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speaks distances him from the
citizens, until he seems to tower
above them, delivering his words
of condemnation as if they were
bolts of lightning: “Despising /
For you the city, thus I turn my
back. / There is a world elsewhere”
(3.3.137–139).
No matter how objectionable
Coriolanus’s words may be, his
magnetism is undeniable. Before
leaving for exile, he tells his mother,
“I shall be loved when I am lacked”
(4.1.16), and these words mirror
most people’s experience of
watching the play in performance;
the play loses some of its zest
whenever he leaves the stage.
While the people of Rome believe
themselves to be the city’s core,
Coriolanus asserts the power of the
individual, and it is his character
that dominates this play, dwarfing
the role played by the city’s people.
Coriolanus is alarmingly self-
assured and self-reliant, forever
acting “Alone” (5.6.117).A play for all time
In following Thomas North’s
translation of Plutarch’s Lives of
the Noble Greeks and Romans,
Shakespeare presented a fractious
and politically explosive period of
Roman history. In recent years,
historians have questioned
whether Coriolanus ever existed,
but certainly Plutarch viewed him
as a historical character, whose
lineage could be traced back to
early kings of Rome.
Shakespeare and his
contemporaries were living through
a similar era of social and political
unrest, in which insurrections and
corn riots were similarly a feature
of their own world. Shakespeare’s
choice of subject matter was
characteristically full of controversy,
contemporary relevance, as well
as commercial interest: the play
exemplifies Ben Jonson’s statement,
in the Preface to the First Folio in
1623, that Shakespeare’s works are
“not of an age, but for all time.” ■A German hero?
Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is
an ambivalent hero, and the
audience is never entirely
certain whose side to take.
This ambivalence has left
space over the centuries for
Coriolanus to be appropriated
for political purposes by
both right- and left-wing
ideologies. This was never
more true than in 20th-century
Germany, where Shakespeare
was the most performed
playwright, and all sides
sought to claim his legacy.
Under the Nazi regime
in the 1930s and 1940s,
Coriolanus’s position as a
powerful leader battling
against a failing democratic
system was emphasized.
Germans were encouraged to
see Hitler as a similar figure—
with the implication that, to
avoid the play’s tragedy, it
was necessary for the masses
to follow him unwaveringly.
In the 1950s, an adaptation
by Bertholt Brecht called
Coriolan stressed the class
warfare in the play. It
highlighted the attack by the
people on their corrupt Roman
leaders. Brecht was working
in Communist East Germany,
and the play was dedicated
to the German proletariat.THE KING’S MAN
O mother, mother!
What have you done?
Behold, the heavens do ope,
The gods look down, and this
unnatural scene
They laugh at.
Coriolanus
Act 5, Scene 3Coriolanus, played here by Toby
Stephens in a 1995 RSC production,
is covered in blood following the
battle at Corioli. He is a man of
action, not a man of words.