Talk:Coriolanus (play)

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Contents 1 Weird name? 2 Pronunciation 3 Critical Appraisal? 4 Uncited reference to being banned 5 Removing unnecessary spoiler tags

[edit] Weird name?

Is it me or does "coriolanus" sound like it means "runka"? --MichTheWeird 28 June 2005 20:46 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation

Does anyone know if the title is pronounced Coriolahnus or Coriolaynus? Bravado

Depends on where you come from. The Romans themselves most probably pronounced it Coriolahnus, with a long and open 'a', imagine the first vowel of 'up' lengthened. [Mehothra]

The actors in the Stratford production I just attended all pronounced it Coriolaynus. CaptainCanada 02:52, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I was hoping that wasn't the case. Oh well, I'll keep on trucking with Coriolahnus. I'm going to see that Stratford show soon anyways.Bravado 00:23, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Critical Appraisal?

Does the critical appraisal section really belong there? I saw that it's been flagged. It doesn't appear to be citing any published critical works, and it comes off as just one person's interpretation. It seems to me that it's a dodgy interpretation at that. Consider the following lines:

"Like Hamlet, the central relationship of the play is between a mother and her son, but in Coriolanus, this relationship is both less fractured and devoid of the sexual tension that exists between Gertrude and the danish prince."

Not only is it not uniform critical opinion that there is sexual tension between Hamlet and Gertrude, but the sexual tension between Coriolanus and his mother seems, to my mind, much more blatant. Consider the scene where she is introduced, and is constantly upbraiding his wife about her worrying, overtly stating that if she were her own son's wife, she would be proud of him. I'm sure any critic who does see sexual tension between Hamlet and Gertrude sees it between Coriolanus and Volumnia as well. I'm not really trying to get in a critical debate here, so much as point out that discussions of themes that are open to interpretation don't belong on an encyclopedia page. 71.197.121.239 05:53, 16 October 2006 (UTC)MOB

[edit] Uncited reference to being banned

Coriolanus has the singular distinction of being the only Shakespeare play banned in a democracy in modern times.[citation needed] It was briefly suppressed in France in the late 1930s due to its possible attraction to the far right.[citation needed]

--- is this even true? Don Shewey's review in American Theatre, 1989 (see www.donshewey.com/theater_reviews/coriolanus.html) states that a run in the inter war years was cancelled following some riots, but there is no indication this meant a ban for all performances of the play in France, just a cancel of the run. Meanwhile, this article does state that the play was banned in Berlin by occupying forces just after WW2 - however, Germany at this time was presumably not a democracy so doesn't fit here either? --richiau

[edit] Removing unnecessary spoiler tags

Most of the articles about Shakespeare plays have a clearly marked section labelled "Synopsis" in which the plot is discussed. It's really unnecessary, and quite insulting, to put a further warning directly beneath that. These are well established plays and people come to read about them. When they see that the article contains a synopsis, they're not going to be surprised because this is an encyclopedia. If they read on and find out the plot of the play, then we have done our job correctly. Pandering for some imaginary people who may not realise that encyclopedias tell you about stuff, or that a plot summary inevitably contains a summary of the plot, is not productive, and certainly no justification for unnecessary duplication of information. --Tony Sidaway 03:56, 17 May 2007 (UTC)