Welcome back to the New Thinkery. I'm David Barr with me as always. My good friend Alex for you. How are you Alex?
Doing well. How are you David? Good, good. And Greg McBrayer.
How are you Greg? David Alex doing well. Thanks. Exciting for your guests today.
Yes, I'm excited to. And it's good. Your guests can see your beard as you've cut it from 10 inches to a modest five out of a show of respect. And we all appreciate that, Greg.
So with us today is a very special guest. Super excited for this. It's Jan Blitz. Many of our listeners are already familiar with his work.
But it's a quick background. He was a founding member of the honors program at the University of Delaware. He taught that for 40 years. He's with us to discuss his new edition of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, out now through Hackett Publishing.
Professor Blitz is the author of many commentators of many commentaries on Shakespeare's plays, including Anthony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Macbeth, a midsummer night's dream, Julius Caesar, and of course, the present play. And along with this edition, he's also edited, and again with Hackett Publishing, Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra. And before I welcome him, I want to say parenthetically, you must treat yourself to any one of the commentaries I just listed. Professor Blitz's manner of interpretation and his mode of presentation, of presenting the text, it's line by line and it's wonderful.
And it's deeply informative and engaging. And he contrasts that, I think, with Harold Bloom, who may be perhaps more well known than our guest, but his interpretations come off as somewhat superficial. And so in the experience universe of interpreters, there are many different styles, but the way that Professor Blitz writes his books is something that I think people that seriously want to engage with the place would appreciate. So with that, welcome, Professor.
It's great to be here. Thank you. Thank you. So we, Sorout, with our guests, I think some of them are older and have pedigree, so we always find interesting.
So we'd love to hear your kind of educational background, a little bit about your journey, and then teachers that inspired you in life for professors in particular, say at the graduate school level. Well, my background, which you covered partly, is that I had a very high school. I had conventional counterculture interests, meth wing politics, and shallow, Evan God French literature. And quite quite by chance, I heard about St.
John's, and I went there, and learned how much there was to get out of the study of authors in first grade book. And I also began to learn how to read Shakespeare there in a sophomore language class studying Hamlet, it turned out. Richard Kennington, who was one of my tutors, has the faculty of cold there, recommended that I applied to the new school for social research with Dick, did his grad, and I went there, and I studied political philosophy with Howard White and Seth Benardetti. Both of them were very important.
After that, I taught at Colby College in Boston College, and I had a sabbatical replacement for a few years. And the University of Delaware was looking for faculty for its brand new honors program, and they were interested in someone with my scholarly interests, which they thought of as interdisciplinary. So I taught in the honors program for some 40 years, and one of the great pleasures during that time was I was able to arrange for Eva Brand, Mary Nichols, and Kathy Zuckert to come and teach as visiting faculty over a five-year stretch. And I also taught ancient mathematics and ancient astronomy with Harvey Fomenho.
Very cool. Right, so we, oh, sorry. No, go ahead. I was gonna say, we all say that here, similar background, that's wonderful.
Alex and I both attended St. John's, albeit as graduate students, but Alex went on to Tulane where he was a student of Herana Berger and Richard Buckley, and then Alex, you were also at Sarah Lawrence with another Kennington student. Yeah, with Michael Davis for a year. Michael Davis, yeah.
Actually, I've seen, we've met once before, I saw you deliver, it was part of a roundtable on Michael's book, The Soul of the Greeksen. Oh, really? And you were talking about his Herodotus chapters, and you remember laughing really hard when you accused him of going native in Egypt, becoming Egyptian himself and that stuck with me. So.
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. So what did you do your dissertation on? Shakespeare's, oh, interesting.
And so Ben or Daddy was on that. Yeah. Howard White died just before I defended, and Ben or Daddy who was on the committee, chair the committee then. Okay.
And so, yeah. And Howard White is, he has a book on vacant as well, right? Right, yeah. He's the name that more people ought to know.
I know that Bloom and Jaffa are often pointed out as folks that helped introduce or revive kind of interest in political philosophers in Shakespeare, but White also shares some of that credit, right? Yeah. And he's still have a seminar on Shakespeare, reading Shakespeare. Wonderful.
