Julius Caesar takes place in ancient Rome in 44 b.c., when Rome was the center of an empire stretching.
A number of Shakespeare’s plays seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming so influential as to affect profoundly the course of Western literature and culture ever after. Before that he taught at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and at Harvard. The legacy of this body of work is immense. Comparative Literature, mainly English and Italian, has remained a keen interest, which shows principally in his monograph Shakespeare and Machiavelli. He took a BA (subsequently MA) in English Literature at the University of Cambridge and an MA and PhD in Comparative Literature at Harvard University. John Roe is a professor in Renaissance literature and a member of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies (CREMS) at the University of York. 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. 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. 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. 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. In this course, Professor John Roe (University of York) explores Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Who is the hero of Julius Caesar? Is it Caesar himself? What about Brutus? or Mark Antony? In this module, we think about who we should consider the hero of play, focusing in particular on the title of the play, the importance of Antony and Brutus, the extent to which Caesar looms over the play even after his death, and the fame and status of Caesar more generally.