Among the plays of William Shakespeare, Coriolanus has garnered more respect than love. William Hazlitt, writing in 1816, in the wake of the French Revolution, thought that the play could spare its audience the trouble of reading Edmund Burke or Thomas Paine. The play’s depiction of class division fascinated Bertolt Brecht, who worked on his own adaptation, seeing in the play’s protagonist a figure consistent with the alienation effects of his own theatre. But if such recommendations inspire fears of a drama more didactic than entertaining, they can be dismissed: Bell Shakespeare’s production embraces its audience, ‘patrician’ and ‘plebeian’ alike.