Shakespeare\u2019s Coriolanus Commentary Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.<\/title><meta name= \"description\" content= \"Coriolanus commentary addresses major themes, major characters such as Coriolanus, Tullus Aufidius, Volumnia, Menenius, literary analysis, drama theory.\"><\/head><\/p>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Commentaries on Shakespeare’s Tragedies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-4f6cdd05 uag-hide-mob\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-dcba7b2a wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">HOME<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div 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target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">GUIDES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-d5da63d7 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/shakespeare-links\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">LINKS<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-19d28286\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-69502be5 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act1\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 1<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0ec42142 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act2\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 2<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-6ac70dcb wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act3\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 3<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-bfd6ecc9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act4\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 4<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-55716ff6 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act5\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 5<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0246bad9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#endnotes\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ENDNOTES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nShakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Coriolanus.<\/em> (The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 1072-1152.)<\/p>\n\n\n\nOf Interest: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rsc.org.uk\/coriolanus\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">RSC Resources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/Library\/Texts\/Cor\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ISE Resources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shakespeare-online.com\/sources\/coriolanussources.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">S-O Sources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/explore\/shakespeare-in-print\/first-folio\/bookreader-68\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">1623 Folio 619-48 (Folger)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0026%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D33\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Livy\u2019s Histories <\/em>Book II.33-40 (modern)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/catalog.hathitrust.org\/Record\/000421498\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Romane Historie of T. Livy, <\/em>Book II(trans. Holland, 1603)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=uc1.b4034284&seq=17\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Plutarch\u2019s Life of Caius Marcius Coriolanus<\/em><\/a> <\/em>| <a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=uc2.ark:\/13960\/t78s4n89f&seq=45&q1=Infinite+proofes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sidney\u2019s \u201cApologie for Poetrie,\u201d pp. 41-42 (1595)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nIntroductory Remarks on Coriolanus<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nCoriolanus\u00a0<\/em>offers us an intense character study. Caius Martius isn\u2019t a deep tragic hero like Macbeth or Hamlet, but Shakespeare\u2019s characterization of him is pure. Structurally and rhetorically, too, the play is superb\u2014an excellence that T. S. Eliot recognizes when he writes in \u201cHamlet and His Problems\u201d from his 1921 collection of essays\u00a0The Sacred Wood,\u00a0<\/em>\u201dCoriolanus<\/em>\u00a0may be not as \u2018interesting\u2019 as\u00a0Hamlet,<\/em>\u00a0but it is, with\u00a0Antony and Cleopatra,<\/em>\u00a0Shakespeare\u2019s most assured artistic success.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn1\" id=\"_ednref1\">[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nShakespeare got the story of Coriolanus from Livy\u2019s Histories<\/em> and Plutarch\u2019s Parallel Lives. <\/em>Martius is a semi-legendary early Roman who would have lived in the early fifth century BCE, so the expulsion of the last Tarquin (Etruscan) ruler Lucius Tarquinius Superbus took place less than two decades before the play\u2019s events (respectively, 509 BCE and the 490s BCE).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s hard to say how real such a person is since early historians mingled historical figures with mythic characters, but in any case Coriolanus was an important and illustrative figure for the Romans, whether legendary or historical. At the least, he would be an exemplar of the harshest patrician view regarding the poorer class of people in ancient Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe play takes for granted some knowledge of a basic point of contention in early Roman times: the \u201cconflict of the orders\u201d <a href=\"#_edn2\" id=\"_ednref2\">[2]<\/a> between commoners, or plebeians, and aristocrats, or patricians. It was some measure of compromise on the part of the aristocratic patricians that allowed the city of Rome to develop into a vital republic and then a mighty empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe immediate context of Martius\u2019 unpopularity would have been that he opposed the reforms stemming from the political rebellion of the plebeian class in what has been called the initial secessio plebis<\/em> of 494 BCE. <a href=\"#_edn3\" id=\"_ednref3\">[3]<\/a> This is how the office of the Tribunes took its origin, as part of a compromise allowing some relief and a voice to the lower orders in Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCaius Martius has his moments, and military strength and cohesion were aristocratic Roman virtues. He certainly possesses the right military values. Still, the crux of the entire play is that one can be so<\/em> Roman that one isn\u2019t truly Roman. Such rigidity isn\u2019t how Rome got to be Rome: \u201cvirtuous, honorable, and inflexible\u201d is a recipe for disaster. The Romans were\u00a0also eminently practical: they were assimilators, builders, willing to spend money and energy on those they conquered and, at least to some extent, to bring the conquered into the orbit of Roman civilization. They were exploiters, too, but it wasn\u2019t all fighting, killing, and dominating.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCaius Martius, whom no one would ever accuse of being truly pragmatic or willing to accommodate the sensibilities of others, insists on military and aristocratic superiority until his maintenance of it becomes a supreme act of foolishness\u2014if this early-fifth-century BCE Roman didn\u2019t predate Aristotle, we would have to say that he violated Aristotle\u2019s notion of virtue as the golden mean between two extremes. <a href=\"#_edn4\" id=\"_ednref4\">[4]<\/a> The sweet spot, writes Aristotle, is right in the middle: one should, for example, show neither foolhardy courage nor abject cowardice, but do one\u2019s duty in spite of genuine fear. That\u2019s valor.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCaius Martius can\u2019t hold to this mean because he is an extremist for \u201cRomanness,\u201d or at least for his social class\u2019s conception of it. The man\u2019s over-the-top quality lies at the root of his tragedy. He possesses and acts upon the extremity of a virtue tied to a particular class and supposedly lacking in the poorer sort of people, and this quality will lead him to disillusion and to betrayal of the ideals that he professes to hold dear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act1\">ACT 1<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 1 (1072-79, the plebeians, near to revolting, complain about the patricians\u2019 treatment of them during a grain shortage; Menenius schools them with a tale about the Senators being Rome\u2019s \u201cstomach\u201d; Martius declares that several \u201cTribunes\u201d will now represent the plebians, and issues a scathing denunciation of the commonfolk; a Volscian army under Tullus Aufidius is said to be menacing Rome, so Martius, Cominius, Lartius, and the Senators go to the Capitol; the Tribunes Brutus and Sicinius remain behind to discuss their foe\u2019s prideful character and his prospects as second-in-command in the imminent war against the Volscians.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nWith regard to the beginning of Coriolanus, <\/em>see also the opening scene of Julius Caesar,<\/em> wherein Murellus becomes angry with the cobbler and other plebeians over their jokes and holiday-making in honor of Caesar. \u201cWherefore rejoice?\u201d asks Murellus, chastising the plebeians in the name of the defeated Pompey the Great. <a href=\"#_edn5\" id=\"_ednref5\">[5]<\/a> Shakespeare seems never to have cared much for the rabble, and his rabbles\u2014even the Roman ones\u2014tend to act like unruly Elizabethan paupers. Jack Cade in Henry VI, <\/em>Part 2 is never far away from such a horde of ill-behaved and irrational citizens. <a href=\"#_edn6\" id=\"_ednref6\">[6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nHere in Coriolanus, <\/em>the First Citizen sums up his self-justification for egging his comrades on to kill Caius Martius with the words, \u201cI speak \/ this in hunger for bread, not in thirst of revenge\u201d (1073, 1.1.20-21). This sounds like class warfare of the sort that actually occurred in early Rome: misery, hoarding, and profiteering. <a href=\"#_edn7\" id=\"_ednref7\">[7]<\/a> Dissent is in the air, and Caius Martius has no sympathy with the commoners. Quite the contrary\u2014he openly despises them. In any case, the plebeians want to be able to buy grain at affordable prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe patrician (and consul) Menenius Agrippa <a href=\"#_edn8\" id=\"_ednref8\">[8]<\/a> tries to talk reason into the citizens with his substantial \u201cbody\u201d analogy (1074-75, 1.1.87ff), in which \u201cThere was a time when all the body\u2019s members \/ Rebelled against the belly \u2026\u201d (1074, 1.1.87-88). <a href=\"#_edn9\" id=\"_ednref9\">[9]<\/a> The people, he suggests, are like a living body\u2019s mutinous members, doing nothing while being supplied by the stomach, the aristocratic class. The Senators are the digestive function, the belly.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn essence, Menenius offers the hungry plebeians an ancient version of 1980s-style \u201ctrickle down\u201d theory to explain how Roman society and economics work. Without the patricians, the idea goes, the common people would fall into famine and disorder, and finally into decay. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe citizens don\u2019t seem impressed with this analogy, and then Caius Martius himself shows up and pours aristocratic hot oil on the common people\u2019s smoldering resentment of his entire class: \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, you dissentious rogues, \/ That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, \/ Make yourselves scabs?\u201d (1076, 1.1.155-57) Obviously, Caius Martius is no friend of the common man and woman in Rome, and the plebeians are entirely right to despise him.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe general\u2019s view, aptly expressed in the above patch of ugly metaphoric language, is that the plebeians cannot and must not be entrusted with any authority. Why? Caius Martius tags their inconstancy, their fickleness, as the cause for this incapacity: \u201cWith every minute you do change a mind \/ And call him noble that was now your hate, \/ Him vile that was your garland\u201d (1076, 1.173-75).<\/p>\n\n\n\nMartius, we know, affines himself to the patrician order, which is closely allied with the military order. He obviously considers this order worthy of the utmost respect and alone capable of steady virtue. One look at modern polls, and we might half agree with him\u2014how contradictory the poor and middling sorts (ourselves, for the most part) are! No firm principles, no clear understanding emerges, at least much of the time. As Oscar Wilde said, \u201cPublic opinion exists only where there are no ideas.