Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Thursday, January 18th, 2024.

Today we have for you a speech from another of Shakespeare's criminally underrated plays,

the Roman drama Coriolanus.

The title character, Coriolanus is a military hero.

In fact, he is a savior of Rome, but his unwillingness to play the political game and pander to the commoners, the plebs in Rome,

costs him an influential political position and ultimately leads to his exile from Rome,

at which point he takes sides with his former enemies and finds himself

at odds with the city that he used to protect and love. And in a fateful climax in Act 5, he's besieging Rome itself at the head of a foreign

army.

And the leaders in Rome send out Coriolanus' own family to talk him out of capturing and sacking the city.

This speech is delivered in that context by his mother, who's rather domineering.

She's one of the most domineering mothers in Shakespeare.

I'm sure Freud would have a field day with her,

and she's made it clear at other times that she's in many ways very proud of her son, but that she has a greater affection

for what he has accomplished and the honorific reputation he's earned for their family

than for his own bodily safety.

This is from Act 5, Scene 3 of Coriolanus.

She's trying to talk her son into sparing Rome,

perhaps at the cost of his own life.

Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment and state of bodies would beray what life we have led

since thy exile. Think with thyself, how more unfortunate than all living women are we come hither,

...