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    Coriolanus
    Coriolanus
    Coriolanus
    Ebook241 pages4 hours

    Coriolanus

    By William Shakespeare

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, based on the life of the legendary Roman leader, Gaius Martius Coriolanus.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBooklassic
    Release dateJun 17, 2015
    ISBN9789635236565
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare is the world's greatest ever playwright. Born in 1564, he split his time between Stratford-upon-Avon and London, where he worked as a playwright, poet and actor. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two, leaving three children—Susanna, Hamnet and Judith. The rest is silence.

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    Reviews for Coriolanus

    3.5/5

    325 ratings14 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      In preparation for the movie coming out soon! Best line so far? Menicius (Coriolanus' friend) calling a citizen, who is critical of the arrogant Coriolanus, as the "great toe of the assembly." And not in a good way, either. Coriolanus then calls all mutinous citizens (those that disagree with C?) "scabs." Awesome!
      ...
      Really enjoyed this play, and I believe it's the first Shakespeare I've read since college. Coriolanus has some of the best speeches with which he burns his foes, and these offset some of the longer, duller passages.
    • 2/5
      I couldn't have followed this story if my life depended on it. Something about a talented warrior who has mama manipulating him on one side and his cohorts betraying him on the other. Who knows? Who cares? Definitely the weakest of all the Bard's works I've read thus far.
    • 3/5
      The secondary characters were the best part. I would have preferred spending more time with Menenius and Aufidius and having been spared some of Coriolanus's haughty declarations. I'm no scholar of Shakespeare's works, but it seemed to me that much of his poetry fell short in this play. Rarely did I stop to savor the language or to marvel at an elegant turn of phrase. I did appreciate some of the political themes, but even the best of these pale in comparison with Shakespeare's vast array of more poignant and personal observations.
    • 4/5
      The citizens of a republic run their greatest soldier out of town because they can't stand him and he can't stand them. As it happens, they can't live without each other - literally. This may be the greatest political drama written. It is also one of the great mother and son stories.
    • 4/5
      I listened to this book on audio in preparation to see the performance. I wanted to familiarize myself with it since I didn't get into Shakespeare much in high school or after. If I had known that his plays were also gruesome and bloody, I would have been enjoying Shakespeare a long time ago.
    • 5/5
      This is a timely play in that it captures something of the American political zeitgeist wherein popularity and playing to the crowd trumps ideals and personal integrity. One can't help hearing the voices of pundits on the left and right in the petty complaints of the tribunes Brutus and Sicinius.

      Marcius (Coriolanus):
      Thanks. What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,
      That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,
      Make yourselves scabs?
    • 4/5
       Coriolanus is worth the read, but there's also a reason why you may be unfamiliar with it. Compared to, say, Julius Caesar, it's nothing. But don't let the Bard set the bar too high on himself.
    • 5/5
      Nobody says Coriolanus is their favorite Shakespeare play--not even the kind of people who have favorite Shakespeare plays. But after a second read, it's moving up my list. Martius (aka Coriolanus) is, for the most part, an intensely dislikeable character--but as the play goes on, you begin to see how he came to be the way he is, and while it doesn't excuse his faults, it certainly makes him a complex and intriguing character.

      There's just so much depth to this play. Martius' relationships with his mother, his wife, and his nemesis are all delightfully screwed up. It's difficult to pick a single "tragic flaw" for Martius because he has so many of them--pride, rigidity, wrath, unhealthy attachment to his mother... It's one of Shakespeare's last tragedies, and thus one of the most mature. Though there's a great deal of blood referenced in the text and the stage directions, there's no on-stage bloodbath as in Titus Andronicus: Martius is the only character to die in the play.

      It almost needs to be seen, either on stage or on screen, to be really appreciated. Just don't talk to me about the Donmar production unless you want me to spend an hour telling you about how perfect every last detail was.
    • 4/5
      Several years ago I read this play as part of a class at the University of Chicago. It was a revelation that entranced me with its drama. Even so, the warrior Coriolanus is perhaps the most opaque of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, rarely pausing to soliloquise or reveal the motives behind his prideful isolation from Roman society. Instead, the play demonstrates his character through his actions and his relationships. The relationship with his mother, Volumnia, is the most important of these. The tension of her love for him reaches heights that are only exceeded by those of Coriolanus fame as a warrior for Rome.
      This is not the Rome of the Caesars but that of the early days when the republic was in its formative stages. It was a city concerned with warring neighbors like the Volscians who are an ever-present enemy. While Caius Martius' success in battles with this enemy lead him to military honors and earn him the name Coriolanus, he does not have the temperamental qualities that would allow him use these accolades for political purposes. He is held back by his own nature and his situation leads to banishment by the crowds who once cheered him. His speech to them as he leaves Rome is memorable:
      "You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
      As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
      As the dead carcasses of unburied men
      That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
      And here remain with your uncertainty!
      Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!
      Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
      Fan you into despair! Have the power still
      To banish your defenders; till at length
      Your ignorance, which finds not till it feels,
      Making not reservation of yourselves,
      Still your own foes, deliver you as most
      Abated captives to some nation
      That won you without blows! Despising,
      For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
      There is a world elsewhere."(Act III, Scene iii)

