Summary & Analysis

Coriolanus, Act 5 Scene 6 — Summary & Analysis

Setting: Antinum. A public place Who's in it: Aufidius, First conspirator, Second conspirator, Third conspirator, All the lords, Lords, First lord, Coriolanus, +4 more Reading time: ~9 min

What happens

Aufidius accuses Coriolanus of treason before the Volscian lords, claiming he betrayed their cause by making peace with Rome at his mother's urging. When Coriolanus arrives and defends his honor, Aufidius provokes him by calling him 'boy.' Coriolanus erupts in rage, and the conspirators seize the moment to kill him. Aufidius stands over the body, claiming sorrow, and the lords grant Coriolanus a noble funeral despite his crimes against Volscia.

Why it matters

Aufidius executes a calculated political assassination disguised as public justice. His carefully worded accusation—that Coriolanus 'sold the blood and labour' of their great action 'for certain drops of salt'—transforms a military alliance's failure into a betrayal of trust. By framing the peace as treachery orchestrated by women rather than as Coriolanus's rational choice, Aufidius appeals to the lords' sense of wounded pride and masculine honor. The conspiracy works because it exploits the very qualities that made Coriolanus dangerous: his pride, his inability to control his rage, and his contempt for political subtlety. When Aufidius calls him 'boy,' he touches the rawest nerve, knowing Coriolanus will respond with uncontrolled fury that makes him appear unstable and reckless before witnesses.

Coriolanus's death is simultaneously his triumph and his defeat. His final words—'O that I had him, / With six Aufidiuses'—reassert his warrior's identity even as he dies. Yet the scene reveals what the play has been suggesting all along: that absolute integrity without flexibility is not virtue but rigidity, and that a man 'more bound to's mother' than anyone else remains, in the end, bound to forces he cannot dominate. The lords' decision to grant him 'a noble memory' despite his destruction of Volscian interests shows that even his enemies recognize something genuinely great in him. His death is not redemption but waste—the destruction of a man whose nature made him incapable of the compromises that survival requires.

Key quotes from this scene

Bear from hence his body; And mourn you for him: let him be regarded As the most noble corse that ever herald Did follow to his urn.

Take his body away from here, And mourn for him. Let him be remembered As the most honorable dead man ever Who a herald has led to his final resting place.

First Lord · Act 5, Scene 6

The play's final words of judgment come not from the victor but from the state's leadership, according Coriolanus the honor his pride always demanded. He receives in death what he could never receive in life: universal recognition and respect. The line is both elegy and epitaph, restoring to him the dignity that his nature and the world's demands conspired to strip away.

Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart Too great for what contains it. Boy! O slave!

Unmeasurable liar, you have made my heart Too great for what it can hold. Boy! Oh, slave!

Caius Marcius Coriolanus · Act 5, Scene 6

Coriolanus explodes at Aufidius's betrayal in the final scene, unable to contain the rage that has built throughout his exile. The image of a heart too great for its container is perfect: he cannot fit himself into any world, any alliance, any role. His fury here is not ignoble—it is the last true expression of a man who has been pushed beyond endurance.

My rage is gone; And I am struck with sorrow.

My anger is gone, And now I am filled with sorrow.

Tullus Aufidius · Act 5, Scene 6

Aufidius speaks these lines after the conspirators kill Coriolanus, and the shift from rage to sorrow is immediate and genuine. In killing his great enemy, he has killed something that gave his life meaning. The line marks the play's final tragic irony: the man who orchestrated the death now grieves it, understanding too late what he has destroyed.

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