A Psychoanalytic Study of Shakspere's Coriolanus

The early historical accounts of the career of Coriolanus contradict each other in their details, and no one account can be regarded as having superior historical accuracy. The editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica feel that it can be stated with an approximation to historical accuracy that the early Roman, Caius Marcius Coriolanus, was given his surname in honor of his bravery displayed at the siege of Corioli, in 493 B.C., during a war against the Volscians. The following year, when there was a famine in Rome, Coriolanus advised that the people should not be relieved by supplies obtained from Sicily, unless they would consent to the abolition of their tribunes. For this he was accused by the tribunes, and, being condemned to exile, took refuge with his friend Attius Tullius, king of the Volscians. A pretext for a quarrel with Rome was found, and Coriolanus, in command of the Volscian army, advanced against his native city. In vain the first men of Rome entreated for moderate terms. He would agree to nothing less than the restoration to the Volscians of all their land, and their admission among the Roman citizens. A mission of the chief priests also failed. At last, persuaded by his mother, Volumnia, and his wife Virgilia, he led back the Volscian army, and restored the territory he had conquered. Then, according to Fabius, the earliest of the commentators, and so perhaps the most accurate, Coriolanus lived on in exile among the Volscians and died at a ripe old age.

The story of a bold warrior losing his triumph because so “bound to's mother” is clearly but a variation of the most essentially tragic of all myths, that of œdipus. The story of Coriolanus is naturally more tellingly tragic if Volumnia's influence over her son can be shown to have been one of if not the chief cause of his actual death; and this fact can surely be counted among the reasons why such a conclusion to the tale of Coriolanus (his death by assassination at the hands of those whom he would not