Coriolanus – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Coriolanus offers us an intense character study—Caius Martius isn’t a deep tragic hero like Macbeth or Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s characterization of him is pure. Structurally and rhetorically, too, the play is superb—an excellence that T. S. Eliot recognizes when he writes in “Hamlet and His Problems” from his 1921 collection of essays The Sacred Wood, ”Coriolanus may be not as ‘interesting’ as Hamlet, but it is, with Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare’s most assured artistic success.” [1]

Shakespeare got the story of Coriolanus from Livy’s Histories and Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. 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’s events (respectively, 509 BCE and the 490s BCE).

It’s 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 very least, he would be an exemplar of the harshest possible patrician view regarding the poorer class of people in ancient Rome.

The play takes for granted some knowledge of a basic point of contention in early Roman times: the “conflict of the orders” [2] 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.

The immediate context of Martius’ 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 of 494 BCE. [3] 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.

Caius 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 Roman that one isn’t truly Roman. Such rigidity isn’t how Rome got to be Rome—”virtuous, honorable, and inflexible” is a recipe for disaster. The Romans were alsoeminently 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’t all fighting, killing, and dominating.

Caius 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—if this early-fifth-century BCE Roman didn’t predate Aristotle, we would have to say that he violated Aristotle’s notion of virtue as the golden mean between two extremes. [4] The sweet spot, writes Aristotle, is right in the middle: one should, for example, show neither foolhardy courage nor abject cowardice, but do one’s duty in spite of genuine fear. That’s valor.

Caius Martius can’t hold to this mean because he is an extremist for “Romanness,” or at least for his social class’s conception of it. The man’s 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 entirely lacking in the poorer sort of people, and this quality will lead him to disillusion and betrayal of the ideals that he professes to hold so dear.

ACT 1

Act 1, Scene 1 (1072-79, the plebeians, near to revolting, complain about the patricians’ treatment of them during a grain shortage; Menenius schools them with a tale about the Senators being Rome’s “stomach”; Martius declares that several “Tribunes” 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’s prideful character and his prospects as second-in-command in the imminent war against the Volscians.)

With regard to the beginning of Coriolanus, see also the opening scene of Julius Caesar, wherein Murellus becomes angry with the cobbler and other plebeians over their jokes and holiday-making in honor of Caesar. “Wherefore rejoice?” asks Murellus, chastising the plebeians in the name of the defeated Pompey the Great. [5] Shakespeare seems never to have cared much for the rabble, and his rabbles—even the Roman ones—tend to act like unruly Elizabethan paupers. Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part 2 is never far away from such a horde of ill-behaved and irrational citizens. [6]

Here in Coriolanus, the First Citizen sums up his self-justification for egging his comrades on to kill Caius Martius with the words, “I speak / this in hunger for bread, not in thirst of revenge” (1073, 1.1.20-21). This sounds like class warfare of the sort that actually occurred in early Rome: misery, hoarding, and profiteering. [7] Dissent is in the air, and Caius Martius has no sympathy with the commoners. Quite the contrary—he openly despises them. In any case, the plebeians want to be able to buy grain at affordable prices.

The patrician (and consul) Menenius Agrippa [8] tries to talk reason into the citizens with his substantial “body” analogy (1074-75, 1.1.87ff), in which “There was a time when all the body’s members / Rebelled against the belly …” (1074, 1.1.87-88). [9] The people, he suggests, are like a living body’s mutinous members, doing nothing while being supplied by the stomach, the aristocratic class. The Senators are the digestive function, the belly.

In essence, Menenius offers the hungry plebeians an ancient version of 1980s-style “trickle down” 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.

The citizens don’t seem impressed with this analogy, and then Caius Martius himself shows up and pours aristocratic hot oil on the common people’s smoldering resentment of his entire class: “What’s the matter, you dissentious rogues, / That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, / Make yourselves scabs?” (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.

The general’s 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: “With every minute you do change a mind / And call him noble that was now your hate, / Him vile that was your garland” (1076, 1.173-75).

Martius, 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—how 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, “Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas.” [10] Still, it’s taking this distrust of the common man and woman’s sagacity very far indeed to call them “scabs.” [11]

A messenger arrives to tell the Senators and Caius Martius that a Volscian army is likely to launch a campaign against Rome, with that army’s leader to be Tullus Aufidius. [12] Martius expresses great respect for Aufidius, saying, “were I anything but what I am, / I would wish me only he” (1077, 1.1.222-23) and ““He is a lion / That I am proud to hunt” (1078, 1.1.226-27).

The 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, “The Volsces have much corn: take these rats thither / To gnaw their garners” (1078, 1.1.240-41).

The 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—the blame, they reason, will be pinned to Cominius, while Martius will get much credit for anything positive.

Act 1, Scene 2 (1079-80, Aufidius talks over the Romans’ war plans with the Volscian Senators, and looks forward to battling Martius, whom he admires as much as Martius admires him.)

Tullus 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 “We’re number two.” [13] 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. [14] 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.

But the feeling and regard go both ways—Martius regards Aufidius as a worthy adversary, and that’s 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.

But 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.

As for Aufidius himself, he looks forward to nothing so much as single combat with his personal adversary, saying to the Senators: “If we and Caius Martius chance to meet, / ‘Tis sworn between us we shall ever strike / Till one can do no more” 1080, 1.2.34-36).

