Coriolanus

The final confrontation between Coriolanus and the people of Rome in Act V serves as the culminating moment for The Role of Personality in Individual Behavior theme. While Cominius and Menenius fail in their suits to Coriolanus because they seek to alter his nature, Volumnia’s rhetoric proves more effective because she relies on the values already present in his character. When Menenius plans to go to Coriolanus to ask for mercy, he decides to go to Coriolanus after a meal, rationalizing that Cominius was only turned away because “he had not dined / The veins unfilled, our blood is cold, and then / We pout upon the morning, are unapt / To give or to forgive” (5.1.59-62), once more invoking the play’s motif of eating (See: Symbols & Motifs). Nevertheless, Menenius fails to move Coriolanus, proving that the alteration in his body after dining is not enough to alter his fundamental nature and inspire feelings of pity.

Volumnia, on the other hand, saves Rome by asking Coriolanus to obey his innate feeling of filial devotion and to feed his desire for increasing his own honor, rather than to suddenly feel pity towards the citizens who banished him. She acknowledges that Coriolanus cannot break his oath to the Aufidius, saying, “If it were so, that our request did tend / To save the Romans, thereby to destroy / The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn / Us / As poisonous of your honor” (5.3.153-157). Therefore, she asks that he helps to make peace between the two nations, providing the Volsces with treasure in exchange for saving Rome from destruction. Her final gesture—demonstrating her own vulnerability by kneeling and weeping (See: Symbols & Motifs) before her son—finally breaks Coriolanus’s resolve. He is finally forced to acknowledge his own humanity and vulnerability by feeling moved in the face of his family’s distress. Since Volumnia’s request does not require Coriolanus to change his feelings or his inherent nature, her words are ultimately more effective than Menenius’s or Cominius’s.

After Volumnia’s successful argument, however, Shakespeare continues to hint at how The Problem of Masculine Violence will result in a continuing cycle of retaliatory bloodshed. While Rome has been saved, Coriolanus cannot break free from his martial cultural upbringing. Shakespeare first foreshadows this in the only line spoken by Coriolanus’s son, the young Martius. While the women weep and kneel before him, the young Martius retorts, “He shall not tread on me. / I’ll run away till I am bigger, but then I’ll fight” (5.3.147-148). The similarity between father and son guarantees that the cycle of violence would continue if Coriolanus attacked the city.

Even after he agrees to spare Rome, Coriolanus implies that he realizes he will still be unable to escape the patriarchal culture of violence. He laments to Volumnia:

CORIOLANUS. O, my mother, mother, O!

You have won a happy victory to Rome,

But, for your son—believe it, O, believe it!—

Most dangerously you have with him prevailed,

If not most mortal to him (5.3.208-212).

Shakespeare leaves his meaning ambiguous here, providing no immediate answer as to how Volumnia’s actions may have inadvertently killed her son. However, Coriolanus’s prediction later comes true when Aufidius also proves unable to let go of violence as a necessary factor of his own masculine identity. Since Coriolanus can no longer be the godlike monster (See: Symbols & Motifs), the perfect warrior whose individual will supersedes all others, he is vulnerable to Aufidius’s resentment and eventual betrayal.

The conclusion of the play depicts Aufidius murdering Coriolanus so that he can reaffirm his own power as the leader of the Volsces. After provoking Coriolanus by calling him the emasculating term “boy,” Coriolanus attacks his assassins and reminds them of how he has previously killed many of their people in previous wars:

CORIOLANUS. Cut me to pieces, Volsces. Men and lads,

Stain all your edges on me. ‘Boy’? False hound!

If you have writ your annals true, ’tis there

That like an eagle in a dovecote, I

Fluttered your Volscians in Corioles,

Alone I did it. ‘Boy’! (5.6.133-138).

His final words before he is killed affirm that the tragic flaw of Coriolanus, which led to his exile and his death, is his inability to find an identity outside of his role as a soldier. He dies by reaffirming his manhood, reminding the Volsces of how many of their troops he killed in Corioles. Once more he fights back against impossible odds to prove his superiority, but his final fight proves fatal to him.