Coriolanus by William Shakespeare

First produced: c. 1607-1608; first published, 1623

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Tragedy

Time of plot: Third century

Locale: Rome, Corioli, and Antium

Principal characters

• Caius Marcius Coriolanus, a noble Roman
• Titus Lartius and Cominius, generals against the Volscians
• Menenius Agrippa, a friend of Coriolanus
• Tullus Aufidius, a general of the Volscians
• Sicinius Velutus and Junius Brutus, tribunes of the people
• Volumnia, the mother of Coriolanus
• Virgilia, the wife of Coriolanus

The Story:

Caius Marcius, a brilliant soldier, is attempting to subdue a mob in Rome when he is summoned to lead his troops against the Volscians from Corioli. The Volscians are headed by Tullus Aufidius, also a great soldier and perennial foe of Marcius. The hatred the two leaders have for each other fires their military ambitions. Marcius’s daring as a warrior, known by all since he was sixteen, leads him to pursue the enemy inside the very gates of Corioli. Locked inside the city, he and his troops fight so valiantly that they overcome the Volscians. Twice wounded, the victorious general is garlanded and hailed as Caius Marcius Coriolanus.

On his return to Rome, Coriolanus is further proclaimed by patricians, consuls, and senators, and he is recommended for the office of consul, an appointment wholeheartedly approved by the nobles. Because the citizens, too, have to vote on his appointment, Coriolanus, accompanied by Menenius Agrippa, goes to Sicinius and Brutus, the plebeian tribunes, to seek their approval.

The people long held only contempt for Coriolanus because of his arrogance and inhumane attitude toward all commoners. Although coached and prompted by Menenius to make his appeal as a wound-scarred soldier of many wars, Coriolanus cannot bring himself to solicit the citizens’ support but instead demands it. He is successful in this with individuals he approaches at random on the streets, but Brutus and Sicinius, who represent the common people, are not willing to endorse the elevation of Coriolanus to office. They voice the opinions of many citizens when they accuse Coriolanus of insolence and of abuses such as denying the people food from the public storehouses. Urging those citizens who voted for him to rescind their votes, Brutus and Sicinius point out that his military prowess is not to be denied but that this very attribute will result in further suppression and misery for the people. Coriolanus’s ambitions, they predict, will lead to his complete domination of the government and to the destruction of their democracy.

Menenius, Cominius, and the senators repeatedly plead with Coriolanus to approach the tribunes civilly, and Volumnia admonishes him that if he wants to realize his political ambitions he must follow their advice. Appealing to his responsibility as a Roman, Volumnia points out that service to one’s country is not shown on the battlefield alone and that Coriolanus must use certain strategies and tactics for victory in peace as well as in war.

Coriolanus misconstrues his mother’s suggestions. She taught him arrogance, nurtured his desires in military matters, and boasted of his strength and of her part in developing his dominating personality. Coriolanus now infers that his mother in her older years is asking for submissiveness and compliance. Although he promises Volumnia that he will deal kindly with the people, it is impossible for him to relent, even when his wife, Virgilia, who never condoned his soldiership, lends her pleas to those of the group and appeals to his vanity as a capable political leader and to his responsibility as a father and a husband.

Coriolanus’s persistence in deriding and mocking the citizens leads to an uprising against him. Drawing his sword, he would have stood alone against the mob, but Menenius and Cominius, fearing that the demonstration might result in an overthrow of the government, prevail upon him to withdraw to his house before the crowd assembles. Coriolanus misinterprets the requests of his friends and family that he yield to the common people, and he displays such arrogance that he is banished from Rome. Tullus Aufidius, learning of these events, prepares his armies to take advantage of the civil unrest in Rome.

Coriolanus, in disguise to protect himself against those who want to avenge the deaths of the many he killed, goes to Antium to offer his services to Aufidius against Rome. When Coriolanus removes his disguise, Aufidius, who knows the Roman’s ability as a military leader, willingly accepts his offer to aid in the Volscian campaign. Aufidius divides his army in order that he and Coriolanus each can lead a unit, thereby broadening the scope of his efforts against the Romans. In this plan, Aufidius sees the possibility of avenging Coriolanus’s earlier victories over him; once they take Rome, Aufidius thinks, the Romans’ hatred for Coriolanus will make possible his dominance over the arrogant patrician.

The Romans hear with dismay of Coriolanus’s affiliation with Aufidius; their only hope, some think, is to appeal to Coriolanus to spare the city. Although Menenius and Cominius blame the tribunes for Coriolanus’s banishment, they go as messengers to the great general in his camp outside the gates of Rome. They are unsuccessful, and Cominius returns to inform the citizens that, in spite of old friendships, Coriolanus will not be swayed in his intentions to annihilate the city. Cominius reports that Coriolanus refuses to take the time to find the few grains who are his friends among the chaff he intends to burn.