Act 1, Scene 3 (1080-82, Volumnia educates Martius’s wife, Virgilia, about masculine virtue; Valeria points to young Martius’s shredding of a butterfly as proof of the boy’s martial spirit; Valeria delivers news that Caius Martius is now approaching the Volscian city of Corioles.)

Caius Martius’s mother Volumnia is a typically upstanding Roman matron: “I pray you, daughter, sing, or express yourself in a / more comfortable sort…” (1080, 1.3.1-2), she tells Martius’s wife Virgilia, explaining to her that she ought to rejoice in the absence of her husband since that absence signifies he is fighting as a man ought to do. Some of Volumnia’s stern pronouncements may strike us as excessive—we are (often rightly) fond of calling out “toxic masculinity”—but for a Roman matron of the sixth century BCE, her attitude would no doubt be considered appropriate. Softness was not an option. [15]

Virgilia must, therefore, respect the military bearing and mission of Caius Martius: it’s better to be a warrior than a lover and a man of peace. “Either come home bearing that shield, or lying dead upon it,” as the Spartan mothers used to say to the sons they sent off to war. [16] Volumnia’s friend Valeria refers to young Martius (the son of Caius Martius and Virgilia, that is) showing some of his father’s ferocity: the boy apparently shredded a hapless butterfly with his teeth while she watched (1081, 1.3.54-61).

Virgilia and Volumnia’s 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: “Oh, I warrant,” she says, “how he mammocked it!” (1081, 1.3.61) This act of cruelty—shredding a butterfly with one’s teeth—is taken as a sign that Martius Jr. is just like his ferocious, temperamental father.

The rest of the scene is taken up with Virgilia’s 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’s wife who resisted attempt 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.

Act 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.)

The 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.

Act 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.)

In Scene 5, the Roman troops, as was common amongst ancient armies, take advantage of this opening and then immediately fall to plundering the city, [17] prompting Caius Martius to denounce them—or at least the common soldiers, whom he later sardonically refers to as “our gentlemen” (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.

By Scene 6, Cominius, [18] 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: “by th’ vows / We have made to endure friends, that you directly / Set me against Aufidius and his Antiates …” (1086, 1.6.57-59). [19] Martius chooses some of his best men, and is ready to go.

In 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.

By Scene 8, Caius Martius and Aufidius square off, with Martius saying “I’ll fight with none but thee, for I do hate thee / Worse than a promise-breaker” (1087, 1.8.1-2), and the outcome is predictable: the Roman wins, and Aufidius [20] and his Volscians are driven from the scene of the fight.

Act 1, Scene 9 (1088-90, Cominius hails Martius as “Coriolanus” and heaps honors upon him, though Martius, true to form, is unsettled by such attention and calls it flattery.)

Cominius declares that “Rome must know / The value of her own” (1088, 1.9.20-21). In other words, there’s 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: “When drums and trumpets shall / I’th’ field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be / Made all of false-faced soothing” (1089, 1.9.42-44). All the same, Martius is forced to give in to Cominius’s persistent attempts, and is hailed “Martius Caius Coriolanus.” We will call him “Coriolanus” from this point onward.

The 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—this “one nice thing” that the exalted patrician and general might have done for the little people—goes awry when Coriolanus, in his tiredness, simply forgets the man’s name.

Act 1, Scene 10 (1090-91; Aufidius tells a few of his soldiers that he will destroy Coriolanus by any means necessary—so much for heroism.)

Coriolanus’s attitude in Scene 9 contrasts starkly with Aufidius’s 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, “I’ll potch at him some way: / Or wrath or craft may get him” (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 “by any means necessary.”

Of course, that warrior does not know about this change of heart on the part of his supposedly steadfast, worthy Volscian enemy.

ACT 2

Act 2, Scene 1 (1091-97, Menenius criticizes the tribunes Brutus and Sicinius for disliking Coriolanus’s pride; the general is welcomed home and is expected to stand for consul, but the tribunes plot to work his destruction on the basis of that very honor.)

From the beginning, the tribunes of the people were a grudging gift to the plebeians—they offered the commonfolk some measure of representation, without fundamentally challenging the supremacy of the patrician class. [21] Brutus and Sicinius can’t stand Coriolanus’s 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.

Brutus and Sicinius both say that Martius is blamable for his “pride” and for his habit of “topping all others in boasting” (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, “a brace of unmer- / iting, proud, violent, testy magistrates …” (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, “understood to be a per- / fecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher in the / Capitol” (1092, 2.1.73-75).

Volumnia, Caius Martius’s 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: “Oh, he is wounded, I thank the gods for’t” (1093), says the Roman matron extraordinaire, while Menenius tempers his glee, hoping only for some minor wounds. That seems sensible of him.

So successful has Martius been that he has been granted a third triumph, and for the latest two wounds in his full tally of 27—Menenius tells us so—Martius is to be immediately given the honorary title “Coriolanus.” 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. [22]

Brutus and Sicinius remain behind, and at once begin to complain about Coriolanus’s 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: “All tongues speak of him, and the blearèd sights / Are spectacled to see him” (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, in which the common people make much of the conquering hero Caesar. [23]

Brutus and Sicinius, two of the five tribunes of the people, together plan to use Coriolanus’s 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.

