In a bitter soliloquy, Coriolanus condemns the democratic processes of Rome, which require a candidate for the consulship to go to the marketplace wearing humble clothing in order to ask the citizens for their individual votes:
Most sweet voices!
Better it is to die, better to starve,
Than crave the hire which first we do deserve.
Why in this woolvish toge should I stand here
To beg of Hob and Dick that does appear
Their needless vouches? Custom calls me to ’t.
What custom wills, in all things should we do ’t?
The dust on antique time would lie unswept
And mountainous error be too highly heaped
For truth to o’erpeer. Rather than fool it so,
Let the high office and the honor go
To one that would do thus. I am half through;
The one part suffered, the other will I do.
Coriolanus offers a sweeping condemnation of Roman democracy, condescendingly referring to the opinions of the masses as mere “voices” and suggesting that he should not have to ask for the consulship when he feels that he deserves it, regardless of the opinions of the Roman citizens. In one of his few soliloquies in the play, he argues that Rome’s political traditions are nothing but outdated conventions that are maintained only for the sake of tradition and should be swept away like dust.
In one of two major soliloquies in the play, Coriolanus reflects upon the surprising twists of life that have left him an ally to his former enemies, the Volscians, and an enemy to his motherland, Rome:
O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,
Whose double bosoms seems to wear one heart,
Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise
Are still together, who twin, as ’twere, in love
Unseparable, shall within this hour,
On a dissension of a doit, break out
To bitterest enmity; so fellest foes,
Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep
To take the one the other, by some chance,
Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends
And interjoin their issues. So with me:
My birthplace hate I, and my love’s upon
This enemy town.
At this point in the play, Coriolanus has entered the Volscian city of Corioli in order to pledge his service to his former nemesis, Aufidius, in the hopes of revenging himself against Rome, which has banished him. Addressing the world at large, Coriolanus notes the “slippery turns” of life that have separated him from his fellow Roman soldiers, who were once completely “unseparable,” as if “in love” with one another. Though he declares himself an enemy of Rome, his mournful language registers the pain he feels due to his separation from his “birthplace.”
