ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the growing contemporary interest in Shakespeare's visual effects, that "large body of images that is not part of the spoken words of the text, but directly presented in the theatre", offers a healthy corrective to the longstanding scholarly obsession with the plays' verbal content. The first moments of Coriolanus's triumphal return from the wars, the opening of the Pleading Scene and Coriolanus's assassination all offer relatively firm clues to Shakespeare's intentions, and also appear to be visual analogues. The new scene opened with the discovery of "A triumphal Arch in Rome", through which passed an ovation numbering some 240 persons. Sheridan's two processions-civic and military-were replaced with one gargantuan spectacle arranged in four divisions. The visual pattern of Coriolanus's assassination, like that of the Pleading Scene, bears strong resemblance to the design for the Triumphal Return episode.
