‘Mark you / his absolute shall?’: Multitudinous tongues and contested words in Coriolanus

Summary

first citizen Before we proceed any further, hear me speak.

all Speak, speak.

first citizen You are all resolved rather to die than to famish?

all Resolved, resolved.

first citizen First, you know Caius Martius is chief enemy to the people.

all We know’t, we know’t.

first citizen Let us kill him, and we’ll have corn at our own price. Is’t a verdict?

all No more talking on’t. Let it be done. Away, away!

(1.1.1–12)

The first moments of Coriolanus capture the clamour and defiance of 'a company of mutinous Citizens' and provide a fitting initiation into a dramatic environment that is saturated with competing forms of language. With this demonstration, a collision of voices that will be maintained and exploited over the course of the play is powerfully introduced. On one hand, the dominant noise belongs to the starving and querulous mob, whose chanted words seem unhinged from their typical interactive and communicative functions. The doubled words, all clipped vowels and hard consonants, acquire an incantatory quality more in line with extra-linguistic sounds than with units of dialogue. Yet even in the midst of this collective howl, a counter-force emerges. Out of the din rises the enlivening voice of the First Citizen, clarifying and directing the sound of the multitude. The result is a confluence of verbal styles; the mob's chanting is offset by a discrete, articulate voice, so that two systems of language - the excited babble of a group, and the exhortative voice of an orator - collide. The pattern of competing voices that is established here is repeated throughout the play and, indeed, the various implications of ‘voice’ provide a potent subtext. The mob’s racket provides a visceral signal of the warring voices that will populate the play, and the words of the individual citizens that emerge from the rabble reinforce the point. There is an early, marked emphasis on the conflict between command and resistance, especially in regard to permitted speech.