SOURCE: Luckyj, Christina. “Volumnia's Silence.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 31, no. 2 (spring 1991): 327-42.

In the following essay, Luckyj asserts that Volumnia's speechlessness in Act V, scene v of Coriolanus represents not triumph but despair, for she understands that her son will die because he yielded to her supplication. The critic emphasizes the Roman matron's vulnerability as well as her vitality, describing various ways she has been represented in performance.

Volumnia's last appearance in Shakespeare's Coriolanus is a brief and silent one. She has just pleaded successfully with her son to spare his native city from intended destruction; her plea, we know, must result in his death at the hands of the Volscians, whose cause he has betrayed. She passes wordlessly over the stage in the company of Virgilia and Valeria as a Roman senator hails her as “our patroness, the life of Rome” (V.v.1).¹ Academic critics take...