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MENENIUS Pray you, go fit you to the custom, and
Take to you, as your predecessors have,
Your honor with your form.
CORIOLANUS It is a part
That I shall blush in acting, and might well
Be taken from the people. (2.2.168–73)
This exchange occurs as the patricians are attempting to convince Coriolanus to make the customary appearance before the citizens dressed in a toga of humility. They want him to put his war wounds on public display as a sign of his service to the republic, then leverage the awe the wounds will generate to ask for the common people’s votes. Coriolanus finds the very idea of such a performance horrifying. As he puts it here, he “shall blush in acting” this part, not least because he feels uncomfortable boasting about his military accomplishments. He implies that such a display of pride would be inauthentic. Ironically, however, it’s precisely his pride that makes him wary of participating in the theater of politics.
Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me
False to my nature? Rather say I play
The man I am. (3.2.16–18)
In act 3, Volumnia shows up to support the patricians in their attempt to convince Coriolanus to swallow his pride and act humble before the plebeians. Coriolanus persists in his feeling that being a politician entails playing a role, and he wants to remain authentic to himself. Thus, as his mother enters the senate chambers, he addresses her with these words, asking why she wants him to act “false to [his] nature.” Rather than playing the role of someone else, he wishes, as he puts it, to “play / The man I am.” With these words, Coriolanus implies that his authentic self is that of a brusque warrior, not a politician. But as Volumnia will point out later in their discussion, battle isn’t without its forms of inauthenticity. Wars are often won through the dissimulations involved in military strategy. In this way, honor isn’t strictly a matter of authentic truth. Why, then, should politics be any different?
Like a dull actor now,
I have forgot my part, and I am out,
Even to a full disgrace. Best of my flesh,
Forgive my tyranny, but do not say
For that “Forgive our Romans.” (5.3.46–50)
Midway through act 5, after Cominius and Menenius have both failed to convince Coriolanus to break off his impending attack on Rome, his mother and his wife come to plea with him. Coriolanus immediately feels chastened at the sight of these women, and he addresses these lines to his wife. His point seems to be that, in choosing the path of war, he has forgotten how to play the “part” of a family man. Indeed, he is “like a dull actor” who, after failing satisfactorily to perform the role of a politician, has since refused to perform any role other than the one he believes most authentic to his nature: namely, the role of the warrior. The warrior identity that his mother instilled in him from a young age is all he has left, which is why he commands his wife not to ask him to forgive the Romans. Of course, his mother will soon convince him to do just that, but it will come at the cost of his identity and lead directly to his death.
