William Shakespeare, Critical Commentary of The Tragedie of Coriolanus
Horace Howard Furness, Jr., A. B.; Litt. D., Ed.

---

---

to be partly proud Capell (I, pt i, p. 80) maintains that the reading of F1 and of Hanmer (see Text. Notes) are both ‘faulty’; ‘for,’ he continues, ‘waving other objections that might be made to them, neither of them agrees with the context. The speaker sets out with ascribing all Marcius’ actions to pride; he is check'd for it by his mates, but adheres to his text in his answer, with this slight difference—that perhaps indeed the pleasing his mother might be some motive to Marcius, but his pride was his chief; and then proceeds to set forth the degree of his pride—that it was a full balance to all his virtues, however great they might be. And this being the Author's intention in the speeches refer'd to, it follows that “partly” must have stood in the place it now occupies [that is, preceding “to please”] and was mov'd out of it by mistake of the printer's.’— Staunton: This may mean, partly to please his mother, and because he was proud; but we believe the genuine text would give us ‘and to be portly proud.’ [Leo, in his edition published four years after Staunton's, also makes this same conjecture, quoting in corroboration of this use of portly: ‘Rudely thou wrongest my deare heart's desire, In finding fault with her too portly pride.’ Spenser, Amoretti, verse v.—Ed.]—Dyce (ed. ii.): Lettsom conjectures pertly; that is, openly, clearly.—C. & M. Cowden Clarke: We think the sentence is one of those clumsily expressed sentences which Shakespeare purposely and characteristically places in the mouths of his common speakers: the phrase here meaning, ‘he did it chiefly to please his mother and partly for his own pride's sake.’ The man has just before said of Coriolanus, ‘he pays himself with being proud.’—Abbott (§ 420) gives other examples of a like transposition of the adverb.

to the altitude of his vertue Steevens quotes as a similar metaphor, ‘He's traitor to the height.’—Henry VIII: I, ii, 214, but this is not, I think, quite parallel.—Case (Arden Sh.) more correctly explains that ‘the speaker, of course, means to say, “brave man as he is, he is quite as proud as he is brave.”’—Ed.