Coriolanus and the Voice of Cynicism

aced with exile, the historical Caius Martius Coriolanus found that even his own formidable voice was no match for that of the crowd that, in Plutarch’s account, “cried out so lowde, and made suche a noyse, that he could not be heard.” Similarly, inWilliam Shakespeare’sCoriolanus, the vox populi is nomere metaphor. Perfectly following the script the Tribunes have given them, the people “cry” and “with a din confused / Enforce the present execution” of the decree of banishment (3.3.19–21). When Sicinius proclaims, “I’th’ people’s name” that “it shall be so,” the people answer, “It shall be so, it shall be so! Let him away! / He’s banished and it shall be so!” and ultimately descend into inarticulate noise: “Our enemy is banished, he is gone! Hoo! Hoo!” (3.3.103–6, 136). Coriolanus responds by disparaging the people (whose voices he begrudgingly solicited a few scenes earlier) as no better than bellowing animals, a “common cry of curs,” and later, when he meets Aufidius at Antium, he bitterly recalls having been “whooped out of Rome” by “th’ voice of slaves” (3.3.119; 4.5.79–80). Likewise, Menenius, upon learning of Coriolanus’s defection to the Volscians and his imminent attack on Rome, mocks the citizens for having “made the air unwholesome when [they] cast / [their] stinking greasy caps in hooting / At Coriolanus’ exile,” recalling the gross materiality of the vox populi as it is repeatedly conjured by the stage direction “The citizens all shout and throw up their caps” (3.3.134 SD). Pointing out that the word “voices” appearsmore frequently inCoriolanus than in any other work of Shakespeare, Peter Holland remarks, “There is a powerful