I had a boss who once told me that America started "going down the crapper" when women got the vote. He said politics should be about money and war, and those are a man's issues. Upon first glance, Coriolanus would seem to agree with him. It is a play that opens with economic outrage, and depicts the glories and horrors of war. One would assume in such a play that perhaps the most significant (and the most villainous) character would be a man. One would be mistaken.

When we first meet Volumnia, she does not strike us as either reprehensible or noteworthy, as we come to find her just moments later. The stage directions dictate that she is sitting on a "low stool" with Virgilia, sewing. Her speech is in prose, to start. All these elements are set to...