SOURCE: Michael, Nancy Carolyn. “Shakespeare's Coriolanus, His Metamorphosis from Man to Monster.” Ball State University Forum 19, no. 2 (spring 1978): 12-19.

In the following essay, Michael concentrates on Coriolanus as an isolated, tragic figure whose failure involves an inability to assert his own humanity.

Much of the criticism of Shakespeare's Coriolanus tends to consider the struggle between the patricians and the plebians as the principal issue of the play, with Caius Marcius Coriolanus, the central character, acting as chief representative and spokesman for patrician elitism and the right to rule.¹ Coriolanus' words and actions prove him no true representative or spokesman for any group. Because Coriolanus is a man apart from the group—plebian or patrician—the play is not primarily concerned with political factions within a social order, however much the Roman plebians and patricians contend for power. Neither is it primarily concerned with the war between separate societies...