The 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, “our authority’s for an end” (1096, 2.1.232). They are right to fear Coriolanus’s ascendancy as the so-called “conflict of orders” was already an established cause of friction in early Rome. [24] 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.

Act 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’s 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.)

At the Capitol, the First and Second officers debate the merits of Coriolanus’s attitude in hating the plebeians for their inconstancy and lack of honor: the First Officer refutes the more generous argument of the Second, saying, “he seeks their hate with greater devotion than / they can render it him” (1097, 2.2.17-18). It’s only his undeniable valor as a soldier that keeps them in awe. Still, both officers agree that Coriolanus is “a worthy man” (1098, 2.2.32).

Now 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 “remember / A kinder value of the people than / He hath hereto prized them at” (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.

Coriolanus 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, “I had rather have my wounds to heal again / Than hear say how I got them” (1099, 2.2.66-67).

To patch the time until Coriolanus’s return, Cominius steps in with some striking rhetoric in praise of the man’s valor, and his ability to turn even the most cowardly soldier into a stalwart Roman fighter: “As weeds before / A vessel under sail, so men obeyed / And fell below his stem” (1099, 2.2.102-04). The rest of Cominius’s speech sounds like Homer’s praise of Achilles in his deadly zeal to slay the Trojan foe: “from face to foot / He was a thing of blood whose every motion / Was timed with dying cries” (1100, 2.2.105-07). [25]

Coriolanus tries to resist going through with the literal “standing” part of “standing for consul,” as he asks his partisan Menenius, “Please you / That I may pass this doing” (1100, 2.2.135-36). Sicinius, as we might have predicted, is having none of this stinting of the ritual, insisting, “Sir, 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’s never-robust patience.

It isn’t difficult to understand Coriolanus’s position, starchy though the man is. He’s a patrician and a warrior, but in order to take his place in the political order—i.e. to follow the “natural” career path, the cursus honorum, [26] 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 “Rome.” So why seek the office of consul then? Why not just retire to his estate and live nobly?

Well, aside from the fact that this is what Coriolanus’s mother, Volumnia, wants him to do, it is simply expected of him by his class. Moreover, it’s 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 “afterlife” is just as much identified with one’s posthumous reputation as with any fine notions about beds of asphodel in Elysium or the more shadowy, grey-tinged landscape of leveling Hades. [27]

While 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’s 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. [28]

Act 2, Scene 3 (1101-07, Coriolanus appears before the people and gruffly seeks their “voices”; despite his mockery, the people consent; soon, however, they revoke their consent, with the Tribunes egging them on so they can work Coriolanus’s destruction.)

The citizens themselves enter the proceedings for Coriolanus’s consulship believing—at least in the view of the Third Citizen—that “for the multitude to be ingrate- / ful were to make a monster of the multitude …” (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. [29]

Unfortunately, Coriolanus doesn’t have the temperament or the impulse control to run even a brief campaign for office, so to speak. 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, “I’ll never do such and such,” and then we see a jump-cut of the same character doing exactly such and such.

Coriolanus’s effort begins, “You know the cause, sir, of my standing here …” (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, “since 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 …” (1103, 2.3.91-94).

This 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 sarcastic follow-up about “custom,” only sets him up for the great fall to come afterwards. “Custom calls me to’t,” says Coriolanus sarcastically, and “What custom wills, in all things should we do’t …” (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.

We 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 “old Roman” showing nothing but contempt for one of his country’s vital traditions simply because he can’t abide the people taking part in it. It’s easy to imagine witnessing Coriolanus’s micro-expressions of contempt, and his nausea at having to spend time among the poorer lot: they literally stink in his high-born nostrils.

The citizens assent, but they almost immediately begin to have second thoughts: “He mocked us when he begged our voices” (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’s consulship, even telling them to say it was the Tribunes’ fault that Coriolanus was approved in the first place: “Lay / A fault on us, your tribunes, that we labored, / No impediment between, but that you must / Cast your election on him” (1106, 2.3.217-20).

The Tribunes are playing Mark Antony in the marketplace: as Antony said, “Mischief, thou art afoot; / Take thou what course thou wilt.” [30] To snatch away an honor granted is much more galling than to refuse it at the outset. Brutus and Sicinius know that Coriolanus won’t brook such a grave insult to his accomplishments and pride: the human powder keg will explode.

ACT 3

Act 3, Scene 1 (1107-15, Lartius tells Coriolanus what Aufidius is up to; Coriolanus scorns the plebeians’ 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.)

From Lartius, Coriolanus hears an interesting bit of information about Aufidius. The Volscian champion is ashamed of his own people, now that Corioles has been breached by the Romans, and 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’s 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: “he would pawn his fortunes / To hopeless restitution, so he might / Be called your vanquisher” (1107, 3.1.15-17).

Brutus and Sicinius stand by as Coriolanus talks with his fellow patricians in a Roman street. Addressing in part the dynamics of power, the famous “conflict of orders” [31] that has long beset Rome, Coriolanus says derisively of the people: “in soothing them, we nourish gainst our Senate the cockle / Of rebellion, insolence, sedition …” (1108, 3.1.66-68). His name-calling is as crisp as ever: “so 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” (1109, 3.1.75-78).

