SOURCE: Kiséry, András. “Emblems of the Polity: The Wounds of Rhetoric and of the Body Politic in Shakespeare's Rome.” In The Iconography of Power: Ideas and Images of Rulership on the English Renaissance Stage, edited by György E. Szönyi and Rowland Wymer, pp. 161-79. Szeged, Hungary: Institute of English and American Studies, University of Szeged, 2000.

In the following essay, Kiséry contrasts the emblematic use of wounded bodies for political purposes in Coriolanus and Julius Caesar.

When at the end of Titus Andronicus, Lucius is requested to tell the tragic story of the Andronici to an audience apparently dumb-struck by the weird consecution of four on-stage killings within the span of something like 20 lines, he sums up his part in the events just about as precipitately, dwelling on his heroic struggle to preserve Rome, and then, as if realising the vulnerability of his claims...