The Coriolanus Gallery

"The Tragedy of Coriolanus", by William Shakespeare, was first printed in the folio of 1623. In this play Shakespeare wrote about the poor and the hungry. Here we will use the name "Coriolanus" for a gallery where art and writing about homelessness and poverty will be displayed.

From Act I, Scene I of Coriolanus:

We are accounted poor citizens; the patricians good. What authority surfeits on would relieve us: if they would yield us but the superfluity, while it were wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely; but they think we are too dear: the leaness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an inventory to particularize their abundance; our sufferance is a gain to them.--Let us revenge this with our pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know, I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.

"The Belly Speaks"
pen and ink illustration
by Tara Kay

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