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn10\" id=\"_ednref10\">[10]<\/a> Still, it\u2019s taking this distrust of the common man and woman\u2019s sagacity very far indeed to call them \u201cscabs.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn11\" id=\"_ednref11\">[11]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nA messenger arrives to tell the Senators and Caius Martius that a Volscian army is likely to launch a campaign against Rome, with that army\u2019s leader to be Tullus Aufidius. <a href=\"#_edn12\" id=\"_ednref12\">[12]<\/a> Martius expresses great respect for Aufidius, saying, \u201cwere I anything but what I am, \/ I would wish me only he\u201d (1077, 1.1.222-23) and \u201c\u201cHe is a lion \/ That I am proud to hunt\u201d (1078, 1.1.226-27).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe party of Senators accompany the generals Lartius, Cominius and Martius to the Capitol following upon this news, and Martius scatters the common people with the nasty command, \u201cThe Volsces have much corn: take these rats thither \/ To gnaw their garners\u201d (1078, 1.1.240-41).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Tribunes Brutus and Sicinius are left alone on the stage, and they discuss not only the fierce pridefulness of Martius but also the gain in reputation that may come his way from being placed as second-in-command in the upcoming action against the Volscians\u2014the blame, they reason, will be pinned to Cominius, while Martius will get much credit for anything positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 2 (1079-80, Aufidius talks over the Romans\u2019 war plans with the Volscian Senators, and looks forward to battling Martius, whom he admires as much as Martius admires him.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nTullus Aufidius is introduced to us in the second scene, and he seems jealous of Caius Martius, to whom he always loses. He probably feels a bit like the modern rental car company that has to try harder because \u201cWe\u2019re number two.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn13\" id=\"_ednref13\">[13]<\/a> The Volscians are a rival people neighboring Roman territory, and conquering such neighbors is how Rome grew first into a great city and finally into an empire. <a href=\"#_edn14\" id=\"_ednref14\">[14]<\/a> Aufidius is the chief warrior of the Volscians, but the Roman Caius Martius is a stronger, abler soldier. Jealousy and envy flows through Aufidius, bordering on obsession and hatred.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut the feeling and regard go both ways. Martius regards Aufidius as a worthy adversary, and that\u2019s something he needs. The first act sets us up for this struggle: we will see Caius Martius charging in through the gates of Corioles, a retreat occurring and then Martius spurring the Romans into battle again.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut for the moment, Aufidius explains to a Volscian senator that things look bad in Rome, what with all the class strife. The Romans are gearing up for war, and the Volscians are in arms as well since they expect a fight to come their way. At the same time, Aufidius points out that the Romans always seem to have gathered sufficient intelligence to know precisely what the Volscians will do next.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs for Aufidius himself, he looks forward to nothing so much as single combat with his personal adversary, saying to the Senators: \u201cIf we and Caius Martius chance to meet, \/ \u2018Tis sworn between us we shall ever strike \/ Till one can do no more\u201d 1080, 1.2.34-36).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 3 (1080-82, Volumnia educates Martius\u2019s wife, Virgilia, about masculine virtue; Valeria points to young Martius\u2019s shredding of a butterfly as proof of the boy\u2019s martial spirit; Valeria delivers news that Caius Martius is now approaching the Volscian city of Corioles.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nCaius Martius\u2019s mother Volumnia is a typically upstanding Roman matron: \u201cI pray you, daughter, sing, or express yourself in a \/ more comfortable sort\u2026\u201d (1080, 1.3.1-2), she tells Martius\u2019s wife Virgilia, explaining to her that she ought to\u00a0rejoice\u00a0<\/em>in the absence of her husband since that absence signifies he is fighting as a man ought to do. Some of Volumnia\u2019s stern pronouncements may strike us as excessive. We are (often rightly) fond of calling out \u201ctoxic masculinity.\u201d But for a Roman matron of the sixth century BCE, her attitude would no doubt be considered appropriate. Softness was not an option. <a href=\"#_edn15\" id=\"_ednref15\">[15]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nVirgilia must, therefore, respect the military bearing and mission of Caius Martius: it\u2019s better to be a warrior than a lover and a man of peace. \u201cEither come home bearing that shield, or lying dead upon it,\u201d as the Spartan mothers used to say to the sons they sent off to war. <a href=\"#_edn16\" id=\"_ednref16\">[16]<\/a> Volumnia\u2019s friend Valeria refers to young Martius (the son of Caius Martius and Virgilia, that is) showing some of his father\u2019s ferocity: the boy apparently shredded a hapless butterfly with his teeth while she watched (1081, 1.3.54-61).<\/p>\n\n\n\nVirgilia and Volumnia\u2019s patrician friend Valeria asks about little Martius at home, and passes along her own anecdote about how the boy tried to catch a butterfly and then, in his anger, tore it to pieces with his teeth: \u201cOh, I warrant,\u201d she says, \u201chow he mammocked it!\u201d (1081, 1.3.61) This act of cruelty\u2014shredding a butterfly with one\u2019s teeth\u2014is taken as a sign that Martius Jr. is just like his ferocious, temperamental father.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe rest of the scene is taken up with Virgilia\u2019s refusal to cross the threshold of the family home until Caius Martius comes home victorious. Valeria teases her by calling her a would-be Penelope, Odysseus\u2019s wife who resisted attempts to get her to accept a suitor on the assumption that Odysseus must by now be long dead, but such comparisons are of no effect, and Virgilia remains steadfast in her intention to stay home.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 4 (1082-84, while the Romans ready a siege of Corioles, the Volscians come out to prevent them from besieging the town; Martius shows his valor against Aufidius and the Volscians, but also gets shut in by himself with the Volscians, behind their own gates; blood-soaked, Martius reopens the gates for his Roman soldiers to enter Corioles.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Volsces pour out of Corioles and attack the Roman army, driving it back to its own trenches. Then Martius displays his valor in full, charging the Volsces and crashing through their gates, only to find that his soldiers have not emulated his heroic deed. Martius is momentarily shut by himself within the gates of Volscian Corioles, and even Lartius is all but certain that he is dead, but he bravely fights his way to freedom and comes back bearing honorable wounds. This time, the Roman forces succeed in their effort to break into Corioles.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scenes 5-8 (1084-88, while Lartius holds down Corioles, which the Romans have now taken, Caius Martius assists Cominius in a battle near that Volscian city, and inspires the Roman soldiers to show courage; Lartius is finally able to join up with Cominius; Martius is victorious over Aufidius and the Volscians, driving them back from the field of battle.)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Scene 5, the Roman troops, as was common among ancient armies, take advantage of this opening and then immediately fall to plundering the city, <a href=\"#_edn17\" id=\"_ednref17\">[17]<\/a> prompting Caius Martius to denounce them\u2014or at least the common soldiers, whom he later sardonically refers to as \u201cour gentlemen\u201d (1086, 1.7.42). Caius Martius himself pines to fight Aufidius directly, along with his fellow Volscians, but for the present he declares that he is going to set out to help Cominius.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy Scene 6, Cominius, <a href=\"#_edn18\" id=\"_ednref18\">[18]<\/a> who commands the Roman forces, has ordered a retreat for strategic purposes: he has heard that the Romans were driven back to their defenses, but does not know yet that they subsequently managed to enter Corioles. Martius arrives and is welcomed warmly by Cominius, and then he asks his friend to set him loose against his fearsome foe. His request is, \u201cby th\u2019 vows \/ We have made to endure friends, that you directly \/ Set me against Aufidius and his Antiates \u2026\u201d (1086, 1.6.57-59). <a href=\"#_edn19\" id=\"_ednref19\">[19]<\/a> Martius chooses some of his best men, and is ready to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Scene 7, Lartius arranges a guard to keep Corioles from escaping its capture, and then sets forth to help Cominius and Martius on the battlefield.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy Scene 8, Caius Martius and Aufidius square off, with Martius saying \u201cI\u2019ll fight with none but thee, for I do hate thee \/ Worse than a promise-breaker\u201d (1087, 1.8.1-2), and the outcome is predictable: the Roman wins, and Aufidius <a href=\"#_edn20\" id=\"_ednref20\">[20]<\/a> and his Volscians are driven from the scene of the fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 9 (1088-90, Cominius hails Martius as \u201cCoriolanus\u201d and heaps honors upon him, though Martius, true to form, is unsettled by such attention and calls it flattery.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nCominius declares that \u201cRome must know \/ The value of her own\u201d (1088, 1.9.20-21). In other words, there\u2019s a political dimension to the acts of valor that Martius has performed, unwilling though the latter may be to think of them in that way. He sounds genuinely noble when he cites his reasoning: \u201cWhen drums and trumpets shall \/ I\u2019th\u2019 field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be \/ Made all of false-faced soothing\u201d (1089, 1.9.42-44). All the same, Martius is forced to give in to Cominius\u2019s persistent attempts, and is hailed \u201cMartius Caius Coriolanus.\u201d We will call him \u201cCoriolanus\u201d from this point onward.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe newly renamed Coriolanus asks for one little favor, and that is to free a poor man who treated him with great kindness during the battle. But this gesture\u2014this \u201cone nice thing\u201d that the exalted patrician and general might have done for the little people\u2014goes awry when Coriolanus, in his tiredness, simply forgets the man\u2019s name.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 10 (1090-91; Aufidius tells a few of his soldiers that he will destroy Coriolanus by any means necessary\u2014so much for heroism.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nCoriolanus\u2019s attitude in Scene 9 contrasts starkly with Aufidius\u2019s anguished amoral will to power in Scene 10: he tells one of his men that he has lost so many times to Coriolanus that his honor is already stained. And with that in mind, he declares, \u201cI\u2019ll potch at him some way: \/ Or wrath or craft may get him\u201d (1090, 1.10.14-15). To borrow a modern idiom, we might say that Aufidius has let go of his strict adherence to the ancient honor code and given in to the imperative that he must defeat Coriolanus \u201cby any means necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nOf course, that warrior does not know about this change of heart on the part of his supposedly steadfast, worthy Volscian enemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act2\">ACT 2<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 1 (1091-97, Menenius criticizes the tribunes Brutus and Sicinius for disliking Coriolanus\u2019s pride; the general is welcomed home and is expected to stand for consul, but the tribunes plot his destruction on the basis of that honor.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nFrom the beginning, the tribunes of the people were a grudging gift to the plebeians\u2014they offered the commonfolk some measure of representation, without fundamentally challenging the supremacy of the patrician class. <a href=\"#_edn21\" id=\"_ednref21\">[21]<\/a> Brutus and Sicinius can\u2019t stand Coriolanus\u2019s open contempt for the common lot, or his arrogance and rigidity, and in arguing with the patrician Menenius, they make it very clear that they fear and distrust Caius Martius.