How Coriolanus drew on Plutarch's Lives
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Plutarch’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Plutarch's Lives
Plutarch · c. 110
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
Coriolanus
William Shakespeare · c. 1608
ShakespeareRelevance
9/10
On Coriolanus’s page
- Coriolanus is Plutarch's Life of Caius Marcius Coriolanus set on stage, by way of North's 1579 translation
- The moment Coriolanus arrives at Aufidius's house to defect is borrowed almost word-for-word from North's prose
- Read the Life first and you can hear exactly where Shakespeare stopped paraphrasing and started transcribing
On Plutarch's Lives’s page
- Plutarch's Life of Caius Marcius Coriolanus is the single source Shakespeare dramatized for Coriolanus
- The speech where Coriolanus turns up at his enemy Aufidius's hearth is a near-verbatim lift of North's 1579 prose
- Plutarch supplied not just the events but the very words of the play's pivotal scene