Shakespeare's Roman plays and their background

Plays that dealt with the History of Rome were frequent on the Elizabethan stage, and all portions of it were laid under contribution. Subjects were taken from legends of the da...

The turn of the centuries roughly bisects the dramatic career of Shakespeare. In the first half he had written many comedies and a few tragedies; in the second he was to write m...

Plutarch, born at Chaeronea in Boeotia, about 45 or 50 A.D., flourished in the last quarter of the first and the earliest quarter of the second century. He came of good stock, w...

Although _Julius Caesar_ was first published in the Folio of 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, there is not much doubt about its approximate date of composition, whic...

The examples given in the previous chapter may serve to show that from one point of view it is impossible to exaggerate Shakespeare’s dependence on Plutarch. But this is not the...

The modification of Brutus’ character typifies and involves the modification of the whole story, because the tragic interest is focussed in his career. This must be remembered,...

Thus Shakespeare has his Act of Oblivion for all that might give an unfavourable impression of Caesar’s past, and presents him very much as the incarnate principle of Empire, wi...

Brutus had been doubly duped, by his own subtlety and his own simplicity in league with his conscientiousness; for in this way he was led to idealise his deed as enjoined both b...

The main lines of his character are given in Caesar’s masterly delineation, which follows Plutarch in regard to his spareness, but in the other particulars freely elaborates the...

It may be taken as certain that Shakespeare did not at once set about continuing the story which he had brought to the end of one of its stages in _Julius Caesar_ and of the fut...

The obligations to Plutarch, though very great, are of a somewhat peculiar kind. Shakespeare does not borrow so largely or so repeatedly from the diction of North as in _Coriola...

Octavia’s distraction between the claims of husband and brother, the overthrow of Pompey and deposition of Lepidus, the account of the coronation of Cleopatra and her children,...

The political setting of _Julius Caesar_ had been the struggle between the Old Order and the New. The Old goes out with a final and temporary flare of success; the New asserts i...

So much for the freedman whom Antony hails as his master, thrice nobler than himself. But what about his betters, the “great fellows” as Menas calls them, his rivals and associa...

“Be a child o’ the time,” says Antony, and he carries out his maxim to the letter. Only that time could bring forth such a devotee of the joys of life and lavish on him such wea...

To Cleopatra, the lodestar, the temptress, the predestined mate of Antony, we now turn: and perhaps even Shakespeare has no more marvellous creation than she, or one in which th...

Hitherto this discussion of _Antony and Cleopatra_ has so far as possible passed over the most distinctive thing in the history of the hero and heroine, the fatal passion that b...

_Coriolanus_ seems to have been first published in the folio of 1623, and is one of the sixteen plays described as not formerly “entered to other men.” In this dearth of informa...

The first impression produced by a comparison of the biography and the play is that the latter is little more than a scenic replica of the former. Shakespeare has indeed absorbe...

It is difficult to describe with any certainty the reasons for Shakespeare’s variations from Plutarch in his treatment of the people. They may, like some of those already discus...

Of the subordinate persons, by far the most imposing and influential is Volumnia, the great-hearted mother, the patrician lady, the Roman matron. The passion of maternity, wheth...

In the atmosphere then of Volumnia’s predominance we are to imagine young Marcius growing up from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood to youth, environed by all the most inspiring...

Feeling for his country, feeling for his caste, feeling for his family thus form the triple groundwork of Coriolanus’ nobleness, but they fail to uphold it in the storm of tempt...

All other persuaded Pompey earnestly to peace, only Menodorus wrote from Sardinia that he should make open _warre, or dryve off_,[307] whyles the dearth continued, _that he migh...