Coriolanus

Summary

Coriolanus, probably written in 1608, is Shakespeare's last Roman tragedy and his harshest study of a city at odds with itself. It is set in the early Roman republic, around 494-491 BC, just after the kings have been expelled, when hungry plebeians demanded grain and won the right to elect tribunes. The play opens with citizens armed with clubs, resolved to kill Caius Martius, whom they call 'chief enemy to the people', and to have corn at their own price. The patrician Menenius Agrippa calms them with the fable of the belly: the members of the body once rebelled against the belly as idle, until it explained that it sends nourishment to every part. Martius arrives and pours contempt on the crowd, then learns that the Volscians are in arms. At the Volscian town of Corioles, Martius fights his way inside the gates alone and then helps rout the enemy army; for this he is given the surname Coriolanus. His mother Volumnia, who has raised him to glory in wounds, wants him made consul. The Senate approves, but custom requires him to put on the gown of humility in the marketplace, show his wounds and ask the citizens for their 'voices'. He does so with barely hidden scorn. The tribunes Sicinius and Brutus, who fear his power, persuade the people to revoke their consent. When Coriolanus rages that giving grain freely and sharing power with tribunes will destroy the state, the tribunes charge him with treason. Volumnia and Menenius persuade him to return and speak mildly, but when the tribunes call him a traitor his temper breaks, and Rome banishes him. He answers, 'I banish you!' In disguise he goes to Antium and offers himself to his old enemy Tullus Aufidius, either to lead the Volscians against Rome or to be killed. Aufidius embraces him, and together they march on the city. Cominius and Menenius plead with him and are rejected. Then Volumnia comes with his wife Virgilia, his young son and the noblewoman Valeria. After a long speech she kneels, and Coriolanus, holding her hand in silence, gives way and makes a peace that spares Rome, knowing it may be 'most mortal' to him. Back in Corioles, Aufidius accuses him of treachery and taunts him as a 'boy of tears'; Coriolanus boasts how he fluttered the Volscians 'like an eagle in a dovecote', and the conspirators kill him. Aufidius, suddenly sorrowful, orders that he 'shall have a noble memory'. The play gives strong arguments to every party: the hungry citizens, the patrician friend, the scheming tribunes, the proud general, and the mother who made him. It leaves students to judge how far courage without self-command, or a city without gratitude, can stand.

Plot or Argument

• Act I: Grain riots, the belly fable, and the taking of Corioles

  Starving citizens plan to kill Caius Martius. Menenius tells his fable of the belly and the members; Martius scorns the crowd and reports that five tribunes have been granted to the people. War with the Volscians follows. At home Volumnia praises the bloody brow of a soldier son while Virgilia refuses to leave the house. At Corioles Martius enters the gates alone, survives, rejoins Cominius, and duels Aufidius. He refuses a share of the spoils and is named Coriolanus. Aufidius, defeated, vows to destroy him by any means.

• Act II: The return and the gown of humility

  Menenius banters with the tribunes; Volumnia counts her son's wounds with pride. The Senate names Coriolanus for consul, but he cannot bear to hear his deeds praised. In the marketplace he asks the citizens for their voices with mocking courtesy and wins them, but the tribunes persuade the people that they have been scorned and should revoke their votes.

• Act III: The consul-elect becomes a traitor

  Told that the people have withdrawn their consent, Coriolanus attacks the tribunate and the free distribution of grain. The tribunes order his arrest and death from the Tarpeian rock; Menenius pleads that he is a diseased limb to be cured, not cut off. Volumnia urges her son to dissemble for the sake of policy. He agrees, but in the Forum the word 'traitor' undoes him, and he is banished. He curses the city and leaves.

• Act IV: Exile and alliance with Aufidius

  Coriolanus parts from his family at the gates. Volumnia curses the tribunes. Coriolanus arrives at Antium in poor clothing and offers his throat or his service to Aufidius, who welcomes him rapturously and shares his command. Rome learns of the Volscian advance with panic. Aufidius, already jealous, privately reflects that 'our virtues / Lie in th' interpretation of the time' and plans his rival's fall.

