ABSTRACT
No Quarto appears to have been printed of this play, and the first Folio of 1623 (where it comes first of the Tragedies) is the sole authority for the text. The stage-directions are elaborate and some read like instructions to the producer. Since they occasionally seem to show knowledge of Plutarch, they were probably written by Shakespeare. 'There can be no doubt that behind F lies a very carefully prepared author's transcript.' 1
There is no evidence of any performance before the Restoration, and the date of composition is doubtful. The play was certainly written after the publication of Camden's Remaines if a Greater Worke concerning Britaine in 1605, for Shakespeare took a point or two from that for Menenius' fable of the belly and its members [inf. 551]. Halliwell-Phillips believed that Coriolanus must have been written after the publication of the 1612 edition of Plutarch's Lives because in V.3.97: 'How more unfortunate than all living women', the word 'unfortunate' points to that edition, earlier editions having 'unfortunately'. But 'unfortunate' is simpler and fits the metre. MacCallum pointed out that 'spite' in IV.5.87 is used thus only in the editions of North published before 1603.2 Georg Brandes3 thought that this play about a mother's love was occasioned by the death of Shakespeare's mother (buried on 9 September, 1608). This is speculation, but 1608 is suggested by more cogent circumstantial evidence. There was a dearth of corn in 1607 and 1608; and the play departs from Plutarch's account of the unrest in Rome in a topical manner, as will be shown later. There was a great frost in the winter of 1607/8 when the Thames was frozen over and 'pans of coals' were to be seen on it [Text VI]. This
The play was certainly well known by the end of 1609 when Ben Jonson in Epicrtne (V.4.227) made Truewit praise the cunning Dauphine thus: 'you have lurched your friends of the better half of the garland, by concealing this part of the plot'- obviously a jesting allusion to Shakespeare's Coriolanus, who in his many battles 'lurch'd all swords of the garland' (II.2. 101). In style Coriolanus resembles somewhat Antony and Cleopatra and Timon, and we may accept Chambers' suggestion (WSh i, 480) that it was produced early in 1608.