So maybe we should be getting to Coriolanus a little bit. Before we do, can I mention also a preparation for the episode? I did a little Googling Professor Blitz, and I watched the lecture you gave on Res Life 10 or 15 years ago, maybe. And I just want to say, I worked in Res Life in grad school to pay my way for my education.
And man, I thought how spot on you were at the time how precious it was that they think they're the only two doing real education. I actually had a vice president of student affairs say in a meeting that the only education that happens on college campuses happens in student affairs. We haven't had an economist. Yeah, that's what they think.
It really blew my mind. So I really gave voice to some sort of incoherent thoughts that I had or incoherent criticisms I had of some of this stuff that happened to universities under the rubric of student affairs. Very interesting lecture. You can find it on Google listeners if you want.
It's on YouTube. I had a long battle here, but we won. Yeah, that was what was most impressive. I mean, it just seems like their victories are sort of, they're almost invincible.
Yeah. Actually, before we go into the summary, Greg, I'd be curious, Jan, if you could talk about the impetus of why a new addition, I know we're kind of jumping in our run of show, but unless you think the summary first makes more sense, but kind of. Well, I can tell you how my friend from other editions, all of the work that I'm at, the, maybe like all of the other editors, they are historicists. Any attention to the matic setting.
In the case of Coriolanus, they think that we're all the Roman players. Shakespeare had no interest in or knowledge of Rome. They, he knew about and cared about only his own England. And that's true of them, the editors.
And they project their view of the world onto. I really loved your preface for what it's worth. I thought it should have maybe been called Evertee's Mall or something like this instead of preface. I really like the way that you go after these other editors.
I was very impressed. So I've done a little translating. Maybe you can tell me just a little bit about what the task of editing a text looks like as opposed to this or translate. I mean, it's an English, for example.
And so what are you making some editorial decisions based on different manuscripts? What does it look like? Well, that's somewhat tricky. And it varies from play to play because some of the plays and others do.
From my point of view, there are just a couple of different sorts of jobs. One is the standard job of glossing certain words and explaining the, and that sometimes tricky and sometimes debatable, one of the big jobs. But the other part, and this is really what interests me, is trying to understand the history, the cult of politics, that varies considerably from play to play. The early Roman plays of Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare, the great length pointing out.
And one has to point them out to the reader. And that takes a lot of reading, primary sources. Many times come up with real surprises. And I would say that so Professor Blitz, it sounds like the readers of your edition, they would see the fruits of that in the footnote.
It seems to me, is that right? We're years ago pointing out, okay, yeah, very good. To the extent of the notes that you bring in. To the added, yeah, exactly.
The books are annotated. And in some cases, paragraph long notes, explaining the significance. Yeah, that sounds very good. Since you already mentioned this, well maybe we should, well before we get to a summary, I suppose it's X.
You mentioned in your preface that you, unlike most other editors focus on Rome, and in your remarks just a moment ago, you said, this is sort of different than Ance and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. So I was wondering if you could just elaborate a little bit for us and for the listeners. Where does Quarralian's fit among the Roman plays? How is it different, and where does it fit chronologically?
Where does it fit, what does it fit, maply? Oh yeah. All that kind of stuff. It's dated around 500 BC, a little bit after 500 BC.
The kings have just been, the kings had, when the, that's really where the play begins, the commoners are looking for some kind of, and that leads to the, some tribune step in Roman history. And that's 500 years before an anti-inclia patra. Can you tell me what a tribune is? Oh sure.
That's a new office established. It turns out to be the first plebeian office in Western history, which is a mixed regime. Commoners have the tribunes, are their protector, from the commoners and they work in behalf of the commoners. And that's true to Roman history.
Their office becomes more and more powerful. And as we see in the play, they use the people, they use cariolanus against the people and the people against coriolanus. They're very shrewd. And that turns out to be, they are able to use the people, I'm sorry, to use the tribunes to control the people.
And that you see the opposite of that in an antheum, where there are no tribunes and you have political murder. Yeah, it's striking how you get a sense of, I always love this about Shakespeare, when you're reading, you get a sense that there's, the plot is in a way discreet and yet it's situated in a larger historical trend. So you have this rise of greater representation for the people and the tribute is already seen pretty powerful. Maybe it's just they're coming, but they really get an exile pretty easily and they're able to play off of them.
