JULIUS CAESAR – WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

RENAISSANCE SHAKESPEARE

 1564: born
 1582: marries Anne Hathaway (26 years; pregnant)
o 3 children: Susannah, twins Hamnet and Judith
 1592: playwright and actor in London
o Lord Chamberlain’s Men → King’s Men
 1593: theaters close (plague)
 1598: Blackfriars (indoor theater)
 1599: The Globe (burned/rebuilt)
 1616: death

TURBULENT TIMES

 Edward VI = Protestant
 Mary Tudor = Catholic
 Elizabeth = Protestant

SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS

 comedies
o Much Ado About Nothing
o Love’s Labour’s Lost
 histories
o Henry V
o Richard II
 tragedies
o Julius Caesar
o Romeo and Juliet

JULIUS CAESAR

 Plutarch: historian Shakespeare relied on

 parallels: Rome and England
o Queen Elizabeth’s long rule
o assassination attempts to limit power
o unclear heir
 used Ancient Rome to discuss English issues
ANCIENT ROMAN CONTEXT

 509 BC = monarch replaced with republic

 59-53 BC = First Triumvirate: Julius Caesar ousts General Pompey
 44 BC = Julius Caesar is assassinated
 43 BC = Civil War: Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius

 Rome was a kingship until Lucius Junius Brutus (509 BC) established the Roman Republic
(wanted power shared among the rulers and the people)

PHILOSOPHY

 stoicism
o to control human appetite
 hero: Socrates, who faced death with serenity
o accept events you cannot change as your wish
o intellectual elite philosophy
o matter: the basis of reality
o reason and law in nature
o rational God (logos) in everything
o self-control: center of ethics
 epicureanism
o world made of atoms, matter
o human: unintentional creation
o aim of life is pleasure
 pleasure not = lust
 ultimate pleasure → mental
o we know through feeling what is good (gives pleasure)
o self-centered morality