Why, asks the Tribune Brutus, should the people favor a man who speaks about them in such a manner? Coriolanus’s answer is chilling, but not unpredictable. Taking the troublesome grain shortages in Rome as his example, Coriolanus 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.

If the many are allowed to win simply because of their numbers and their clamor, he insists, then all is lost: “Thus we debase / The nature of our seats and make the rabble / Call our cares ‘fears,’ which will in time / Break ope the locks o’th’ Senate and bring in / The crows to peck the eagles” (1110, 3.1.132-36). Order is at the center of Coriolanus’s political philosophy, which seems to be grounded in his military experience and his status as a leading patrician.

Brutus and Sicinius don’t necessarily disagree about keeping order, but they’re coming at the matter from their own class-based perspective, and they resent Coriolanus’s assumption that the plebeian order and its demands are illegitimate, even worthless. The general sees it as patrician cowardice even to play ball with the lower orders.

By the time Coriolanus argues that the higher-class Romans must “pluck out / The multitudinous tongue …” (1110, 3.1.152-53) if they want the state to be whole—i.e. they must get rid of the office of the Tribunes—Brutus and Sicinius have heard more than enough, and they accuse their antagonist of being a revolutionary, a “traitorous innovator” (1111, 3.1.171) rather than as the old-guard traditionalist Coriolanus no doubt considers himself.

Whether the charge of treachery that Brutus and Sicinius level is as yet entirely fair is open to question, since, to be fair, Coriolanus hasn’t simply declared himself Rome’s dictator. Nonetheless, events are running in the Tribunes’ favor, so they take advantage of the general’s wildly provocative words, calling loudly for Coriolanus’s apprehension and execution by being cast off the top of the Tarpeian Rock [32] (1112, 3.1.206-08).

A scuffle takes place, and Menenius says he will try to smooth things over, but we don’t need an augurer to know how that 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: “His heart’s his mouth: / What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent …” (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.

There follows some bandying about of the “corporeal metaphor” that we heard about from Menenius in Act 1, Scene 1—this time, the First Citizen says that the Tribunes are the “mouths” of the plebeian order, and the common people are its “hands” (1114, 3.1.264-65). Menenius and Sicinius also trade barbs with the help of a “disease” 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)

To end the scene, Menenius brings up the dread subject of “faction” that has long bedeviled the Republic. [33] It’s best, says the old patrician, to “Proceed by process, / Lest parties—as he is beloved—break out / And sack great Rome with Romans” (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.

Act 3, Scene 2 (1115-19, Coriolanus’s patrician relatives and friends—chiefly Volumnia, Cominius, and Menenius—fearing civil strife, talk him into feigning contrition at his imminent trial in the marketplace; Coriolanus makes a dubious promise to his supporters.)

In the third act, we have seen Coriolanus first getting talked into presenting himself to the plebeians, then infuriated by the result, and 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’s argument is the canniest: “If it be honor in you wars to seem / The same you are not … / … how is it less or worse / That it shall hold companionship in peace / With honor as in war …?” (1116-17, 3.2.46-50)

Volumnia equates the tactics used in war to the means deployed in favor of certain ends in political and social life in a way that would easily win Machiavelli’s approval. [34] It’s uncertain whether Coriolanus believes his mother’s sage rhetoric, but he accedes to his her request all the same, saying like a sullen child, “With my base tongue give to my noble heart / A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do’t” (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.

Act 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.)

Brutus 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: “Being once chafed, he cannot / Be reined again to temperance” (1119, 3.3.27-28). In politics—even ancient politics—saying 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.

Coriolanus soon finds himself charged by Brutus and Sicinius with tyranny and treason: “We 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” (1120, 3.3.61-64).

Coriolanus immediately takes the bait, and he belts out, “The fires i’th’ lowest hell fold in the people!” (1121, 3.3.66) he snarls, and the game is up. “I banish you, / And here remain with your uncertainty! / Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts …” (1122, 3.3.120-22), he practically spits at his fellow Romans, and concludes with “Despising / For you the city, thus I turn my back. / There is a world elsewhere” (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.

Coriolanus 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.

Coriolanus has gone from one extreme to the other, and he will soon find, as many ancients apparently did, that exile isn’t as sustainable a model for a compromised person’s future as it might seem. [35] Rome is a world unto itself, and leaving it isn’t 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.

ACT 4

Act 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’s home in Antium to speak with him.)

In Scene 1, Coriolanus takes a sad but stoic farewell from Rome, telling his wife and mother, “The beast / With many heads butts me away” (1122, 4.1.1-2), and to Menenius, “Tell these sad women / ‘Tis fond to wail inevitable strokes / As ‘tis to laugh at ‘em” (1123, 4.1.25-27). The new exile tells Cominius and all present that he will stay in touch: “While I remain above the ground, you shall / Hear from me still, and never of me aught / But what is like me formerly” (1123, 4.1.51-53).

In Scene 2, Volumnia curtly denounces the Tribunes Brutus and Sicinius, and declares when they are gone, “Anger’s my meat. I sup upon myself / And so should starve with feeding” (1125, 4.2.50-51).

In 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 “strange insurrections” that pit “the / people against the senators, patricians, and nobles” (1125, 4.3.12-13). The two great factions are working against each other. Nicanor’s assumption that Aufidius “will / appear well in these wars” (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.

