care who commands and who does not, whom Rome praises and whom she does not. All he wants is a chance to fight so that, in any office, he can win his mother's praise.
... to guard Corioles
The fast Roman response to the Volscian threat forces the Volscians to hasten their own plans. Tullus Aufidius is consulting with the Volscian council and one of the Volscian senators says:
Noble Aufidius,
Take your commission; hie you to your bands:
Let us alone to guard Corioles.
- Act I, scene ii, lines 25-27
This council of war is taking place in Corioli (or Corioles), a town whose location is now uncertain, and this, in itself, is one of the signs that the story of Coriolanus is legendary. At the time of the traditional date of this war, 493 b.c. (a year after the plebeian uprising, although Shakespeare, in the interest of speeding the action, makes it take place immediately afterward), what records we have indicate that Corioli was not a Volscian city but was in alliance with that portion of Latium which was under Roman leadership.
It is very likely that the tales of Coriolanus that were dimly remembered had to be adjusted to account for the name. Why should Marcius be remembered as Coriolanus unless he had played a key role in the conquest of that city? So the conquest was assumed.
And why was Marcius eventually given the name of Coriolanus if it was not because of the conquest of the city? No one will ever know. For that matter, can we be certain that such a man as Coriolanus ever existed at all?
... Hector's forehead...
Now, at last, Marcius' mother, Volumnia, is introduced. So is his wife, Virgilia. Virgilia is, however, a shrinking girl, much dominated by her mother-in-law, who is pictured as the ideal Roman matron. She is a most formidable creature and we cannot help but wonder if Marcius' little-boy love for her is not intermingled with more than some little-boy fear.
Shakespeare makes it plain that Marcius has become something that is his mother's deliberate creation. Even when he was young, she tells her daughter-in-law proudly, all she could think of was how honor (that is, military glory) would become him. She says:
To a cruel war I sent him,
from whence he returned,
his brows bound with oak
- Act I, scene iii, lines 14-16
(An oak wreath was the reward granted a soldier who had saved the life of a fellow soldier.)
Virgilia timidly points out that Marcius might have been killed, but Volumnia says, grimly:
I had rather had eleven die nobly
for their country than one voluptuously
surfeit out of action.
- Act I, scene iii, lines 25-27
And when Virgilia gets a little queasy over Volumnia's later reference to possible blood on Marcius' brow, Volumnia then says, in scorn at the other's weakness:
Away, you fool! It [blood] more becomes a man
Than gilt his trophy. The breasts of Hecuba,
When she did suckle Hector, looked not lovelier
Than Hector's forehead when it spit forth blood
- Act I, scene iii, lines 42-46
In later centuries the Romans invented a legend to the effect that they were descended from the Trojan hero Aeneas (see page I-20), and it is natural to read this back into early Roman history and to imagine that the early Romans identified strongly with the Trojans. Hector (page I-81) was Troy's greatest fighter.
... a gilded butterfly.. .
Volumnia's bloodthirsty and single-minded approach to the notion of military honor makes it plain why Marcius, trained by her, is what he is. But can it be that Shakespeare approves of this sort of mother and finds the product of her training to be admirable? Let's see what follows immediately!
Valeria, a friend of the family, comes to visit, and describes something she has observed that involves Marcius' young son. She says:
1 saw him run after a gilded butterfly;
and when he caught it, he let it go again;
and after it again; and over and over he comes,
and up again; catched it again;
or whether his fall enraged him, or how 'twas,
he did so set his teeth, and tear it.
- Act I, scene iii, lines 63-68
The promising child, in other words, plays cat-and-mouse with a butterfly and ends by killing it in a rage. But why a butterfly? Surely nothing can be as pretty, harmless, and helpless as a butterfly. It isn't possible that we can feel sympathetic for a child that would deliberately and sadistically kill one. And this is clearly the product of Volumnia's bringing up.
But can we really apply the unreasoning action of a young child to the