William Shakespeare, Critical Commentary of The Tragedie of Coriolanus
Horace Howard Furness, Jr., A. B.; Litt. D., Ed.

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In this point . . . ne're distributed MacCallum (p. 511): The accusations brought against Coriolanus in Shakespeare are substantially just. He may not seek to wind himself into a power tyrannical if we take tyrant, as Plutarch certainly did but as Shakespeare probably did not, in the strict classical sense of tyrannus, but with his disregard of aged custom and his avowed opinions of the people, there can be no doubt that he would have wielded the consular powers tyrannically, in the ordinary acceptation of the word. For there can be as little doubt about his ill-will to the masses and his abhorrence of the tribunitian system. And it is on these that he is condemned. It is very noticeable that the division of the Antiate spoil, which in Plutarch is the most decisive and unwarrantable allegation against him, is mentioned by Shakespeare only in advance as a subordinate point that may be brought forward, but, as a matter of fact, it is never urged. Shakespeare makes no further use of a circumstance to which Plutarch attaches so great importance that he dwells on it twice over and gives it the prominent place in the narrative of the trial. This piece of sharp practice becomes quite negligible in the play, and the only chicanery of which the tribunes are guilty in the whole transaction is that, as in the Life, but more explicitly, they goad Coriolanus to a fit of rage in which he avows his real sentiments—a tactical expedient that many politicians would consider perfectly permissible. Shakespeare, as has often been pointed out, in some ways shows even less appreciation than Plutarch of the merits of the people; so it is all the more significant that, at the crisis of the play, he softens down and obliterates the worst traits in their proceedings against their enemy. And the second thing we observe is that by all this Shakespeare emphasises the insolence and truculence of the hero. It is Coriolanus's pride that turns his candidature, which begins under the happiest auspices, to a snare. It is still his pride that plays into the Tribunes' hands and makes him repeat in mere defiance his offensive speech. It is again his pride, not any calumny about his misapplying the profits of his raid, that gives the signal for the adverse sentence. Just as in this respect the plebs is represented as, on the whole, less ignoble than Plutarch makes it, so Coriolanus's conduct is portrayed as more insensate. And this two-fold tendency, to palliate the guilt of Rome and to stress the violence that provoked it, appears in the more conspicuous of Shakespeare's subsequent deviations from his authority. [Both Verity and Gordon call attention to the unfairness in bringing forward this question of the spoils of the Antiates.—Ed.]