By Scene 4, Coriolanus has made his way to the very 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’t 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 with and even exceeding the best.

Coriolanus parses his situation thus: “My birthplace hate I, and my love’s upon / This enemy town. I’ll enter. If he slay me, / He does fair justice; if he give me way, I’ll do his country service” (1127, 4.4.23-26). This sounds accurate enough, though Coriolanus’s exclamation, “O world, thy slippery turns!” (1126, 4.4.12) seems more evasive than self-aware.

In any case, either fate—death or enlistment into Aufidius’s Volscian cause—would put an end to the chaos of the present situation. We know that Coriolanus doesn’t deal well with uncertainty or chaos—a debility that links him with another of Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists, Othello.” [36]

Act 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.)

In seeking entry to Aufidius’s estate, Coriolanus is at first almost turned away by a pretentious servant who calls him an “ass” or a “daw” (1128, 4.5.42-43), but he eventually gets his message through and finds acceptance. The Roman exile is trapped, and it’s 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.

It 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: “if 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” (1129, 4.5.83-87).

Once he knows the stranger’s identity, Aufidius admits to envying Coriolanus, even to the point of what sounds to many critics like homoeroticism: “Thou has beat me out / Twelve several times, and I have nightly since / Dreamt of encounters twixt thyself and me—/ We have been down together in my sleep …” (1129, 4.5.120-23). These are in any case enemies who know each other’s qualities intimately, almost to the point of identifying with each other.

The intimacy between Coriolanus and Aufidius stems in part from their outsized stature; neither man is entirely contained by his political and geographic particulars. Hegel’s master-servant dialectic implies that authentic selfhood requires reciprocity, mutual recognition. [37] Aufidius may not exactly be a servant-consciousness, but Coriolanus has been the master, one who doesn’t need to “think” himself deeply. What was called in ancient times “amicitia perfecta,” or the love between two men, [38] no doubt expressed itself along a sliding scale, from comfortably Platonic to a more sexualized or at least “fraught” union.

In 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’s energy), but also that he is not very self-aware regarding his beliefs and self-image, as we would put it today.

Now there’s nowhere for Coriolanus to turn except to the opposite side and to an enemy with whom he feels a certain affinity based on his appraisal of the man’s personal value as a soldier and an aristocrat. Coriolanus is in Aufidius’s 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.

Several Servingmen round off Scene 5 with gossip, with the second such relating how assiduously Aufidius is wooing his old nemesis: “Our general himself makes a mistress / of him, sanctifies himself with’s hand …” (1131, 4.5.195-96). The First and Third Servingmen unite in their excitement at the coming of war: “Let me have war, say I” and “The wars for my money” (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. [39]

Act 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.)

The 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.

Cominius, hardly eager to relieve their anxiety, tells them and surrounding citizens, “You have holp to ravish your own daughters and / To melt the city leads upon your pates, / To see your wives dishonored to your noses” (1134, 4.6.81-83). This isn’t unrealistic since attacks on civilians during ancient wars were vicious. Another example of such references would be Henry V’s threats against the town leaders in Harfleur, his question to them in Henry V being, “will you yield, and this avoid, / Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy’d?” [40]

Some of the citizens in the present scene, put in mortal fear by what they’ve heard, repent their action against Coriolanus; laments one, “I ever said we were i’th’ wrong when we banished / him” (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. [41]

Based on what Cominius says, the Tribunes have no trouble discerning that they are not among friends: “These are a side that would be glad to have / This true which they so seem to fear” (1136, 4.6.150-51). There is no way to divorce the dreadful news from the class struggle going on in Rome.

Act 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.)

Aufidius says of Coriolanus, “He bears himself more proudlier, / Even to my person, than I thought he would / When first I did embrace him” (1136, 4.7.8-10). We register Aufidius’ deep resentment in still other passages: “All places yield to him ere he sits down, / And the nobility of Rome are his” (1136, 4.7.28-29). But the trouble is that—whether due to pride, a judgment in defect, or nature—Coriolanus can’t “Carry his honors even” (1137, 4.7.37).

Aufidius is all but psychoanalyzing his longtime foe. The virtues of a man are subject to “th’interpretation of the time,” 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. [42] An insistently ethical person surrounded by immoralists must come to a bad end, as Machiavelli informs us in The Prince. [43]

Still, that isn’t necessarily the best framework with which to talk about what Coriolanus is doing. There’s 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: “When, Caius, Rome is thine, / Thou art poor’st of all; then shortly art thou mine” (1137, 4.7.56-57).

ACT 5

Act 5, Scene 1 (1137-39, Cominius’s visit fails to soften Coriolanus’s resolve to set fire to Rome; reluctantly, Menenius agrees to try his luck.)

Coriolanus has taken Roman values to a destructive extreme, a fault that cost him the people’s approval and much more: he has turned honor and strength into rigidity, absolute hardness, invulnerability. [44] Cominius speaks perceptively on the damage that Coriolanus has done to himself: “’Coriolanus’ / He would not answer to, forbade all names. He was a kind of nothing, titleless, / Till he had forged himself a name o’th fire / Of burning Rome” (1137, 5.1.11-15). But what kind of identity is that for a Roman? [45]

Ever 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.

