To turn from following his enemy in "a fiery gulf" to "flattering" him in "a bower" would be, for Coriolanus, to turn from a "masculine" enterprise to a "feminine" one, from action to words—or say, from "action" to "acting." It would be to exchange his honor for mere policy (to use the terms Volumnia herself introduces). Coriolanus is certainly being told how to "act" a part, even down to the stage directions: "Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand; / And thus far having stretch'd it—here be with them—/ Thy knee bussing the stones—for in such business / Action is eloquence," and so on. He is to affect a heart heavy to the bursting, like an overripe black mulberry, easily bruised and bloodied. Volumnia is what we now call a "stage mother," a playwright of sorts, or in any case a director. Coriolanus is her show.

But as for "flattering his enemy in a bower": we already have Coriolanus's word on that. Here he is after his great victory at Corioli, where he fought the Volscians off single-handed while locked inside the city gates:

        When drums and trumpets shall

I' th' field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be

Made all of false fac'd soothing. When steel grows

Soft as the parasite's silk, let him be made

An overture for th' wars.

The "parasite" spoken of here is the courtier, the courtly politician; he subsists on the blood of real men, on the blood of warriors, having so little of it in himself. The metaphor Coriolanus deploys is peculiarly rich: "When steel grows soft as the parasite's silk." One thinks of rigor, and then, opposed to it, not only of silk, but perhaps (and a little phallically) also of silkworms; the insect suggestion of "parasite" may help the figure along, though that idea seems unlikely. And one thinks also of Timon of Athens: "You knot of Mouth-Friends: . . Most smiling, smooth, detested Parasites" (3.7.93). In any case, the figure is of a rigid blade giving way to a kind of invertebrate laxity and limpness. The metaphor is (latently) a metaphor of detumescence, which is but another way of imagining the turn from "active" warrior to "passive" court politician.

As for the distressing idea that politics may simply be another kind of warfare, and warfare another kind of politics, consider what Volumnia says to Coriolanus:

If it be honour in your wars to seem

The same you are not, which for your best ends

You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse

That it shall hold companionship in peace

With honour as in war; since that to both

It stands in like request?

This speech confuses everything, at least for Coriolanus. If what Volumnia says is true, then the distinctions he'd always depended on between "action" and "talk," between being and seeming, between "trumpets" and "flattery," are not dependable at all. Actions are a kind of words, and words a kind of action. Derrida made no advance on Volumnia's thinking: there is nothing outside the text. Battlefield and court begin to look too much alike. Both have a hand in what Coriolanus calls "false-fac'd soothing." Coriolanus himself is not so pure after all. He is a politician, like Menenius. Hasn't his mother said so?

Those were fine words Coriolanus delivered after the battle, of course. They bear looking at again, this time in context.

COMINIUS.         Of all the horses--

Whereof we have ta'en good, and good store—of all

The treasure in this field achiev'd and city,

We render you the tenth; to be ta'en forth

Before the common distribution at

Your only choice.

MARCIUS. I thank you, General,

But cannot make my heart consent to take

A bribe to pay my sword. I do refuse it,

And stand upon my common part with those

That have beheld the doing.

[A long flourish. They all cry 'Marcius, Marcius!' cast up their caps and lances. COMINIUS and LARTIUS stand bare.]

May these same instruments which you profane

Never sound more! When drums and trumpets shall

I' th' field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be

Made all of false fac'd soothing. When steel grows

Soft as the parasite's silk, let him be made

An overture for th' wars. No more, I say.

For that I have not wash'd my nose that bled,

Or foil'd some debile wretch, which without note

Here's many else have done, you shout me forth

In acclamations hyperbolical,

As if I lov'd my little should be dieted

In praises sauc'd with lies.