SOURCE: “Voiceless Bodies and Bodiless Voices: The Drama of Human Perception in Coriolanus,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 2, Summer, 1992, pp. 170-85.

In the essay that follows, Walker studies Coriolanus as a play focused on the battle between “body and speech.” Walker observes that in Coriolanus's derision for speech, a parallel hatred for time is revealed and contends that Coriolanus seeks to live in a single moment that transcends time.

Critics have long been accustomed to reading Shakespeare's plays as though they were constructed out of speech. Since most scenes create their time and place in spoken text, it has been easy to locate the plays close to narrative poetry and to rely on critical techniques derived from the study of non-dramatic works. Under this strategy the theatrical essence of the plays is contained in the safe concession that these are texts for speaking, and that the essential activity...