Coriolanus (New Cambridge Shakespeare Series) / Edition 2

by Lee Bliss, Bridget Escolme

Overview

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This second edition of Coriolanus, edited by Lee Bliss, provides a thorough reconsideration of what was probably Shakespeare's last tragedy. In the introduction, Bliss situates the play within its contemporary social and political contexts and pays particular attention to Shakespeare's manipulation of his primary source in Plutarch's Lives. The edition is alert to the play's theatrical potential, while the stage history also attends to the politics of performance from the 1680s onwards, including European productions following the Second World War. A new introductory section by Bridget Escolme accounts for recent theatrical productions as well as scholarly criticism of the last decade, with particular emphasis on gender and politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521728744
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/21/2010
Series:	The New Cambridge Shakespeare
Edition description:	Second edition
Pages:	328
Sales rank:	743,165
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Bridget Escolme is Senior Lecturer in Drama at Queen Mary, University of London.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations vi

Acknowledgements vii

Abbreviations and conventions viii

Introduction 1

Date, theatre, chronology 1

Sources 10

Contemporary contexts 17

Dearth, riots, rebellions 17

Politics and the franchise 27

Essex and Ralegh 33

The Play 40

Coriolanus on Shakespeare's stage 63

Stage history 67

Recent stage and critical interpretations BRIDGET ESCOLME 98

The people and the city: the politics of Coriolanus 99

Gender, sexuality, identity 101

A theatre of shame 102

The play in performance and performance criticism: anti-theatricality, stage presence and charisma 103

Spatial and sartorial politics in the early and post-modern theatre 109

Note on the text 112

List of characters 116

The Play 118

Textual analysis 289

Appendix: Lineation 308

Reading list 314

Editorial Reviews

Penguin chose to revamp its venerable Pelican Shakespeare line in 1999. The updated series includes more accurate texts and new introductions by the current crop of leading Shakespearean scholars. The good stuff just gets better with age. (Classic Returns, LJ 10/15/99) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

YA-- Four more useful volumes accessible to high-school students of Shakespeare. Each includes a stage history, a critical history, and a few short critical analyses by the authors.

School Library Journal