Abstract
Coriolanus’ unwillingness to reveal his wounds makes him seem an innocent guarding virginity. The terms he uses to describe the citizens refer to their lack of cleanliness, their bad breath. This may well have been a fact of the time; but Coriolanus seems as obsessed as if contact were sexual intimacy. When the citizens ask for his love, Coriolanus mocks ‘I will counterfeit the bewitchment of some popular man and give a bountiful to the desirers’ [ii.iii.106–7]. He will only show his wounds in private [ii.iii.80–1, l72]. The wound, blood, sexual imagery becomes degraded into prostitution and is linked with the imagery of money, price, cost, reflecting the citizens’ perspective but also associated with the futility of life. Exchanges are often treated as the buying of sexual favours:
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© 1989 Bruce King
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King, B. (1989). The price of love: unclean mouths. In: Coriolanus. The Critics Debate. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20207-2_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20207-2_23
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