There's also this, I think a subtle not forward to the empire in a little bit, right? Because they're defeating these other cities and there's a question of how the food is to be distributed to the people or to the military. Could you say a little bit more than how he's maybe looking forward to Imperial Rome and maybe to the transition that we see in Julius Caesar, the play of Julius Caesar? 500 years, close to 500 years.
I'm not sure that you can see of the empire. If that's what you. Well, Republican Rome became somewhat imperial, even prior to being right, having the emperors, right? So there's already a kind of.
Well, it's a standard, sure. Yeah. It conquered the area around it. And that's what you see in Coriolanus.
Devotions are a city about 10 miles away and they're the big enemy. Rome conquers them and over time, a wider area of Italy, finally, all of Italy. And then it moves on from there, virtually the whole known world. What you see in C and Anthony and Cleopatra is really the corruption of what you see in Coriolanus.
In Coriolanus, the private realm has virtually no things, that's easy exception. Everything about the right of the public realm is the realm of life. And in Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra, the public realm is, and everything is private. They're true in Anthony and Cleopatra.
In Coriolanus and in Caesar, the people have a big role. In Anthony and Cleopatra, they have no role whatsoever. Once they throw out the nobles, they lose their own voice. When they get rid of their enemy, they get rid of their own voice.
So maybe can you provide us with just a short synopsis of the play that I'm a professor, and we can launch into it? Into some of the themes. You do it so much better. No, no, David, come on.
Pull your way, David. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's so hard to summarize. You're just a big ass, Alex.
Yeah, so you have, this is the story of both Rome after the expulsion of the Tarquin kings, and also the story of a man, Coriolanus, and his kind of like inter familial relations with his mother, with the commoners, with the leaders of Rome, and it kind of begins where, it begins with the people complaining about the shortage of grain, and they decide to get violent quickly, and they say that we deserve more of the largest of Rome, and we're not getting it. And they're particularly angry at Coriolanus, who at this point in the play isn't so named. He goes by Kayas Marcius. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that.
Correctly. He shows his temper early on in the play. He has a volcanic temperament. He blames the plebeians for not being sufficiently grateful for what the city has provided them, et cetera, et cetera.
He then, I guess, gets expelled. Or am I missing the timeline? For him, for Con. That's right.
He picked up on his mockery, yeah. Yeah, and that's right. He campaigns. He doesn't want to campaign.
He doesn't want to ask for their vote. And so he's forced to, and as you say, he mocks them while pretending to praise them, take them seriously. And the tribunes engineer is expulsion. Yes, and he's expelled to the land of his enemy.
Tell us a fidious? Well, he goes there. They don't know where he's going to go. He doesn't say where he's going to go.
And nobody can believe that he'd go to this prime enemy, because he wants revenge. That's a very good example of something we could perhaps. Yeah, because it seems like- Yeah, that's what we want. No, no, it's just that the character of Coriolanus has analogues all over the place, which he seems to be- I don't know.
I know that Shakespeare's touchstone was obviously plutarch, as far as information is concerned. But the aspects of the play remind me of Achilles in the Iliad, also a little bit of also Bites. I don't know if that's fair to say. Yeah, one of the points that's important to make is that Anne-Greece d'Ifon, what it means, very different understandings of one of the reasons why it's a Greek, a Roman hero, and if it's full of the Roman, in the to Rome.
So I didn't know what to make of that entirely, because I didn't actually see the connection to Hector that I think it's his mother in one instance, who liked him to Hector. And then the second time, the second time it's men and yes, I think, in one eight. Anyway, so if you have any thoughts or comments there? These are very proud of Troy.
Yeah, of course. Well, I think there's a care- I mean, I was trying to figure that out in one way in which Hector differs from Achilles, he's much more rooted in his family. And when he decides to stay outside of the walls of Troy, his mother besetches him and even talks about breastfeeding him. And there's a similar parallel in the play when she besetches him.
So except in Coriolanus's case, it works. In Hector's case, it doesn't. Right? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Go on. So I think the question we're kind of dancing around here, but we could, is this love of honor?
And what Aristotle refers to as the sort of peak virtue of this love of honor, which is greatness of soul. So maybe, do you mind going into a little bit? Well, what is greatness of soul? And the Aristotelian sense or just in a general sense?
