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Ann Barton's important essay “Livy, Machiavelli and Coriolanus” has indicated the importance of reading Shakespeare's Roman plays from the perspective of European historiography, looking at the political uses sixteenth-century history writing made of the past. Reading Shakespeare's Coriolanus against the comment on the early history of the Roman republic provided by Machiavelli, who in his turn is reading Livy's account, Barton has been able to counter conservative readings of the play and to highlight its republican meanings. Her own reading can actually be inscribed in the very tradition she is discussing, namely of the political reading of Shakespeare's political appropriation of history.

John Roe has recently contested Barton's reading, questioning the input of Machiavelli in the making of the play: Shakespeare's negative treatment of the tribunes clearly indicates that he favoured North's Plutarch over the Livy–Machiavelli line. He adopts Plutarch's view of the tribunes as “seditious” and “flattering” and “makes popular, conspiratorial Machiavels of the tribunes, whereas Machiavelli sees them as men of principle whose disinterested application to the law preserves universal liberty”. Indirectly Shakespeare rejects the usefulness of their institution. Nor do the people, Roe insists further countering Barton, ”come all that well out of the encounter with Coriolanus.” The conclusion that one can draw is that the case of the republicanism of the play seems to have been overstated, at least in so far as it concerns Shakespeare's appropriation of Machiavelli's views on history and politics.