Seminar: Shakespeare’s Rome – Course Description

In this seminar, we study Shakespeare as a serious political thinker, who displays familiarity with Plato and Aristotle, and detailed knowledge of Machiavelli’s Discourses. Shakespeare’s Roman plays are a sustained effort to understand what he and his contemporaries regarded as the most successful political community in antiquity and perhaps in all of human history. The Renaissance was an attempt to revive classical antiquity; Shakespeare’s Roman plays are one of the supreme achievements of the Renaissance in the way that they bring alive the ancient city on the stage.

We study the plays, not in the order in which they were written, but in historical order. Coriolanus portrays the early days of the Roman Republic, indeed the founding of the Republic, if one recognizes the tribunate as the distinctively republican institution in Rome. Julius Caesar portrays the last days of the Roman Republic, specifically the moment when Caesar tries to create a form of one-man rule in the city, while the conspirators try to restore the republican order. The issue of Republic vs. Empire stands at the heart of Julius CaesarAntony and Cleopatra portrays the early days of the Roman Empire, the emergence of Octavius as the sole ruler of Rome (he went on to become Augustus Caesar, the first official Roman Emperor).

The way Shakespeare arranged his three Roman plays suggests that he was centrally concerned with the contrast between the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. The Roman plays thus offer an opportunity to study the phenomenon Plato and Aristotle referred to as the regime (politeia)—the way a particular form of government shapes a particular way of life. From classical antiquity down to the eighteenth century and such thinkers as Montesquieu and the American Founding Fathers, Rome has been one of the perennial themes of political theory. Shakespeare’s Roman plays are his contribution to the longstanding debate about Rome, and also occupy a very important place in his comprehensive understanding of the human condition. The plays are evidence of the crucial importance of politics in Shakespeare’s view of human nature, as well as of his sense of the limits of politics.