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBrutus and Sicinius both say that Martius is blamable for his \u201cpride\u201d and for his habit of \u201ctopping all others in boasting\u201d (1091, 2.1.17-18). Menenius, for his part, sizes up his adversaries as petty men, fools incapable of accomplishing anything on their own. They are, he says, \u201ca brace of unmer- \/ iting, proud, violent, testy magistrates \u2026\u201d (1092, 2.1.39-40). The tribunes in turn insinuate that Menenius is more of a gourmand than a serious statesman: he is, they say, \u201cunderstood to be a per- \/ fecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher in the \/ Capitol\u201d (1092, 2.1.73-75).<\/p>\n\n\n\nVolumnia, Caius Martius\u2019s mother, puts an end to this mutual class-saturated hazing by announcing that the great man is on his way back to Rome, victorious in battle as usual. In an almost comical vein, Volumnia and Menenius both celebrate the fact that Martius bears some battle-wounds, as he is wont to do: \u201cOh, he is wounded, I thank the gods for\u2019t\u201d (1093), says the Roman matron extraordinaire, while Menenius tempers his glee, hoping only for some minor <\/em>wounds. That seems sensible of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSo successful has Martius been that he has been granted a third triumph, and for the latest two wounds in his full tally of 27\u2014Menenius tells us so\u2014Martius is to be immediately given the honorary title \u201cCoriolanus.\u201d This title brings Volumnia joy, even if Coriolanus himself sounds flummoxed by the addition. But what Volumnia most wants now is one more title for her son: consul. And so on to the Capitol the aristocratic party goes, the better to seek that office. <a href=\"#_edn22\" id=\"_ednref22\">[22]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nBrutus and Sicinius remain behind, and at once begin to complain about Coriolanus\u2019s new honors and likely damaging stint as consul. The worst of it is, they admit, that just now the people are full of enthusiasm and praise for the starchy militarist: \u201cAll tongues speak of him, and the blear\u00e8d sights \/ Are spectacled to see him\u201d (1095, 2.1.193-94). The rest of the description of how the people bustle to catch a glimpse of Coriolanus is reminiscent of the opening tableau in Julius Caesar, <\/em>in which the common people make much of the conquering hero Caesar. <a href=\"#_edn23\" id=\"_ednref23\">[23]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nBrutus and Sicinius, two of the five tribunes of the people, together plan to use Coriolanus\u2019s great pride and rigid hatred of the plebeians to destroy him. They believe he will balk at doing the (to him) humiliating necessaries of one who seeks the consulship, which is to stand before the people in humble dress and seek their approval singly and collectively. This dictates, of course, that they as tribunes should insist on the fulfillment of this ritual, thereby enraging Coriolanus to give up the attempt altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe tribunes agree that they must remind the people of how much this haughty man despises them, and how little he thinks of their capacity for self-determination. If they fail in making this case, they say, \u201cour authority\u2019s for an end\u201d (1096, 2.1.232). They are right to fear Coriolanus\u2019s ascendancy as the so-called \u201cconflict of orders\u201d was already an established cause of friction in early Rome. <a href=\"#_edn24\" id=\"_ednref24\">[24]<\/a> The general has shown himself to be an absolutist in favor of patrician rule, and he has little aptitude for the vital skills involved in mediating deep political tensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 2 (1097-1101, the Senate convenes, and Cominius lauds Coriolanus, with the Senate selecting him to stand for the powerful office of consul; two officers debate Coriolanus\u2019s hatred of the plebeians; Cominius praises his valor against the Volscians; the haughty general asks to be excused from practically begging for the consulship before the commonfolk, but Sicinius insists on the ceremony being honored.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAt the Capitol, the First and Second officers debate the merits of Coriolanus\u2019s attitude in hating the plebeians for their inconstancy and lack of honor: the First Officer refutes the more generous argument of the Second, saying, \u201che seeks their hate with greater devotion than \/ they can render it him\u201d (1097, 2.2.17-18). It\u2019s only his undeniable valor as a soldier that keeps them in awe. Still, both officers agree that Coriolanus is \u201ca worthy man\u201d (1098, 2.2.32).<\/p>\n\n\n\nNow that Coriolanus is expected to go up for a consulship, he must stand in the public square and ask the plebeians humbly for the honor he believes he has already earned with his military prowess. Brutus moves to ensure that the ritual is to be respected, and adds that plebeian approval comes with one condition: the general must \u201cremember \/ A kinder value of the people than \/ He hath hereto prized them at\u201d (1098, 2.2.55-57). However, Coriolanus removes himself from the proceedings at the mere thought of hearing his wounds told back to him for plebeian ratification.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCoriolanus would accept the power of the consulship, but he rigidly opposes the vulgar means by which it must be obtained. To hear praise for his valor even from Cominius is intolerable, Coriolanus says, and, as he puts the matter, \u201cI had rather have my wounds to heal again \/ Than hear say how I got them\u201d (1099, 2.2.66-67).<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo patch the time until Coriolanus\u2019s return, Cominius steps in with some striking rhetoric in praise of the man\u2019s valor, and his ability to turn even the most cowardly soldier into a stalwart Roman fighter: \u201cAs weeds before \/ A vessel under sail, so men obeyed \/ And fell below his stem\u201d (1099, 2.2.102-04). The rest of Cominius\u2019s speech sounds like Homer\u2019s praise of Achilles in his deadly zeal to slay the Trojan foe: \u201cfrom face to foot \/ He was a thing of blood whose every motion \/ Was timed with dying cries\u201d (1100, 2.2.105-07). <a href=\"#_edn25\" id=\"_ednref25\">[25]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nCoriolanus tries to resist going through with the literal \u201cstanding\u201d part of \u201cstanding for consul,\u201d as he asks his partisan Menenius, \u201cPlease you \/ That I may pass this doing\u201d (1100, 2.2.135-36). Sicinius, as we might have predicted, is having none of this stinting of the ritual, insisting, \u201cSir, the people \/ Must have their voices; neither will they bate \/ One jot of ceremony (1100, 2.2.136-38). That must be very satisfying for Sicinius to say, as it sorely tests Coriolanus\u2019s never-robust patience. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIt isn\u2019t difficult to understand Coriolanus\u2019s position, starchy though the man is. He\u2019s a patrician and a warrior, but in order to take his place in the political order\u2014i.e. to follow the \u201cnatural\u201d career path, the cursus honorum, <\/em><a href=\"#_edn26\" id=\"_ednref26\">[26]<\/a> for such a great nobleman. He must submit to means that he considers vile, and use his valor and deeds as a bargaining chip to exchange with people whom he considers parasites, not citizens vital to the idea or reality that is \u201cRome.\u201d So why seek the office of consul then?\u00a0Why not just retire to his estate and live nobly?<\/p>\n\n\n\nWell, aside from the fact that this is what Coriolanus\u2019s mother, Volumnia, wants him to do, it is simply expected of him by his class. Moreover, it\u2019s a matter of future fame. Coriolanus must promote his valiant achievements if he means to perpetuate his name in the traditional way. The Greek and Roman \u201cafterlife\u201d is just as much identified with one\u2019s posthumous reputation as with any fine notions about beds of asphodel in Elysium or the more shadowy, grey-tinged landscape of leveling Hades. <a href=\"#_edn27\" id=\"_ednref27\">[27]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhile an illustrious Roman is still alive, this family- and class-driven drive to take up an honorable traditional office seems closely tied to the concept of an afterlife. Not to be an actor in the game is to be forgotten more quickly than one would like. Coriolanus\u2019s dilemma is that if the honor he has won and upon which he stands is to attain its full value, it must be recognized by others. Unused or not put into some appropriate form and enlisted in fitting action, it rusts and falls into oblivion. <a href=\"#_edn28\" id=\"_ednref28\">[28]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 3 (1101-07, Coriolanus appears before the people and gruffly seeks their \u201cvoices\u201d; despite his mockery, the people consent; soon, however, they revoke their consent, with the Tribunes egging them on so they can work Coriolanus\u2019s destruction.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe citizens themselves enter the proceedings for Coriolanus\u2019s consulship believing\u2014at least in the view of the Third Citizen\u2014that \u201cfor the multitude to be ingrate- \/ ful were to make a monster of the multitude \u2026\u201d (1101, 2.3.9-10). The others are a bit more willing to complain about the office-seeker in question, but on the whole they seem disposed to accept his consulship. <a href=\"#_edn29\" id=\"_ednref29\">[29]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nUnfortunately, Coriolanus doesn\u2019t have the temperament or the impulse control to run even a brief campaign for office. The scene in which he refuses to stand for the consulship and then gets talked into doing so is the stuff of modern situation comedy: a character says, \u201cI\u2019ll never do such and such,\u201d and then we see a jump-cut of the same character doing exactly<\/em> such and such.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCoriolanus\u2019s effort begins, \u201cYou know the cause, sir, of my standing here \u2026\u201d (1102, 2.3.58), and things only go downhill from there. The people want to hear the cause repeated all the same. In the end, Coriolanus turns to a species of metadrama that can hardly please the common people: he puts on a little piece of insincere street theater, saying of their inclinations openly, \u201csince the \/ wisdom of their choice is rather to have my hat than my \/ heart, I will practice the insinuating nod and be off to them \/ most counterfeitly \u2026\u201d (1103, 2.3.91-94).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is not the sort of act that even a good politician could easily pull off, and Coriolanus is not a good politician. Here, his little play, along with his follow-up about \u201ccustom,\u201d only sets him up for the great fall to come afterwards. \u201cCustom calls me to\u2019t,\u201d says Coriolanus sarcastically, and \u201cWhat custom wills, in all things should we do\u2019t \u2026\u201d (1103, 2.3.110-11). In other words, he is willing to go through the prescribed motions, so long as this whole distasteful spectacle is soon over with. He also wants everyone present to know that he considers it utterly beneath him.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe tend to think of the Romans as wedded to their ancient traditions as an integral part of their identity, but in this instance, we see an \u201cold Roman\u201d showing contempt for one of his country\u2019s vital traditions simply because he can\u2019t abide the people taking part in it. It\u2019s easy to imagine witnessing Coriolanus\u2019s micro-expressions of disgust, and his nausea at having to spend time among the poorer lot: they literally stink in his high-born nostrils.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe citizens assent, but they almost immediately begin to have second thoughts: \u201cHe mocked us when he begged our voices\u201d (1104, 2.3.151), says the Second Citizen, and others make similar critical observations. The Tribunes see the value in this turnabout, and they goad the people to revoke their own approval of Coriolanus\u2019s consulship, even telling them to say it was the Tribunes\u2019 fault that Coriolanus was approved in the first place: \u201cLay \/ A fault on us, your tribunes, that we labored, \/ No impediment between, but that you must \/ Cast your election on him\u201d (1106, 2.3.217-20).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Tribunes are playing Mark Antony in the marketplace: as Antony said, \u201cMischief, thou art afoot; \/ Take thou what course thou wilt.