Key Examples in Coriolanus
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!
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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.