Act 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’s desire to destroy Rome remains constant.)

After a longish delay due to the obstinacy of Aufidius’s 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 “I writ it for thy sake” (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’s mother and wife might succeed where Cominius and Menenius have failed.

What the Second Watchman says about Coriolanus after Menenius has made his pitch bodes ominously for Rome: “He’s the rock, the oak not to be wind-shaken” (1141, 5.3.104). That is a solid metaphor for passional strength—one can find it in literature at least as far back as Sappho. [46]

Act 5, Scene 3 (1141-46, Coriolanus’s family—most of all his mother, Volumnia—prevail upon him to make peace, and Aufidius realizes the opportunity this presents to him.)

Volumnia, 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: “I melt, and am not / Of stronger earth than others” (1142, 5.3.28-29).

At the sight of his family coming to entreat him, Coriolanus tries to maintain his steady, pitiless posture, insisting, “I’ll never / Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand / As if a man were author of himself / And knew no other kin” (1142, 5.3.34-37). Still, he has little choice but to hear them speak, and their arguments prove lethally effective.

Volumnia frames her case by pointing out that her son has put his family in an impossible dilemma: “how can we for our country pray, / Whereto we are bound, together with thy victory, / Whereto we are bound?” (1144, 5.3.107-09). To this, she adds a concern for reputation: if Coriolanus sacks and burns Rome, all he will do is “reap … such a name / Whose repetition will be dogged with curses …” (1145, 5.3.143-44). “Think’st thou it honorable,” asks Volumnia, “for a noble man / Still to remember wrongs?” (1145, 5.3.154-55)

The sight and sound of his family works, and Coriolanus gives in—for 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’s doorstep.

This time, the cause is pietas, [47] to which Coriolanus accedes with what seems like relief mingled with foreboding: “The 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 … / Most dangerously you have with him prevailed …” (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.

Aufidius, hearing all this and Coriolanus’s weak offering that he will “frame convenient peace” (1146, 5.3.191), makes an aside that reveals his treacherous nature: “I am glad thou hast set thy mercy and thy honor / At difference in thee. Out of that I’ll work / Myself a former fortune” (1146, 5.3.200-02). Aufidius knows that Coriolanus’s peace-making can be turned into a reason to dismiss him from the Volscians’ good graces, and thereby win back his own once sterling reputation.

One way of understanding Coriolanus’s 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’s “man of steel” posture yields to the entreaties of the indomitable Volumnia. But see more on the quality of Coriolanus as tragedy below, in “Final Reflections.”

Act 5, Scenes 4-5 (1146-48, Menenius laments getting only a letter importing conditions from Coriolanus; good news arrives regarding Coriolanus’s peace offer, and Rome pays homage to Volumnia when she reenters the City.)

In Scene 4, Menenius describes the implacable will of Coriolanus in somewhat exaggerated terms: “He wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven / to throne in” (1147, 5.4.22-23). It’s 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’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid. [48]

A Messenger reports that the people in their desperation have captured the tribune Brutus and are threatening to kill him if Coriolanus’s wife and mother don’t bring home good news. But just after this, a Second Messenger delivers the news that “The Volscians are dislodged, and Martius gone” (1147, 5.4.39). In light of this great news, Menenius’s “godlike” lendings to Coriolanus sound almost comic.

By Scene 5, it’s the women who are being celebrated, not so much Coriolanus. As Volumnia, Virgilia, and Valeria return to Rome, the citizens are told to “Strew flowers before them, Unshout the noise that banished Martius; Repeal him with the welcome of his mother. / Cry, ‘Welcome, ladies, welcome!’” (1148, 5.5.3-6)

Act 5, Scene 6 (1148-52; Coriolanus returns to Corioles, only to be betrayed by Aufidius before the city’s lords and then cut down by assassins with whom Aufidius has contracted.)

Rome’s good news sets the stage for Coriolanus’s 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: “At a few drops of women’s rheum, which are / As cheap as lies, he sold the blood and labor / Of our great action. Therefore shall he die, / And I’ll renew me in his fall” (1149, 5.6.45-48).

As 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.

When Coriolanus reveals to the Volscian lords that he has “made peace / With no less honor to the Antiates / Than shame to th’ Romans” (1150, 5.6.78-80), and offers to show them the exact conditions in writing, his reward is Aufidius’s urging to the Volscian men of note, “Read it not, noble lords, / But tell the traitor in the highest degree / He hath abused your powers” (1151, 5.6.83-85).

Aufidius follows up this entreaty with another insultingly “feminizing” description of the moment when Coriolanus surrendered to the women in his family: “at his nurse’s tears / He whined and roared away your victory, / That pages blushed at him and men of heart / Look’d wond’ring each at others” (1150, 5.6.96-99). He even plasters Coriolanus with the supremely insulting epithet, “boy of tears” (1150, 5.6.100). Assassins soon thereafter kill Coriolanus at Aufidius’ bidding, only to provoke the latter’s remorse: “My rage is gone, / And I am struck with sorrow” (1152, 5.6.145-46). No matter—the deed is done.

Final Reflections on Coriolanus as Tragedy.

