So he feasted him for that time, and entertained him in the honourablest manner he could, talking with him in no other matters at that present: but within few days after, they fell to consultation together in what sort they should begin their wars.'
Comparison of this passage with its Shakespearean counterpart (IV. v. 55–153) shows that while the speech of Coriolanus is virtually all Plutarch, the speeches of Aufidius are almost wholly original with Shakespeare. They offer an instructive contrast in style and an admirable illustration of the manner in which Shakespeare could make dramatic adaptation go hand in hand with dramatic originality.
In the handling of incident Shakespeare treats Plutarch with the same appreciative discrimination as in the writing of dialogue. Seven scenes of the play are independent of North, and Plutarchan incidents are not infrequently altered to the advantage of dramatic economy, as when Shakespeare makes Coriolanus' yearlong squabbles with the Plebeians all focus upon the election to the Consulship. But when the Plutarchan story is good drama as it stands, the poet hardly tampers with it at all.
For the fable of Menenius, as told in the play (I. i. 94–160) it has been pointed out that Shakespeare appears to have made use of a version more detailed than that which Plutarch gives. This is found in William Camden's Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britain, published in 1605. It will be seen on comparison with North's narrative, quoted on page 158, that the following account, as given by Camden, has a number of verbal similarities with Shakespeare's lines which are absent from North and can hardly have been accidental:—'All the members of the body conspired against the stomacke, as against the swallowing gulfe of all their labors; for whereas the eies beheld, the eares heard, the handes labored, the feete traveled,
