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IV

As several recent critics have noted, issues of language are also central to Coriolanus, along with issues of political power and psychological integrity. Coriolanus himself seems deeply suspicious of language. Unlike virtually all of Shakespeare's other tragic protagonists, he never uses language to explore inward emotional states: he has only one true soliloquy (4.4),³⁷ and it is primarily about the instability of human social relationships, rather than about Coriolanus' feelings. Coriolanus, Lawrence Danson asserts, demands "wholeness of being," and this demand leads to a "distrust of words, and indeed of all the conventional symbolic means (verbal and gestural) that men have for expressing themselves."³⁸ Similarly, Leonard Tennenhouse argues that Coriolanus' "abhorrence of public speech and his distrust of words are functions of his obsessive quest for a personal integrity which can only be concretely realized in physical...

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1. Introduction
2. Ii
3. Iii
4. Iv
5. V
6. Copyright