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn30\" id=\"_ednref30\">[30]<\/a> To snatch away an honor granted is much more galling than to refuse it at the outset. Brutus and Sicinius know that Coriolanus won\u2019t brook such a grave insult to his accomplishments and pride: the human powder keg will explode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act3\">ACT 3<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 1 (1107-15, Lartius tells Coriolanus what Aufidius is up to; Coriolanus scorns the plebeians\u2019 revocation, and blames the patricians for having granted them any say in Roman affairs; Cominius and Menenius try in vain to change his mind: the Tribunes, accusing Coriolanus of treason and tyranny, try to arrest him and send him to be cast down from the Tarpeian Rock; the patricians manage to save Coriolanus only by promising to bring him to the marketplace, where the Tribunes will conduct a quick trial; the Senate has returned Corioles to the Volscians.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nFrom Lartius, Coriolanus hears an interesting bit of information about Aufidius. Now that Corioles has been breached by the Romans, the Volscian champion is ashamed of his own people. It seems he no longer sees the Volscians as an adequate vehicle for his own valor. Like Coriolanus in relation to the Romans, Aufidius exceeds his people\u2019s worth, exceeds the worth even of the Volscian nobility. For that reason, reports Lartius, Aufidius has retired for now to Antium, but he still wants to destroy Coriolanus: \u201che would pawn his fortunes \/ To hopeless restitution, so he might \/ Be called your vanquisher\u201d (1107, 3.1.15-17).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBrutus and Sicinius stand by as Coriolanus talks with his fellow patricians in a Roman street. Addressing in part the dynamics of power, the famous \u201cconflict of orders\u201d <a href=\"#_edn31\" id=\"_ednref31\">[31]<\/a> that has long beset Rome, Coriolanus says derisively of the people: \u201cin soothing them, we nourish gainst our Senate the cockle \/ Of rebellion, insolence, sedition \u2026\u201d (1108, 3.1.66-68). His name-calling is as crisp as ever: \u201cso shall my lungs \/ Coin words till their decay against those measles \/ Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought \/ The very way to catch them\u201d (1109, 3.1.75-78).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy, asks the Tribune Brutus, should the people favor a man who speaks about them in such a manner? Coriolanus\u2019s answer is chilling, but not unpredictable. Taking the troublesome grain shortages in Rome as his example, he makes the point that somebody must lead; somebody must maintain order, and in his view, the plebeians, based on their propensity to mutiny and their demands for what does not belong to them, are certainly not the people who should be entrusted to do so. In his view, they are parasites, not a vital part of Roman society.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIf the many are allowed to win simply because of their numbers and their clamor, he insists, then all is lost: \u201cThus we debase \/ The nature of our seats and make the rabble \/ Call our cares \u2018fears,\u2019 which will in time \/ Break ope the locks o\u2019th\u2019 Senate and bring in \/ The crows to peck the eagles\u201d (1110, 3.1.132-36). Order is at the center of Coriolanus\u2019s political philosophy, which seems to be grounded in his military experience and his status as a leading patrician.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBrutus and Sicinius don\u2019t necessarily disagree about keeping order, but they\u2019re coming at the matter from their own class-based perspective, and they resent Coriolanus\u2019s assumption that the plebeian order and its demands are illegitimate, even worthless. The general sees it as patrician cowardice even to temporize with the lower orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy the time Coriolanus argues that the higher-class Romans must \u201cpluck out \/ The multitudinous tongue \u2026\u201d (1110, 3.1.152-53) if they want the state to be whole\u2014i.e., they must get rid of the office of the Tribunes\u2014Brutus and Sicinius have heard more than enough, and they accuse their antagonist of being a revolutionary, a \u201ctraitorous innovator\u201d (1111, 3.1.171) rather than the old-guard traditionalist Coriolanus no doubt considers himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhether the charge of treachery that Brutus and Sicinius level is as yet entirely fair is open to question, since, to be fair, Coriolanus hasn\u2019t simply declared himself Rome\u2019s dictator. Nonetheless, events are running in the Tribunes\u2019 favor, so they take advantage of the general\u2019s wildly provocative words, calling loudly for Coriolanus\u2019s apprehension and execution by being cast off the top of the Tarpeian Rock <a href=\"#_edn32\" id=\"_ednref32\">[32]<\/a> (1112, 3.1.206-08).<\/p>\n\n\n\nA scuffle takes place, and Menenius says he will try to smooth things over, but we don\u2019t need an augurer to know how that <\/em>plan will turn out. Menenius also speaks to the point when he has a moment alone with a fellow patrician. He says that Coriolanus, as we would put it today, has no filter: \u201cHis heart\u2019s his mouth: \/ What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent \u2026\u201d (1113, 3.1.250-51). With Coriolanus, no political mediation is possible. In his person and temperament, he repudiates a few centuries of Roman history filled with both negotiation and violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere follows some bandying about of the \u201ccorporeal metaphor\u201d that we heard about from Menenius in Act 1, Scene 1. This time, the First Citizen says that the Tribunes are the \u201cmouths\u201d of the plebeian order, and the common people are its \u201chands\u201d (1114, 3.1.264-65). Menenius and Sicinius also trade barbs with the help of a \u201cdisease\u201d metaphor: Sicinius sees Coriolanus as a disease in himself that must be rooted out, while Menenius says he is simply in need of a cure. (1115, 3.1.286-88)<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo end the scene, Menenius brings up the dread subject of \u201cfaction\u201d that has long bedeviled the Republic. <a href=\"#_edn33\" id=\"_ednref33\">[33]<\/a> It\u2019s best, says the old patrician, to \u201cProceed by process, \/ Lest parties\u2014as he is beloved\u2014break out \/ And sack great Rome with Romans\u201d (1115, 3.1.305-07). This seems to have some effect on Brutus and Sicinius, who advise the people to put down their weapons. Coriolanus will, the Tribunes and Menenius agree, come to the marketplace to face judgment.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 2 (1115-19, Coriolanus\u2019s patrician relatives and friends\u2014chiefly Volumnia, Cominius, and Menenius\u2014fearing civil strife, talk him into feigning contrition at his imminent trial in the marketplace; Coriolanus makes a dubious promise to his supporters.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the third act, we have seen Coriolanus first getting talked into presenting himself to the plebeians, then infuriated by the result. Now his well-wishers, fearing the worst sort of civil unrest, try to convince him to display contrition in the marketplace where the people assemble. Volumnia\u2019s argument is the canniest: \u201cIf it be honor in you wars to seem \/ The same you are not \u2026 \/ \u2026 how is it less or worse \/ That it shall hold companionship in peace \/ With honor as in war \u2026?\u201d (1116-17, 3.2.46-50)<\/p>\n\n\n\nVolumnia equates the tactics used in war to the means deployed in favor of certain ends in political and social life. She does this in a way that would easily win Machiavelli\u2019s approval. <a href=\"#_edn34\" id=\"_ednref34\">[34]<\/a> It\u2019s uncertain whether Coriolanus believes his mother\u2019s sage rhetoric, but he accedes to his her request all the same, saying like a sullen child, \u201cWith my base tongue give to my noble heart \/ A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do\u2019t\u201d (1118, 3.2.100-01). One last rather weak attempt to get out of the task, and Coriolanus resigns himself to the ordeal of the marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 3 (1119-22, In the marketplace, the Tribunes charge Coriolanus with treason and attempted tyranny, deliberately provoking him into scorning and abandoning Rome; Coriolanus is initially sentenced to death, but then the sentence is changed to banishment.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nBrutus and Sicinius are politically adept, and their plan is based on a thorough understanding of their noble quarry. They will simply keep jabbing him with accusations (tyranny, malice, unfair distribution of war-spoils) that get under his skin until he explodes with rage and says something irrevocably damning to his own cause: \u201cBeing once chafed, he cannot \/ Be reined again to temperance\u201d (1119, 3.3.27-28). In politics\u2014even ancient politics\u2014saying what you really think can get you into very hot water, and that is exactly what Brutus and Sicinius are counting on as they await the arrival of Coriolanus.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCoriolanus soon finds himself charged by Brutus and Sicinius with tyranny and treason: \u201cWe charge that you have contrived to take \/ From Rome all seasoned office and to wind \/ Yourself into a power tyrannical, \/ For which you are a traitor to the people\u201d (1120, 3.3.61-64).<\/p>\n\n\n\nCoriolanus immediately takes the bait, and he belts out, \u201cThe fires i\u2019th\u2019 lowest hell fold in the people!\u201d (1121, 3.3.66) he snarls, and the game is up. \u201cI banish you, \/ And here remain with your uncertainty! \/ Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts \u2026\u201d (1122, 3.3.120-22), he practically spits at his fellow Romans, and concludes with \u201cDespising \/ For you the city, thus I turn my back. \/ There is a world elsewhere\u201d (1122, 3.3.130-32). Rome is no longer worthy of Coriolanus, to hear him tell it. He has been led to this point by his principled rigidity.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCoriolanus was bred to think of himself as the ultimate Roman, at least in his narrow, class-saturated way, but now he is thoroughly disillusioned with Rome and its people, so much so that he actually invites the capital penalty that is initially pronounced against him, to be softened to exile only by the good graces of Cominius, who prevails upon the Tribunes to alter the punishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCoriolanus has gone from one extreme to the other, and he will soon find, as many ancients apparently did, that exile isn\u2019t as sustainable a model for a compromised person\u2019s future as it might seem. <a href=\"#_edn35\" id=\"_ednref35\">[35]<\/a> Rome is a world unto itself, and leaving it isn\u2019t going to bring Coriolanus peace. By the end of Act 3, this worthy but arrogant man has followed a path not only to personal disgrace but to self-conscious betrayal of the Roman state and its citizens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act4\">ACT 4<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scenes 1-4 (1122-27, Coriolanus bids farewell to his family and well-wishers as he prepares to leave Rome; Volumnia and Virgilia denounce the Tribunes; the Roman Nicanor tells the Volscian spy Adrian that Coriolanus is banished and Rome is in turmoil; Coriolanus travels to the gates of Aufidius\u2019s home in Antium to speak with him.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Scene 1, Coriolanus takes a sad but stoic farewell from Rome, telling his wife and mother, \u201cThe beast \/ With many heads butts me away\u201d (1122, 4.1.1-2), and to Menenius, \u201cTell these sad women \/ \u2018Tis fond to wail inevitable strokes \/ As \u2018tis to laugh at \u2018em\u201d (1123, 4.1.25-27). The new exile tells Cominius and all present that he will stay in touch: \u201cWhile I remain above the ground, you shall \/ Hear from me still, and never of me aught \/ But what is like me formerly\u201d (1123, 4.1.51-53). <\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Scene 2, Volumnia curtly denounces the Tribunes Brutus and Sicinius, and declares when they are gone, \u201cAnger\u2019s my meat. I sup upon myself \/ And so should starve with feeding\u201d (1125, 4.2.50-51).