Play reviews: Julius Caesar

Unveiling the Layers: Analysing The Tragedy of Julius Caesar in the Context of Shakespeare and His Time, 2022

This paper explores the significance of analyzing William Shakespeare's play, "The Tragedy of Julius Caesar," within the context of the author's life and the historical period. It highlights Shakespeare's exceptional qualities as a playwright and the ability of his works to resonate across eras. The paper examines the limited knowledge of Shakespeare's life, the theatrical environment of his time, the influence of the Renaissance, and the themes and character complexities in "Julius Caesar." By studying these factors, the paper emphasizes the importance of understanding the play's meaning and enduring relevance.

HOMEROS

Re-reading of Shakespeare has undergone significant transformations in the last few decades, for Shakespeare's plays always have something to say about the time they are read. The strong relationship between drama and political sciences is another factor for Shakespeare adaptations and appropriations. Instead of speaking about specific events describing the way they occur, Shakespearean plays reveal truths behind the so-called and perceived truths, not what is visible but what is invisible, not what happens but what could happen, focusing on historical, political and sociological probabilities and prophecies. Shakespeare's plays are a storehouse for such probabilities and prophecies. In his Roman tragedies, Shakespearescripted many ideas, probabilities and prophecies about the concepts of state and politics, which seem to belong to our own modern times. This study aims to reread Shakespeare's Julius Caesar on the basis of political context with reference to two contemporary political concepts: deep state and parallel state.

Research Article, 2019

Re-reading of Shakespeare has undergone significant transformations in the last few decades, for Shakespeare's plays always have something to say about the time they are read. The strong relationship between drama and political sciences is another factor for Shakespeare adaptations and appropriations. Instead of speaking about specific events describing the way they occur, Shakespearean plays reveal truths behind the so-called and perceived truths, not what is visible but what is invisible, not what happens but what could happen, focusing on historical, political and sociological probabilities and prophecies. Shakespeare's plays are a storehouse for such probabilities and prophecies. In his Roman tragedies, Shakespearescripted many ideas, probabilities and prophecies about the concepts of state and politics, which seem to belong to our own modern times. This study aims to reread Shakespeare's Julius Caesar on the basis of political context with reference to two contemporary political concepts: deep state and parallel state.

British Journal of Psychotherapy, 1994

Miscommunication, both in the form of deception and self-deception, is endemic in the action of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. This article investigates why this should be, and links the functions of miscommunication in the play with its psychoanalytic meanings as these have been outlined in particular by Bion. The truth is avoided or manipulated by most of the protagonists of the play as a response to their anxieties about catastrophic change. The fear of the conspirators that Caesar is about to accept a crown is only the focal point of a deeper anxiety about the threat to the Roman republic. The play is shown to illuminate unconscious forces involved in political leadership and mass politics in particular. The preparation and enactment of the assassination add a burden of failed mourning and of unassimilable guilt to already deep anxieties, all of which lead to the cumulative tragedies which the play depicts.

Critical Insights: Julius Caesar, 2021

This paper examines the idea of risk in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, beginning with risk as danger and progressing to risk as opportunity and destiny. I argue that risk, in all these guises, is the trigger of the devastating low-probability, high-consequence events of the play.

2019

What follows is a prefatory commentary and an English translation of the critical introduction to the text Roma nelle tragedie di Shakespeare (Rome in Shakespeare's Tragedies) published in Italy in 1924. The book contains the translations of Julius Caesar and Coriolanus, both carried out by Ada Salvatore, and an introductory essay written by Giuseppe De Lorenzo. Our aim in translating the introductory essay by De Lorenzo is to raise awareness among non-Italian speaking scholars of how Shakespearian material was appropriated through translation by translators and intellectuals during the Fascist era.

2019

Note: reviews of STFORR have been uploaded here as multiple separate files. Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic introduces Shakespeare as a historian of ancient Rome alongside figures such as Sallust, Cicero, St Augustine, Machiavelli, Gibbon, Hegel and Nietzsche. In Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare shows Rome’s transition from Republic to Empire. Why did Rome degenerate into an autocracy? Alternating between ruthless competition, Stoicism, Epicureanism and self-indulgent fantasies, Rome as Shakespeare sees it is inevitably bound for civil war. Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic considers Shakespeare’s place in the history of concepts of selfhood and reflects on his sympathy for Christianity, in light of his reception of medieval biblical drama, as well as his allusions to the New Testament. Shakespeare’s critique of Romanitas anticipates concerns about secularisation, individualism and liberalism shared by philosophers such as Hannah Arendt, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel and Patrick Deneen. Reviews to date: Paul Hammond, The Seventeenth Century (34.4): 547-48; Paul Innes, The Classical Review (69.2): 636-68; Jeffrey S. Doty, The Review of English Studies (70.296): 768-70; T. P. Wiseman, Times Literary Supplement (9 August 2019; cf. Letters, 20 and 27 September 2019); Andrew Hadfield, Renaissance Quarterly (73.1): 378-80; Sean Keilen, Cahiers Élisabéthains (101.1): 136-39; Andrea Campana, The Heythrop Journal (61.3): 546; Paul A. Cantor, Skenè: Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies (6.1): 255-64; cf. Patrick Gray, ‘A Reply to Paul A. Cantor’, Skenè: Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies (6.2): 5-21; Lucy Munro, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 (60.2): 400-01; Cyrielle Landrea, Anabases: Traditions et réceptions de l’Antiquité (32): 270-72; Domenico Lovascio, Early Modern Literary Studies (21.2): open access (6 pp.); Andelko Mihanovic, thersites 13 (2021): 213-21 (open access) for the special issue “Antiquipop: chefs d’œuvres revisités,” edited by F. Bièvre-Perrin; Nathanael Lambert, Parergon (39.1): 244-46; Erin Casey-Williams, Shakespeare Quarterly (volume, issue, and page numbers tbd).