William Shakespeare's play Coriolanus explores the journey of power and the transformation of a skilled warrior into a statesman. This paper employs Machiavelli’s framework of pragmatic statecraft to analyse Coriolanus’s tragic failure as a political leader despite his unparalleled prowess as a Roman general. It analyses Coriolanus's political career, revealing how his military skills, while effective in warfare, do not translate into political success. The paper shows that Coriolanus’s contempt for performative politics, refusal to adopt civic diplomacy, and failure to soften aristocratic pride with populist appeal turn plebeians against him and alienate patricians. His upholding of martial honour — fostered by his mother Volumnia’s martial ideals — prevents him from rising to the top of Rome’s fractious political hierarchy. In contrast, Brutus and Sicinius's tribunes exemplify Machiavellian cunning, using rhetoric and public opinion to consolidate their power unscrupulously. The play’s meditation on leadership emphasises a tempting paradox: The skills that win on the battlefield, like discipline and unilateral decisiveness, are often the ones that will sink you politically, where compromise, performative empathy and strategic deception are necessities. The paper contributes to Shakespearean studies by reframing the tragedy as a critique of inflexible leadership in hierarchal societies, with implications for modern discourses on populism, authoritarianism, and the performative nature of power.