Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus. Shakespeare worked on it during the same years he wrote Antony and Cleopatra, making them his last two tragedies.
John Philip Kemble as Coriolanus in "Coriolanus" by William Shakespeare, Thomas Lawrence (1798)
"Virgilia bewailing the absence of Coriolanus" by Thomas Woolner
An 1800 painting by Richard Westall of Volumnia pleading with Coriolanus not to destroy Rome.
The first page of The Life of Caius Martius Coriolanus from Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes.
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
The Chandos portrait, likely Shakespeare, early 17th century
John Shakespeare's house, believed to be Shakespeare's birthplace, in Stratford-upon-Avon
Shakespeare's coat of arms, from the 1602 book The book of coates and creasts. Promptuarium armorum. It features spears as a pun on the family name.
Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon
