Animal Imagery in Shakespeare's Coriolanus

Animal Imagery in Shakespeare's Coriolanus

Caius Martius Coriolanus, the protagonist in Shakespeare's play that bears his name, undergoes a circular transformation. He changes from the hero of Rome to an outcast and then back to a hero. As he undergoes this transformation he is likened to a dog, a sheep, a wolf, and an osprey. The invocation of animals to describe Coriolanus is ?perhaps based in the very animal like nature of Coriolanus himself?(Barton 68). His actions like those of an animal are not based on rational thought, instead they are based on instinct. Like an animal he is lacking in speech and can only perform the role that he has been given.

Twice in the play the description of Coriolanus is tied in with the invocation of the image of a wolf. The invocation of a wolf as a counter to the nature of Coriolanus shows the way in which Coriolanus is played against himself in the text. He is treated by the text as prey. He is a pitiful creature who falls prey to the motives of the other characters in the play. In Act 2 Scene 1 the use of the image of the wolf portrays Coriolanus as a potential quarry of the masses:

MENENIUS: Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not Marcius.

SICINIUS: Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

MENENIUS: Pray you, who does the wolf love?

SICINIUS: The lamb.

MENENIUS: Ay, to devour him; as the hungry plebeians would the noble Marcius. (Shakespeare 2.2.5-10)

Coriolanus in this passage is likened to a lamb. Even his friend and supporter Menenius sees that Coriolanus although feared by the people outside the walls of Rome is easy prey for Rome's own citizens. The second place in the play where Coriolanus is seen as pitiful is in Act 4 Sc...

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...oriolanus speaks in long lines to the Volsces generals. His speech is that of a shepherd who has been through much. He relates his banishment from Rome in long flowing and bitter lines.

?Coriolanus is manifest in his play as both a lamb and a shepherd he is a defeated man who becomes the pray of the wolves of Rome?(Barton 112).

Works Cited and Consulted

Barton, Ann. "Livy, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare's Coriolanus ." In William Shakespeare's Coriolanus, ed. Harold Bloom, New York, 1988.

Frye, Northrup. "Nature and Nothing." Essays of Shakespeare. Ed. Gerald W. Chapman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.

Shakespeare, William. Coriolanus , ed. John Dover Wilson. Cambridge, 1969.

Wilkie, Brian and James Hurt. "Shakespeare." Literature of the Western World. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992.