in his introduction to his edition of North's
_Plutarch_, i. pp. xciii-c, gives an excellent criticism of the relations
of Shakespeare's play to Plutarch's life of Antonius.

{246} See the whole of Coriolanus's great speech on offering his
services to Aufidius, the Volscian general, IV. v. 71-107:

My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done
To thee particularly and to all the Volsces,
Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may
My surname, Coriolanus . . . to do thee service.

North's translation of Plutarch gives in almost the same terms
Coriolanus's speech on the occasion. It opens: 'I am Caius Martius, who
hath done to thyself particularly, and to all the Volsces generally,
great hurt and mischief, which I cannot deny for my surname of Coriolanus
that I bear.' Similarly Volumnia's stirring appeal to her son and her
son's proffer of submission, in act V. sc. iii. 94-193, reproduce with
equal literalness North's rendering of Plutarch. 'If we held our peace,
my son,' Volumnia begins in North, 'the state of our raiment would easily
betray to thee what life we have led at home since thy exile and abode
abroad; but think now with thyself,' and so on. The first sentence of
Shakespeare's speech runs:

Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment
And state of bodies would bewray what life
We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself . . .

{249} See p. 172 and note 2.

{250} In I. i. 136-7 Imogen is described as 'past grace' in the
theological sense. In I. ii. 30-31 the Second Lord remarks: 'If it be a
sin to make a true election, she is damned.'

{251a} See p. 255, note I. Camillo's reflections (I. ii. 358) on the
ruin that attends those who 'struck anointed kings' have been regarded,
not quite conclusively, as specially designed to gratify James I.

{251b} _Conversations with Drummond_, p. 16.

{251c} In _Winter's Tale_ (IV. iv. 760 et seq.) Autolycus threatens that
the clown's son 'shall be flayed alive; then 'nointed over with honey,
set on the head of a wasp's nest,' &c. In Boccaccio's story the villain
Ambrogiuolo (Shakespeare's Iachimo), after 'being bounden to the stake
and anointed with honey,' was 'to his exceeding torment not only slain
but devoured of the flies and wasps and gadflies wherewith that country
abounded' (cf. _Decameron_, translated by John Payne, 1893, i. 164).

{253a} Printed in Cohn's _Shakespeare in Germany_.

{253b} Golding's translation