Coriolanus: The Soldier Who Cannot Bend

Coriolanus is Rome's greatest soldier and its worst politician. He can win any battle. He cannot beg for votes. When the Roman custom requires him to stand in the marketplace and show his wounds to the common people to win the consulship, he finds it degrading, and he is not wrong that the whole ritual is theatre. But he cannot perform it.

His contempt for the people is genuine and absolute. He calls them 'the common cry of curs' and tells them, when they banish him, that he banishes them. It is magnificent and catastrophic.

Volumnia, his mother, made him. She raised him to be a soldier, taught him that wounds were honour and softness was weakness. When she finally convinces him not to destroy Rome, it costs him everything.