ABSTRACT
Coriolanus is William Shakespeare's most political play. Sheltering under Samuel Taylor Coleridge's comforting assertion that Coriolanus illustrates 'the wonderful philosophic impartially in Shakespeare's politics', literary critics could concentrate on character, theme and how – or whether – Coriolanus could be considered a tragic hero. Attempting to bring together insights into the influence of private relationships on Coriolanus's fate with Shakespeare's evident interest in the political processes initiated by the creation of the Tribunate, others stress the extent to which Volumnia is used as patrician spokeswoman in the public realm. Patricia Meszaros insists on seeing Coriolanus in its Jacobean context as an experimental play using ancient history to illuminate the present, attempting 'to translate a sense of momentous political change in England into dramatic terms'. The struggle to control Rome 'in the new order is to be waged with language'; Coriolanus becomes a victim of history because of his inability to become a political man, 'to use language rhetorically'.
