Julius Caesar's Self-Created Image and Its Dramatic Afterlife

The book explores the extent to which aspects of Julius Caesar's self-representation in his commentaries constituent themes and characterization have been appropriated or contested across the English dramatic canon from the late 1500s until the end of the 19th century. <br/><br/>Caesar in his own words constructs his image as a supreme commander characterised by exceptional celerity and mercifulness; he is also defined by the heightened sense of self-dramatization achieved by the self-referential use of the third person and emerges as a quasi-divine hero inhabiting a literary-historical reality. Channelled through Lucan's epic <i>Bellum Civile</i> and ancient historiography these Caesarean qualities reach drama and take the shape of ambivalent hubris political role-playing self-institutionalization and an exceptional relationship with temporality.<br/><br/>Focusing on major dramatic texts with rich performance history such as Shakespeare's <i>Julius Caesar</i> Handel's opera <i>Giulio Cesare in Egitto</i> and Bernard Shaw's <i>Caesar and Cleopatra </i>but also a number of lesser known early modern plays the book encompasses different levels of drama's active engagement with the process of reception of Caesar's iconic and controversial personality.