• Act V: The embassy of the women and the death at Corioles

  Cominius and then Menenius are turned away. Volumnia, Virgilia, Valeria and young Martius kneel before Coriolanus. After Volumnia's plea he yields, makes peace, and returns with the Volscians. Rome welcomes the women as its saviours. In Corioles Aufidius charges him with betrayal and calls him 'boy'; the conspirators kill him amid the cries of the Volscian people, and Aufidius orders a dead march.

Characters

• Caius Martius Coriolanus, protagonist

  A patrician soldier of overwhelming courage who despises flattery, the common people and his own need of others; he cannot ask, bargain or conceal, and he is most moved by his mother.

• Volumnia, his mother

  A Roman matron who formed her son for war and glory, rejoices in his wounds, urges him to political cunning, and finally saves Rome by kneeling to him.

• Virgilia, his wife

  A quiet, devoted woman who will not leave the house while her husband is at war and speaks little; he greets her as 'my gracious silence'.

• Young Martius, his son

  A boy reported to have torn a butterfly to pieces in a fit; he appears with the women in the final embassy.

• Menenius Agrippa, patrician friend

  A witty, humorous elder who tells the fable of the belly, mediates between Coriolanus and the people, and is rejected when he pleads at the Volscian camp.

• Cominius, Roman general and consul

  Coriolanus's commander, who praises his deeds before the Senate and later fails to turn him from Rome.

• Tullus Aufidius, Volscian general

  Coriolanus's rival and mirror, who welcomes the exile as a brother-in-arms and then arranges his death.

• Sicinius Velutus and Junius Brutus, tribunes of the people

  Newly created officers who rightly fear Coriolanus's contempt for the plebeians and manipulate the crowd to bring him down.

• The Citizens, Roman plebeians

  Hungry, argumentative, often fair-minded individuals who grant and withdraw their voices; the First Citizen frames the opening grievance.

Lessons

• The fable of the belly and the body politic

  Menenius answers a hunger riot with an old political allegory, also found in Livy and Plutarch: the body's members rebel against the belly, which replies that it sends nourishment to all. The fable is clever and partly true, but it is told to men who are actually starving, and the First Citizen interrupts it with a list of the body's more active parts. The scene teaches students to admire an argument's form while asking whom it serves and whether it answers the complaint.

  • What is true in the belly's answer, and what does it leave out?
  • Why does the First Citizen describe the head as 'kingly crowned' and the heart as 'counsellor'? What kind of body does he imagine?
  • Later, Sicinius calls Coriolanus 'a disease that must be cut away' and Menenius replies that he is a limb to be cured. How does the body image change across the play?

• Courage without humility: the gown and the wounds

  Roman custom asks the victorious general to stand in a humble gown and show his wounds to the people. Coriolanus's courage is real; his refusal to ask is also real. He would rather have his wounds 'to heal again / Than hear say how I got them', and his request for votes becomes mockery. Shakespeare shows a man whose virtue is bound up with a pride that cannot receive gifts or depend on others. Classical Christian students can weigh this against the scriptural account of courage joined to meekness without turning the play into a sermon.

  • Is Coriolanus's refusal to boast a form of modesty or a form of pride? Find lines that support each reading.
  • Why is the custom of showing wounds so unbearable to him?
  • What would it have cost Coriolanus to ask honestly for the people's support, and would it have been wrong?

• Volumnia: the mother who made the soldier

  Volumnia rejoices that her son is wounded, tells Virgilia that blood becomes a man more than gold, counsels him to dissemble, and claims, 'Thy valiantness was mine'. Her final plea saves Rome by appealing to the very kinship her son had sworn to ignore. She is neither villain nor simple heroine. Students can trace how an upbringing forms a character and still leave the grown man responsible for his choices.

