Dear Penners:
Some Shakespeare:
Mes. Where's Caius Martius?
Mar. Here; what's the matter?
Mess. The news is, sir, the Volsces are in arms.
Mar. I am glad on't; then we shall ha' means to vent
Our musty superfluity.
Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act I, Sc. I
I don't know if David Shemano is a steady member of this list, or wether he
is/is not list-ening to all the reactions to his message. I don't know even if
this is of any import. Anyway.
He said marxists are trying to fit the reality into the small straitjacket of
class analysis. Well, well, it is much more simple than that. You don't even
need Marx to understand what is going on. Good ol' Shakespeare explained to us
one important aspect of it. Where? First act of Corolianus.
The people of Rome was rebelling against the patricians, when a war was
declared. Coriolanus (Caius Martius) rejoiced himself and exclaimed it was a
good opportunity to "vent our musty superfluity", the said mutineers.
And Plutarch, where Shakespeare must have sought the inspiration for his
tragedy, explained the old trick: "and by this meanes as well to take awaye
this new sedition, and utterly to ryd it out of the citie, as also to cleare
the same of many mutinous and seditious persones, being the superfluous ill
humours that greavously fedde this disease� and they leavied out of all the
rest that remained in the cittie of Rome, a great number to goe against the
Volsces, hoping by the meanes of forreine warre, to pacifie their sedition at
home" [Coriolanus, The Arden Shakespeare, 1996, Annex, page 329].
Manel