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Scene 3, we hear a conversation between a Volscian named Adrian and Nicanor, a Roman informant to the Volscians, who tells his acquaintance that Rome is full of \u201cstrange insurrections\u201d that pit \u201cthe \/ people against the senators, patricians, and nobles\u201d (1125, 4.3.12-13). The two great factions are working against each other. Nicanor\u2019s assumption that Aufidius \u201cwill \/ appear well in these wars\u201d (1126, 4.3.28-29), however, is somewhat off the mark. It is Coriolanus himself who will shine most brightly in the coming war against Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy Scene 4, Coriolanus has made his way to the home of Tullus Aufidius in Antium. Having brought upon himself his own exile from Rome, he comes in disguise to the home of his great rival if not quite equal, expecting either to be accepted or killed. At this point, it probably doesn\u2019t matter to Coriolanus which fate he is dealt. He has become alienated from what makes him who he is: Roman military and class ideology, a sense of belonging among the best, and even exceeding them.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCoriolanus parses his situation thus: \u201cMy birthplace hate I, and my love\u2019s upon \/ This enemy town. I\u2019ll enter. If he slay me, \/ He does fair justice; if he give me way, I\u2019ll do his country service\u201d (1127, 4.4.23-26). This sounds accurate enough, though Coriolanus\u2019s exclamation, \u201cO world, thy slippery turns!\u201d (1126, 4.4.12) seems more evasive than self-aware.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn any case, either fate\u2014death or enlistment into Aufidius\u2019s Volscian cause\u2014would put an end to the chaos of the present situation. We know that Coriolanus doesn\u2019t deal well with uncertainty or chaos\u2014a debility that links him with another of Shakespeare\u2019s tragic protagonists, Othello.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn36\" id=\"_ednref36\">[36]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 5 (1127-32, Coriolanus visits Aufidius, who has dreamt of him and who welcomes him; servingmen air their views on war; Coriolanus makes what Aufidius considers an astonishing offer to assist the Volscians in their efforts to damage Rome.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn seeking entry to Aufidius\u2019s estate, Coriolanus is at first almost turned away by a pretentious servant who calls him an \u201cass\u201d or a \u201cdaw\u201d (1128, 4.5.42-43), but he eventually gets his message through and finds acceptance. The Roman exile is trapped, and it\u2019s symptomatic that the rhetoric employed by this sometime man of few words swells to prolixity as he makes his attempt to convince Aufidius of his sincerity and usefulness.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt takes Coriolanus a good thirty-five lines to get his circumstances and identity across to his reluctant host, but the sum total of it is that the ex-Roman now wants to put himself in league with anyone who desires vengeance against the great City: \u201cif thou hast \/ A heart of wreak in thee that wilt revenge \/ Thine own particular wrongs and stop those maims \/ Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight \/ And make my misery serve thy turn\u201d (1129, 4.5.83-87).<\/p>\n\n\n\nOnce he knows the stranger\u2019s identity, Aufidius admits to envying Coriolanus, even to the point of what sounds to many critics like homoeroticism: \u201cThou has beat me out \/ Twelve several times, and I have nightly since \/ Dreamt of encounters twixt thyself and me\u2014\/ We have been down together in my sleep \u2026\u201d (1129, 4.5.120-23). These are in any case enemies who know each other\u2019s qualities intimately, almost to the point of identifying with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe intimacy between Coriolanus and Aufidius stems in part from their outsized stature; neither man is entirely contained by his political and geographic particulars. Hegel\u2019s master-servant dialectic implies that authentic selfhood requires reciprocity, mutual recognition. <a href=\"#_edn37\" id=\"_ednref37\">[37]<\/a> Aufidius may not exactly be a servant-consciousness, but Coriolanus has<\/em> been the master, one who doesn\u2019t need to \u201cthink\u201d himself deeply. What was called in ancient times amicitia perfecta,<\/em> or the love between two men, <a href=\"#_edn38\" id=\"_ednref38\">[38]<\/a> no doubt expressed itself along a sliding scale, from Platonic to a more sexualized or at least \u201cfraught\u201d union.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn any case, Aufidius seems to understand that Coriolanus is a production into which a great deal of Roman masculine energy has been invested. A constant and convincing projection of strength requires a great deal of a person\u2019s energy. But the Volscian also knows that his Roman counterpart is not very self-aware, as we would put it today. <\/p>\n\n\n\nNow there\u2019s nowhere for Coriolanus to turn except to the opposite side and to an enemy with whom he feels an affinity based on his appraisal of the man\u2019s personal value as a soldier and an aristocrat. Coriolanus is in Aufidius\u2019s clutches in spite of his own former dominance in battle over Aufidius and indeed all of the Volscian commanders. But for the moment, Coriolanus receives a warm welcome from his old adversary, who has such high hopes for what Coriolanus will be able to do for the Volscians against Rome that he offers him half of his own military commission. <\/p>\n\n\n\nSeveral servingmen round off Scene 5 with gossip, with the second such relating how assiduously Aufidius is wooing his old nemesis: \u201cOur general himself makes a mistress \/ of him, sanctifies himself with\u2019s hand \u2026\u201d (1131, 4.5.195-96). The First and Third Servingmen unite in their excitement at the coming of hostilities: \u201cLet me have war, say I\u201d and \u201cThe wars for my money\u201d (1131-32, 4.5.221, 4.5.231). Their view is similar to what many have opined: peace makes a people dull and soft, while war makes them strong. <a href=\"#_edn39\" id=\"_ednref39\">[39]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 6 (1132-36, just as the Tribunes and Citizens are congratulating themselves on banishing Coriolanus, they become alarmed by news that Volscian forces led by Coriolanus and Aufidius are invading the territories surrounding Rome proper.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Tribunes Brutus and Sicinius seem quite self-assured at the beginning of this scene since they think Rome is doing fine without Coriolanus. They soon find out, however, that the Volscians are raiding Roman territories and that Coriolanus is among their leaders. The impact of this information throws the Tribunes into a panic.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCominius, hardly eager to relieve their anxiety, tells them and surrounding citizens, \u201cYou have holp to ravish your own daughters and \/ To melt the city leads upon your pates, \/ To see your wives dishonored to your noses\u201d (1134, 4.6.81-83). This isn\u2019t unrealistic since attacks on civilians during ancient wars were vicious. Another example of such references would be Henry V\u2019s threats against the town leaders of Harfleur, his question to them in Henry V <\/em>being, \u201cwill you yield, and this avoid, \/ Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy\u2019d?\u201d <a href=\"#_edn40\" id=\"_ednref40\">[40]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nSome of the citizens in the present scene, put in mortal fear by what they\u2019ve heard, repent their action against Coriolanus. Laments one, \u201cI ever said we were i\u2019th\u2019 wrong when we banished \/ him\u201d (1136, 4.6.154-55). The play in general depicts the plebeians as indecisive and self-serving, even if they have right on their side when it comes to the grain shortages that plague Rome. <a href=\"#_edn41\" id=\"_ednref41\">[41]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nBased on what Cominius says, the Tribunes have no trouble discerning that they are not among friends: \u201cThese are a side that would be glad to have \/ This true which they so seem to fear\u201d (1136, 4.6.150-51). There is no way to divorce the dreadful news from the class struggle going on in Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 7 (1136-37, Aufidius airs his resentment of Coriolanus, who has drawn a conspicuous amount of praise from Volscian soldiers, and starts plotting to kill him.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAufidius says of Coriolanus, \u201cHe bears himself more proudlier, \/ Even to my person, than I thought he would \/ When first I did embrace him\u201d (1136, 4.7.8-10). We register Aufidius\u2019 deep resentment in still other passages: \u201cAll places yield to him ere he sits down, \/ And the nobility of Rome are his\u201d (1136, 4.7.28-29). But the trouble is that\u2014whether due to pride, a judgment in defect, or nature\u2014Coriolanus can\u2019t \u201cCarry his honors even\u201d (1137, 4.7.37).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAufidius is all but psychoanalyzing his longtime foe. The virtues of a man are subject to \u201cth\u2019interpretation of the time,\u201d say Aufidius (1137, 4.7.50), and we may recall Titus Andronicus, that last honorable Roman amongst scores of Latin-parsing rascals from various lands. <a href=\"#_edn42\" id=\"_ednref42\">[42]<\/a> An insistently ethical person surrounded by immoralists must come to a bad end, as Machiavelli informs us in The Prince. <\/em><a href=\"#_edn43\" id=\"_ednref43\">[43]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, that isn\u2019t necessarily the best framework within which to talk about what Coriolanus is doing. There\u2019s no honor accruing to him from the self-destructive and treasonous path he is now following. Aufidius seems to understand this, and he ends the scene with an instructive rhyme: \u201cWhen, Caius, Rome is thine, \/ Thou art poor\u2019st of all; then shortly art thou mine\u201d (1137, 4.7.56-57).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act5\">ACT 5<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 1 (1137-39, Cominius\u2019s visit fails to soften Coriolanus\u2019s resolve to set fire to Rome; reluctantly, Menenius agrees to try his luck.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nCoriolanus has taken Roman values to a destructive extreme, a fault that cost him the people\u2019s approval and much more. He has turned honor and strength into rigidity, absolute hardness, invulnerability. <a href=\"#_edn44\" id=\"_ednref44\">[44]<\/a> Cominius speaks perceptively on the damage that Coriolanus has done to himself: \u201c\u2019Coriolanus\u2019 \/ He would not answer to, forbade all names. He was a kind of nothing, titleless, \/ Till he had forged himself a name o\u2019th fire \/ Of burning Rome\u201d (1137, 5.1.11-15). But what kind of identity is that for a Roman? <a href=\"#_edn45\" id=\"_ednref45\">[45]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nEver the absolutist, Coriolanus is determined to burn his past behind him, leaving nothing but a fiery present wherein his talents may generate a fierce new reputation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 2 (1139-41, and Menenius has only slightly better luck with Coriolanus, who gives him a letter to bring home; hopes remain that Volumnia and Virgilia will succeed, but thus far the renegade general\u2019s desire to destroy Rome remains constant.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter a longish delay due to the obstinacy of Aufidius\u2019s watchmen, Menenius is finally able to try his hand at softening up Coriolanus. He has slightly better success than Cominius did since Coriolanus at least hands him a letter, saying \u201cI writ it for thy sake\u201d (1141, 5.3.84). But Coriolanus remains firm in his contractual obligation to Aufidius and the Volscians. He is nothing if not a man of his word. The hopes of Rome will turn now to the chance that Coriolanus\u2019s mother and wife might succeed where Cominius and Menenius have failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat the Second Watchman says about Coriolanus after Menenius has made his pitch bodes ominously for Rome: \u201cHe\u2019s the rock, the oak not to be wind-shaken\u201d (1141, 5.3.104). That is a solid metaphor for the strength of passion\u2014one can find it in literature at least as far back as Sappho. <a href=\"#_edn46\" id=\"_ednref46\">[46]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 3 (1141-46, Coriolanus\u2019s family\u2014most of all his mother, Volumnia\u2014prevail upon him to make peace, and Aufidius realizes the opportunity this presents to him.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nVolumnia, Virgilia, and young Martius now visit the Volscian camp to try their hand at getting Coriolanus to relent. Little else remains since the Romans have refused the conditions set forth in the letter he had given to Menenius out of pity. It is clear that the very sight of these three begins to soften the stoic resolve and warlike fury of Coriolanus, even before they speak: \u201cI melt, and am not \/ Of stronger earth than others\u201d (1142, 5.3.28-29).