service record and what later proves to have been a filial piety fouled by the fact it is exercised in response to a haughty and rigid mother. The forcefulness of the mother-son relationship for the unfolding action of the play should in no case be dismissed. When in I.i a citizen suggests that Coriolanus has achieved military victory for Rome in pursuit of private, patrician interests, Menenius responds:
I say unto you, what he hath done famously, he did it to that end: though soft-conscienced men can be content to say it was for his country, he did it to please his mother and to be partly proud; which he is, even to the altitude of his virtue (I.i)
Though Menenius uses a lengthy metaphor to remind them that the blessings from the "stomach," or higher citizens flow to all the members of the body politic, the resentment of the common people against the patricians is confirmed upon the proud and haughty entrance of Coriolanus, which aggravates that resentment. This same attitude will be a major feature of Coriolanus's undoing, but the present point is that in his first appearance he confirms virtually every negative prejudice that the populace has against him. He describes them as "dissentious rogues" (I.i.175), little more than a necessary evil in the operation of state; someone must after all be governed. The fact that Coriolanus is arrogant does not prove his judgment of the people to be wrong. But neither does accurate judgment mitigate the persistent power of arrogance to be the agent of Coriolanus's eventual destruction. By the same token, it is his bearing that is the source of tragic stature and self-awareness.
He owes this bearing to the fact that he is his mother's son. Earlier recognition on his or Volumnia's part of the dangerous excess of noble virtue, whether by means of birth or by measurable achievement, might save Coriolanus much annoyance in having to work up a prideful and vengeful emotion against Rome. The u...