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15 - Coriolanus and the Use of Power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

By
Catherine M. S. Alexander
Edited by
David Loewenstein  and
Paul Stevens
David Loewenstein
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Paul Stevens
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

This chapter considers the contemporary social and military context of the composition of Coriolanus including civil unrest, governance, education, the influence of the classical world, and later conjecture that Shakespeare himself was a soldier. In considering the performance of the play and its afterlives, attention is paid to stage directions, sound, character, and the subsequent adaptation and appropriation of Coriolanus and his mother in other media – art, poetry, film – that focus on the military, civil, personal, and political conflicts at the heart of the play.

Keywords

adaptationBasilicon DoronChartistsCoriolanus (character)Coriolanus (play title)First Folio (1623)illustrationsMidland RevoltThomas Northstage directionsVolumnia
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and War , pp. 256 - 271
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Barlow, Adrian (ed.). Special issue on the literature of the First World War, The Use of English, 65 (Spring 2014).Google Scholar
Barton, Ann. “Livy, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus,” in Alexander, Catherine M. S. (ed.), Shakespeare and Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 67–90.Google Scholar
Bristol, Michael D. “Lenten Butchery: Legitimation Crisis in Coriolanus,” in Howard, Jean E. and O’Connor, Marion F. (eds.), Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, London, Methuen, 1987, pp. 207–24.Google Scholar
Dessen, Alan C., and Thomson, Leslie. A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–1642, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Dobson, Michael. The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660–1769, Oxford, Clarendon, 1992.Google Scholar
Dollimore, Jonathan, and Sinfield, Alan (eds.). Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Edgar, David. How Plays Work, London, Nick Hern Books, 2009.Google Scholar
Hawkes, Terence. Meaning by Shakespeare, London, Routledge, 1992.Google Scholar
Kahn, Coppélia. Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women, New York, Routledge, 1997.Google Scholar
Kraye, Jill (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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