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAt the sight of his family coming to entreat him, Coriolanus tries to maintain his steady, pitiless posture, insisting, \u201cI\u2019ll never \/ Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand \/ As if a man were author of himself \/ And knew no other kin\u201d (1142, 5.3.34-37). Still, he has little choice but to hear them speak, and their arguments prove lethally effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\nVolumnia frames her case by pointing out that her son has put his family in an impossible dilemma: \u201chow can we for our country pray, \/ Whereto we are bound, together with thy victory, \/ Whereto we are bound?\u201d (1144, 5.3.107-09). To this, she adds a concern for reputation: if Coriolanus sacks and burns Rome, all he will do is \u201creap \u2026 such a name \/ Whose repetition will be dogged with curses \u2026\u201d (1145, 5.3.143-44). \u201cThink\u2019st thou it honorable,\u201d asks Volumnia, \u201cfor a noble man \/ Still to remember wrongs?\u201d (1145, 5.3.154-55)<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe sight and sound of his family works, and Coriolanus gives in. This is the third time, since he relented under pressure in originally standing for consul, then in feigning contrition in the marketplace, and now during the hostilities he has brought to Rome\u2019s doorstep.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis time, the cause is pietas,<\/em> <a href=\"#_edn47\" id=\"_ednref47\">[47]<\/a> to which Coriolanus accedes with what seems like relief mingled with foreboding: \u201cThe gods look down, and this unnatural scene \/ They laugh at. O my mother, mother, O! \/ You have won a happy victory to Rome; \/ But for your son \u2026 \/ Most dangerously you have with him prevailed \u2026\u201d (1146, 5.3.184-88). It seems clear that Coriolanus blames not himself for what has just happened, but Volumnia, as if she both dominates him and yet embodies a feminine principle that the tough warrior takes himself as bound to reject.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAufidius, hearing all this and Coriolanus\u2019s weak offering that he will \u201cframe convenient peace\u201d (1146, 5.3.191), makes an aside that reveals his treacherous nature: \u201cI am glad thou hast set thy mercy and thy honor \/ At difference in thee. Out of that I\u2019ll work \/ Myself a former fortune\u201d (1146, 5.3.200-02). Aufidius knows that Coriolanus\u2019s peacemaking can be turned into a reason to dismiss him from the Volscians\u2019 good graces, and thereby win back his own once sterling reputation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOne way of understanding Coriolanus\u2019s impending downfall is that all the human feeling that he tried to bury or burn away now comes flooding back, with disastrous results for him. At least, that is one way to construe the tragic moment in which Coriolanus\u2019s \u201cman of steel\u201d posture yields to the entreaties of the indomitable Volumnia. But see more on the quality of Coriolanus <\/em>as tragedy below, in \u201cFinal Reflections.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scenes 4-5 (1146-48, Menenius laments getting only a letter importing conditions from Coriolanus; good news arrives regarding Coriolanus\u2019s peace offer, and Rome pays homage to Volumnia when she reenters the City.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Scene 4, Menenius describes the implacable will of Coriolanus in somewhat exaggerated terms: \u201cHe wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven \/ to throne in\u201d (1147, 5.4.22-23). It\u2019s hard to resist the notion that to some extent, reputations such as those of Coriolanus stem from such outlandish, divinity-imputing stuff, which vies to outdo similar talk among the heroic cast of Homer\u2019s Iliad <\/em>and Virgil\u2019s Aeneid.<\/em> <a href=\"#_edn48\" id=\"_ednref48\">[48]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nA Messenger reports that the people in their desperation have captured the tribune Brutus and are threatening to kill him if Coriolanus\u2019s wife and mother don\u2019t bring home good news. But just after this, a Second Messenger delivers the news that \u201cThe Volscians are dislodged, and Martius gone\u201d (1147, 5.4.39). In light of this great news, Menenius\u2019s \u201cgodlike\u201d lendings to Coriolanus sound almost comic.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy Scene 5, it\u2019s the women who are being celebrated, not so much Coriolanus. As Volumnia, Virgilia, and Valeria return to Rome, the citizens are told to \u201cStrew flowers before them, \/ Unshout the noise that banished Martius; \/ Repeal him with the welcome of his mother. \/ Cry, \u2018Welcome, ladies, welcome!\u2019\u201d (1148, 5.5.3-6)<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 6 (1148-52; Coriolanus returns to Corioles, only to be betrayed by Aufidius before the city\u2019s lords and then cut down by assassins whom Aufidius has hired.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nRome\u2019s good news sets the stage for Coriolanus\u2019s sad end in Corioles, even as he returns to popular acclaim in that alien city. Aufidius speaks with conspirators of his faction, and resolves in bitterness (misogynistic bitterness at that) to kill his old adversary: \u201cAt a few drops of women\u2019s rheum, which are \/ As cheap as lies, he sold the blood and labor \/ Of our great action. Therefore shall he die, \/ And I\u2019ll renew me in his fall\u201d (1149, 5.6.45-48).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs formerly, Aufidius proves himself devious in deed as well as in vow: fraud seconded by violence is fine by him. Like many political realists, Aufidius evidently construes power as a zero-sum affair, part of an economy that relies on scarcity: more for one person is less for another.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen Coriolanus reveals to the Volscian lords that he has \u201cmade peace \/ With no less honor to the Antiates \/ Than shame to th\u2019 Romans\u201d (1150, 5.6.78-80), and offers to show them the exact conditions in writing, his reward is Aufidius\u2019s urging to the Volscian men of note, \u201cRead it not, noble lords, \/ But tell the traitor in the highest degree \/ He hath abused your powers\u201d (1151, 5.6.83-85).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAufidius follows up this entreaty with another insultingly \u201cfeminizing\u201d description of the moment when Coriolanus surrendered to the women in his family: \u201cat his nurse\u2019s tears \/ He whined and roared away your victory, \/ That pages blushed at him and men of heart \/ Look\u2019d wond\u2019ring each at others\u201d (1150, 5.6.96-99). He even plasters Coriolanus with the supremely insulting epithet, \u201cboy of tears\u201d (1150, 5.6.100). Assassins soon thereafter kill Coriolanus at Aufidius\u2019 bidding, only to provoke the latter\u2019s remorse: \u201cMy rage is gone, \/ And I am struck with sorrow\u201d (1152, 5.6.145-46). No matter\u2014the deed is done.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFinal Reflections on Coriolanus <\/em>as Tragedy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Coriolanus, <\/em>there really does seem to be a classical touch in that the play, like many Greek tragedies, more or less observes the unity of action. It is also\u2014surprisingly, given the play\u2019s martial bent and heroes\u2014much more about the protagonist\u2019s attitude<\/em> than action. That isn\u2019t always the case in Shakespeare\u2019s plays, which tend to offer plenty of physical action and events. Coriolanus <\/em>dwells upon Coriolanus\u2019s excessive virtues and over-the-top expression of them, and on the attitudes of others towards these expressions. This is a pattern that repeats a number of times in the play, and lends it its structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs a character, Coriolanus doesn\u2019t have the complexity of a Macbeth or a Hamlet. He is a one-dimensional fighting man; unlike the melodramatic villain Richard III, he can\u2019t ride chaos to a kingship. Coriolanus seems to be a character devoid of inner conflict or turmoil; his consciousness is unified in its patrician, militaristic cast, and this unity makes him as oddly compelling as he is ultimately resourceless in the face of the dreadful fate that overtakes him. <a href=\"#_edn49\" id=\"_ednref49\">[49]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nSamuel Johnson wrote that when we\u2019re shown vice, it ought to disgust us. Otherwise, a play\u2019s influence over us will be bad. <a href=\"#_edn50\" id=\"_ednref50\">[50]<\/a> In Coriolanus, <\/em>an excess of virtue<\/em> actually becomes disgusting. Being so \u201cRoman\u201d that one is un-Roman isn\u2019t an attractive proposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe might compare this process to its obverse in Antony and Cleopatra, <\/em>wherein Mark Antony is so Roman that he\u2019s capable of embracing eastern luxury, dallying with Cleopatra the Hellenistic Egyptian queen, and yet remaining an iconic, even legendary, Roman. <a href=\"#_edn51\" id=\"_ednref51\">[51]<\/a> There is something outsized about Mark Antony, so that he remains admirable, even magnificent, in defeat, but Coriolanus never looks smaller, more limited, than when he betrays his country due to wounded pride. <\/p>\n\n\n\nAs Machiavelli says, where the crowd is, there\u2019s room only for the crowd and for its own \u201copinion,\u201d which must be acknowledged. <a href=\"#_edn52\" id=\"_ednref52\">[52]<\/a> Our unfortunate Roman general can\u2019t abide that fact; he can\u2019t project an appearance that differs from who he really is. In the end, what he is<\/em> turns out to be so limiting that he can\u2019t overcome the force of circumstance.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAn ancient pattern sheds further light on the tragedy that befalls Coriolanus. It\u2019s the one we can find in the biographies of the Greek general and (according to Plato) favorite pupil of Socrates, Alcibiades (c. 450-404 BCE), <a href=\"#_edn53\" id=\"_ednref53\">[53]<\/a> and the Athenian historian (author of The Peloponnesian War<\/em>) and general Themistocles (c. 524-459 BCE). The former was an aristocrat, and a skilled general whose labyrinthine career made him at times lauded and vilified by the Athenians and who met a bad end in Phrygia. Themistocles (not born an aristocrat) was exiled to Argos and ended up in the service of the Persian ruler Artaxerxes I. <a href=\"#_edn54\" id=\"_ednref54\">[54]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nBoth Alcibiades and Themistocles were the product of their times and of a complex Athenian value system. In both cases, a strong feeling of betrayal or, to borrow a Miltonic phrase, \u201csense of injured merit,\u201d <a href=\"#_edn55\" id=\"_ednref55\">[55]<\/a> seems to have led profoundly talented men to take on the status of traitors to their group. The superiority that may have set prominence before these leaders\u2019 eyes was treated by the Greeks in a mercenary fashion, like a tool to be cast aside as soon as the present work was done, so they ended up alienated from the City that had made them who they were.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCaius Martius Coriolanus\u2019s fate is not dissimilar to that of Themistocles or Alcibiades. He is the living, breathing excess<\/em> of the ancient code that has generated him, and the excess of that caste-based honor code proves destructive both to him personally and to the Roman state.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFinally, we should ask a common and important question about the overall effect of Coriolanus. <\/em>To what extent is this play a tragedy? <\/em>How we answer this question will depend on how we respond to the scene in which Volumnia overcomes Coriolanus\u2019s prideful determination to destroy the city that has exiled him. Does Coriolanus recover or discover his long-suppressed humanity?<\/p>\n\n\n\nIf, at the cost of his own life, he recovers his connection to other human beings, and finds a way to evaluate his worth by some other standard than violence, that sounds like a very recognizable tragic ending: in classical tragedy, the usual price of deep insight is death. But if there\u2019s nothing to recover or discover\u2014if Coriolanus cannot plausibly be thought to have the depth and tenderness required for such a transformation\u2014then we may still experience the play as tragic, but not exactly in the way described as traditional or classical.