Coriolanus (Vol. 30) - Overviews

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D. J. Gordon (essay date 1964)

SOURCE: "Name and Fame: Shakespeare's Coriolanus," in Papers Mainly Shakespearean, Oliver and Boyd, 1964, pp. 40-57.

[In the following essay, Gordon examines the acts of naming in Coriolanus as a means to exploring the play's social commentary and its approach to the concept of honor.]

Name is Fame, is Honour, and is won by deeds; in Rome, by deeds in war.

Now in those days, valliantnes [so North renders Plutarch (in Plutarch's Lives, 1895)] was honoured in Rome above all other vertues: which they called Virtus, by the name of vertue selfe, as including in that generali name all other speciali vertues besides.

So Cominius the General in his formal encomium, his laus of Caius Marcius, begins:

       It is held
That valour is the chiefest virtue and
Most dignifies the haver.
...

[The entire page is 27929 words long]

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