52 pages • 1 hour read
William Shakespeare, Roma Gill, William Aldis Wright, Francis FergussonCoriolanus
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1608A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Role of Personality in Individual Behavior
Throughout the play, many characters urge Coriolanus to set aside the inclinations of his temperament whenever such traits prove detrimental to his advancement. Coriolanus is portrayed as a man who is naturally imperious due to his own noble birth, but who also nurses aggression and a quick temper. Coriolanus often struggles with whether or not he should try to suppress his natural inclinations for the sake of political gain, ultimately finding the idea too repellant to try. Through Coriolanus's rise and fall, the play probes the role of personality in influencing an individual’s behavior for better or worse.
Both Coriolanus’s allies and enemies are aware of Coriolanus’s nature as a proud and quick-tempered soldier. Coriolanus’s friend Menenius often uses the idea of innate personality as an excuse for Coriolanus’s bad behavior, reminding the people that Coriolanus only speaks rudely to them because of his intrinsic military temperament. While some of the common people view Coriolanus’s mannerisms as prideful arrogance, other citizens remark, “What he cannot help in his nature you / account a vice in him” (1.1.41-42, emphasis added). Similarly, Aufidius recognizes that Coriolanus has claimed power in his army and reduced his authority over the Volsces because of his natural inclination towards ruling over others.
Related Titles
By these authors
All's Well That Ends Well
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare, Іван Франко, Barbara A. Mowat, Ivan Franko, Panteleimon Kulish, Cynthia Marshall, Ludwig Tieck, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Paul Werstine
As You Like It
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
Cymbeline
William Shakespeare, Harold Bloom, Gabriele Baldini
Hamlet
William Shakespeare, Israel Gollancz, Harold Bloom, Rex Gibson, Henry Norman Hudson, Max J. Herzberg, L.A. Sherman
Henry IV, Part 1
William Shakespeare, David Scott Kastan
Henry IV, Part 2
William Shakespeare, David Scott Kastan, David Bevington
Henry V
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Michael Neill, Paul Werstine
Henry VIII
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
Henry VI, Part 1
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 3
William Shakespeare, John D. Cox, Eric Rasmussen
Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare, Roma Gill, Harold Bloom, William Allan Neilson
King John
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
King Lear
William Shakespeare, William James Rolfe
Love's Labour's Lost
William Shakespeare, Henry R. Woudhuysen
Macbeth
William Shakespeare, Jack Armstrong, Carmen Kahn
Measure For Measure
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
Much Ado About Nothing
Gail Kern Paster, Robert Jackson, Barbara A. Mowat, Henry Norman Hudson, F.H. Mares, Henry Irving, Frederick S. Boas, Paul Werstine, William Shakespeare
Nature
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary Mapes Dodge, George Darley, William Motherwell, George Eliot, John Milton, Clement Scott, George Arnold, Robert Browning, James Thomson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., William Ernest Henley, Denis Florence MacCarthy, William Cullen Bryant, John Sterling, John Clare, Izaak Walton, Matthew Arnold, James Whitcomb Riley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Jenner, William Gilmore Simms, Charles G.D. Roberts, Henry Timrod, William Cox Bennett, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, George MacDonald, William Shakespeare, Matthias Claudius, Alexander Hume, James Beattie, Thomas Gray, Craig Franklin, John Cunningham, Norman Rowland Gale, James Gates Percival, Joel Benton, Thomas Heywood, Richard Hovey, Anna Boynton Averill, Charles Sangster, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dora Hill Read Goodale, Joanna Baillie, Thomas Nashe, Henry Wotton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, John Howard Bryant, John G.C. Brainard, Thomas Campbell, Eduard Mörike, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, David Gray, William Cowper, W.B. Yeats, William Prescott Foster, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Thomas Carew, William Howitt, John B. Tabb, Jones Very, Henry Fielding, Barry Cornwall, Samuel Daniel, John Keats, Homer, George Francis Savage-Armstrong, John Leyden, Tomas Peter, Thomas Hood, Philip Pendleton Cooke, Richard Watson Gilder, Ethelwyn Wetherald, William Wordsworth, Euripides, Joseph Blanco White, Edmund Clarence Stedman, G.W. Pettee, Robert Tannahill, Ebenezer Jones, John Chalkhill, Abraham Cowley, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Russell Lowell, Andrew Marvell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lisle Bowles, Leanne Yau, Charles Harpur, Sonia, Edith M. Thomas, Charles Kingsley, Lord Byron, Ebenezer Elliott, Benjamin Franklin Taylor, Richard Henry Horne, Jason in Panama, Walter Scott, Hartley Coleridge, Duncan Campbell Scott, Alfred Tennyson, John Davies, Aristophanes, Charles G. Eastman, Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, William Browne, Robert Burns, Samuel Rogers, Ludwig H.C. Hölty, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Celia Laighton Thaxter
Featured Collections
Books that Feature the Theme of...
View Collection
British Literature
View Collection
Challenging Authority
View Collection
Elizabethan Era
View Collection
Nation & Nationalism
View Collection
Power
View Collection
Pride & Shame
View Collection
Shakespeare
View Collection
Tragic Plays
View Collection