Repository | Book | Chapter

Is Coriolanus too stubborn, childish, stupid? Or is he too honest, noble, even "too noble for the world" (III.1.257)?¹ These are hardly original questions for Shakespeare criticism, and, as Stanley Cavell notes, they have been bound up with taking sides for either patricians or plebeians (Cavell, 2003, p. 145). Does Coriolanus fail to negotiate with the people in a respectful manner to win their rightful votes; or is he too honest to ingratiate himself by false flattery with those who do not know their place? Characters in the play, however divided in their political allegiances, agree on one thing. Whether they regard him as noble, stupid or arrogant, all find him, as his mother Volumnia puts it, "too absolute" (III.2.40). It is, indeed, in terms of this absolutism, this obstinacy and determination that both claims for his nobility and stupidity are put forward — and both assessments of Coriolanus come with imagery that positions him as obstinate beyond the limits of the human.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137033598_7

Full citation: