Coriolanus: Portrait of the Artist as Infant

A work of art can be looked upon as a solution to an emotional problem, and as such it provides a record of the problem wrestled with. That is to say, a work is to some extent autobiographical of its own creation and contains the traces of its emotional origins. In stressing the infantile origins of a work I am arguing for the continuity of life, a principle emphasized by Shakespeare himself, as shall be demonstrated in the following. The present approach is based on the premise that patterns of imagery which are penetrating and pervasive, that is, organically bound up with the movement of the work as a whole, are derived from central traits of the artist's own personality, and correlating evidence will be found to justify this belief. A full understanding of a work should reveal the basis for the adoption of artistic creation as the mode of choice for expression of the original impulse, and should throw some light on the relation of the artist to his medium and to his audience. Let us begin by confronting Shakespeare's Coriolanus, exposing ourselves in the first half of this paper to the impact of the main themes and contrapuntal variations.

In attempting to understand the deeper meanings of a play it is often instructive to scrutinize the ending. For the ending tends to culminate or resolve the tensions intimated in the opening lines and developed through the body of the play. In the case of Coriolanus we shall also see that the ending of a life can reveal the emotional origins which gave it shape.* At the end Coriolanus appears as a warrior of almost godlike proportions joined with and leading his former enemies, about to attack his native city, and dissuaded from