And then how is or is Coriolanus a great soul man? Because I found myself saying, yeah, he seems like it. But then at times he is, he's a little too wordy, I think for the great, great soul man, at least as it struck me so maybe give us a little. Well, yeah, the great soul man, James Gray honors for great deeds.
That's the most salient character claims great honors. He single handedly, he also liked the great soul man, as Aristotle describes him as austere. He's uninterested in wealth. He has contempt for people who care about wealth.
And I felt a joke. The great soul man, he has a deep voice slowly. The differences are always measuring himself against others. He claims to depend only on himself and to be dependent on nothing but himself.
He knows himself only by comparing himself through not only in battle where he would expect it, but in the city. He does whatever he can to be hated. But he says at one point, he who deserves greatness, deserves your hate. And then he does everything he can to court in order to confirm his own greatness, out of his way to insult, abuse.
And that's not the great soul man. And in fact, one of the minor characters in the play, the first sentence doesn't leave nothing undone that would show him the people's opposite. And the word opposite is really telling us. He wants to show that he's their opposite as their adversary and as their contrary.
And the two are connected. He seeks their position in order to show that he is their opposite. And he knows himself only by what he can oppose and overcome. That's not the great soul man.
So it's Shakespeare. It's funny, you can read this play at different times. I guess we were joking about this before the podcast again, but depending on my disposition, just in life, will affect how I view Coriolanus. Sometimes I think that he's done so much or as people, he's underappreciated.
And other times he's contemptible in a way, even though he has these martial virtues and clearly benefits people surrounding him. But it's upon this reading. I don't know if it's just I'm getting older and more prudence or something. But I did to Shakespeare the way he presents him.
Do you think he meant to? Do you think he intended to present him in a contemptible way? Or because he doesn't seem as complex as other Shakespearean characters. I think that's wrong.
I think he is. I think he shows the complexity. And it's particularly with him. He's really by colors.
It's true of the love of honor in general and of spirit in this, the most in general. Why does he want honor? Why does the great soul man, I think it's queer, he's a Roman. And the Romans with one another for the highest honors.
Romans in general, see honor as the city's verdict on a man's. At the same time, Cornelius wants to think and to have everyone think that it's self-sufficient, entirely on himself, it's own sufficient, both in its origin and its end. The pursuit of honor denies, in both respects. It depends on those who bestow it.
And it's only as good as they are. It's not an end in itself, but a means to, what I find interesting about that, and I think referring to, the pursuit of honor is at odds with most deserves honor. The pursuit seems to devalue the virtue for which it is given. And so we have a paradox.
Someone's pursuit of honor seems to show that the person does not deserve the honor that he seeks or claims. Since claim to self-sufficient values with the honor that he seeks for that. And one important consequence, which we see in the play, is that ambition for the highest birth seems ultimately to turn against itself into the disc. I think you can.
Sorry, I could go on. No. No. Okay.
And so something you're bringing out, I think that's, maybe this is the wrong way to look at it, but one thing you bring out that I find so fascinating is that Coriolanus doesn't just want to be excellent. He also wants to be known as excellent. Right? Known as excellent to those who are beneath him, and who can't even, dare to give some grain, right?
And he still he wants there, somehow them to recognize him, and to in a way just bow before him. And there's a kind of tyrannical aspect. And I found myself, as I read this play, I never had a character, I think in anything, but certainly in Shakespeare, who I agreed so much with his assessment of things, but disliked him so much as a character. And I think this is like has to do with his lack of prudence, which would have, I think, acted as a sort of counterbalance to his desire that people recognize him for who he is.
He would understand that there's this tension that you're bringing out, right? So my question is, I guess, is those moments when he resists the counsel of his mother, right, or Menenius, and he refuses to dissemble his true nature before the people. Is that the same thing as seeing virtue as a means, right? This virtue as a means to sort of power?
Or is that, what's the cause of that unwillingness to make some compromise between his desire to be known for what he is in prudence? Does that make sense as a question? I think so. Prudence means knowing when to compromise, how to compromise, but he wants virtue to be absolute.
