This is the only Shakespeare play I have yet encountered which deals with the vicissitudes of electoral politics (though really only in a couple of scenes in the second act). Caius Marcius, a Roman general in the early years of the Republic, is given the surname Coriolanus after leading a successful military campaign against the neighbouring Volscii (and capturing the town of Corioli). Back in Rome, he is persuaded by his family to enter politics, but can barely endure the humiliation of asking the common people for their votes. They vote for him anyway, but are easily persuaded not only to change their minds but to exile him from Rome because of his arrogant behaviour.
Coriolanus throws his lot in with his former enemies, the Volsci, and leads them in turn to military success against his home city. He appears implacable in his new allegiance, until his family again appear and persuade him to work for peace instead. He returns to Antium, the Volsci capital, with a peace treaty; the Volsci general Aufidius, unimpressed by this latest shift of allegiance, has him killed on the spot, and the play ends.
Coriolanus is not a very likeable hero, and unlike some of Shakespeare’s other problematic heroes, there’s not a lot of mystery or suspense about his actions. He is arrogant and proud, and prefers fighting battles to fighting elections. At the same time he is a sucker for the wishes of his wife and mother, who talk him into politics in the first place, and then talk him out of attacking Rome at the end. An inspired director and actor could no doubt make something memorable of it, but it’s tough material to work with.
Shakespeare doesn’t seem to be a big fan of electoral democracy. The voters are shown as fickle, agreeing with the person who last shouted at them, easily manipulated by Coriolanus’ enemies, who have deliberately set him up for failure, humiliation and exile (and then get their just deserts in terms of military disaster and civil chaos). Coriolanus however is not a good man struggling with an evil system; he is a vain man who is easily outmanœuvred by the leaders of the democratc faction.
The most interesting of the other characters are Aufidius, the Volscian general, Menenius, Coriolanus’ friend in Rome, and Volumnia, his mother. Arkangel has decently solid performances in all four main parts (Paul Jesson, Martin Marquez, Ewan Hooper, Marjorie Yates). Clive Brill, the director, has had a good idea for the soundscape which doesn’t quite work: the Volsci are Yorkshiremen, and the incidental music is therefore all in colliery brass band style. The resonances would have been better if Rome had sounded musically distinct from the Volscian territories; also I think the Westminster/Yorkshire split is a poor parallel for the Roman/Volscian of the story – English/Welsh might have been better. (And the minor characters have accents from all over the place: Aufidius has two very camp servants, one from the Home Counties and the other from Scotland.) He’s limited, of course, by the audio format: on the stage you could have a dozen different ways of distinguishing between them visually, and let them talk however they liked.
I shouldn’t complain too much. Apart from Troilus and Cressida, the last dozen or so plays have been pretty solid. (Though I understand there are a couple more duds on the list.)
Henry VI, Part I | Henry VI, Part II | Henry VI, Part III | Richard III / Richard III | Comedy of Errors | Titus Andronicus | Taming of the Shrew | Two Gentlemen of Verona | Love’s Labour’s Lost | Romeo and Juliet | Richard II / Richard II | A Midsummer Night’s Dream | King John | The Merchant of Venice | Henry IV, Part 1 / Henry IV, Part I | Henry IV, Part II | Henry V | Julius Caesar | Much Ado About Nothing | As You Like It | Merry Wives of Windsor | Hamlet / Hamlet | Twelfth Night | Troilus and Cressida | All’s Well That Ends Well | Measure for Measure | Othello | King Lear | Macbeth | Antony and Cleopatra | Coriolanus / Coriolanus | Timon of Athens | Pericles | Cymbeline | The Winter’s Tale / The Winter’s Tale | The Tempest | Henry VIII | The Two Noble Kinsmen | Edward III | Sir Thomas More (fragment) | Double Falshood/Cardenio
I’m with you about half way. From what I have now read about Theft of Swords, Liz Bourke’s review is roughly what I would expect and want from Strange Horizons – intelligent, expecting relatively high literary standards of what it is reviewing, and willing to be robust in its criticism. I would have been rather worried if Strange Horizons had given Theft of Swords a good review. And while this does seem to have been a case of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, the publisher, Orbit, had presumably presented the nut to the sledgehammer. And given Orbit’s track record with SF and fantasy, Strange Horizons could reasonably expect its readers to want to know whether this specific book met its standards. It clearly didn’t.
From the other end, though, I have some sympathy with Sullivan and his fans. I would suggest Orbit have made two or three dubious decisions, though not the one you highlighted (at least in the form you mentioned). The least dubious of these was the decision to buy the book (or rather the series) in the first place – or rather, while the decision was almost certainly dubious on literary grounds, it probably made commercial good sense. Sullivan had obviously already established himself as a successful pulp fantasy writer through his own efforts – so Orbit were buying not only the books but Sullivan’s existing readership. However, this means that Orbit and Sullivan need to continue satisfying his readers’ expectations – which, for instance, probably ruled out extensive copy-editing. Sullivan’s language may be clunky, his characterisation poor and his tropes outworn, but he is obviously doing something right (pacing? plot structure?). Consciously or not, his supporters are obviously tuning out (or even completely oblivious to) his bad points and concentrating on his good ones.
Rather more dubious, obviously, was the decision to have Strange Horizons review the book. However, the one that is pure speculation on my part but the worst if it happened, is the possibility that Orbit actually did ask Sullivan to rewrite the book to a higher standard. If so, from the passages quoted, Sullivan got this distinctly wrong – polishing up language that was already over-mannered. On seeing the “improvements”, Sullivan’s editors should probably have found some way of telling him that, on second thoughts, his first version was perfectly good enough after all. They obviously didn’t.
And the fans? For at least some of them, coming across Liz Bourke’s review and Strange Horizons seems to have produced a culture clash. Because they rarely come near our usual haunts, I think it’s easy to miss how many people are essentially unfamiliar with intellectual argument styles – for them, arguments are always eventually a personal scramble for position. And, unless they simply back away quickly, they start fighting back on that basis.