Coriolanus. / William Shakespeare ; edited by Philip Brockbank.

Coriolanus captures the conflict dividing personal nobility from political reality."Coriolanus prefers to lose on principle rather than to win through catering to popular demands as an actor might do."The poltician's role is one that belies Corolianus true nature in the most fundamentally dishonest way.He professes not to speak mertely in anger ,he is too easily baited by the tribunes and too quick to speak his mind.He professes love of his country ,but because his attachment is to an exclusively patricoian order,he is ready to urn traitor against a Rome that gives a politi cal voice to the pleibians he so abhors.Corolinaus is poised between two irreconcilable cravings:to please a mother whose demands can never be satisfied and to fashion an identity that is entirely self made. In The Complete Works of Shakespeare,5th edition

edited by David Bevington.