ABSTRACT
The glamor of Cleopatra or Rosalind: none of that is in Coriolanus. It glows with no magic of personality. Its hero has no charisma, comes to no self-knowledge, participates in no miracle, transforms nothing in himself. Rage can provoke fantasies that are petty. But anger as rebellion against the decorum of work is a real fantasy for everyone. Professors of William Shakespeare and their students are white-collar workers. A good manager and a good worker had to display at all times their capacity to understand others. Anger became an expression of lack of professionalism, of someone who did not "have it together." Passion and frankness threaten it, and bland, antiseptic middle-managers fear explosions of rage, hate, and vituperations of passion. Thomas de Quincy uses the word in passing as a way of talking about Coriolanus. And thanks to an essay by Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, the relationship between Coriolanus's words and parrhesia is now a topic in Shakespeare criticism.
