Isaac Asimov - Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

—Act V, scene i, lines 24-28

Even at best, with all possible motive, Coriolanus seems to have skirted the edge of madness here, for as Menenius points out:

—Act V, scene i, lines 28-29

There seems little hope for penetrating the red veil of madness that has closed over Coriolanus' vengeful mind. Cominius says:

—Act V, scene i, lines 70-74

Even this faint possibility seems to wither. Menenius is urged to try his luck with Coriolanus, but he is thrust scornfully away and Coriolanus denies that anyone, even his dearest, can sway him. He says to Menenius:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 83-84

Has Coriolanus the strength to turn against his own mother? Perhaps, but only because he has a substitute. He remains the little boy who must have parental approval. Having brutally turned away Menenius, he turns to Aufidius and seeks approval with what might almost be a simper:

—Act V, scene ii, lines 93-94

Aufidius knows his man. Gravely, he gives him what he wants and tells him he is a good boy:

—Act V, scene ii, line 95

But now the women come: his wife, his mother, the fair Valeria. His young son is also there.

Coriolanus kneels to his mother, but holds firm, saying:

—Act V, scene iii, lines 81-86

He is determined to place his own grievances above Rome and wishes to cancel his mother's arguments even before she makes them.

But now Volumnia, in a speech of noble eloquence, shows that she places Rome before him and herself. Too late she tries to teach him that life is not a matter of blows and rages alone; that there are softer and nobler virtues:

—Act V, scene iii, lines 154-55

And when Coriolanus remains obdurate, she rises to return to Rome to die and then uses the one remaining weapon at her disposal, and the most terrible of all:

—Act V, scene iii, lines 177-82

With a terrible understatement, she makes it clear that when the city is burning, she will call down a dying mother's curse upon her son.

And before this Coriolanus cannot stand. He collapses utterly and cries out:

—Act V, scene iii, lines 185-89

He turns away; he will not fight further against Rome; and he asks Au-fidius to make peace. Aufidius is willing to do so. With Coriolanus not in the fight, Rome will be difficult to take. It would be better to make the peace, use the results against Coriolanus, and perhaps fight Rome another time when Coriolanus is not present either to help or to hinder. So much we can assume. Aufidius actually says, in an aside, that he is glad at this development since it will help himruin Coriolanus.

In Rome Menenius is gloomy. He tells an anxious Sicinius that he doesn't think Volumnia will prevail; after all, he himself did not. He describes Coriolanus in the most forbidding terms as nothing but a war machine:

—Act V, scene iv, lines 22-23

He is, in other words, as immobile, as aloof, as untouched by humanity as a statue of Alexander the Great. This is an anachronism, for Alexander lived nearly a century and a half after Coriolanus and died in 323 b.c.

But almost at that moment comes the news that Coriolanus has given in and that the army is gone. Rome goes mad with joy and flocks to the gates to greet Volumnia.

The Volscian army is back in Corioles now and Aufidius is ready to strike and rid himself of the incubus he had earlier accepted; an incubus that would have been worth its cost if it had brought them the destruction of Rome. But it had not, for, as Aufidius says bitterly:

—Act V, scene vi, lines 97-98

Coriolanus, stupefied, calk on Mars, the god of war, and Aufidius says, with contempt:

—Act V, scene vi, line 101

For the first time, Coriolanus has been openly called what he is. He is a boy; a tearful, butterfly-killing mamma's boy who never grew up except in muscles; who did all his warlike deeds so that his mother might clap her hands over him; and who broke up at last when his mother said "Bad boy!"

Coriolanus cannot accept Aufidius' sneer because in his heart he knows it is true, and he dare not let himself know it consciously. He keeps repeating that word, shouting:

—Act V, scene vi, lines 113-17

His last boast is of his feat at Corioli in entering the city and fighting alone. At the end as at the beginning he is alone in the universe, he with his mother. Is that being a boy, he asks? Of course it is. A foolish act of boyish braggadocio is no less foolish because it succeeds.

And once again, Coriolanus' rage and tactlessness draws down anger upon himself. He is killed by numerous swords that have been prepared for the purpose by Aufidius himself.

The Volscian nobles are taken aback. They regret the sudden killing without trial, but one says of Coriolanus:

—Act V, scene vi, lines 145-47

It is at this point of the climax of self-ruin that Shakespeare ends the tale.

Plutarch tells a little more. Coriolanus is honorably buried and the city of Rome pays homage to the mother, if not the son, by allowing her to mourn for him the full period of ten months that was then customary.

And at some time, in a future battle, Tullus Aufidius died in arms against Rome. Roman power grew steadily and Volscian power declined, and in the end it was Rome, Rome, Rome, over all Latium, all Italy, all the Mediterranean world.

The first Plutarchian play (see page I-213) written by Shakespeare (probably in 1599) concerned the time four and a half centuries after Coriolanus. Rome had survived the Gallic sack and the onslaught of Hannibal of Carthage. It had spread itself west and east over the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and now all those shores were either Roman territory or under the control of some Roman puppet king.