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo be fair, there is more than one way to define and talk about tragedy, and in Shakespeare\u2019s ten tragic plays, we will find a great deal of variety\u2014perhaps almost as much as Henry James argued that the wonderfully expansive genre of novelistic<\/em> fiction ought to admit. <a href=\"#_edn56\" id=\"_ednref56\">[56]<\/a> Macbeth is not the same kind of protagonist as Hamlet, who is not the same as King Lear, who is not the same as Antony and Cleopatra, who are not the same as Othello, and so forth. In the end, it\u2019s up to readers and audience members to process for themselves what kind of tragic protagonist Coriolanus is.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEdition.<\/strong>\u00a0Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors.\u00a0The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies + Digital Edition.<\/em>\u00a03rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93860-9.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2012, revised 2025 Alfred J. Drake<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDocument Timestamp: 8\/7\/2025 7:18 AM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"endnotes\">ENDNOTES<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref1\" id=\"_edn1\">[1]<\/a> In the same passage, Eliot suggests that Hamlet <\/em>is literature\u2019s \u201cMona Lisa\u201d\u2014oddly compelling stuff, but not a masterpiece. See T. S. Eliot, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bartleby.com\/lit-hub\/the-sacred-wood\/hamlet-and-his-problems\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Hamlet and His Problems<\/a>.\u201d Bartleby.com. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref2\" id=\"_edn2\">[2]<\/a> On the \u201cConflict of the Orders,\u201d see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.livius.org\/articles\/person\/coriolanus-gn-marcius\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gn. Marcius Coriolanus<\/a>\u201d in Livius.org. See also \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldhistory.org\/Plebeians\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Plebeians<\/a>\u201d in the World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref3\" id=\"_edn3\">[3]<\/a> On the first secessio plebis, <\/em>see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.labrujulaverde.com\/en\/2024\/02\/secessio-plebis-the-roman-antecedent-of-the-general-strike-in-which-the-people-abandoned-the-city\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Secessio Plebis, the Roman Antecedent of the General Strike \u2026<\/a>\u201d at LBV: Magazine Cultural Independiente.<\/em> Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref4\" id=\"_edn4\">[4]<\/a> See Aristotle. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0054%3Abekker+page%3D1106a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nichomachean Ethics.<\/em> Becker 1106a26\u2013b28<\/a>. The basic point is that a \u201cvirtue\u201d is to be located at the mean or mid-point between excess of a quality and deficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref5\" id=\"_edn5\">[5]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 288-343. See Murellus\u2019s speech to the plebeians at 289-90, 1.1.31-54.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref6\" id=\"_edn6\">[6]<\/a> Shakespeare was a businessman, a property owner, a bourgeois<\/em> gentleman, and probably, therefore, somewhat conservative when it came to property and wealth, so it makes sense to suppose that he would not have a high tolerance for anarchy and disorder. It\u2019s hard to accept fully the common modern view of Shakespeare as a cultural or political iconoclast\u2014his plays don\u2019t readily support that construction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref7\" id=\"_edn7\">[7]<\/a> The disorder over things like grain shortages and unavailability of affordable land continued through centuries of Roman history. The story of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unrv.com\/empire\/gracchi-brothers.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gracchi Brothers<\/a> (137-121 BCE) is instructive. The plebeians were by no means inclined to remain passive in the teeth of patrician oppressors. See UNRV.com Roman History. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref8\" id=\"_edn8\">[8]<\/a> Agrippa Menenius Lanatus was Consul in 503-02 BCE. See also \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldhistory.org\/Plebeians\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Plebeians<\/a>\u201d in the World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref9\" id=\"_edn9\">[9]<\/a> See Sidney\u2019s 1595 rendition in his \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=uc2.ark:\/13960\/t78s4n89f&seq=45&q1=Infinite+proofes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Apologie for Poetrie.<\/a>\u201c HathiTrust. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref10\" id=\"_edn10\">[10]<\/a> The quip is included in Wilde\u2019s 1894 \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikisource.org\/wiki\/A_Few_Maxims_For_The_Instruction_Of_The_Over-Educated\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated<\/a>.\u201d Wikisource. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref11\" id=\"_edn11\">[11]<\/a> We have a vote in favor of democracy on no less a conservative aristocratic curmudgeon\u2019s authority than that of Sir Winston Churchill, who said in a Parliamentary speech (evidently paraphrasing another writer) that \u201cdemocracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time \u2026\u201d (11 Nov. 1947). See the <a href=\"https:\/\/winstonchurchill.org\/resources\/quotes\/the-worst-form-of-government\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">quote available at the International Churchill Society<\/a>. Accessed 8\/25\/2024. See also Quote Investigator\u2019s interesting <a href=\"https:\/\/quoteinvestigator.com\/2023\/12\/08\/democracy-worst\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">discussion of this idea\u2019s multiple origins<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref12\" id=\"_edn12\">[12]<\/a> On the Volscians, see the entry \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.livius.org\/articles\/people\/volsci\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Volsci<\/a>\u201d at Livius.org. See also \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.historyfiles.co.uk\/KingListsEurope\/ItalyVolsci.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Volsci<\/a>\u201d at Historyfiles.co.uk and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Volsci#:~:text=Volsci%2C%20ancient%20Italic%20people%20prominent,fertile%20land%20of%20southern%20Latium.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Volsci<\/a>\u201d at Brittanica.com. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref13\" id=\"_edn13\">[13]<\/a> In the commercials, Hertz and Avis are the two car-rental antagonists, with Avis saying they \u201ctry harder\u201d because they aren\u2019t \u201cnumber one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref14\" id=\"_edn14\">[14]<\/a> See, for example, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldhistory.org\/Rome\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ancient Rome<\/a>.\u201d World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref15\" id=\"_edn15\">[15]<\/a> The Romans admired stories that showed them being fiercely martial, like Gaius Mucius, who, as Livy recounts, thrust his hand into a fire to impress an Etruscan king with his Roman contempt for pain. See Livy\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0151%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D12\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ab Urbe condita <\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0151%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D12\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">2.12-13<\/a>. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref16\" id=\"_edn16\">[16]<\/a> On this Spartan saying, see Plutarch. In the Moralia,<\/em> see <a href=\"https:\/\/penelope.uchicago.edu\/Thayer\/E\/Roman\/Texts\/Plutarch\/Moralia\/Sayings_of_Spartan_Women*.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Lacaenara Apophthegmata<\/a>, <\/em>or Sayings of Spartan Women.<\/em> #16: \u201cEither this or upon this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref17\" id=\"_edn17\">[17]<\/a> Antiates is a term for the people of the Volscian capital <a href=\"https:\/\/www.timetravelrome.com\/2020\/08\/20\/antium-shakespeare-coriolanus\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Antium<\/a>, modern Italy\u2019s Anzio. Time Travel Rome. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref18\" id=\"_edn18\">[18]<\/a> That is, the Consul Postumus Cominius Auruncus, with the play\u2019s supposed events taking place circa 493-488 BCE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref19\" id=\"_edn19\">[19]<\/a> Antiates were Volscians who came from the area in and around Antium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref20\" id=\"_edn20\">[20]<\/a> Attius Tullus, historically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref21\" id=\"_edn21\">[21]<\/a> On the office of Tribune, see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldhistory.org\/Plebeians\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Plebeians<\/a>\u201d in the World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref22\" id=\"_edn22\">[22]<\/a> Consulship was a major step in a Roman nobleman\u2019s career path, the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.livius.org\/articles\/concept\/cursus-honorum\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cursus honorum<\/a>.<\/em>\u201d The cursus <\/em>proper consisted of the following offices: quaestor, aedile <\/em>or tribune, praetor, consul,<\/em> and censor.<\/em> The path described only became more or less settled in the third century BCE, but since Shakespeare often mixes historical facts, it makes sense to mention it here. Livius.org. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref23\" id=\"_edn23\">[23]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 288-343. The play begins with the a tableau of plebeians celebrating Caesar\u2019s triumphal procession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref24\" id=\"_edn24\">[24]<\/a> On the \u201cConflict of the Orders,\u201d see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.livius.org\/articles\/person\/coriolanus-gn-marcius\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gn. Marcius Coriolanus<\/a>\u201d in Livius.org. See also \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldhistory.org\/Plebeians\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Plebeians<\/a>\u201d in the World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref25\" id=\"_edn25\">[25]<\/a> Homer describes Achilles\u2019s fury in war in great detail. One example is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134%3Abook%3D20%3Acard%3D490\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Iliad 20.491-504<\/a><\/em>. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref26\" id=\"_edn26\">[26]<\/a> As above, see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.livius.org\/articles\/concept\/cursus-honorum\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cursus honorum<\/a>.<\/em>\u201d The cursus <\/em>proper consisted of the following offices: quaestor, aedile <\/em>or tribune, praetor, consul,<\/em> and censor.<\/em> Livius.org. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref27\" id=\"_edn27\">[27]<\/a> On the Roman sense of an afterlife, see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.unrv.com\/articles\/roman-underworld-and-afterlife.php#:~:text=In%20the%20Roman%20imagination%2C%20the,the%20wicked%20faced%20endless%20torment.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Roman World and Afterlife.<\/a>\u201d UNRV Roman History. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref28\" id=\"_edn28\">[28]<\/a> See Alfred, Lord Tennyson\u2019s poem \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/45392\/ulysses\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ulysses<\/a>,\u201d in which the title character Ulysses or Odysseus pines for the good old days of war and ultimate adventure: \u201cHow dull it is to pause, to make an end, \/ To rust unburnish\u2019d, not to shine in use!\u201d Poetry Foundation. Accessed 8\/27\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref29\" id=\"_edn29\">[29]<\/a> On the consulship and its electoral rituals, see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/penelope.uchicago.edu\/Thayer\/E\/Roman\/Texts\/secondary\/SMIGRA*\/Consul.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Consul<\/a>.\u201d Smith\u2019s Dictionary at Penelope, U. of Chicago. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref30\" id=\"_edn30\">[30]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 982-1060. See Mark Antony\u2019s lines at 324, 3.2.258-59.