...What Coriolanus seems to prove, Hazlitt argues with bitter irony, is the legitimacy of oppression: 'The people are poor; therefore they ought to be starved....They are slaves; therefore they ought to be beaten . . . This is the logic of the imagination and the passions: which seek to aggrandize what excites...

...to their arrogance and absurdity. ' ' And his conclusion is: 'The whole dramatic moral of Coriolanus is, that those who have little shall have less, and...those who have much shall take all that others have left."2 It will be seen that Hazlitt has a secure grasp of the play. While not minimizing Shakespeare's...

...more formidable ; and from Gods would convert them into Devils. The whole dramatic moral of CORIOLANUS is that those who have little shall have less, and...therefore they ought to be treated like beasts of burden. They are ignorant ; therefore they ought not to be allowed to feel that they want food, or...