Coriolanus

Here you will find all Good Tickle Brain material related to Coriolanus including my comprehensive, scene-by-scene re-telling of the entire play.

A Stick-Figure Coriolanus

Here is my comprehensive scene-by-scene guide to Coriolanus. It originally appeared as a series of blog posts in January 2014. I have reproduced my accompanying enlightening commentary. (Disclaimer: Commentary may or may not actually be enlightening).

• Dramatis Personae

• Act One

• Act Two

• Act Three

• Act Four

• Act Five

• Summary

Stand-Alone Comics

Here are all the stand-alone comics I have done that reference Coriolanus 

2015-08-18 - The Coriolanus Death Clock

2015-01-15 - Exit, Pursued by a Bear: Coriolanus Edition

2014-02-07 - Three-Panel Plays, part 3 (Coriolanus and Cymbeline)

Comparative Performances

I love seeing how different actors and directors treat the same passage of text. Here are video comparisons of various passages from Coriolanus here, as brought to life by Alan Howard and Ralph Fiennes, who starred in the only two full-length video productions of Coriolanus that I have been able to find. I've only got a couple now, but will be adding more shortly.

The line "make you a sword of me" is often cited as distilling the core of Martius's character. He's not a human being. He's a weapon. Like a sword, he's also sharp, pointy, and covered in blood.

I'm not fond of the BBC Shakespeare production. Alan Howard does a fine job, but the production itself, particularly the battle scenes, is highly stylized and loses some primal energy as a result. I also prefer the way Fiennes deals with the somewhat odd line "O me alone".

This is a great speech. Coriolanus just lets loose a wave of vitriol and disdain that shuts everybody else up entirely. There are two key lines in this speech. First, "I banish you!" This is the classic "You can't fire me, I quit!" response. Second, "There is a world elsewhere." Or, in other words, "Rome, you're dead to me."

Both these performances are good, but Fiennes's makes me want to hide under a table. He is straight-up apoplectic.

"I was moved withal" is one of those great lines that has so much more going on under the surface. The following video starts with a segment of John Barton's Playing Shakespeare series, in which he examines the irony and hidden meaning of the line, which is then superbly demonstrated by Ben Kingsley. I have also tacked on clips from the BBC Shakespeare production and the Ralph Fiennes movie, but you don't get better than Kingsley in this case. 

Incidentally, if you haven't watched Playing Shakespeare, you need to go buy it or borrow it from a library right now, because it's wonderful.