Late in 2012, I watched Ralph Fiennes' mesmerising Coriolanus on DVD (just after I'd purchased a Pelican Shakespeare edition of the play - from 1966 - for $5 from Exeter General Store, near home).
Fiennes was pitch-perfect throughout. He owned his role. The way he pronounced his last words in Act V (directed to Aufidius) were chilling, thrilling... particularly the way he spat, Boy? Sheer defiance, sheer pride and sheer vitriol at the point of death! And that grand justification for his 'triumphant' actions, the desire to mark his war victories as historical truth, something The Bard also gives us with The Moor's last words in Othello. Ahhhh, I loved it.
Cut me to pieces, Volsces. Men and lads,
Stain all your edges on me. Boy? False hound!
If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there
That, like an eagle in a dovecote, I
Fluttered your Volscians in Corioles.
Alone I did it. Boy?
LJ, March 18 2013.
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