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref31\" id=\"_edn31\">[31]<\/a> As above, on the \u201cConflict of the Orders\u201d see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.livius.org\/articles\/person\/coriolanus-gn-marcius\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gn. Marcius Coriolanus<\/a>\u201d in Livius.org. See also \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldhistory.org\/Plebeians\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Plebeians<\/a>\u201d in the World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref32\" id=\"_edn32\">[32]<\/a> On the Tarpeian rock\u2019s history, see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/ancient-history-blog.mq.edu.au\/cityOfRome\/Tarpeian-Rock\">Fallen from Grace: the Victims of <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ancient-history-blog.mq.edu.au\/cityOfRome\/Tarpeian-Rock\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ancient-history-blog.mq.edu.au\/cityOfRome\/Tarpeian-Rock\">Tarpeian Rock<\/a>.\u201d By Zachary Hale, Macquarie U. Ancient History Blog. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref33\" id=\"_edn33\">[33]<\/a> America\u2019s founding politicians also saw parties<\/em> as dangerous since they often end up promoting \u201cfaction,\u201d by which is meant a strongly biased group that governs not in the interest of the whole people, but in its own interest only. Where faction of this extreme sort reigns, democracy cannot long endure. See James Madison\u2019s opinion on factions in <a href=\"https:\/\/avalon.law.yale.edu\/18th_century\/fed10.asp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Federalist <\/em>10<\/a>. Avalon Project (Yale Law Library). Accessed 8\/28\/2024. See also the Library of Congress\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/guides.loc.gov\/federalist-papers\/full-text\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Full Text of the Federalist Papers.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref34\" id=\"_edn34\">[34]<\/a> See Machiavelli\u2019s advice to the Medici rulers in The Prince<\/em>. As a general precept, he tells his Medici audience that a prince should cultivate a number of virtues outwardly, but he must not suppose they are always to be observed; that would be dangerous. See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/1232\/pg1232-images.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Prince<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>(Gutenberg e-text.) Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref35\" id=\"_edn35\">[35]<\/a> On exile in ancient Greece and Rome, see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/ovid-censorship\/exile\/history-of-roman-exile\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ovid and the Censored Voice: The History of Roman Exile<\/a>.\u201d Colby.edu. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref36\" id=\"_edn36\">[36]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice.<\/em> Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 512-86. Othello\u2019s inability to deal with uncertainties and \u201cin-between\u201d situations is evident all through the play, as when he says to the absent Desdemona: \u201cExcellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul \/ But I do love thee; and when I love thee not, \/ Chaos is come again\u201d (546, 3.3.89-91).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref37\" id=\"_edn37\">[37]<\/a> On Hegel\u2019s dialectic, see \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecollector.com\/hegel-master-slave-dialectic\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Hegel\u2019s Master-Slave Dialectic Explained<\/a>.\u201d The Collector. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref38\" id=\"_edn38\">[38]<\/a> On a<\/em>micitia perfecta, <\/em>see Shakespeare\u2019s Globe essay \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@shakespearesglobe\/shakespeare-and-friendship-d4dd854e0670\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Shakespeare and Friendship.<\/a>\u201d April 6, 2018. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref39\" id=\"_edn39\">[39]<\/a> Nietzsche sometimes voiced that view, but of course it\u2019s as old, at least, as the Spartans and their admirer Plato, who fashioned his Republic <\/em>and Laws <\/em>on a conception of the Spartan way of life. See Plato\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0168\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Republic<\/a>. <\/em>Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 8\/30\/2024. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref40\" id=\"_edn40\">[40]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Life of Henry the Fifth.<\/em> Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories,<\/em> 3rd ed. 790-857. See Henry\u2019s speech to the defenders of Harfleur, 817, 3.4.1-43.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref41\" id=\"_edn41\">[41]<\/a> See Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare after All. <\/em>Anchor Books, 2004. \u201cCoriolanus,\u201d 776-801. On 784, Garber writes, \u201cThe citizens, whether Romans or Volscians, are portrayed as self-regarding, self-righteous, and vacillating, however just their claims.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref42\" id=\"_edn42\">[42]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Most Lamentable Roman Tragedy of Titus Andronicus.<\/em> Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 145-98.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref43\" id=\"_edn43\">[43]<\/a> Consider Machiavelli\u2019s characterization of the ruler\u2019s ethical dilemma: to quote from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/1232\/1232-h\/1232-h.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Chapter XV of The Prince<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> \u201ca man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.\u201d (Gutenberg e-text.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref44\" id=\"_edn44\">[44]<\/a> See Aristotle. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0054%3Abekker+page%3D1106a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nichomachean Ethics. <\/em>Becker 1106a26\u2013b28<\/a>. Again, the basic point is that a \u201cvirtue\u201d is to be located at the mean or mid-point between excess of a quality and deficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref45\" id=\"_edn45\">[45]<\/a> See Garber, Marjorie, ibid. <\/em>On 787, the author observes that Coriolanus is often referred to as a \u201cthing,\u201d a person who is \u201cmechanically motivated\u201d rather than a fully human protagonist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref46\" id=\"_edn46\">[46]<\/a> Sappho. See fragment 47 on <a href=\"https:\/\/digitalsappho.org\/fragments\/fr47\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Digital Sappho<\/a>: <\/em>\u1f1c\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 \u03b4\u1fbf \u1f10\u03c4\u03af\u03bd\u03b1\u03be\u03ad \u03bc\u03bf\u03b9 \/ \u03c6\u03c1\u03ad\u03bd\u03b1\u03c2, \u1f60\u03c2 \u1f04\u03bd\u03b5\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2 \u03ba\u1f70\u03c4 \u1f44\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 \u03b4\u03c1\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd \u1f10\u03bc\u03c0\u03ad\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd. \u201cLove shook my \/ heart, like a wind bearing down a mountain takes an oak.\u201d My translation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref47\" id=\"_edn47\">[47]<\/a> Pietas, <\/em>devotion to the gods, one\u2019s family, and one\u2019s country was part of the mos maiorum <\/em>or \u201cway of the ancestors.\u201d See \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mos_maiorum\">Mos Maiorum<\/a>.\u201d Wikipedia. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref48\" id=\"_edn48\">[48]<\/a> In The Aeneid, <\/em>Book 9, for example, Virgil describes the fighting as \u201craging strong \/ as a tempest out of the West \u2026\u201d and two warriors as \u201cmen like pines and peaks \/ of their native land \u2026\u201d (9.760-61, 768-69).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref49\" id=\"_edn49\">[49]<\/a> Perhaps Shakespeare has brought out as much from his source material in Livy and Plutarch as possible, and has chosen to aim mainly for structural and dramatic excellence over depth of character. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref50\" id=\"_edn50\">[50]<\/a> In \u201cOn Fiction\u201d in <a href=\"https:\/\/anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu\/work\/Johnson\/johnson-rambler-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Rambler No. 4. 1750<\/a><\/em>, Samuel Johnson writes, \u201cVice, for Vice is necessary to be shewn, should always disgust; nor should the Graces of Gaiety, or the Dignity of Courage, be so united with it, as to reconcile it to the Mind.\u201d See Literature in Context. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref51\" id=\"_edn51\">[51]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 982-1060.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref52\" id=\"_edn52\">[52]<\/a> Machiavelli, Niccolo. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/1232\/pg1232-images.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Prince<\/a>.<\/em> Chapter XVIII. \u201c[L]et a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody; because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.\u201d Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref53\" id=\"_edn53\">[53]<\/a> See Plutarch\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=uc1.b3827690&seq=253\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Life of Alcibiades<\/a>.<\/em>\u201d Temple Plutarch, Vol. 2 on HathiTrust. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref54\" id=\"_edn54\">[54]<\/a> See Plutarch\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=uc1.b3827690&seq=17\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Life of Themistocles<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u201d Temple Plutarch, Vol. 2 on HathiTrust. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref55\" id=\"_edn55\">[55]<\/a> Milton, John. <a href=\"https:\/\/milton.host.dartmouth.edu\/reading_room\/pl\/book_1\/text.shtml\">Paradise Lost<\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/milton.host.dartmouth.edu\/reading_room\/pl\/book_1\/text.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"> 1.97-99<\/a>. The Milton Reading Room. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref56\" id=\"_edn56\">[56]<\/a> Henry James. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/catalog.hathitrust.org\/Record\/100769190\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Art of Fiction<\/a>.\u201d James writes, \u201cThe only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does<\/em> compete with life. When it ceases to compete as the canvas of the painter competes, it will have arrived at a very strange pass.\u201d Washington State U. Accessed 8\/30\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shakespeare\u2019s Coriolanus Commentary Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Coriolanus. (The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 1072-1152.) Of Interest: RSC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"iawp_total_views":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[309,36,310,220,130,312,311,313],"wf_page_folders":[11],"class_list":["post-237","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-tragic-plays","tag-ancient-rome","tag-elizabethan-drama","tag-roman-mythology","tag-roman-republic","tag-shakespearean-tragedy","tag-tullus-aufidius","tag-volscians","tag-volumnia"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"ajd_shxpr","author_link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/author\/ajd_shxpr\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Shakespeare\u2019s Coriolanus Commentary Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Coriolanus. (The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 1072-1152.) Of Interest: RSC […]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9709,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/237\/revisions\/9709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

{"id":237,"date":"2024-04-13T22:10:12","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T05:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/?page_id=237"},"modified":"2025-08-07T07:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T14:18:09","slug":"coriolanus-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/coriolanus-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Coriolanus"},"content":{"rendered":"