In Coriolanus, 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—surprisingly, given the play’s martial bent and heroes—much more about the protagonist’s attitude than action. That isn’t always the case in Shakespeare’s plays, which tend to offer plenty of physical action and events. Coriolanus dwells upon Coriolanus’s 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.

As a character, Coriolanus doesn’t have the complexity of a Macbeth or a Hamlet. He is a one-dimensional fighting man; unlike the melodramatic villain Richard III, he can’t 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. [49]

Samuel Johnson wrote that when we’re shown vice, it ought to disgust us—otherwise, the play’s influence over us will be bad. [50] In Coriolanus, an excess of virtue actually becomes disgusting. Being so “Roman” that one is un-Roman isn’t an attractive proposition.

We might compare this process to its obverse in Antony and Cleopatra, wherein Mark Antony is so Roman that he’s capable of embracing eastern luxury, dallying with Cleopatra the Hellenistic Egyptian queen, and yet remaining an iconic, even legendary, Roman. [51] 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.

As Machiavelli says, where the crowd is, there’s room only for the crowd and for its own “opinion,” which must be acknowledged. [52] Our unfortunate Roman general can’t abide that fact; he can’t project an appearance that differs from who he really is. In the end, what he is turns out to be so limiting that he can’t overcome the force of circumstance.

Finally, an ancient pattern sheds further light on the tragedy that befalls Coriolanus. It’s 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), [53] and the Athenian historian (author of The Peloponnesian War) 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. [54]

Both 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, “sense of injured merit,” [55] 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’ 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.

Caius Martius Coriolanus’s fate is not dissimilar to that of Themistocles or Alcibiades: he is the living, breathing excess 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.

Finally, we should ask a common and important question about the overall effect of Coriolanus. To what extent is this play a tragedy? How we answer this question will depend on how we respond to the scene in which Volumnia overcomes Coriolanus’s prideful determination to destroy the city that has exiled him. Does Coriolanus recover or discover his long-suppressed humanity?

If, 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’s just nothing to recover or discover—if Coriolanus cannot plausibly be thought to have the depth and tenderness required for such a transformation—then we may still experience the play as tragic, but not in the way described as traditional or classical

To be fair, there is more than one way to define and talk about tragedy, and in Shakespeare’s ten tragic plays, we will find a great deal of variety—perhaps almost as much as Henry James argued that the wonderfully expansive genre of novelistic fiction ought to admit. [56] 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’s up to readers and audience members to process for themselves what kind of tragic protagonist Coriolanus is.

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93860-9.

ENDNOTES

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[1] In the same passage, Eliot suggests that Hamlet is literature’s “Mona Lisa”—oddly compelling stuff, but not a masterpiece. See T. S. Eliot, “Hamlet and His Problems.” Bartleby.com. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[2] On the “Conflict of the Orders,” see “Gn. Marcius Coriolanus” in Livius.org. See also “Plebeians” in the World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[3] On the first secessio plebis, see “Secessio Plebis, the Roman Antecedent of the General Strike …” at LBV: Magazine Cultural Independiente. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[4] See Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics. Becker 1106a26–b28. The basic point is that a “virtue” is to be located at the mean or mid-point between excess of a quality and deficiency.

[5] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 288-343. See Murellus’s speech to the plebeians at 289-90, 1.1.31-54.

[6] Shakespeare was a businessman, a property owner, a bourgeois 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’s hard to accept fully the common modern view of Shakespeare as a cultural or political iconoclast—his plays don’t readily support that construction.

[7] The disorder over things like grain shortages and unavailability of affordable land continued through centuries of Roman history. The story of the Gracchi Brothers (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.

[8] Agrippa Menenius Lanatus was Consul in 503-02 BCE. See also “Plebeians” in the World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[9] See Sidney’s 1595 rendition in his “Apologie for Poetrie.“ HathiTrust. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[10] The quip is included in Wilde’s 1894 “A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated.” Wikisource. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[11] We have a vote in favor of democracy on no less a conservative aristocratic curmudgeon’s authority than that of Sir Winston Churchill, who said in a Parliamentary speech (evidently paraphrasing another) that “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time …” (11 Nov. 1947). See the quote available at the International Churchill Society. Accessed 8/25/2024. See also Quote Investigator’s interesting discussion of this idea’s multiple origins.

[12] On the Volscians, see the entry “Volsci” at Livius.org. See also “Volsci” at Historyfiles.co.uk and “Volsci” at Brittanica.com. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[13] In the commercials, Hertz and Avis are the two car-rental antagonists, with Avis saying they “try harder” because they aren’t “number one.”

[14] See, for example, “Ancient Rome.” World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[15] 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’s Ab Urbe condita 2.12-13. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[16] On this Spartan saying, see Plutarch. In the Moralia, see Lacaenara Apophthegmata, or Sayings of Spartan Women. #16: “Either this or upon this.”

[17] Antiates is a term for the people of the Volscian capital Antium, modern Italy’s Anzio. Time Travel Rome. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[18] That is, the Consul Postumus Cominius Auruncus, with the play’s supposed events taking place circa 493-488 BCE.

[19] Antiates were Volscians who came from the area in and around Antium.

[20] Attius Tullus, historically.

[21] On the office of Tribune, see “Plebeians” in the World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[22] Consulship was a major step in a Roman nobleman’s career path, the “Cursus honorum.” The cursus proper consisted of the following offices: quaestor, aedile or tribune, praetor, consul, and censor. 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.

