Excerpt from Coriolanus By William Shakespeare

Coriolanus

By William Shakespeare

Edited by Barbara A. Mowat

and Paul Werstine

Folger Shakespeare Library

http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org

Contents

Front Matter • From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library

• Textual Introduction

• Synopsis

• Characters in the Play

ACT 1 • Scene 1

• Scene 2

• Scene 3

• Scene 4

• Scene 5

• Scene 6

• Scene 7

• Scene 8

• Scene 9

• Scene 10

ACT 2 • Scene 1

• Scene 2

• Scene 3

ACT 3 • Scene 1

• Scene 2

• Scene 3

ACT 4 • Scene 1

• Scene 2

• Scene 3

• Scene 4

• Scene 5

• Scene 6

• Scene 7

ACT 5 • Scene 1

• Scene 2

• Scene 3

• Scene 4

• Scene 5

• Scene 6

From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library

It is hard to imagine a world without Shakespeare. Since their composition four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s plays and poems have traveled the globe, inviting those who see and read his works to make them their own.

Readers of the New Folger Editions are part of this ongoing process of “taking up Shakespeare,” finding our own thoughts and feelings in language that strikes us as old or unusual and, for that very reason, new. We still struggle to keep up with a writer who could think a mile a minute, whose words paint pictures that shift like clouds. These expertly edited texts are presented to the public as a resource for study, artistic adaptation, and enjoyment. By making the classic texts of the New Folger Editions available in electronic form as Folger Digital Texts, we place a trusted resource in the hands of anyone who wants them.

The New Folger Editions of Shakespeare’s plays, which are the basis for the texts realized here in digital form, are special because of their origin. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is the single greatest documentary source of Shakespeare’s works. An unparalleled collection of early modern books, manuscripts, and artwork connected to Shakespeare, the Folger’s holdings have been consulted extensively in the preparation of these texts. The Editions also reflect the expertise gained through the regular performance of Shakespeare’s works in the Folger’s Elizabethan Theater.

I want to express my deep thanks to editors Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine for creating these indispensable editions of Shakespeare’s works, which incorporate the best of textual scholarship with a richness of commentary that is both inspired and engaging. Readers who want to know more about Shakespeare and his plays can follow the paths these distinguished scholars have tread by visiting the Folger either in-person or online, where a range of physical and digital resources exist to supplement the material in these texts. I commend to you these words, and hope that they inspire.

Michael Witmore

Director, Folger Shakespeare Library 

Textual Introduction

By Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine

Until now, with the release of the Folger Digital Texts, readers in search of a free online text of Shakespeare’s plays had to be content primarily with using the Moby™ Text, which reproduces a late-nineteenth century version of the plays. What is the difference? Many ordinary readers assume that there is a single text for the plays: what Shakespeare wrote. But Shakespeare’s plays were not published the way modern novels or plays are published today: as a single, authoritative text. In some cases, the plays have come down to us in multiple published versions, represented by various Quartos (Qq) and by the great collection put together by his colleagues in 1623, called the First Folio (F). There are, for example, three very different versions of Hamlet, two of King Lear, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, and others. Editors choose which version to use as their base text, and then amend that text with words, lines or speech prefixes from the other versions that, in their judgment, make for a better or more accurate text.

Other editorial decisions involve choices about whether an unfamiliar word could be understood in light of other writings of the period or whether it should be changed; decisions about words that made it into Shakespeare’s text by accident through four hundred years of printings and misprinting; and even decisions based on cultural preference and taste. When the Moby™ Text was created, for example, it was deemed “improper” and “indecent” for Miranda to chastise Caliban for having attempted to rape her. (See The Tempest, 1.2: “Abhorred slave,/Which any print of goodness wilt not take,/Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee …”). All Shakespeare editors at the time took the speech away from her and gave it to her father, Prospero.

The editors of the Moby™ Shakespeare produced their text long before scholars fully understood the proper grounds on which to make the thousands of decisions that Shakespeare editors face. The Folger Library Shakespeare Editions, on which the Folger Digital Texts depend, make this editorial process as nearly transparent as is possible, in contrast to older texts, like the Moby™, which hide editorial interventions. The reader of the Folger Shakespeare knows where the text has been altered because editorial interventions are signaled by square brackets (for example, from Othello: “[If she in chains of magic were not bound,]”), half-square brackets (for example, from Henry V: “With ⌜blood⌝ and sword and fire to win your right,”), or angle brackets (for example, from Hamlet: “O farewell, honest 〈soldier.〉 Who hath relieved/you?”). At any point in the text, you can hover your cursor over a bracket for more information.

Because the Folger Digital Texts are edited in accord with twenty-first century knowledge about Shakespeare’s texts, the Folger here provides them to readers, scholars, teachers, actors, directors, and students, free of charge, confident of their quality as texts of the plays and pleased to be able to make this contribution to the study and enjoyment of Shakespeare.

Synopsis

As Coriolanus begins, two Roman patricians, Menenius and Martius, calm a revolt by the city’s famished plebians. Martius, who despises the plebians, announces that their petition to be represented by tribunes has been granted. When Volscian invaders attack Roman territories, Martius helps lead the Roman forces, and almost single-handedly conquers the Volscian city of Corioles, winning the name “Coriolanus.” The Volscian leader, Aufidius, swears revenge.

Victorious in battle, Coriolanus expects to be made a consul, but by custom he must ask for votes from the plebians. He does this so contemptuously that he is rejected as a consul. The tribunes later charge Coriolanus with treason and banish him from Rome. He seeks his former enemy, Aufidius.

Coriolanus and Aufidius join forces to conquer Rome. On the brink of success, Coriolanus is persuaded by his mother, Volumnia, to spare the city, though he knows it may cost him his life. Aufidius and his fellow conspirators plot Coriolanus’s death. Coriolanus returns to Corioles, where he is assassinated. Rome honors Volumnia for saving the city.

Characters in the Play

Caius martius, later Caius Martius coriolanus

volumnia, his mother

virgilia, his wife

young martius, their son

valeria, friend to Volumnia and Virgilia

A gentlewoman, Volumnia’s attendant

menenius Agrippa, patrician

cominius, patrician and general

Titus lartius, patrician and military officer

sicinius Velutus, tribune

Junius brutus, tribune

Roman senators, patricians, nobles

Roman lieutenant

Roman officers

Roman aediles

Roman herald

Roman soldiers

Roman citizens or plebeians

Roman messengers

A roman defector, Nicanor

Tullus aufidius, general of the Volscians

Volscian conspirators of his faction

Three of his servingmen

Volscian senators, lords

Volscian lieutenant

Volscian soldiers

Two of the Volscian watch

Volscian people

A volscian spy, Adrian

citizen of Antium

Roman Lords, Gentry, Captains, Lictors, Trumpeters, Drummers, Musicians, Attendants, and Usher

https://biblia.com/books/corolns/Page.p_1

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