page_title: Coriolanus
section_title: Sources
hierarchical_section_title: Coriolanus / Sources
caption_attribution_description: English: The first page of The Life of Caius Martius Coriolanus from Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes.
context_page_description: Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader Caius Marcius Coriolanus. It is one of the last two tragedies written by Shakespeare, along with Antony and Cleopatra.
  Coriolanus is the name given to a Roman general after his military success against various uprisings challenging the government of Rome. Following this success, Coriolanus becomes active in politics and seeks political leadership. His temperament is unsuited for popular leadership and he is quickly deposed, whereupon he aligns himself to set matters straight according to his own will. The alliances he forges along the way result in his ultimate downfall.
context_section_description: Coriolanus is largely based on the "Life of Coriolanus" in Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (1579). The wording of Menenius's speech about the body politic is derived from William Camden's Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine (1605), where Pope Adrian IV compares a well-run government to a body in which "all parts performed their functions, only the stomach lay idle and consumed all"; the fable is also alluded to in John of Salisbury's Policraticus (Camden's source) and William Averell's A Marvailous Combat of Contrarieties (1588).
  Other sources have been suggested, but are less certain. Shakespeare might also have drawn on Livy's Ab Urbe condita, as translated by Philemon Holland, and possibly a digest of Livy by Lucius Annaeus Florus; both of these were commonly used texts in Elizabethan schools. Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy were available in manuscript translations, and could also have been used by Shakespeare. He might also have made use of Plutarch's original source, the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as well as on his own grammar-school knowledge of Roman custom and law".
caption: The first page of The Life of Caius Martius Coriolanus from Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes.
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