[23] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 288-343. The play begins with the a tableau of plebeians celebrating Caesar’s triumphal procession.

[24] On the “Conflict of the Orders,” see “Gn. Marcius Coriolanus” in Livius.org. See also “Plebeians” in the World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[25] Homer describes Achilles’s fury in war in great detail. One example is Iliad 20.491-504. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[26] As above, see “Cursus honorum.” The cursus proper consisted of the following offices: quaestor, aedile or tribune, praetor, consul, and censor. Livius.org. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[27] On the Roman sense of an afterlife, see “Roman World and Afterlife.” UNRV Roman History. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[28] See Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses,” in which the title character Ulysses or Odysseus pines for the good old days of war and ultimate adventure: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!” Poetry Foundation. Accessed 8/27/2024.

[29] On the consulship and its electoral rituals, see “Consul.” Smith’s Dictionary at Penelope, U. of Chicago. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[30] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 982-1060. See Mark Antony’s lines at 324, 3.2.258-59.

[31] As above, on the “Conflict of the Orders” see “Gn. Marcius Coriolanus” in Livius.org. See also “Plebeians” in the World History Encyclopedia. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[32] On the Tarpeian rock’s history, see “Fallen from Grace: the Victims of the Tarpeian Rock.” By Zachary Hale, Macquarie U. Ancient History Blog. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[33] America’s founding politicians also saw parties as dangerous since they often end up promoting “faction,” 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’s opinion on factions in Federalist 10. Avalon Project (Yale Law Library). Accessed 8/28/2024. See also the Library of Congress’s “Full Text of the Federalist Papers.”

[34] See Machiavelli’s advice to the Medici rulers in The Prince. 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 The Prince. (Gutenberg e-text.) Accessed 8/30/2024.

[35] On exile in ancient Greece and Rome, see “Ovid and the Censored Voice: The History of Roman Exile.” Colby.edu. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[36] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 512-86. Othello’s inability to deal with uncertainties and “in-between” situations is evident all through the play, as when he says to the absent Desdemona: “Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul / But I do love thee; and when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again” (546, 3.3.89-91).

[37] On Hegel’s dialectic, see “Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic Explained.” The Collector. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[38] On amicitia perfecta, see Shakespeare’s Globe essay “Shakespeare and Friendship.” April 6, 2018. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[39] Nietzsche sometimes voiced that view, but of course it’s as old, at least, as the Spartans and their admirer Plato, who fashioned his Republic and Laws on a conception of the Spartan way of life. See Plato’s Republic. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[40] Shakespeare, William. The Life of Henry the Fifth. Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 790-857. See Henry’s speech to the defenders of Harfleur, 817, 3.4.1-43.

[41] See Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare after All. Anchor Books, 2004. “Coriolanus,” 776-801. On 784, Garber writes, “The citizens, whether Romans or Volscians, are portrayed as self-regarding, self-righteous, and vacillating, however just their claims.”

[42] Shakespeare, William. The Most Lamentable Roman Tragedy of Titus Andronicus. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 145-98.

[43] Consider Machiavelli’s characterization of the ruler’s ethical dilemma: to quote from Chapter XV of The Prince, “a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.” (Gutenberg e-text.)

[44] See Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics. Becker 1106a26–b28. Again, the basic point is that a “virtue” is to be located at the mean or mid-point between excess of a quality and deficiency.

[45] See Garber, Marjorie, ibid. On 787, the author observes that Coriolanus is often referred to as a “thing,” a person who is “mechanically motivated” rather than a fully human protagonist.

[46] Sappho. See fragment 47 on The Digital Sappho: Ἔρος δ᾿ ἐτίναξέ μοι / φρένας, ὠς ἄνεμος κὰτ ὄρος δρύσιν ἐμπέτων. “Love shook my / heart, like a wind bearing down a mountain takes an oak.” My translation.

[47] Pietas, devotion to the gods, one’s family, and one’s country was part of the mos maiorum or “way of the ancestors.” See “Mos Maiorum.” Wikipedia. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[48] In The Aeneid, Book 9, for example, Virgil describes the fighting as “raging strong / as a tempest out of the West …” and two warriors as “men like pines and peaks / of their native land …” (9.760-61, 768-69).

[49] 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.

[50] In “On Fiction” in The Rambler No. 4. 1750, Samuel Johnson writes, “Vice, for Vice is necessary to be shewn, should always disgust; nor should the Graces of Gaiety, o the Dignity of Courage, be so united with it, as to reconcile it to the Mind.” See Literature in Context. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[51] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 982-1060.

[52] Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Chapter XVIII. “[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.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[53] See Plutarch’s “The Life of Alcibiades.” Temple Plutarch, Vol. 2 on HathiTrust. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[54] See Plutarch’s “The Life of Themistocles.” Temple Plutarch, Vol. 2 on HathiTrust. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[55] Milton, John. Paradise Lost 1.97-99. The Milton Reading Room. Accessed 8/30/2024.

[56] Henry James. “The Art of Fiction.” James writes, “The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does compete with life. When it ceases to compete as the canvas of the painter competes, it will have arrived at a very strange pass.” Washington State U. Accessed 8/30/2024.