Roman Shakespeare

by Coppélia Kahn

The first full-length study of Shakespeare's Roman plays offers fresh, detailed readings and identifies new sources which are analyzed from a historical feminist perspective.

Genres: Nonfiction, Shakespeare

209 pages, ebook

First published April 17, 1997

Reviews

[max theodore · Rating 5 out of 5]

(2022 monthly goals: one piece of nonfiction/memoir/and-or theory)

i had to stop* reading roman shakespeare: warriors, wounds, and women because it was making me too CRAZY! dr. coppélia kahn would say shit like “the only members of the family whose destiny is to leave it, [daughters] are thus made liminal, and turned into creatures of passage” and "Brutus and his fellows imagine themselves as the ethical and political core of the republic, but in reality they are being squeezed out by the constituency they despise: the people" and "“Antony without his power isn’t Antony, and his power is always already configured in relation to Caesar" and i was like [SCREAMS]

*did not stop. wrote a paper

[Mora]

overall it was interesting but not quite what i was expecting, so that likely diminished my enjoyment - i wanted more discussion of women directly, and it was more about feminized vs masculinized social structures. again, interesting, but i would have preferred more incorporation of actual women. the best chapter was coriolanus, which was also one of the shortest, so that was disappointing. titus was second most interesting. (it checks out that these were the two chapters that most discussed the direct role of their play's female characters.) kahn was trying really hard to get me to like a&c and i still do not, though i did find interesting the discussion of how it is caesar who makes antony antony because of the rivalry thing and what cleopatra's role in that relationship was (versus how it is generally/popularly seen).

[Katheryn Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy Shakespeare's Roman plays, and I enjoyed this book which takes them as its focus. I would have liked more discussion of classical conceptions of 'virtue' and 'heroism', but I think this is an interesting book that has aged well.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic feminist reading of Romanness in Shakespeare's plays. I highly recommend it.