Blakiston�s ecstatic reaction to the Coriolanus� letter in 2.1 re-emphasised Thacker�s reading of Volumnia as a mother who finds joy in her son�s masculine feats. �O, he is wounded, I thank the gods for it� (2.1.116) was mouthed by Blakiston with sadistic relish, and she shouted the number of wounds inflicted on her son as if it was a public proclamation. During the Herald�s subsequent announcement of her son, rather than immediately turn to him, Volumnia again stared out, chin forward, almost as if overcome by this public confirmation of her son�s achievements. The stage tableau Thacker constructed, with Volumnia at the front-centre of the stage, the back-cloth of Delacroix�s �Liberty Leading the People� back-centre and the newly arrived Coriolanus in-between the two subtly encapsulated the mother-son relationship. Delacroix�s symbolically powerful female was made to represent all that Volumnia, a woman of Rome, desired to achieve: the role of a woman with iconic power in her society. Coriolanus, the man/boy who is perceived as the means for mother and icon to become one, was cleverly framed, almost trapped, between the two. In this moment, Thacker�s casting of the youthful Stephen�s, significantly younger than the vast majority of previous Coriolanus�, again became clear in this presentation of a boy trapped by his mother�s thirst for power . Furthermore, every word of her first line to Coriolanus (�Nay, my good soldier, up� - 2.1.163) was given emphasis, demonstrating Volumnia�s value of her son firstly for being her possession, and secondly for being a soldier (rather than son). Her final line �O, thy wife� (2.1.167) was played for laughs as she suddenly moved away in disgust, but nevertheless re-played what had already been suggested in 1.3: Volumnia�s frustration with Virgilia in failing to embrace her own bloody fantasies.
Up to this point, Thacker�s reading of Volumnia appeared up to be synonymous with a majority of critical readings of the mother-son relationship , for example Katharine Maus� opinion that,
In Volumnia, the discipline required to submit to rules of Roman womanliness seems to have generated a complicated sadomasochistic adaptation. She displaces her own forbidden bellicosity onto a dream of exaggerated masculinity and then attempts to realise that dream in her son.
She is a woman in patriarchal Rome who, in the wake of her son�s victory, achieves the same mythological status as Delacroix�s Liberty, one she thirsts for (encapsulated in the physical re-enactment of rocking, where she likens herself to Hecuba). Coriolanus� victory at Corioli therefore completes the process of Volumnia�s mythologizing, turning her into �the life of Rome� (5.5.1).
Yet crucially, and in contrast to the Terry Hands and John Barton production, this Volumnia realised the cost of her endeavour. This did not come until the pivotal scene of 5.5, but by pitching the character as being highly dynamic and vocal from the beginning, Blakiston made Volumnia�s sudden realisation of the consequences of her actions harrowingly poignant. For while her attempted coaching of Coriolanus to bow to the Tribunes and her following rebuke of them for the exile of her son were carried through with an energy that prevented a moment for reflection, Coriolanus� dramatic capitulation to her on �O, mother, mother!� (5.3.183) suddenly turned her world upside down.
The whole of 5.3 was made to pivot on two major reversals occurring between mother and son. The first was on Volumnia�s side, inherent in the appeal to her �soldier� not to storm Rome. In her entreaty of over fifty lines, Blakiston placed emphasis on the words �grace�, �reconcile�, �mercy�, �peace� and �fellowship� in the same way as she had earlier stressed their antithetical opposites. Instead of acting out Coriolanus in the battlefield or directing her face upward, she lay herself flat on the stage with her hand on her son�s foot in a state of absolute submission. This double-barrelled verbal and physical volte-face dramatically underlined just how traumatic Volumnia�s appeal to Coriolanus was; it completely contradicted everything she had taught him before. Stephen�s body-language was similarly important in this sequence. Having initially taken up a rigid, unmoving stance at the centre of the stage that succeeded in repelling Menenius in 4.2 (leading to Menenius� description of him as �an engine� a thing made for Alexander�), the statue suddenly crumbled and became human, Stephen�s head turning violently on Volumnia�s announcement that she had changed tack: �Our suit / Is that you reconcile them� (5.3.136-7). Having witnessed the female exemplar of his own hyper-masculine ideology capitulate, Coriolanus� reaction was to hold his mother�s hand for a moment before collapsing to his knees in a state of near-delirium. Removing the breastplate he had assumed once in command of the Volsces, whose metallic quality suggested his earlier impregnable rigidity, he sat prostrate on his knees in a state of physical and emotional disarmament.
Shakespeare�s Volumnia does not speak again after her son�s capitulation, and Thacker�s production suggested that this climatic act emasculated both Coriolanus and his mother. Volumnia, who had so purposely dominated the stage thoughout, had to be physically supported by Virgilia in her exit in 5.3. In the following procession of 5.5, she walked the perimeter of the stage with the young Martius holding her hand. But this was no triumphant march; Volumnia�s footsteps were slow, stumbling and uncertain. Her face was contorted into a mask of dejected horror, open-eyed in disbelief. Consciously contrasting with her earlier dominance of the space, Volumnia never approached the centre which had been previously functioned as her platform � the scene was played like the death-march that Thacker actually cut from the play�s final scene. Virgilia�s reservations about the worship of such hyper-masculinity, reservations forcibly censored by her step-mother throughout the play, are ultimately shown to be true. Yet even if, as G.R.Hibbard suggest, Volumnia has �learnt something in the interval since 4.2� she has at last seen he truth of what her daughter-in-law stood for all along� , it is nevertheless a tragic and comfortless realisation. Rather than parade the young Martius as her next project, a Coriolanus mrk. 2, the young boy (dressed in white) seemed to lead her like a taunting ghost of her son, oblivious to the horror etched on both Volumnia and Virgilia�s faces.
