Coriolanus

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of illustrations (p. vi)
• Acknowledgements (p. vii)
• Abbreviations and conventions (p. viii)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• Date, theatre, chronology (p. 1)
• Sources (p. 10)
• Contemporary contexts (p. 17)
• Dearth, riots, rebellions (p. 17)
• Politics and the franchise (p. 27)
• Essex and Ralegh (p. 33)
• The Play (p. 40)
• Coriolanus on Shakespeare's stage (p. 63)
• Stage history (p. 67)
• Recent stage and critical interpretations BRIDGET ESCOLME (p. 98)
• The people and the city: the politics of Coriolanus (p. 99)
• Gender, sexuality, identity (p. 101)
• A theatre of shame (p. 102)
• The play in performance and performance criticism: anti-theatricality, stage presence and charisma (p. 103)
• Spatial and sartorial politics in the early and post-modern theatre (p. 109)
• Note on the text (p. 112)
• List of characters (p. 116)
• The Play (p. 118)
• Textual analysis (p. 289)
• Appendix: Lineation (p. 308)
• Reading list (p. 314)