Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the seventh in an eight-week sequence on the plays of Shakespeare. It concerns Shakespeare’s final tragedy, the Roman history Coriolanus, often acclaimed and reprehended as the poet’s most political play, banned as fascist in 1930s France, the favorite of ideological dramatists of right and left like T. S. Eliot (who judged it better than Hamlet) and of Bertolt Brecht (who thought it anticipated his own epic theater), and which led the Romantic liberal critic William Hazlitt to argue that poetry itself is inherently right-wing. We consider the play closely, as well as these critical responses. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:
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