Joining Virgilia and Volumnia as they discuss the similarities between Coriolanus and his son, a patrician gentlewoman named Valeria offers a brief flashback, describing a minor anecdote that attests to the son’s violent instincts:
O’ my word, the father’s son! I swear ‘tis a
very pretty boy. O’ my troth, I looked upon him ‘
Wednesday half an hour together. H’as such a confirmed
Countenance. I saw him run after a gilded
Butterfly, and when he caught it, he let it og again,
And after it again, and over and over he comes,
And up again, catched it again. Or whether his fall
Enrgaged him or how ‘twas, he did so set his teeth
And tear it. O, I warrant how he mammocked it!
Emphasizing the similarities between father and son, Valeria recalls an incident in which the son of Coriolanus played with a "gilded" or golden butterfly. The son, she recounts, chased after the butterfly, releasing it and then re-catching it over and over as a sort of game. Eventually, he gives up on the game and kills the butterfly, violently tearing it to pieces with his teeth. Though the son is young, Valeria’s flashback emphasizes his taste for violence, a trait he shares with his father. In releasing the butterfly and then catching it again over and over again, the son prolongs his violent game, blending the playful nature of a child with the violence of a soldier. The women of Rome, as presented in the play, celebrate and encourage combat and war.
While Coriolanus wages war against the Volscians, his wife, Virgilia, and his mother, Volumnia, discuss the war at their home in Rome. In a flashback, Volumnia reflects upon the childhood of her son, Coriolanus:
When
Yet he was but tender-bodied and the only son of
My womb, when youth with comeliness plucked
All gaze his way, when for a day of king’s entreaties
A mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding
I, considering how honor would become
Such a person—that it was no better than picture-elike
To hang by th’ wall, if renown made it not
Stir—was pleased to let him seek danger where he
Was like to find fame. To a cruel war I sent him,
From whence he returned, his brows bound with
Oak.
Volumnia begins with a conventionally maternal description of her young son, whom she describes as “tender-bodied.” He was such an attractive child, she argues, that everyone would look at him. Though she acknowledges that a mother would, in general, not allow her child to leave her sight, Volumnia realized during her son’s childhood that he was destined for great things, and so she sent him to “cruel war” at a young age in order to gain “honor.” In this flashback, Volumnia argues that honor is more important to her than life itself, and she urges Virgilia to celebrate, rather than fear, her husband's participation in the war.