He wants to be nothing but virtue. He wants to depend entirely on himself. He even goes so far as to say that he would like to generate himself. His own and happens is that when you get this kind of purity of you're absolutely virtuous and you make no concessions to conditions or any kind of compromise, the only thing that's good is everything else is.
And so what you get is this tendency to try to rise above one's human nature. And that means ultimately to the ambition that you have a tragic in the love of honor and in any public affirmation or the ambition for public of one's excellence. On the score, I was really struck by one of the passages in your introduction to the new edition. I hope you don't mind if I read just a little bit allowed.
So this is on page, this is Roman in World 14. This is capturing this tension that you've been laying out so nicely for listeners. You say not only the concern for honor, but virtually everything notable about Coriolanus conduct turns back against himself. His pursuit of wounds turns into his refusal to show his wounds, his defensive Rome into his treason to Rome, his insistence on constancy and integrity into his betrayal of both the Romans and the Volsians, his crowded jubilant entry to Rome into his solitary side departure on and on, I just want to skip down just a little more.
A man who does not allow for contradictions, Coriolanus becomes the embodiment of self-contradiction. I'll transition to a question that I thought you really captured that well in the paragraph. In the next paragraph, you say a man of self-contradictions, Coriolanus is at once the exemplar and the antithesis of Republican Rome. So I guess that leads me to a question that takes us too far afield, feel free to bring us back.
I know Alex has a question about the names of characters and places. It led me to the following question. Is Rome itself a self-contradiction? Is Coriolanus somehow emblematic of Rome?
And if that's right, what is Shakespeare telling us about Republican government in general? Is that something that? Well, there was, sorry, sorry. Is there a loaded question?
Yeah, look, the little of any form involves self- even a cursory reading of, but you find in particular in Rome, the inherent tensions in paradigm, Rome is a city of, and it's not all the other good or altogether bad. Rome became great, certainly, in many, many ways. That's also very problematic. Can I ask a, oh, sorry, did you need to go on, Professor?
Right. What does a city do when they have a man like this, a Republican city do when they have a man like this in its midst? Is containment impossible or redirection or re-channelling of this kind of energy? Or does it just spell doom on the horizon?
I think he has no place in the city. It's not just that he doesn't feel like that, and he's not willing to make the compromises, but he did make the compromises. He would become a monarch. Okay, so this I found interesting, Professor Blitz, because so then it seems to me that the city can't do without this person, and he can't be a part of this.
In other words, I mean, his exceptional military valor is cities need men like Coriolanus who can defend the city, it seems. I mean, his military prowess is exceptional. But then the question is, what do you do afterwards? They seem like they can't be incorporated easily back into the city.
Just one more small point, I was struck by the tendency on behalf of citizens to think that military men who are successful militarily, that that will transfer or translate into a political rule. And those aren't the same thing. Is that another thing that Shakespeare's trying to teach us? It's a common human mistake that we make, that we assume that militarily or political leaders, and then also that that's false, that's not necessarily the case.
Well, it's certainly not the case. The hope is can control that. And the institutional arrangements, you serve as counsel for one year, you share that with another counsel, you're not eligible for reelection right away. The very ambition of Romans limits far when can go.
But the danger is that, and we see with, and with Coriolanus and Antium, that the great hero might just pander to the commoners and override all of those institutional barriers. Yeah, you have institutional and they're somewhat tenuous. They depend on the moral attitude of the people. If Coriolanus did what the tribunes pretend they want him to do to be kind to the people, who would be the end of the topic in Rome?
Maybe now's a good time to talk a little bit about the figure who's looming in the background of all this, which is I think Coriolanus's mother, who seems very, very important. It's stilling, yeah, Volumia, who seems to have been very, very crucial. There's a little bit of attention between his mother and his wife, right, who his wife is a little bit more worried about him, right, what might happen to him given his character. And then Volumia, it seems like his mother has eventually won over a little bit to say, oh, this is kind of bit out of hand, right, you need to come to your senses, you're supposed to be serving Rome, right, and it counsels him to be a bit more cautious, a little ironic and it never works with Coriolanus.
So could you talk a little bit about the relationship between him and his mother? Yeah, that's very important, I think. And it touches on a lot of the major questions in the play. She's a widow.
We never hear about presumably he died in war, but it is silent and I think that's important. She assumes the function of a father to raise Coriol. She rears him as if he had no mother. And she's a single mother who suppresses her own womanhood.
