His men celebrate him, but Coriolanus can hardly bear it. There is real humility in this, something we easily forget when thinking of Coriolanus (he is proverbially arrogant). What he does in battle he does for no mean motive, certainly not for riches (he cannot make his heart consent to take a bribe to pay his sword). Acclaim such as he is given even here, on the battlefield, and by other warriors, strikes him as rather decadent, and decadent in a sensualizing sort of way, too (as with the parasite's silk). He finds himself, to his distaste, "dieted / In praises sauc'd with lies." His temper is Spartan, even a bit ascetic. By his own lights this sets him apart from the courtiers and politicians. They live too much in the body, too little in the heart and mind. Coriolanus holds fast to his foundational distinction between warfare and politics, actions and words. If its validity is challenged—as it very effectively is by Volumnia and Menenius—then the basis of all his beliefs is denied him. The world he inhabits simply does not make sense in the way he supposed it did. And that is why he seeks "a world elsewhere."

Gender enters into this, as I have hinted. Coriolanus speaks of his "base tongue" and his "noble heart": the former is all politics, talk and cunning, the latter all sincerity, passion and action; the former is all ideals, all "his own truth," the latter all practice and policy. And the doubtful arts of the tongue—the arts of politics—are "womanish," at least as this play conceives them. They un-man Coriolanus, and he has spent his life learning how to become a man. Lee Bliss is quite correct. In this play "power and identity are understood in terms of a definition of masculinity that consciously excludes maternal values." "Violence is self-validating," Bliss adds, and through it Coroilanus seeks to "author" himself, indeed to become "invulnerable and godlike" (10). The following exchange between Coriolanus and his mother makes the difficulty of the project clear. She knows how best to work his vulnerabilities, how best to call him back to the nursery. She has been coaching him in the politic craft of seduction:

VOLUMNIA. I prithee now, sweet son, as thou hast said

My praises made thee first a soldier, so,

To have my praise for this, perform a part

Thou hast not done before.

CORIOLANUS. Well, I must do't.

Away, my disposition, and possess me

Some harlot's spirit! My throat of war be turn'd,

Which quir'd with my drum, into a pipe

Small as an eunuch or the virgin voice

That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of knaves

Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys' tears take up

The glasses of my sight! A beggar's tongue

Make motion through my lips, and my arm'd knees,

Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his

That hath receiv'd an alms! I will not do't,

Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,

And by my body's action teach my mind

A most inherent baseness.

VOLUMNIA. At thy choice, then.

To beg of thee, it is my more dishonour

Than thou of them. Come all to ruin. Let

Thy mother rather feel thy pride than fear

Thy dangerous stoutness; for I mock at death

With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list.

Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me;

But owe thy pride thyself.

CORIOLANUS. Pray be content.

Mother, I am going to the market place;

Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves,

Cog their hearts from them, and come home belov'd

Of all the trades in Rome. Look, I am going.

Commend me to my wife. I'll return consul,

Or never trust to what my tongue can do

I' th' way of flattery further.

From "I must do it" to "I will not do't" in a mere ten lines! Coriolanus's account of what he is about to do almost shocks him out of resolution. Still, he does become a boy again, or a harlot, or a eunuch, or a virgin. The trumpet-throated warrior plays the strumpet. He is carried back into pre-adolescence as his voice "pipes" high and shrill. The idea is suggestive. Purity of temper and heart is a masculine prerogative—as is allegiance to Truth as against allegiance to party, class, or even family. Coriolanus uses metaphors of sexual perversion—or simply of sexuality as such—to describe the peculiar way in which politics debases him. And this lets us see what register, in his imagination, the arts of politics occupy: a feminine one.