Coriolanus (Vol. 30) | Norman Rabkin (essay date 1966)
Norman Rabkin (essay date 1966)
SOURCE: "Coriolanus: The Tragedy of Politics," in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. XVII, No. 3, Summer, 1966, pp. 195-212.
[In the following essay, Rabkin claims that Coriolanus presents Shakespeare's tragic view of politics and his criticism of two inviable political extremes: unquestioning appeal to popular sentiment and strict adherence to absolutist codes.]
One is tempted almost irresistibly to ask which was Shakespeare's last tragedy, Antony and Cleopatra or Coriolanus. Either one of these plays could be seen as the satisfying final note in a series that neatly arches from Hamlet through Othello and King Lear and Macbeth, and that ends to make way for the romantic tragi-comedy in which Shakespeare would invest the rest of his poetry. If Antony and Cleopatra or Coriolanus existed alone we could make tidy generalizations about the...
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