INTRODUCTION

Summary

DATE

The only substantive text we possess of Coriolanus is the one printed in the First Folio of 1623, and since the entry of that volume in the Stationers' Register names the play as one of sixteen ‘not formerly entred to other men’ we may probably assume that no quarto of it, good or bad, had appeared previously. Nor is there any trace of it among the rather scanty references to theatrical performances before the Restoration. Indeed that of an adaptation by Tate referred to on the titlepage of that version published in 1682 is the first record we have of stage production in any form.

Its early theatrical history being thus blank we must turn to the play itself for possible clues to the date of composition. First then it was written after the beginning of 1605, which saw the publication of Camden's Remaines concerning Britaine, since, as Malone observed, Menenius's tale of the Belly and the Members, although in the main derived from Plutarch, owes a phrase or two to Camden. And second, it was written before the beginning of 1610 when The Silent Woman appeared, because in that play Jonson pokes fun at ‘He lurched all swords of the garland’ which Cominius says in praise of Coriolanus at 2. 2. 99, and Jonson would hardly have applied this description of the superlative prowess of the hero of an epical tragedy to the super- lative intrigue of the hero in his comedy, had he not expected the audience to recognize the parallel.