(same passage I wrote about on my blog! sweet!)
After having resolutely decided to sack Rome with the Volscians, his family comes to 'talk sense to him.' Coriolanus tries to steel himself "But out, affection!" -- by treating his love like an infection--willing it out of his body as he would blood on a battlefield (linking this passage back to the discussions we had in class about humoralism). However, as the following lines show, Coriolanus' resolve is withering away by his mother's words: "My mother bows, / As if Olympus to a molehill should / In supplication nod" -- and his son cries "Deny not!" as though telling Coriolanus not to deny their existence in his life, or not to deny the affection he feels for them.
Perhaps it's that love and affection are such foreign feelings to Coriolanus that, to him, they are akin to a disease of sorts.
Conversation Piece - Monday, December 8, 2008
"Oh, come not near me, sir; I shall defile you.
I am that of your blood was taken from you
For your better health. Look no more upon't
But cast it to the ground regardlessly;
Let the common sewer take it from distinction.
Beneath the stars, upon yon meteor
Ever hung my fate, 'mongst things corruptible;
I ne'er could pluck it from him. My loathing
Was prophet to the rest, bu ne'er believed;
Mine honor fell with him, and now my life."
(The Changeling V.iii.158-67)
I am that of your blood was taken from you
For your better health. Look no more upon't
But cast it to the ground regardlessly;
Let the common sewer take it from distinction.
Beneath the stars, upon yon meteor
Ever hung my fate, 'mongst things corruptible;
I ne'er could pluck it from him. My loathing
Was prophet to the rest, bu ne'er believed;
Mine honor fell with him, and now my life."
(The Changeling V.iii.158-67)