And raises a single-sided son. And it's part of the deny ones, understand on your own and no other kin. And she encourages that. She denies her own interest when her friend comes to visit a woman about to give birth.
Fine or detail, I think. She's a very different woman. She's warm, she jokes, she acts like a woman. But in front of her son and daughter-in-law, she tries to act like a hard-edged man.
And Coriolanus eventually caves into her when she comes. She then becomes the mother and not the father and takes on re-acquirers a kind of womanhood. So that brings me right. So you mentioned that his virtues end up denying their own source, right?
This is the nature of spirit and is. And there's a kind of anti-corporiality, where he's somehow denying the body as well. That comes up in a few lines that he has. Now I was looking, doing a little research.
And since you've edited the play, you'll probably be able to answer this question for me. But in Livy, Volumia is the name not of Coriolanus's mother, but of his wife. Is that correct? Now did Shakespeare rely it all on Livy?
Because there is this one moment where Volumia says, well, if I were his wife, he says this too, his actual wife. And so there's this inner play of wife and mother, right, exchangeability that reminds you a bit of edifice, right? And edifice is another one of these guys who wants to be self-sufficient and autonomous. So is he drawing on Livy?
Is there any evidence that he actually did look to Livy in this way? Not sure I can answer that. And see, in my own book, it's not fresh. My question is not fresh in my mind.
I wouldn't be surprised if Livy was there. But at the moment, I can't think of an example. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about this aspect of denying your origins and his relation to his mother. And maybe just in general terms, is there an edifice connection or am I jumping?
Our minds are in the gutter, Professor. It's always. I'll give you a look for just one second. I'm just looking at your index.
And I'm looking at some of the passages. Several of your footnotes. I mean, just the first one, for example, this is an act I've seen one, line 87. You note that one of the lines seems to evoke, in fact, Livy.
And there's some other passages as well. So it's possible. It's possible that we're some. Yeah, of course.
And we know that Shakespeare read Machiavelli, of course, from the entrance. And so there would have been some maybe some awareness of Livy seems possible. Yeah. Plutov was certainly not his only source.
Right, right. Yeah. Alex once asked because he got upset with me earlier before we started recording. Because we were actually wondering if there was some connection between they always make fun of me, between incest and spirit and this or something like this, and desire for self-generation.
Just like there's the end of this thing that Alex was talking about. That there's something, maybe I'm not going to take it as very well, but you don't want to have to be dependent upon anyone else whatsoever, which is why the father is missing in this case, I think, as well. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Yeah. One thing I'd like to get back to, we didn't quite get to earlier, is the difference between the Roman and the Greek understanding of nobility. And it's a problem. What's the problem that I see often when people who have really been educated, they tend to transfer the Greek notion.
I'm probably guilty of that for its worth. Yeah. So I definitely, I'm looking forward to hearing you tell me more about the difference between the Greek and Roman conceptions and nobility. Yeah.
For the Greeks, noble is associated with the people in some way or other. For the Romans, associated with the decoris, the becoming. It concerns what's appropriate to how one appears to others in the affairs of the city. In Athens, the noble or the beautiful transcends or points beyond political life.
In Rome, nothing transcends political corruption comes in. And so Rome is roof. Even Rome's mythology depicts Roman political life. Cality, particularity, and the reify where the Greeks ideal.
And Shakespeare seems to have understood this perfectly. A very important fact. Weird noble and its variance appears more often in Coriolanus than in any other Shakespeare play. That is huge, huge, huge.
That's a huge insight. Wow. All right, very cool. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Thirds, d, and beautiful. Never play. Oh, wow. That is really something.
So you're saying, so for what it's worth, then, for listeners, you think that this play Coriolanus could be Shakespeare laying out in his own understanding how Rome invert you differs from Greek Virgin. At least he's laying out clearly the Roman conception, which implicitly is showing how it's different from the Greek notion. That's really something. Yeah.
And I think that anyone who we should here plug our Alex, who is your colleague at the University of Colorado who has a forthcoming podcast on Rome? Oh, it's out already. Oh, it is. Yeah.
When you handle it. Do you know about this, young? No. It's called Get Ready for a Traveler's thing.