      It is, for me, the best of the lesser-known of his plays and stands tall by the side of the other two great Roman history plays, Julius Caesar and Antony & Cleopatra. In particular, the psychological depth of the character of Coriolanus, his relationships with his mother and subject Romans, and the dramatic action make this play a delight to read.
    • 5/5
      In most tragedies, and Shakespearan ones in particular, the force of the tragedic ending is based on the reader's (or audience's) sympathy with the principal character. We may not like him or her, but we feel close enough to them to suffer their loss. We've lamented in the storm with Lear, and contemplated with Hamlet. We can never really get to this place with Caius Martius Coriolanus (I'll use Martius to refer to the character, to avoid confusion with the title of the play).

      Martius is a Roman general of great reknown, whose tragic flaw is his contempt for the people of Rome. Led on by members of the Roman senate, the people turn on Martius, and he is cast from the city. When his mother leads a contingent to him, to ask him to lay down the arms he has raised against Rome, Martius prepares himself for their visit:

      "My wife comes foremost; then the honored mold
      Wherein this trunk was framed, and in her hand
      The grandchild to her blood. But out, affection!
      All bond and privilege of nature, break!
      Let it virtuous to be obstinate" (V.3, 22-25).

      This is a moving passage, and a rich one. Does Martius think that it is obstinate to be virtuous, because the obstinancy protects a virtue (namely his pride)? Or does he recognize that he has long since left virtue behind, and is pleading to retain virtue? Yet even here, where Martius tries to cast aside affection for his family and break the bonds he has with them, it is difficult for the reader to sympathize with Martius in the way we would with characters in other tragedies. He has not given us rich soliloquies, or even reflected on his course of action.

      What's more, his course of action seems clearly in the wrong. His pride against the people is contemptous, and when he is cast aside, he ends up electing to burn Rome to the ground. The way in which pride drives him to these actions, the way it drives him to atttempt to reject his bonds, is entirely opaque. The play is not weaker for it though. It is different from many of the tragedies, but no less moving and no less thought provoking. While I may not have felt the same sense of desolation that one feels at the end of Lear, this play is rewarding for the complexity of the character interactions, and the depth of the sub-text.

      Consider, for example, the role of the citizens of Rome. The play opens with their lodging a complaint with Martius, that he has prevented them from receiving available grain. This charge is unrefuted, and Martius instead replies that the people do not deserve it, for they have not served in the wars. They ultimately turn on Martius, and it seems that there is something prescient about this decision. While Martius was not guilty of some of the charges laid against him, his willingness to turn against Rome on the simple matter of his pride suggests a mercenary element of his character that the people have trussed out.

      At the same time, the people are led by tribunes who goad and manipulate them. Martius' failure is his inability to win the crowd over in this way. This portrayal is much harsher on the citizens. In these passages, they come across as animals waiting to be herded. This is like the image we get of the Roman citizens in Julius Caesar, where the people's emotions are so easily manipulated by Brutus and then Antony. We see elements of that here, but the people are much more complex.

      After banishing Martius, one citizen recalls "For mine own part, / when I said `Banish him,' I said 'twas pity." One might read this as the citizens simply turning coat again, as Martius' returns with an army. Yet, I suspect there is more to it than that. The citizens may be manipulable, but they recognize this fact. The citizens in Caesar show little indication that they recognize how Antony moves them at his will.

      This relation between Martius and the people drives the play. As noted above, Martius' downfall is due to his unwillingness and inability to placate the people. In one particularly moving passage, Martius' claims:

      "...I will not do't
      Lest I surcrease to honor mine own truth
      And by my body's action teach my mind
      A most inherent baseness" (III.2, 119-122).

      Martius, along Aristotelian lines, sees acting viciously as a way of training vicious character, and as he sees placating the people as a vice, he cannot bring himself to do it (or ultimately to do it well). On one hand, if we side with Martius, we see a populace refusing to understand and exalt the triumphs of the soldier. It is Martius who has spilled blood for the city, and the citizens who have benefited from his wounds refuse to honor them. For Martius, the conflict is clear.

      Yet, it is clear that Shakespeare does not want us to simply settle into Martius' point of view. Indeed, since we understand him so poorly, it is very difficult to do so. What's more, after being thrown from the city, Martius' ultimately elects to burn Rome. Civilian control over the military here seems essential. While they may have been led around by the tribunes, the people have rightly removed a highly dangerous individual, whose loyalty to Rome seems to be rooted more in his own pride at being a soldier than love for the virtues of the city or its society.

