Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds and Women

by Coppélia Kahn

In the first full-length study of Shakespeare's Roman plays, Coppelia Kahn brings to these texts a startling, critical perspective which interrogates the gender ideologies lurking behind 'Roman virtue' Plays featured * Titus Andronicus * Julius Caesar * Antony and Cleopatra * Coriolanus * Cymbeline Setting the Roman works in the dual context of the popular theatre and Renaissance humanism, the author identifies new sources which she analyzes from a historicised feminist perspective. Roman Shakespeare is written in an accessible style and will appeal to scholars and students of Shakespeare and those interested in feminist theory, as well as classicists.

Genres: Nonfiction, Shakespeare

212 pages, Paperback

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.