Coriolanus (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

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Coriolanus (SparkNotes Literature Guide) by William Shakespeare
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• Language: English
• Publisher: SparkNotes
• Release date: Aug 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781411474598

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Context

Likely the most influential writer in all of English literature and certainly the most important playwright of the English Renaissance, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England. The son of a successful middle-class glove-maker, Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582, he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part owner of the Globe Theater. His career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558-1603) and James I (ruled 1603-1625); he was a favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeare's company the greatest possible compliment by endowing them with the status of king's players. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford, and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeare's death, such luminaries as Ben Jonson hailed him as the apogee of Renaissance theatre.

Shakespeare's works were collected and printed in various editions in the century following his death, and by the early eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was well established. The unprecedented admiration garnered by his works led to a fierce curiosity about Shakespeare's life; but the paucity of surviving biographical information has left many details of Shakespeare's personal history shrouded in mystery. Some people have concluded from this fact that Shakespeare's plays in reality were written by someone else--Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular candidates--but the evidence for this claim is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the theory is not taken seriously by many scholars.

In the absence of definitive proof to the contrary, Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the 37 plays and 154 sonnets that bear his name. The legacy of this body of work is immense. A number of Shakespeare's plays seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming so influential as to affect profoundly the course of Western literature and culture ever after.

Coriolanus was probably written in 1607-08 and first performed in 1609-10 at the Blackfriars Theatre in London, although both these dates are uncertain. As the next-to-last tragedy that Shakespeare composed, it follows on the heels of Othello,King Lear,Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra, all of which Shakespeare probably composed between 1604 and 1606. Like Antony and Cleopatra, it is a Roman play, but unlike that play (and Julius Caesar), Coriolanus is set not in the Imperial Rome of the first century A.D. but more than two centuries earlier, when Rome was still just one Italian city among many, fighting for survival. The action, then, is semi-historical, set in the aftermath of the fall of Tarquin, the last king of Rome (who is referred to in the text several times), and focuses on the struggle between the plebeians and patricians during Rome's transition from monarchy to republic. /PARAGRAPH Shakespeare's interest in Roman history typified the more general Renaissance fascination with the classical world; playwrights and political philosophers alike consistently turned to Greece and Rome for inspiration. The

Reviews for Coriolanus (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

[drbubbles_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Uncritically accepts what I call the "standard interpretation" of the play, which actually wants a great deal of criticism. Whatever the Modern Language Association may have become, for ages literary criticism was élitist and literary critics tended to be social and political conservatives: perhaps friendly to the abstract ideals of republican democracy, but certainly not to its practical extension among the hoi polloi [and, yes, I know that's like saying "the Christ" or "con carne with meat," but hoi polloi functions as a two-word noun in English].[Briefly, this is the "standard interpretation;" you may find it in virtually any introduction to the play. The plebeians are governed more by their hearts and bellies than by their heads, whereas the opposite obtains for the patricians. (As Mayor "Diamond Joe" Quimby has put it: "I'm sick o' you people! You're nothing but a pack of fickle mush-heads!" or "Are these morons getting dumber or just louder?") Politically, the plebeians are allowed no will of their own, or at least none worth the patricians' attention. The patricians, on the other hand, look out for the plebeians in looking out for the best interests of Rome (note particularly how Menenius, who shares many of Coriolanus' opinions of the plebeians, is written as a kindly old man, despite the fact that he tells Coriolanus to lie to the people so he can become Consul, at which time he could break his promises with impunity). It is the people's tribunes, rather, who are portrayed as the self-interested manipulators of the political process, who play for fools the people who chose them, and who cause everyone to suffer because of it. Even where it is conceded that the people have a point, at least initially, the tribunes are nonetheless the ones identified as personally unlikeable, as untrustworthy, and as manipulative.]And yet: the plebeians always give the patricians the benefit of the doubt. The patricians never give a straight answer; when asked why they let the plebeians starve, they offer non-denial denials: 'why would we do that?' They laugh about the plebeians thinking they're flush with grain, but do they offer to show their empty granaries (as they must be if the patricians are honest)? The patricians fling ad hominem insults upon the plebeians; they plot to be nice only when they want something from the plebeians and then go back to being their everyday jerk-ass selves; they insist upon having their way because they've always had their way; when the plebeians want a voice in government, the patricians refuse to participate in government at all, and then blame the plebeians when things go to hell. And yet, when the patricians insist upon having the most jerk-ass-y patrician of all as the leader of Rome – solely as a reward for victory in battle, not for anything even remotely indicative of political competence – the plebeians are willing to accede if only he'll ask their approval politely. I ask you: which class has the greater nobility of character?From a strictly literary perspective, however, it's about what you'd expect of a Cliffs-Notes-y thing.