It was put into English in 1579 (from a French version) by Sir Thomas North, who did it so well that his book turned out to be one of the prose masterpieces of the Elizabethan Age. Shakespeare read it and used it as the basis for three of his plays. He paid the translation the ultimate compliment of scarcely changing its words in some cases. They made almost perfect blank verse as they stood.

Shakespeare wrote Coriolanus about 1608 and it was the last of his three Plutarchian plays. Its subject matter was, however, the earliest in time, so I am placing it first.

The action opens in 494 b.c. (according to legend), only fifteen years after the rape of Lucrece, the expulsion of the Tarquins, and the establishment of the Republic by Brutus (see page I-211). The events described in the play are therefore of extremely dubious value historically, for they take place a century before the destruction of the Roman annals by the Gallic invaders (see page I-204).

Nevertheless, with Plutarch's guidance, Shakespeare can draw upon a complete and interesting story, though perhaps one that is too romantic to sound completely true.

Coriolanus opens in the streets of Rome, with citizens hurrying onstage in a fever of agitation, carrying weapons. Some crisis is taking place and the men are desperate. Their leader is called "First Citizen" in the play and he calls out to them:

—Act I, scene i, lines 4-5

Only fifteen years before, King Tarquin had been driven out of Rome and the institution of the monarchy had been destroyed. The Roman Republic was set up and was to last for five centuries. Control was placed in the hands of the aristocracy (the "patricians"), with numerous checks and balances, to make sure that no one of the aristocrats could gain so much power as to make himself a king and start the round of tyranny and revolt over again.

That did not mean, however, that Rome had become a little corner of heaven. The patricians, now that they had power in their hands, intended to keep it there. They reserved to themselves virtually all the rights, both political and economic, and yielded very little to the common people ("plebeians").

The plebeians in those days were small farmers who were expected to leave their farms and fight the city's battles whenever duty called. In the years after the first founding of the Republic, duty called frequently, for the exiled king tried to regain his position and made use of neighboring tribes as allies. Rome had to fight for its life.

As a result of those wars, though, the plebeian soldier might return from battle to find his farm neglected, or even ravaged, and would be in need of capital to begin again. The city did not consider itself economically responsible for its farmers and the loans a plebeian could get from the patricians were on harsh terms; and if they were not repaid, he and his family could be sold into slavery.

Furthermore, when food was scarce there was nothing to prevent the patricians (who had the capital for it) from buying up the supplies and then reselling it to the plebeians at a profit, thus capitalizing on the general misfortune.

It would be utterly inhuman to expect that the plebeians would sit still for all this. Undoubtedly, their lot had worsened under the Republic and they found it intolerable that they were expected to give their lives for the patricians while getting nothing in return.

The riotous citizens onstage are rebelling plebeians, then, and the First Citizen reminds them whom they are chiefly to blame for their misfortunes. He cries out:

—Act I, scene i, lines 7-8

Caius Marcius is the proper name of the hero of the play. He is to gain the surname of Coriolanus under circumstances to be described later.

Caius Marcius came from an old patrician family. According to Plutarch (in a passage Shakespeare quotes later in the play) he was a descendant of Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome. This did not mean that Caius Marcius, as the descendant of a king, was necessarily a royalist.

Rome's seven kings could be divided into two groups, in fact, with Ancus Marcius belonging to the older. When he became king, he established an advisory body consisting of a hundred of the older representatives of the various clans that made up the city's people. This group of older men was the "Senate," so called from the Latin word for "old men." These senators were called "patricians" from the Latin word for "father," because they were, in theory, the fathers of the people. The word was then extended to all the old families from whom senators might be drawn.

According to tradition, Ancus Marcius brought in new colonists from among conquered tribes outside Rome, since the growing city could use the extra hands. These, however, were not granted the political powers of the old Romans. It was their descendants who became plebeians.

Ancus Marcius was not succeeded by his sons, but by a king called Tarquinius Priscus ("Tarquin the Elder"), who was an Etruscan from the north. (The Etruscans to the north of Rome were at that time the dominant people in Italy, and the succession of Tarquinius Priscus may be actually a sign of Etruscan overlordship of Rome-a situation softened in the Roman legends out of Roman pride.)

Under Tarquinius Priscus, Rome prospered materially, but the power of the king increased at the expense of the patricians. He was finally assassinated by those on the side of the old kings, but eventually the son of Tarquinius Priscus gained the throne. This was the Tarquinius Superbus who was expelled from Rome after the events outlined in The Rape of Lucrece (see page I-211).

Caius Marcius, by family tradition, then, would be against the Tarquinian notion of monarchy. And he would be strongly pro-patrician and anti-plebeian.

When the Second Citizen, a less extreme leader of the plebeian mob, expresses reservations against aiming at Marcius particularly, the First Citizen replies firmly:

—Act I, scene i, lines 28-29

This is the key to Marcius' character. He is a "dog" to his enemies. He snarls and bites. Plutarch says of him: "he was so choleric and impatient, that he would yield to no living creature, which made him churlish, uncivil, and altogether unfit for any man's conversation."

That is his tragedy: the tragedy of his personality. What he might have gained, and ought to have gamed for the better qualities within himself, he threw away by his perpetual anger and willfulness.

It may have been just this which was the challenge that interested Shakespeare and made him decide to write the play. In Antony and Cleopatra (see page I-317), which he had written a year or so earlier, Shakespeare shows us a flawed hero, Mark Antony, who sacrificed honor and worldly ambition to love and to sexual passion. In Coriolanus he shows us the reverse, a hero who served only military honor and who allowed nothing to stand in his way (with one exception).