n Coriolanus by an act of
treachery that brings the noble heart under the foot of the traitor.

_Coriolanus_ is one of the greatest of Shakespeare's creations. Much of
the glory of the creation is due to Plutarch. There can be no great art
without great fable. Great art can only exist where great men brood
intensely on something upon which all men brood a little. Without a
popular body of fable there can be no unselfish art in any country.
Shakespeare's art was selfish till he turned to the great tales in the
four most popular books of his time, Holinshed, North's Plutarch,
Cinthio, and De Belleforest. Since the newspaper became powerful, topic
has supplanted fable, and subject comes to the artist untrimmed and
unlit by the vitality of many minds. In reading _Coriolanus_ and the
other plays of the great period a man feels that Shakespeare fed his
fire with all that was passionate in the thought about him. He appears
to be his age focussed. The great man now stands outside his age, like
Timon.

_Coriolanus_ is a play of the clash of the aristocratic temper with the
world. It contains most of the few speeches in Shakespeare which ring
with what seems like a personal bitterness. Hatred of the flunkey mind,
and of the servile, insolent mob mind, "false as water," appears in
half-a-dozen passages. Some of these passages are ironic inventions, not
prompted by Plutarch. The great mind, brooding on the many forms of
treachery, found nothing more treacherous than the mob, and nothing more
dog-like, for good or evil, than the servant.

Greatness is sometimes shown in very little things. Few things in
Shakespeare show better the fulness of his happy power than the
following--

(_Corioli. Enter certain Romans with spoils._)

_1st Roman._ This will I carry to Rome.

_2nd Roman._ And I this.

_3rd Roman._ A murrain on't. I took this for silver.

_Timon of Athens._

_Written._ 1606-8 (?)

_Published._ 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ William Paynter's _Palace of Pleasure_.
Plutarch's _Life of Antonius_. Lucian's _Dialogue_.

_The Fable._ Timon of Athens, a wealthy, over-generous man, gives
to his friends so lavishly that he ruins himself. He finds none
grateful for his bounty. In his ruin all his friends desert him.
None of them will lend to him or help him. He falls into a loathing
of the world and retires to die alone. Alcibiades of Athens,
finding a lik