ABSTRACT
A loftier perfect piece of man's work was never done in the world than this tragedy of Coriolanus: the one fit and crowning epithet for its companion or successor is that bestowed by Coleridge "the most wonderful". It is from first to last, for all its turmoil of battle and clamour of contentious factions, rather a private and domestic than a public or historical tragedy. The partisans of oligarchic or democratic systems may wrangle at their will over the supposed evidence of Shakespeare's prejudice against this creed and prepossession in favour of that: a third bystander may rejoice in the proof thus established of his impartial indifference towards either: it is all nothing to the real point in hand. The subject of the whole play is not the exile's revolt, the rebel's repentance, or the traitor's reward, but above all it is the son's tragedy.