But it's all a Roman history. It's one, Rome seems, at least in Strausian scholarship, awfully neglected, just as an aside. Great. Offaly neglected.
Yeah, we all agree. And I think for the interesting that nothing transcends the city. And there's no philosophy. Philosophy comes in as a Greek import.
And it's a strange kind of philosophy. You get, and they aren't interested in understanding. They have a doctrine that they want to. And yeah, it's a bad imitation of Greek philosophy.
Now, at this point, I think maybe since we've gotten a grasp of Roman nobility and the Roman political circumstances, maybe now's a good time to talk a bit about the difference, the political difference between Rome and Antium. Antium being the city to which Coriolanus goes after he's been banished from Rome, where he meets up with his mortal enemy, Alphideus. But they actually admire each other some, which I think is the basis for their temporary reconcilment in the play. But it did struck me when you suggested the topic how much more peace the plebeian types are with the nobles than in Rome.
But maybe you could just spell that out a bit more. What's going on there? Yeah, a large enemy so that he can get an army to, a good example, by the way, of who will pay any price, even crumbly, and who he's always because he needs someone to measure himself against. So he needs somebody who is just equal, but yet someone he can defeat.
So he's always exaggerating Alphideus' to in order to have, so he goes there. And he does in Antium what he would never do in Rome. He becomes a demagogue. He courts the people, and he really is a danger.
Antium has no the tribune. The people have the balance of power. Alphideus says, you don't have to do anything. Just do what's in your interest to be victorious.
And the office like the tribunes. There's no way any real power. There's no mixed regime. The checks and balances that the office of tribune establishes in Rome are simply absent.
And so you get in Rome the first, in the year 133, which coast of 400 years, the Althur of the kings, Hiberius Grakis, or in a city where people quite used to warfare. But in Antium, it's evidently. But then again, when you think about later Rome, you do think about political murder, right? Oh, yeah.
So how does that happen in Rome? You begin with the Grakai. Yeah. Yeah.
And all of the constraints, or many of the constraints, and you get trying to rally the people and using others using the military for political ends in the city. And so I think before we wrap this up, I just want to say this has been eye-opening. I think you've made a great case of any of our listeners who may not have read the play. Quilliness is eminently entertaining.
The speeches are great. If you have any interesting questions about honor and ambition about its necessary preconditions and then its problems on its manifestation, it's really a delightful play. And who's it published by Alex? Let's plug it.
Yeah, well, his intention is to focus Hackett, right? Hackett, press. Right. And I really recommend it.
The notes were helpful. Every time I had a question, there was an answer for me. And every time I went to just read out of curiosity, the notes should do light. And if you want to read a casually, you want to study, it's an affordable edition, and it's a really great guide.
And so are his Anthony and Cleopatra and Caesar editions. Yeah, but we should also say, Professor Gletz, you have also a book on Quilliness, a couple of books on most of the plays, I think you've edited, if not all of them, right? Yeah. And you have an edition of Macbeth coming out, which I'm looking forward to looking at, because it's one of my favorite plays.
But we already have an edition of Macbeth. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. An edition, forgive me. I thought you meant commentary.
Professor, what are you working on aside from what Alex just noted? Any interesting things on the horizon? Well, I'm currently working on Ham before long. I think I'll have an edition of that.
Great. I think David thinks Hamlet's about a small pig, but I think he's a little bit too. He's a little confused. So Greg has these lightning round questions.
He loves to ask him. We humor him. And we think it's good to bring out the human side. You probably sound like a bit of a, like Coriolanus, a kind of interpretive deity up in the clouds, but you have your roots.
So Greg likes to bring those out. All right, yeah. So we call this lightning round. So you obviously can pass on any question if you don't want to answer it.
But this just meant to sort of help listeners get to know you a little better. I'm going to ask the first question I think I know the answer to. Who is your favorite thinker of all time? Yeah, I thought that was what you guys think.
All right. So yeah. Yeah. I'm going to follow up then.
Apart from Shakespeare, who is your favorite thinker? It's usually the one that I'm studying at the time. What are you studying right now? I'm going to take a very similar one.
Shakespeare. That's funny. All right, fair enough. Favorite Shakespeare play?