      Shakespeare remains ambiguous between these interpretations, and the opacity of Martius' character lends itself to this ambiguity. Rather than getting sucked into his view of the matter (even if we recognize the other side), here we are unable to really understand anyone. Martius is inscrutable and the people are being led around. I found that this issue truly rewarded reflection, and it is the sort of issue that Coriolanus raises so well.

      This is not to mention a host of other interesting questions raised in the play, which for the sake of brevity, I will simply mention. The gender politics of Volumnia are fascinating. She has raised Martius by the ideals of honor, even so much as to value his honorable death greater than his living company. Or what is the nature of honor? Is it tied to virtue (or is itself a virtue), or can one have strictly self-interested honor? Should we say that Martius' lacks honor in the end, or that he has a self-interested honor? Woven together, as always, with Shakespeare's unparalled poetry, these rewarding and interesting questions make Coriolanus a truly powerful play.
    • 4/5
      [Coriolanus] by [[William Shakespeare]].

      While not the best of Shakespeare's tragedies, [Coriolanus] just may be the timeliest. Yes, it's a play about a soldier whose pride and love for his overbearing mother ultimately bring him down. But the driving force behind the plot is a pair of manipulating politicians who know how to spin things to their advantage and lead the fickle multitude by their noses.

      While the people are more villains that victims, one can't help but notice that some things never change; here's one of them on their current government:

      Care for us! True, indeed! They ne'er cared for us
      yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
      crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
      support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
      established against the rich, and provide more
      piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
      the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
      there's all the love they bear us.

      All one has to do to see the truth in that is take a look at the PA governor's proposed budget . . . or the federal budget, for that matter. It's Robin Hood in reverse: give to the rich and take from the poor.
    • 1/5
      Tragedy usually centers on someone with a tragic flaw, but I'm not sure being an asshole counts as a tragic flaw. There's a reason this one wasn't covered in my Shakespeare courses. Give it a miss unless you insist on reading all of Shakespeare.
    • 1/5
      I have actually seen this as a play as well as read it, and either way, its INSANELY boring.
    • 5/5
      Personal code of honor admits no compromises; Shakespeare's strong argument against republican government

    Book preview

    Coriolanus - William Shakespeare

    978-963-523-656-5

    Act I

    SCENE I. Rome. A street.

    Enter a company of mutinous Citizens, with staves, clubs, and other weapons

    First Citizen

    Before we proceed any further, hear me speak.

    All

    Speak, speak.

    First Citizen

    You are all resolved rather to die than to famish?

    All

    Resolved. resolved.

    First Citizen

    First, you know Caius Marcius is chief enemy to the people.

    All

    We know't, we know't.

    First Citizen

    Let us kill him, and we'll have corn at our own price.

    Is't a verdict?

    All

    No more talking on't; let it be done: away, away!

    Second Citizen

    One word, good citizens.

    First Citizen

    We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good.

    What authority surfeits on would relieve us: if they

    would yield us but the superfluity, while it were

    wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely;

    but they think we are too dear: the leanness that

    afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an

    inventory to particularise their abundance; our

    sufferance is a gain to them Let us revenge this with

    our pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know I

    speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.

    Second Citizen

    Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?

    All

    Against him first: he's a very dog to the commonalty.

    Second Citizen

    Consider you what services he has done for his country?

    First Citizen

    Very well; and could be content to give him good

    report fort, but that he pays himself with being proud.

    Second Citizen

    Nay, but speak not maliciously.

    First Citizen

    I say unto you, what he hath done famously, he did

    it to that end: though soft-conscienced men can be

    content to say it was for his country he did it to

    please his mother and to be partly proud; which he

    is, even till the altitude of his virtue.

    Second Citizen

    What he cannot help in his nature, you account a

    vice in him. You must in no way say he is covetous.

    First Citizen

    If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations;

    he hath faults, with surplus, to tire in repetition.

    Shouts within

    What shouts are these? The other side o' the city

    is risen: why stay we prating here? to the Capitol!

    All

    Come, come.

    First Citizen

    Soft! who comes here?

    Enter MENENIUS AGRIPPA

    Second Citizen

    Worthy Menenius Agrippa; one that hath always loved

    the people.

    First Citizen

    He's one honest enough: would all the rest were so!

    MENENIUS

    What work's, my countrymen, in hand? where go you

    With bats and clubs? The matter? speak, I pray you.

    First Citizen

    Our business is not unknown to the senate; they have

    had inkling this fortnight what we intend to do,

    which now we'll show 'em in deeds. They say poor

    suitors have strong breaths: they shall know we

    have strong arms too.

