A skilled orator and cunning diplomat, Menenius employs the common early modern political allegory of the “body politic,” which imagines the nation as a single biological body. In Act 1, Scene 1, he attempts to quell an angry mob, saying:
There was a time when all the body’s members
Rebelled against the belly, thus accused it:
That only like a gulf it did remain
I’ th’ midst o’ th’ body, idle and unactive
Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing
Like labor with the rest, where th’ other instruments
Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,
And, mutually participate, did minister
Unto the appetite and affection common
Of the whole body. [...]
In early modern political theory, a kingdom or state was often understood through the allegory of the “body politic,” which assigned different roles to different classes of society, just as different organs and body parts serve different purposes but are nevertheless dependent upon one another. In Menenius’s allegorical parable, the “body’s members” rebel against the “belly,” as they feel that it does not work but nevertheless hoards all the food for itself. For Menenius, then, the angry crowds are like the rebellious body parts that attack the “belly” or the ruling class, which they regard as lazy and greedy. For Menenius, such rebellion is self-destructive, as the different social classes all constitute a single “body” and are therefore reliant upon each other for survival.
After Menenius begins to tell his parable of the belly, though, the Second Citizen interrupts him. He mocks the elderly statesman’s political clichés, further developing the allegory of the body politic:
SECOND CITIZEN
Your belly’s answer –what?
The kingly crowned head, the vigilant eye,
The counselor heart, the arm our soldier,
Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter,
With other muniments and petty helps
In this our fabric, if that they--
MENENIUS
Well, what then?
‘Fore me, this fellow speaks. What then? What then?
SECOND CITIZEN
Should by the cormorant belly be restrained,
Who is the sink o’ th’ body—
Menenius’s parable, which imagines the organs of the body rebelling against the stomach, is clearly familiar to the Roman crowds. This allegorical image of the state as a body was in fact common in Shakespeare’s own time. Mockingly, the Second Citizen “finishes” Menenius’s parable for him, listing off the conventions of this popular political allegory. He identifies, in accordance with early modern thought, the king as the “head” of the body, the authorities as the “vigilant eye,” the royal counselor as “heart,” the soldiers as “arm,” the cavalry as “leg,” and the trumpeter as “tongue.”
Menenius is outraged at the interruption, demanding that the Second Citizen finish the tale if he is going to interrupt him. In response, the Second Citizen uses a metaphor that compares the belly to a “cormorant.” In Shakespeare’s day, the cormorant was understood to be a greedy bird that could eat far more fish than it needed to survive. The Second Citizen, then, metaphorically suggests that the belly of the body politic, which represents the wealthy, has taken more than its fair share of resources.
A similar debate appears later in the play. When the citizens debate whether they should accept Coriolanus's candidacy for the consulship of Rome, they imply that the body-politic allegory is ill-suited for describing the complexities of a democratic state. The Third Citizen argues that if the state really did have a single body and a single head, it wouldn’t know where to turn. By highlighting this viewpoint, the play destabilizes the allegory of the body politic that the ruling class is apparently so eager to advance.
