William Shakespeare: Coriolanus. Ed. Peter Holland (The Arden Shakespeare: Third Series).

In many ways, this is a singular edition of Shakespeare’s quite singular play. Peter Holland introduces his Coriolanus edition as an editorial project that veers from conventional expectations, what he calls “a format that tends to suggest a required template” (p. xxviii). The introduction, for example, is written without a footnote; the organization of the edition is boldly unlike other editions; there is a bibliography of primary and secondary texts, but no review of scholarship, even with an additional 133 pages over the previous Arden edition. The differences between Holland’s Arden Three and Brockbank’s Arden Two, first published in 1976, may raise questions about the current state of Shakespeare studies, Shakespeare editorial practices, and the audience for the Arden Shakespeare. The play-text itself is superbly and meticulously edited, with ample glosses, attention to textual variants, modernizations, emendations, and stage directions. Scholars, performers, students both undergraduate and graduate will find this useful and readerfriendly. A 27-page “Longer Notes” section goes more deeply into issues of context, adaptation, and performance, and it is followed by a section on publication and textual transmission, offering a thoughtful discussion that should please textual scholars and interest others.