CORIOLANUS BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE EDITED, WITH NOTES, INTRODUCTION CHARLOTTE PORTER AND NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. · PUBLISHERS TOLST INTRODUCTION OLSTOY, Mr. Bernard Shaw, and the late Mr. Ernest Crosby have gathered from this Play the impression that Shakespeare, too, as well as Coriolanus, is an Enemy of the People. Other much earlier animadverters against Shakespeare's adamant, such as Tate, Gildon, and Dennis (see Selected Criticism appended), have read no deeper. as Yet-barring some proper allowance for the gradual processes of social evolution, and for times and manners, too, in Art -even for Coriolanus, Shakespeare represents him, it may be maintained that he is as true an Enemy of the People as Ibsen's Dr. Stockmann. His real animus, like Dr. Stockmann's, is aimed rather at the compact majority' and its misleaders than at genuine democracy. For a genuine democof individual souls who may coracy is made up operate for the common good, but who cannot be led by the nose as a single mass. Such a community of self-poised men, led by combined brain and heart, is the choicest product of social evolution. Political or civic government is idle or pernicious when thwarted from being a means toward that long-desired end. This the dramatic creator of Dr. Stockmann shows, very much as the dramatic creator of Coriolanus shows it. Not by ethical preachment or reformpropaganda, certainly, does it appear. But it is |