  • Compare Volumnia's speech on Hector's bleeding forehead (Act I) with her plea at the Volscian camp (Act V). Has she changed?
  • She tells her son, 'thou suck'dst it from me, / But owe thy pride thyself.' How far is he responsible for what she taught him?
  • Rome welcomes Volumnia as its saviour. Is the welcome deserved?

• 'As if a man were author of himself'

  Before the women plead, Coriolanus resolves to 'stand / As if a man were author of himself, / And knew no other kin.' The phrase names the illusion at the centre of the tragedy: a man who has defined himself by refusing need is undone by the claims of mother, wife and child. Exile from Rome has not made him free; it has made him a weapon in another city's hands. Silence before his mother is the play's turning point.

  • What does it mean to be 'author of himself'? Why can no one truly be so?
  • Why does Shakespeare make Coriolanus's surrender a silent gesture, holding his mother's hand, rather than a speech?
  • He tells his mother she has won 'a happy victory to Rome' but perhaps a mortal one for him. Is his yielding an act of virtue, weakness or both?

• Tribunes, voices and the interpretation of the time

  The tribunes are not wrong to fear a consul who calls for their office to be abolished, yet they manipulate the citizens and provoke the outburst they need. Aufidius, watching from outside, reflects that 'our virtues / Lie in th' interpretation of the time'. The play offers no faction as wholly right, which makes it an excellent text for practising fair political judgment and resisting partisanship.

  • Make the strongest case for the tribunes, then the strongest case against them, using their own words.
  • Do the citizens behave as a mob or as reasoning men? Does the answer change from scene to scene?
  • What does Aufidius mean when he says virtues lie in the interpretation of the time? Is he right about Coriolanus?

Context

Shakespeare's source is Plutarch's Life of Caius Martius Coriolanus in Sir Thomas North's English translation (1579, from Amyot's French), which he followed closely; Volumnia's great plea in Act V is close verse adaptation of North's prose. The legend also appears in Livy, Book II, which places it in the years after the first secession of the plebs (c. 494 BC) and the creation of the tribunes. Shakespeare's emphasis on corn as the cause of the opening revolt, where Plutarch begins with debt, is usually connected with the Midland Rising of 1607, a series of protests against enclosure and dearth in Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire. The play's dense language of the body politic draws on a commonplace of Tudor and Jacobean political writing.

Composition

There is no record of performance or publication before the First Folio of 1623, where the play opens the tragedies section. Allusions to the Midland Rising, to the hard frost of 1607-1608 (the 'coal of fire upon the ice'), and the style of the verse lead most editors to date it 1608, after Antony and Cleopatra. The Folio text, apparently from an authorial or near-authorial manuscript, is the sole authority; act divisions are in the Folio, and scene divisions, like those in the Project Gutenberg text used here, were added by later editors.

Reception

The play had few recorded performances before the Restoration, and Nahum Tate (1682) and John Dennis (1719) adapted it to fit political crises of their own day. Hazlitt's essay in Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817) argued that the play shows how poetry naturally sides with power. In the twentieth century it became a political flashpoint: a 1934 production at the Comédie-Française provoked riots in Paris, and Bertolt Brecht began a reworking that favoured the plebeians. T. S. Eliot called it, with Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's most assured artistic success. The Great Books of the Western World (2nd ed., 1990) included it in volume 26.

Comparisons

• Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

  Plutarch pairs Coriolanus with Alcibiades and judges him a man of noble nature spoiled by lack of education and an untempered anger. Shakespeare takes the plot and much of Volumnia's speech from North's translation, but shifts the cause of revolt to famine and gives the citizens and tribunes far sharper voices than Plutarch does.

• The History of Rome, Books I-V

  Livy's Book II tells the Coriolanus story inside his account of the struggle of the orders, with Menenius's fable used to end the first secession of the plebs. Reading Livy shows how Shakespeare compressed decades of institutional history into a single life.

• Julius Caesar

  Both Roman plays turn on a crowd that can be swayed in a single scene. Mark Antony wins the plebeians by flattering them with feigned modesty; Coriolanus loses them because he will not flatter at all. Brutus and Coriolanus are both undone partly by their refusal to see how others will read them.

