One of the most natural traits in this play is the difference of the interest taken in the success of Coriolanus by his wife and mother.  The one is only anxious for his honour; the other is fearful for his life.

   Volumnia.  Methinks I hither hear your husband’s drum: 
     I see him pluck Aufidius down by th’ hair: 
     Methinks I see him stamp thus—­and call thus—­
     Come on, ye cowards; ye were got in fear
     Though you were born in Rome; his bloody brow
     With his mail’d hand then wiping, forth he goes
     Like to a harvest man, that’s task’d to mow
     Or all, or lose his hire.

   Virgila.  His bloody brow!  Oh Jupiter, no blood.

   Volumnia.  Away, you fool; it more becomes a man
     Than gilt his trophy.  The breast of Hecuba,
     When she did suckle Hector, look’d not lovelier
     Than Hector’s forehead, when it spit forth blood
     At Grecian swords contending.

When she hears the trumpets that proclaim her son’s return, she says in the true spirit of a Roman matron: 

     These are the ushers of Martius:  before him
     He carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears. 
     Death, that dark spirit, in’s nervy arm doth lie,
     Which being advanc’d, declines, and then men die.

Coriolanus himself is a complete character:  his love of reputation, his contempt of popular opinion, his pride and modesty, are consequences of each other.  His pride consists in the inflexible sternness of his will; his love of glory is a determined desire to bear down all opposition, and to extort the admiration both of friends and foes.  His contempt for popular favour, his unwillingness to hear his own praises, spring from the same source.  He cannot contradict the praises that are bestowed upon him; therefore he is impatient at hearing them.  He would enforce the good opinion of others by his actions, but does not want their acknowledgements in words.

     Pray now, no more:  my mother,
     Who has a charter to extol her blood,
     When she does praise me, grieves me.

His magnanimity is of the same kind.  He admires in an enemy that courage which he honours in himself:  he places himself on the hearth of Aufidius with the same confidence that he would have met him in the field, and feels that by putting himself in his power, he takes from him all temptation for using it against him.

In the title-page of Coriolanus it is said at the bottom of the Dramatis Personae, ’The whole history exactly followed, and many of the principal speeches copied, from the life of Coriolanus in Plutarch.’  It will be interesting to our readers to see how far this is the case.  Two of the principal scenes, those between Coriolanus and Aufidius and between Coriolanus and his mother, are thus given in Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, 1579.  The first is as follows: