Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

Perhaps this is why the missing scene is missing (either taken out or never written). For the missing scene to have worked, there would have had to be news of a Volscian advance, followed by a patrician refusal to abandon the city, so that Coriolanus would have had to join the enemy in a rage. But then he would merely be joining a marching army as a hanger-on.

This way, the Volscians don't move until Coriolanus joins them, and the news arrives that not only is the enemy approaching but the exiled Coriolanus is at their head. So, for the sake of this added drama, the missing scene is removed. It means that the meeting between the Roman and the Volsce is made irrelevant and Coriolanus' desertion to the Volscians and his anger against the "dastard nobles" left inadequately motivated. In this case, apparently, Shakespeare had his choice of two lines of development and did not manage to make a clear decision.

… cowardly nobles.. .

The failure to make a clear decision between the two courses of development haunts this sixth scene of the fourth act. At first the patricians seem rather exultant about Coriolanus' assault. Cominius says of the Vol-scians:

they follow him
Against us brats with no less confidence
Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,

—Act IV, scene vi, lines 93-95

Cominius is actually proud of Coriolanus' ascendancy over the Vol-scians, but note the picture of butterfly killing again. It is as though Shakespeare were reminding us that a child who is brought up as a butterfly killer may end as a city destroyer.

In the absence of the missing scene, it is perhaps here that the patricians ought to overcome their sympathy and admiration for Coriolanus and decide that patriotism takes priority. The necessary speech does not occur (perhaps because it was originally in the lost scene and was not shifted when the scene was lost). That it may have at one time been present might be indicated by a bitter remark of Menenius to the tribunes:

We loved him, but, like beasts
And cowardly nobles, gave way unto your clusters.

—Act IV, scene vi, lines 122-23

Of course, it might refer to the patricians acceding to the sentence of exile.

… more proudlier

Yet all is not well with Coriolanus, either. He is still Coriolanus and can no more bend to the Volscians, now that he is leading them, than he could ever bend to the Romans. The Volscian officers are uneasy and even Tullus Aufidius is unhappy, saying:

He bears himself more proudlier,
Even to my person, than I thought he would
When first I did embrace him; yet his nature
In that's no changeling. ..

—Act IV, scene vii, lines 8-11

And yet he must be used, for he is conquering Rome without even having to fight. Aufidius says:

All places yield to him ere he sits down,
And the nobility of Rome are his;
The senators and patricians love him too.

—Act IV, scene vii, lines 28-30

Apparently, even though the patricians of Rome have agreed to resist, there remain some who cling more tightly to party than to country. And even those who are intending to resist can do so with only half a heart.

And yet can the patricians honestly think that the Volscians are willing to serve as nothing more than a bunch of errand boys for them, to help them back to power out of love and kindness? The outside power, brought in to help in an internal fight, stays (all history shows) to help itself at the expense of all. And Aufidius says, at the end of the scene, apostrophizing the absent Coriolanus (to whom he refers by the familiar first name as though the man is someone he can now consider a tool or servant):

When, Caius, Rome is thine,
Thou art poor'st of all; then shortly art thou mine

—Act IV, scene vii, lines 56-57

The patricians who decide to resist Coriolanus may be moved by abstract love of country, but they may also be moved by a realization of the danger of accepting foreign help under any circumstances. This is something the Greeks never learned (and few nations since).

… one poor grain or two …

Soon Rome knows the worst. It is Coriolanus' vengeful desire to burn it to the ground. Surrender will not satisfy him; only destruction will. (This is purely psychotic unless the patricians had specifically deserted Coriolanus in the scene I postulate to be missing.)

Cominius, the ex-consul, and Coriolanus' old general, had gone to plead and had been met coldly. Cominius had reminded Coriolanus of his friends in the city and reports that:

His answer to me was,
He could not stay to pick them in a pile
Of noisome musty chaff. He said 'twas folly,
For one poor grain or two, to leave unburnt
And still to nose th'offense.

—Act V, scene i, lines 24-28

Even at best, with all possible motive, Coriolanus seems to have skirted the edge of madness here, for as Menenius points out:

For one poor grain or two!
I am one of those; his mother, wife, his child,

—Act V, scene i, lines 28-29

There seems little hope for penetrating the red veil of madness that has closed over Coriolanus' vengeful mind. Cominius says:

… all hope is vain
Unless his noble mother and his wife,
Who (as I hear) mean to solicit him
For mercy to his country.

—Act V, scene i, lines 70-74 

Wife, mother, child…

 Even this faint possibility seems to wither. Menenius is urged to try his luck with Coriolanus, but he is thrust scornfully away and Coriolanus denies that anyone, even his dearest, can sway him. He says to Menenius:

Wife, mother, child, I know not.
My affairs Are servanted to others.

—Act V, scene ii, lines 83-84

Has Coriolanus the strength to turn against his own mother? Perhaps, but only because he has a substitute. He remains the little boy who must have parental approval. Having brutally turned away Menenius, he turns to Aufidius and seeks approval with what might almost be a simper:

This man, Aufidius,
Was my beloved in Rome; yet thou behold'st.