Coriolanus is a five-act tragedy by the English dramatist William Shakespeare. It belongs to the third period of his artistic development, when he wrote his great tragedies, such as Hamlet and Macbeth. It also belongs, with Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, to a group of plays dealing with Roman history. This subject held a particular fascination for the people of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Experts believe that Coriolanus was Shakespeare’s last tragedy, written and performed probably in 1608. It was published in 1623.
Coriolanus is a tragedy based mainly on the English writer Sir Thomas North’s translation of Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, by the ancient Greek biographer Plutarch. Its central character is Caius Marcius, a haughty general of ancient Rome, who wins the surname Coriolanus by capturing the town of Corioli from the Volsci, an Italian people with whom the Romans are at war. Returning in triumph to Rome, Coriolanus is nominated for the position of consul, the highest political office in the land. He cannot conceal, however, his contempt for the common people of Rome, even though he needs their support to win the consulship. He soon makes himself unpopular with the fickle Roman mob, and the tribunes (Roman officials) find it easy to have him banished from the city.
Coriolanus joins forces with his old enemy, the Volscian general Tullus Aufidius, and leads an army against Rome in revenge for his treatment. He wins his way to its very walls. The Romans, seeking to save the city from destruction, send envoys from among Coriolanus’s old friends to propose terms for surrender, but to no avail. In the end, Coriolanus’s mother Volumnia, his gentle wife Virgilia, and his son are sent to plead with him to spare the city. He gives in to them, suspecting that by so doing he has ensured his own imminent death, and makes a treaty with Rome that is favorable to the Volscian people. He returns with the Volscian troops to the town of Antium. Here Aufidus turns on him, accusing him of treason against the Volsci, and with the help of a group of conspirators assassinates him in public.
The tragedy of Coriolanus raises issues that remain relevant today. Shakespeare questions the values of personal popularity and political success. The play also debates the conflicting interests of public and private life and the competing claims of an aristocracy versus a democracy.
