“So shall my lungs coin words”: The Latin and English Sympathies of Coriolanus

The hero of William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus brings about his own exile through arrogance and lack of political tact, despite being lauded initially as a great military leader. His intractability makes him an outsider by choice, and this attitude is reflected in his preference for plain English words over the Latinate formulations that other characters use to conform to a political Rome. This essay examines the contemporary statuses of Latin-derived English and plain English and their effect on the play, the etymology of “new words” that are spoken by Coriolanus, and the typical use of Latin and English in Coriolanus’ speeches; all of these contribute to Coriolanus’ military characterization and to a complex dramatization of his rejection of Rome. Coriolanus speaks many of the words coined in this play, and these are never directly derived from Latin, unlike the words coined by the more political characters. In his rhetoric, he sets Latin and English against each other in deliberate constructions, but only enrages his audience in doing so