Coriolanus (Vol. 30) | David George Hale (essay date 1971)
David George Hale (essay date 1971)
SOURCE: "The Age of Elizabeth: Challenge," in The Body Politic: A Political Metaphor in Renaissance English Literature, Mouton, 1971, pp. 69-107.
[In the following essay, Hale discusses Coriolanus' downfall in terms of Menenius ' "fable of the belly," and the metaphor of the body politic.]
As is the case with all of Shakespeare's plays, Coriolanus has been the subject of centuries of analysis and commentary which seem to arrive at an appalling variety of conclusions. There is little agreement about a basic method of approach or even about what problems are to be approached. The most common approach, following Aristotle, sees the play as the working out of the fall of a tragic hero. One of the most favorable views of Coriolanus was stated by Barrett Wendell [in William Shakespeare, 1899]: "The fate of Coriolanus … comes from no decadence, no corruption, no vicious weakness, but rather...
[The entire page is 4156 words long]
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