SOURCE: "Body Politic and Political Body in Coriolanus," in Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol. XXX, No. 2, April, 1994, pp. 97-112.

In this essay, Motohashi sees Coriolanus as a critique of societies in which heterogeneous class elements coexist only at the expense of heroic individuals.

In act 3 of Coriolanus, Sicinius who leads the incited citizens seeking Coriolanus asks:

Where is this viper
 That would depopulate the city and
 Be every man himself?

(III.i.261-3)¹

Vipers are believed to be born eating through their . motherly bowels, and Sicinius, by associating Coriolanus with a power devouring the source of its own birth, strikes at the paradox of the eponymous hero. At the same time, his use of the verb "depopulate"—a key term to criticise the "enclosure" in the sixteenth century, and the only usage in the entire Shakespearian canon²—reveals the play's context as close to the contemporary social...