SOURCE: “‘Manhood and Chevalrie’: Coriolanus, Prince Henry, and the Chivalric Revival,” in Review of English Studies, Vol. 51, No. 203, August, 2000, pp. 395-422.

In the following essay, Wells reviews the conflict between war and peace in ancient Rome as it is depicted in Coriolanus and examines how these conflicts parallel the political situation of Shakespeare’s own time.

The Midlands corn riots of 1607, and the arguments in parliament three years earlier over the right of the House of Commons to initiate legislation, form a well-documented part of Coriolanus's political background. But there was another political issue that was being debated in the years immediately preceding the writing of the play. It is one that had international rather than purely domestic implications, and that may help to answer Bullough's question: ‘What led Shakespeare to write this play on a comparatively minor and early figure in Roman history?’ In the last...