Menenius, sent to appeal again to Coriolanus, meets with the same failure. Coriolanus maintains that his ears are stronger against the pleas than the city gates are against his might. Calling the attention of Aufidius to his firm stand against the Romans, he asks him to report his conduct to the Volscian lords. Aufidius promises to do so and praises the general for his stalwartness. While Coriolanus vows not to hear the pleas of any other Romans, he is interrupted by women’s voices calling his name. The petitioners are Volumnia, Virgilia, and young Marcius, his son. Telling them that he will not be moved, he again urges Aufidius to observe his unyielding spirit. Then Volumnia speaks, saying that their requests for leniency and mercy are in vain, since he already proclaimed against kindliness, and that they will therefore not appeal to him. He also makes it impossible for them to appeal to the gods: They cannot pray for victory for Rome because such supplication will be against him, and they cannot pray for his success in the campaign because that would betray their country. Volumnia proclaims that she does not seek advantage for either the Romans or the Volscians but asks only for reconciliation. She predicts that Coriolanus will be a hero to both sides if he can arrange an honorable peace between them.

Finally moved by his mother’s reasoning, Coriolanus announces to Aufidius that he will frame a peace agreeable to the two forces. Aufidius declares that he, too, is moved by Volumnia’s solemn pleas and wise words. Volumnia, Virgilia, and young Marcius return to Rome, there to be welcomed for the success of their intercession with Coriolanus. Aufidius withdraws to Antium to await the return of Coriolanus and their meeting with the Roman ambassadors, but as he reviews the situation, he realizes that peace will nullify his plan for revenge against Coriolanus. Moreover, knowing of the favorable regard the Volscians have for Coriolanus, he believes he has to remove the man who was his conqueror in war and who might become his subduer in peace. At a meeting of the Volscian lords, Aufidius announces that Coriolanus betrayed the Volscians by depriving them of victory. In the ensuing confusion, he stabs Coriolanus to death. Regretting his deed, he then eulogizes Coriolanus and says that he will live forever in men’s memories. One of the Volscian lords pronounces Coriolanus the most noble corpse ever followed to the grave.

Bibliography

Barton, Anne. “Julius Caesar and Coriolanus: Shakespeare’s Roman War of Words.” In Shakespeare’s Craft: Eight Lectures, edited by Philip H. Highfill, Jr. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982. Barton points out that in a world dependent on verbal rhetorical persuasion, Coriolanus’s distrust of language alienates and isolates him, as does his personal use of language without regard to audience response.

Blits, Jan H. Spirit, Soul, and City: Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus.” Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2006. Provides a line-by-line commentary on the text, analyzing the play’s characters, language, allusions, puzzles, and other literary devices and elements of the drama.

Crowley, Richard C. “Coriolanus and the Epic Genre.” In Shakespeare’s Late Plays: Essays in Honor of Charles Crow, edited by Richard Tobias and Paul Zolbrod. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1974. Argues that Coriolanus merges tragedy and epic and has at its heart the conflict between mercy and honor.

McAlindon, T. “Coriolanus: An Essentialist Tragedy.” Review of English Studies 44 (November, 1993): 502-520. Rather than analyzing Coriolanus as a metaphor for England’s problems, McAlindon regards the play as a political tragedy of class conflict and manipulation of power in a realistic, historically specific society.

McKenzie, Stanley D. “’Unshout the Noise That Banish’d Marcius’: Structural Paradox and Dissembling in Coriolanus.” Shakespeare Studies 18 (1986): 189-204. Argues that in a world of chaotic reversals, betrayals, and paradoxes where only the adaptable survive, Coriolanus’s unchanging consistency dooms him.

Miles, Geoffrey.“’I Play the Man I Am’: Coriolanus.” In Shakespeare and the Constant Romans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Examines the depiction of constancy in Coriolanus and Shakespeare’s other Roman plays. The Romans considered constancy a virtue, and Miles traces the development of this ethical concept from ancient Rome through the Renaissance. He then analyzes the ambiguity of this virtue in Shakespeare’s depiction of the obstinate Coriolanus.

Miller, Shannon. “Topicality and Subversion in William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 32, no. 2 (Spring, 1992): 287-310. Discusses Coriolanus’s intricate structure of topical references and draws parallels with the career of James I, early seventeenth century issues of authority and monarchy, and other conflicts and contradictions of Shakespeare’s age.

Rackin, Phyllis. “Coriolanus: Shakespeare’s Anatomy of ’Virtus.’” Modern Language Studies 13, no. 2 (Spring, 1983): 68-79. Interprets Coriolanus as a cautionary illustration of the narrow, exclusive inadequacy of the Roman ideal. The hero’s Roman virtues ironically are the vices that doom him.

Ripley, John.“Coriolanus” on Stage in England and America, 1609-1994. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998. Chronicles how this play has been altered in performance to accommodate political and social ideologies, ideas about aesthetics, and changing theatrical practices at the time it was produced. Includes discussion of performances in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the twentieth century interpretation of actor Laurence Olivier, and the influence of psychoanalysis, politics, and postmodernism in performances staged from 1961 through 1994.

Steible, Mary. Coriolanus: A Guide to the Play. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. Describes the dramatic structure, themes, textual and performance history, critical approaches, and the historical, cultural, literary contexts of the play.