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References to Body Parts
Strewn throughout Coriolanus are numerous references to body parts. These references are nearly always metaphorical and involve the figure of speech known as metonymy, in which a part of something is rhetorically substituted for the whole. This device can be seen, for example, when an angry citizen declares that “[Coriolanus] shall well know / The noble tribunes are the people’s mouths / And we their hands” (3.1.346–48). As the officials who have been elected to represent the plebeians in the Roman senate, the tribunes are understood metonymically as “the people’s mouths.” Likewise, the agitated citizenry is ready to rebel with physical force, becoming “[the people’s] hands.” These and other references to body parts relate back to Menenius’s famous set piece in the opening scene, where he presents a fable in which the belly collects all the food before distributing it to the rest of the body. Menenius’s speech offers an allegory of the “body politic,” a prominent Renaissance political theory that likened a kingdom or nation to the human body, effectively naturalizing the hierarchy of functions between the ruler and the ruled. Yet the play’s many floating references to body parts builds a collective impression that the “body politic” of Rome is being dismembered.
Images of Grain and Harvest
Grain is a subject of central importance in Coriolanus. As the play begins, the common people are ready to rebel for lack of grain, which they believe the patrician class has been hoarding. Menenius assures the plebeians that, just as the belly gathers all the food before distributing its nutrients throughout the body, so too does the ruling class gather all the grain before distributing it throughout the body politic. However, the ongoing class tension in the play seems to suggest that the patricians are indeed keen to keep the upper hand. Thus, in a telling outburst from Menenius late in the play, the patrician angrily addresses Sicinius the tribune: “[Coriolanus’s] mother, wife, his child, / And this brave fellow too [i.e., Cominius], we are the grains; / You are the musty chaff” (5.1.33–35). This distinction between “the grains” and “the musty chaff” strongly echoes the biblical image of Christ as a winnower who separates the righteous (i.e., the wheat) from the wicked (i.e., the chaff). Elsewhere in the play, Volumnia envisions her heroic son killing Volscians with the dedication of “a harvestman that’s tasked to mow / Or all or lose his hire” (1.3.39–40). Again, the harvest is associated with the superiority of the ruling class.
Animal Similes
Many of Shakespeare’s plays, and particularly his history plays, make frequent use of animal similes. This device almost always functions to describe key traits of the characters in the play. In Coriolanus, the plebeians are variously described in derogatory terms that liken them starving dogs, wily foxes, cowardly geese, and even ravenous scavengers: “Break ope the locks o’ th’ Senate and bring in / The crows to peck the eagles” (3.1.176–77). As these insulting words from Coriolanus indicate, the plebeian tribunes are lowly “crows” compared to the noble “eagles” of the patrician class. And indeed, animals that are often associated with nobility will consistently be applied to noblemen in the play. Thus, Coriolanus likens his chief rival, Aufidius, to “a lion / That I am proud to hunt” (1.1.262–63). Coriolanus, meanwhile, is at once likened to the wolf and the lamb. The plebeians see him as a tyrannical wolf, one who appears before them in the humble toga much like the biblical wolf that appears in the garb of a lamb. On the other hand, Coriolanus’s patrician defenders see him as a sacrificial lamb, led by the tribunes to slaughter. Yet Coriolanus prefers to see himself “like to a lonely dragon” (4.1.35)—at once heroic, legendary, and not of this world.
