This generously annotated edition offers a thorough reconsideration of Shakespeare's remarkable, and probably his last, tragedy.

The First Folio of 1623 was prepared for print by two members of Shakespeare's acting troupe -- John Hemings and Henry Condell -- which included comic actor Will Kemp and the great tragedian Richard Burbage. In a fascinating and detailed introduction, Freeman points out that because Shakespeare and his colleagues wrote from a rhetorical tradition -- a society where the emphasis was on the spoken word -- he wrote with an eye to how he wanted his plays performed, giving as much direction as possible to his actors. Freeman looks at what is known of the printing of that First Folio and analyzes the variations between the First Folio, later Folios, Quarto editions (where available) and modern editions of the plays. He examines the "corrections" made by editors over the centuries that have shaped the way we perceive Shakespeare today -- from the regularization of verse, to the changes from prose to verse (and vice versa) and the standardization of character prefixes.

Perhaps the most brilliant political play ever written, Coriolanus is a gripping psychological study of the relationship between personality and politics, and its Roman hero one of the most memorable Shakespeare ever created. The introduction to this new edition offers the first full stage history and analysis of the original production of Coriolanus at the Blackfriars theater, and also examines Shakespeare's adaptation of his historical material while emphasizing the wide range of interpretations that are possible in performance.

Drawing upon promptbooks and other theater documents, engravings and photographs, reviews, interviews, letters, diaries, and memoirs, he creates a richly layered account of a play persistently denied its character and rarely staged without explicit or implicit apology.

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.

First published in 2004, David George's majestic compendium of criticism relating to Shakespeare's Coriolanus was recognised as a major contribution to teaching and scholarship on the play. This new edition has been updated with a new supplementary introduction by the author tracing criticism on the play since that first publication, including materialist, psychoanalytic and feminist readings, as well as further readings of the play's politics. As with all titles in the series, this edition increases our knowledge of how Shakespeare's plays were received and understood by critics, editors and general readers. The volume offers, in separate sections, both critical opinions about the play across the centuries and an evaluation of their positions within and their impact on the reception of the play. The chronological arrangement of the text-excerpts engages the readers in a direct and unbiased dialogue, whereas the substantial introduction offers a critical evaluation from a current stance, including modern theories and methods. Thus the volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the play and of the traditions of Shakespearean criticism surrounding it as they have developed from century to century.