• Antony and Cleopatra

  Written within a year or so of each other and both drawn from North's Plutarch, the two plays mark opposite poles: Antony dissolves Roman virtue into pleasure and expansiveness, Coriolanus hardens it into a single, unbending soldierly rigour.

• Politics

  Aristotle's account of the mixed constitution and of the dangers of faction between rich and poor provides a vocabulary for the Roman quarrel. His observation that a man who needs no city is either a beast or a god sheds light on Coriolanus's wish to stand 'as if a man were author of himself'.

• The Iliad

  Volumnia invokes Hector's bleeding forehead as a sight lovelier than a mother's breast. Like Achilles, Coriolanus withdraws in wounded honour and turns against his own side; unlike Achilles, he is reconciled not by an enemy father's plea but by his own mother's.

Quotes

Medical Lens

Coriolanus is not about medicine, but it is saturated with the bodily language of early modern physiology and surgery. Menenius's belly fable describes digestion and distribution in Galenic terms: the belly as 'storehouse and shop' sending nourishment through 'the rivers of your blood' to heart and brain. Wounds are a political currency, counted, displayed and refused, and Menenius jokes that a letter from Martius is better than 'the most sovereign prescription in Galen'. In Act 3 the quarrel is argued in surgical terms of disease, infection, gangrene and amputation. The opening scene's famine gives hunger a concrete social cause. These are metaphors and incidents, not a sustained medical subject, so relevance is kept low.

• Act 1, Scene 1

  Menenius's fable of the belly and the members, with its account of nourishment sent through the blood to heart, brain, nerves and veins; framed by a riot over grain and hunger.

  Humoral Medicine Starvation Nutrition
• Act 1, Scene 3

  Volumnia tells Virgilia that blood becomes a man more than gilt and compares Hector's bleeding forehead to Hecuba's breasts.

  WAR Wounds
• Act 2, Scene 1

  Menenius mocks Galen's prescriptions as 'empiricutic' beside the cheering effect of Martius's letter, then he and Volumnia count and locate Martius's wounds with pride.

  Ancient Medicine WAR Wounds
• Act 2, Scenes 2-3

  The custom of showing wounds to the people in the gown of humility, which Coriolanus resists and performs with contempt.

  WAR Wounds
• Act 3, Scene 1

  The tribunes call Coriolanus a disease to be cut away and an infection of catching nature; Menenius argues for cure rather than amputation and invokes a gangrened foot.

  Surgery

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation between Sicinius and Brutus on the night after Coriolanus is banished, in which one of them begins to doubt whether they have served the people or only themselves.

• Fiction

  Rewrite the gown-of-humility scene from the point of view of one of the citizens whose vote Coriolanus asks for, keeping the facts of Act 2, Scene 3 but adding what the citizen sees and thinks.

• Essay

  Menenius says Coriolanus's nature is 'too noble for the world'; Aufidius says virtues lie 'in th' interpretation of the time'. Which judgment does the play bear out? Argue from three scenes.

• Classroom

  Stage Volumnia's plea in Act 5, Scene 3 twice: once with Coriolanus turning away throughout, and once with him watching her. Discuss where the stage direction 'He holds her by the hand, silent' should fall and why the silence matters.

• Poetry

  Write a short poem in the voice of Virgilia, whom her husband calls 'my gracious silence', on the day he leaves Rome in exile.

Further Reading

• The Life of Caius Martius Coriolanus (in Plutarch's Lives, trans. Sir Thomas North), Plutarch

  Shakespeare's main source; compare Volumnia's speech with North's prose.

• Characters of Shakespear's Plays, William Hazlitt

  Hazlitt's 1817 essay on Coriolanus, the classic statement that the play shows poetry's attraction to power.

• Coriolan, T. S. Eliot

  Eliot's unfinished two-part poem (1931-1932) drawing on the play's triumphal and political scenes.

• Shakespeare's Rome, Robert S. Miola

  A study of Rome across Shakespeare's plays, with a full chapter on Coriolanus.