The Second Citizen emerges as a moderate voice within the turbulent plebeian masses, distinct from the more heated rhetoric of the First Citizen. Where others demand immediate violence or unthinking obedience, the Second Citizen asks probing questions and occasionally voices hesitation, serving as a mirror for the common people’s internal doubts. In Act 1, when the First Citizen demands Coriolanus’s death, the Second Citizen gently counters that they have power to refuse—a small assertion of independent will that gets quickly overwhelmed by collective anger. This pattern repeats throughout the play: the Second Citizen thinks, questions, even defends Coriolanus’s service, yet remains trapped within the crowd’s momentum.
His most significant moment comes in Act 2, Scene 3, the forum scene, where the Second Citizen wrestles with the paradox of voting for a man he knows to be arrogant and contemptuous. He voices the simple truth that ingratitude is monstrous, that citizens should feel shame if they repay Coriolanus’s wounds with betrayal. Yet even as he speaks this moral clarity, he is swayed by the tribunes’ manipulation. By Act 4, Scene 6, after Coriolanus’s banishment, the Second Citizen begins to recognize the terrible mistake—he admits he said “banish him” not out of conviction but out of pity, and that the decision was made “against our will.” This growing regret, too late to prevent the catastrophe, defines his tragedy: he has moral sense but lacks the will or power to resist the tide of popular passion.
The Second Citizen represents Shakespeare’s vision of the common people as neither wholly villainous nor heroic, but tragically human—capable of wisdom but fatally prone to manipulation, guilt-ridden but ineffectual, speaking truth one moment and swept into falsehood the next. His few lines carry the weight of collective agency and collective shame, suggesting that the banishment of Coriolanus is not the work of a few demagogues alone, but the result of thousands of individuals failing to resist when resistance was possible. In his regret, he carries the play’s indictment of democracy itself.
What is the city but the people?
What is the city if not the people?
Second Citizen · Act 3, Scene 1
Sicinius speaks this line as he incites the crowd to turn against Coriolanus after a violent confrontation. The question cuts to the heart of the play's central conflict: whether a state belongs to its military hero or its people. It is memorable because it sounds simple but contains an entire political philosophy that justifies the tribunes' actions and sets the stage for Coriolanus's downfall.
We may, sir, if we will.
We can, sir, if we want to.
Second Citizen · Act 2, Scene 3
A citizen asserts that the people have the power to vote as they choose, refusing to be told what their duty requires. The line resonates because it claims popular sovereignty in a moment when they are being pressured by their tribunes—the people know they have power, even if they do not always know how to use it wisely. It captures both the potential and the danger of rule by the many.
