Limited Sovereign Power and Popular Consent: Reading Coriolanus in the Context of Commonwealth Discourse

Abstract

This paper explores Shakespeare’s political maneuvering as a dramatist by reading Coriolanus in the context of contemporary commonwealth discourse. It examines how the First Citizen challenges Menenius’s distorted use of the body politic, reclaiming a model of hierarchical harmony among the parts within the whole body. This topos frequently articulated in the commonwealth discourse is read as endorsed by the play. The paper then discusses the tribunate, created through popular politics, and argues that by securing the people’s share of power within the polity, it functions as an analogue to the English Parliament. Coriolanus’s vehement opposition to the tribunate parallels James I’s absolutist conflict with the Commons. Rather than offering an overt political statement, Shakespeare implicitly critiques James’s absolutist ideology through a dramaturgy of indirection that invites audiences to apply consensus political ideas to the stage—namely, limited sovereign power and popular consent, central to the contemporary commonwealth discourse.