The politics of neo-classicism

Abstract

Coriolanus was written during the early years of the formation of English neo-classicism, when Ben Jonson and others explored what use could be made of the classics for improving literary style, understanding human nature and political wisdom. The neo-classicism of the Stuart period was not merely cultural — architecture, literature and portraiture in painting — but also political. This is obvious later in the century when Roman analogies are invoked as often as biblical parallels to argue political positions by both Royalists and Republicans. The stereotypes of the later seventeenth century were being formed in the early Stuart period. Behind such a mode of imagination was the start of modern British history studies in the form of the antiquarianism of William Camden, the great scholar who was Ben Jonson’s teacher. Camden attempted to collect information about English history with an awareness of its Roman period. (Camden’s 1605 Remains of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine is the basis of a few points in Menenius’ fable of the belly.) The effect of this was to make modern Britain appear continuous with Rome; England now had a classical past, rather than the crazy quilt of late medieval English monarchy, an historically recognised past, a legitimacy (remember the tribunes anticipate that Coriolanus will claim his ancestors built Rome), and was part of Europe (a Stuart policy in contrast with Tudor isolationism). England was viewed as a continuation of Roman politics and rituals.