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Shakespeare: Julius Caesar
In this course, Professor John Roe (University of York) explores Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. We begin by thinking about the sources for the play, focusing in particular on the works of Plutarch, before moving on in the second module to give a summary of the plot. After that, we think about who we could consider to be the hero of the play, before turning in the fourth module to consider the extent to which Julius Caesar is a ‘Machiavellian’ play. In the fifth module, we explore Brutus’ famous soliloquy “It must be by his death”, before moving on in the sixth module to consider the role of the people in the play. In the seventh module, we provide an analysis of Mark Antony’s famous “Friends, Romans, countrymen” speech, before turning in the eighth and final module to the figures of Cassius and Casca, and think about the extent to which Shakespeare himself might have been a Republican.
Sources
In this module, we think about some of the sources for Julius Caesar, focusing in particular on the works of Plutarch and Shakespeare’s earlier works, as well the reasons for Shakespeare’s turn from English to Roman history after 1599.
let me talk then about the sources.
00:00:02Well, there is one obvious source for this play, and that is Pluto,
00:00:05who wrote the lives of the famous Greeks and Romans.
00:00:09This work was translated into French, first of all by man called Jacque Romeo
00:00:14and then into English by Sir Thomas North, and it appeared in print in 15 79.
00:00:21It's part of that
00:00:27great later humanist movement of the 16th century, when,
00:00:29instead of just studying the classics,
00:00:35people decided that they would render them into the vernacular.
00:00:37And so these texts became available,
00:00:40and it was an obvious and ready source for Shakespeare.
00:00:43It's clearly the principal source,
00:00:46and he drew on two lives.
00:00:48Caesar's Life and also the life of Brutus. It's interesting that
00:00:51Pluto felt that Brutus required a life to himself,
00:00:55even though there's a lot of overlap.
00:00:59He returns the killing, the assassination of Julius Caesar
00:01:02in the life of Brutus.
00:01:06As far as Caesar's life goes, he gives you an absolutely detailed account.
00:01:08And interestingly, Shakespeare only takes
00:01:14the bit that leads up to the assassination that is the conspiracy.
00:01:18He he doesn't talk about Caesar's Gallic wars or the invasion
00:01:22of Britain or all the other things that Pluto does.
00:01:27There are other possible sources. Of course, one is Shakespeare himself.
00:01:31He's very good at going back to his own material and re fashioning it.
00:01:36You might say recycling, but an example would be
00:01:40the Henry six, Part two, which also has themes of conspiracy and assassination.
00:01:44So Shakespeare's rather good at doing this.
00:01:52He's It's a sort of habitual thing for him.
00:01:56There have been arguments that one of the reasons why he may have left the
00:02:00question of history of English history and gone on to foreign history such as Roman,
00:02:05is that the times we're getting a little bit tricky for certain
00:02:10themes that you say there was the bishops ban on books,
00:02:15books, possibly of a seditious or a worrying nature, very often scurrilous books,
00:02:18but also ones that might touch on religious or political themes.
00:02:24That was in 15 99.
00:02:27Maybe Shakespeare felt that he shouldn't really treat of English history anymore,
00:02:29and so he went to a Roman theme.
00:02:35I myself don't really accept this argument. It's rather too subtle.
00:02:36I think it's the It's the simple argument that really, um,
00:02:42answers the question and the simple argument is that
00:02:46he was pretty written out on English history.
00:02:50By the time he had finished Henry the fifth, that is to say,
00:02:53he'd written to two trilogies, uh,
00:02:57the first one dealing largely with the life of Henry six and then Richard the third
00:03:00and then the second tetralogy, which runs from the again an assassination.
00:03:04If you like all
00:03:09the murder anyway, of reach of the second, uh,
00:03:10right through to the triumph of Henry the fifth,
00:03:13that's already eight plays on English history themes.
00:03:16And then you've got King John, which is kind of stand alone.
00:03:19History play was also written in that decade of the nineties,
00:03:22and so, as I say, I think Shakespeare probably had
00:03:26had done enough in terms of history in England, and he was looking for another place,
00:03:30another arena,
00:03:37and Rome was the obvious place because that's very rich. He went on to write
00:03:39Anthony and Cleopatra and also Coriolanus
00:03:44to other big plays that he wrote in the 16 hundreds, following
00:03:48Julius Caesar of 15 99
00:03:53
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Roe, J. (2018, November 21). Shakespeare: Julius Caesar - Sources [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/shakespeare-julius-caesar/who-is-the-hero-of-the-play
MLA style
Roe, J. "Shakespeare: Julius Caesar – Sources." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 21 Nov 2018, https://massolit.io/courses/shakespeare-julius-caesar/who-is-the-hero-of-the-play