ABSTRACT
Shakespeare wrote many plays about heroes, but only Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus are distinguished by heroic appeals that are exclusively and definitively aristocratic. One hesitates to urge a predominance of external influences on that creativity which gives Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, but out of the bombardment of internal and external stimuli came two distinctly heroic tragedies which for the first time in Shakespeare's career treat aristocratic appeals that are definitively and insistently exclusive. In confronting the aristocratic ideal of Rome with a contemporaneous antagonistic City, Coriolanus more than incidentally reflects the social and political turmoil of Jacobean England. He moral vision of Shakespeare's two heroic tragedies incorporates the popular, didactic morality of the people: Antony and Cleopatra are certainly overthrown by lust; Coriolanus is indeed a victim of his own pride. Cleopatra's theatrical fears, therefore, are symptomatic of a moral comprehensiveness achieved by a playwright manipulating a diverse audience with diverse points of view.