Once again, it depends on what I'm studying at the time. So hang on to the top right now? Well, I've worked on Macbeth and it's a wonderful play. I don't mean to denigrate the Coriolanus or the other Roman plays at all.
You know, it's when you're immersed in it, you see how wonderful it is. And you know, you just with every line and you see how things fit together. And so Macbeth has been on my mind in Hamlet because I've been working one minute. By the way, Hamlet, I don't know if this fits your lightning round.
But I can't remember the Shakespeare that I think brings out is how important it is to read the page and other stage. What's the name of the... The story of the P? I don't...
The quality of Hamlet is right now. The quality of the story is... And at some point it's a Roman name and Rome is important to Hamlet, to the play Hamlet in many ways. You would never know that if you didn't read it.
It's never mentioned in the dialogue. Shakespeare changes Luigi's names. And he gives him a Roman name and then never mentions it. And to say nothing in the fact that...
He's just called a ghost, right? No, no, no, that's the previous king. Oh, okay. Oh, I'm sorry, I got it.
Nothing in fact. You can't keep... It would be impossible to keep the totality of a Shakespearean play in your mind for longer after. I mean, you can't as it unfolds before you on stage.
It's too hard to make the connections. There's just too much going on. He would never... What's most interesting of the way that speaks.
So can I ask a variation on Greg's lightning-mount question, because you've been a criminally evasive so far. What was the first Shakespeare play that really hooked you on him? I think that you were going to ask him about Francis Bacon. See, Professor Alex is one of these Francis Bacon true believers.
And we all wear tin foil, hats in one way or another. This is Alex's, and it's shameful. I'm sorry to even bring it up. This is a joke.
It's a running joke. I don't actually think that's in person. But yeah, what's the first play that maybe it was as a... when you were in high school or something like that, but or maybe much later that really turned you on to the fact that Shakespeare is a first-street thinker?
Well, I think I mentioned earlier, what in college in sophomore language tutorial, we were reading Hamlet. And they turned out to be really just eye-opening. What's the difference, the lesson that really made it deep and proud between the characters who, knowing things through what they hear and those who know things from what they see? And that's in fact very important in the play.
And it really, I don't know, I began to realize that it's more to the play than just the words in action. I mean, it's real depth. And it's depth, fundamental human phenomena. Very good.
Let's continue with the world's slowest lightning round. What's the favorite place? Just kidding. What's the favorite place you've ever visited?
Professor Klotz. I'm sorry? A favorite place you've ever visited? Oh, well, Rome is very nice up there.
And really enjoy it. I lived in Zurich for a year. Oh, wow. And I have very fond memories of that.
Oh, yeah, that's where my uncle lives. It's wonderful. And that's where Alex isn't there, where all your family keeps its money. He swears this.
Why am I under the camera? You have an international family. Yeah. They're international financiers, Dr.
Blitz, his family, not ours. OK, what was your first car? This is one I really like to ask. It's a terrible car.
A Hillman. Wow, I've never heard of this. I have any. I'm going to have to Google that.
See, this is a 20-day picture. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. They went out of business a long time ago. Up to a car and a low-priced car.
Really? When I was driving it down the highway, a wheel came loose. I love this is my favorite question. I love that question.
Very good. It's lucky that I, as my wife said, too much to win. Fair enough. All right, I got two more, and then we'll wrap things up.
Do you have any pets? Yes, a cat. What's the cat's name? Mead.
Why? Scottish name. Oh, OK, very good. All right, last question.
And this will take us back to the text, actually. If you had to identify one figure in American history who is most like Corey Lanes, who would you say? Ooh, I knew this was coming. Glad I can't think of one at the moment.
Seems fair enough. All right, well, Professor Blitz, it's just been a great time. I think David will take us out. But I just thank you for your time.
I've learned a lot. It was fun rereading this play. We actually did an episode on Macbeth, one of our first episodes on Macbeth. Maybe we'll do it again and have you back when you're.
No, we're going to do all of the plays, Professor over time. And we would love to have you as a guest. Absolutely. Come back.
When you knew edition of Macbeth comes, we'll have you on to discuss it in then. Oh, yeah, any edition that you come out with will plug. I mean, this is, again, you're very shameless on that way. Yeah, yeah.
Very few. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Professor.
We'll talk to you soon.