Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Russell Jackson

Critical Essay by Russell Jackson

SOURCE: “Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon, 1994-95,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 3, Autumn, 1995, pp. 340-57.

In the following excerpt, Jackson comments on the French Revolutionary setting of David Thacker's production of Coriolanus, and states that the liberties Thacker took with the text were effective.

If only on a compare-and-contrast basis, Coriolanus made a good stablemate for Henry V, and the Swan Theatre served this Roman play well. The debate scenes benefited from the intimacy of the thrust stage and galleried auditorium, while the space was sufficient to accommodate the battle in the first act or to emphasize the isolation of Caius Martius as he stood in his gown of humility waiting for “voices.” In this theater the audience could be appealed to as though they were the Roman public, and the director capitalized on this by placing the plebeians around the auditorium, making us complicit in the decisions taken,...
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