SOURCE: Poole, Adrian, ed. “You Shames of Rome!” In Harvester New Critical Introductions to Shakespeare: Coriolanus, pp. 1-22. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1988.

In the following essay, Poole argues that the compelling power of shame is one of the thematic touchstones of Coriolanus.

Coriolanus begins with a rush. The stage is instantly filled with physical tumult. There is a menace in the start of many Shakespeare plays, but nowhere is it as overt and palpable as this. These people are intent on violence, ready to die and ready to kill.

It is a well-known fact that like all good citizens Shakespeare hated mobs. Most literary critics are good citizens and therefore disposed to bring the following agreed truths to bear on this play: ‘We know that Shakespeare detested the city mob’;¹ ‘The populace is consistently presented as unstable, fickle, anarchical, deficient in vision’;² ‘Shakespeare portrays the unreasoning violence of...