In Coriolanus (1608), Shakespeare stages a paradigmatic discussion surrounding memory and forgetfulness in relation to Coriolanus’s excessive corporeality. Coriolanus, whose cognomen commemorates his memorialising wounds that ‘smart/To hear themselves remembered’ (I. ix. 27–8), 1 would prefer to be forgotten (II. iii. 56–7). Coriolanus is hurt by prospect of his life being determined by those who remember certain aspects of him—his body, its wounds, their commemoration of victory in battle—and who take those memories as synecdochically representative of his whole character.