, responding with empathy, they

wave their swords beore physically and literally crossing the line separat-ing themselves rom the bleeding general. A similar situation occurs in

the nal scene when Coriolanus enters in procession and ceremoniouslypresents himsel and his peace treaty to the Volsces. While Audius andthe conspirators initiate Coriolanus assassination by ascribing meaningto his last perormance (that he is a traitor to the Volsces), this meaningcoincides with a collapse o aesthetic distance. Coriolanus body is againat the centre o the Volsce audiences reception and, by inviting themto violate him physically, he echoes the Third Citizens invasive languagerom Act Two, though Coriolanus words carry a phallic rather than a

lingual overtone: Cut me to pieces Volsces. Men and lads, / Stain allyour edges on me (TLN 378283; 5.6.11213). As the conspiratorsexpress their unied antipathy to Coriolanus, (Kill, kill, kill, kill, killhim) and stab him, they cross the line that separates themselves romhim, that separates witness rom actor. At this moment, the physical oncemore supersedes the discursive: the conspirators literally intrude uponCoriolanus address to the Volsces and physically wrest control rom him;by pushing their blades into his fesh, they momentarily join themselvesto him, and realize the metaphoric penetration o the peoples tonguesin his wounds. This brie murderous union between killers and victimsuggests the complexity o perormative, corporeal iconic identity: thesenew wounds on Coriolanus body bear the signicance o enemy to theVolsces, but this signicance is inseparable rom his physical actuality or
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Documents

Coriolanus and Audience Response Clanak