    MENENIUS

    Why, masters, my good friends, mine honest neighbours,

    Will you undo yourselves?

    First Citizen

    We cannot, sir, we are undone already.

    MENENIUS

    I tell you, friends, most charitable care

    Have the patricians of you. For your wants,

    Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well

    Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them

    Against the Roman state, whose course will on

    The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs

    Of more strong link asunder than can ever

    Appear in your impediment. For the dearth,

    The gods, not the patricians, make it, and

    Your knees to them, not arms, must help. Alack,

    You are transported by calamity

    Thither where more attends you, and you slander

    The helms o' the state, who care for you like fathers,

    When you curse them as enemies.

    First Citizen

    Care for us! True, indeed! They ne'er cared for us

    yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses

    crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to

    support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act

    established against the rich, and provide more

    piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain

    the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and

    there's all the love they bear us.

    MENENIUS

    Either you must

    Confess yourselves wondrous malicious,

    Or be accused of folly. I shall tell you

    A pretty tale: it may be you have heard it;

    But, since it serves my purpose, I will venture

    To stale 't a little more.

    First Citizen

    Well, I'll hear it, sir: yet you must not think to

    fob off our disgrace with a tale: but, an 't please

    you, deliver.

    MENENIUS

    There was a time when all the body's members

    Rebell'd against the belly, thus accused it:

    That only like a gulf it did remain

    I' the midst o' the body, idle and unactive,

    Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing

    Like labour with the rest, where the other instruments

    Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,

    And, mutually participate, did minister

    Unto the appetite and affection common

    Of the whole body. The belly answer'd—

    First Citizen

    Well, sir, what answer made the belly?

    MENENIUS

    Sir, I shall tell you. With a kind of smile,

    Which ne'er came from the lungs, but even thus—

    For, look you, I may make the belly smile

    As well as speak—it tauntingly replied

    To the discontented members, the mutinous parts

    That envied his receipt; even so most fitly

    As you malign our senators for that

    They are not such as you.

    First Citizen

    Your belly's answer? What!

    The kingly-crowned head, the vigilant eye,

    The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,

    Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter.

    With other muniments and petty helps

    In this our fabric, if that they—

    MENENIUS

    What then?

    'Fore me, this fellow speaks! What then? what then?

    First Citizen

    Should by the cormorant belly be restrain'd,

    Who is the sink o' the body,—

    MENENIUS

    Well, what then?

    First Citizen

    The former agents, if they did complain,

    What could the belly answer?

    MENENIUS

    I will tell you

    If you'll bestow a small—of what you have little—

    Patience awhile, you'll hear the belly's answer.

    First Citizen

    Ye're long about it.

    MENENIUS

    Note me this, good friend;

    Your most grave belly was deliberate,

    Not rash like his accusers, and thus answer'd:

    'True is it, my incorporate friends,' quoth he,

    'That I receive the general food at first,

    Which you do live upon; and fit it is,

    Because I am the store-house and the shop

    Of the whole body: but, if you do remember,

    I send it through the rivers of your blood,

    Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain;

    And, through the cranks and offices of man,

    The strongest nerves and small inferior veins

    From me receive that natural competency

    Whereby they live: and though that all at once,

    You, my good friends,'—this says the belly, mark me,—

    First Citizen

    Ay, sir; well, well.

    MENENIUS

    'Though all at once cannot

    See what I do deliver out to each,

    Yet I can make my audit up, that all

    From me do back receive the flour of all,

    And leave me but the bran.' What say you to't?

    First Citizen

    It was an answer: how apply you this?

    MENENIUS

    The senators of Rome are this good belly,

    And you the mutinous members; for examine

    Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly

    Touching the weal o' the common, you shall find

    No public benefit which you receive

    But it proceeds or comes from them to you

    And no way from yourselves. What do you think,

    You, the great toe of this assembly?

    First Citizen

    I the great toe! why the great toe?

    MENENIUS

    For that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest,

    Of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost:

    Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run,

    Lead'st first to win some vantage.

    But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs:

    Rome and her rats are at the point of battle;

    The one side must have bale.

    Enter CAIUS MARCIUS

    Hail, noble Marcius!

    MARCIUS

    Thanks. What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,

    That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,

    Make yourselves scabs?

    First Citizen

    We have ever your good word.

    MARCIUS

    He that will give good words to thee will flatter

    Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs,

    That like nor peace nor war? the one affrights you,

    The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,

    Where he should find you lions, finds you hares;

    Where foxes, geese: you are no surer, no,

    Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,

    Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue is

    To make him worthy whose offence subdues him

    And curse that justice did it.

    Who deserves greatness

    Deserves your hate; and your affections are

    A sick man's appetite, who

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