SOURCE: Willems, Michèle. “‘Women and Horses and Power and War’: Worship of Mars from 1 Henry IV to Coriolanus.” In French Essays on Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, edited by Jean-Marie Maguin and Michèle Willems, pp. 189-202. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995.
In the following essay, Willems evaluates Hotspur and Coriolanus as exemplars of the cult of military heroism. The critic compares Henry IV, Part 1 and Coriolanus in terms of their depictions of heroic and antiheroic value systems, differences between professional and common soldiers, disparities between warriors and politicians, and conflicts between masculine and feminine virtues.
