The Citizens of Rome represent the play’s most destabilizing force—not through individual agency, but through their collective power as a voting bloc. They appear scattered throughout the action: demanding grain in the opening, gathering in the Forum to grant Coriolanus the consulship, then just as quickly (at the tribunes’ urging) revoking their support and demanding his banishment. They are the embodiment of what both Coriolanus and the tribunes exploit: a mass without fixed conviction, responsive to rhetoric, fear, and the manipulation of whoever holds their ear. When Sicinius asks, “What is the city but the people?” the question seems rhetorical—yet the play suggests the citizens are precisely what makes Rome unstable. They lack the wisdom to govern themselves, yet their “voices” are the formal source of all political legitimacy.
What makes the Citizens dramatically powerful is their voicelessness. Individual citizens speak—the First Citizen debates grain policy, the Sixth Citizen praises Coriolanus, the Third Citizen worries about consequences—yet they are forever overshadowed by the tribunes, who orchestrate their movements like a puppeteer. The tribunes teach them what to think, then amplify their own interpretation as the people’s will. Coriolanus despises them for this very instability; he calls them “many-headed,” “scabs,” and a “common cry of curs.” Yet his contempt only strengthens the tribunes’ hand, because it proves to the Citizens that Coriolanus does indeed look down on them. By Act 4, when news arrives that Coriolanus is marching on Rome with an army, the Citizens panic and immediately blame the tribunes for the banishment they themselves demanded. Their complicity is real, but so is their helplessness—they are caught between forces larger than themselves.
The Citizens’ final appearance comes in Act 5, when they welcome home the ladies of Rome, celebrating the peace that Volumnia has negotiated. Even here, their joy is directed by others; they cheer because they are told to cheer. Yet in that moment, they become inadvertent peacemakers. Their relief at Coriolanus’s departure—even if they don’t fully understand why it happened—is genuine. The play leaves the question hanging: are the Citizens the foundation of Rome’s strength, or the source of its ruin? Shakespeare seems to suggest they are both, and neither, depending on who speaks to them last.
