The Harvard Square Book Circle

The Harvard Square Book Circle, our in-store book club, will discuss Shakespeare's tragic history Coriolanus.

Coriolanus is officially classified as one of Shakespeare's tragedies, but it tells the story of the real life Roman leader Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, based on an excerpt from Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans.

"Set against a background of strife between the powerful aristocracy and hungry citizens of the early Roman republic, Coriolanus is a visceral and politically sharp-edged play. At its centre is Caius Martius, fresh from victory over the hated Volscians, dismissive of the Roman people and, following exile, hungry for war and retribution. Brusque, muscular language conveys insistent questions about the meaning of the heroic ideal and one man’s emotional blindness."
—description from a recent production of Coriolanus at the Globe Theatre in London