Wherein this trunk was framed, and in her hand
The grandchild to her blood.
(V. iii. 22.)
It is as son, husband and father that the depths of Coriolanus’ nature can be reached. In his greetings to his wife, in his prayers for his boy, we have glimpses of his inward heart; but of course this family feeling is concentrated on his mother who, as it were, sums up his ancestry to him, and who, by her personal qualities and her parental authority, fills his soul with a kind of religious reverence. We have seen how she has fashioned him, how she commands and awes him. When she inclines her head as she appears before him, he already feels that it is incongruous and absurd:
My mother bows:
As if Olympus to a molehill should
In supplication nod.
(V. iii. 29.)
When she kneels, it is prodigious, incredible; he cannot believe his eyes:
What is this?