Shakespeare and a Place Calling Itself Rome

<p>This new examination of Shakespeare’s four Roman tragedies (<em>Julius Caesar</em> <em>Titus Andronicus</em> <em>Coriolanus</em> and <em>Antony and Cleopatra</em>) revisits Shakespeare’s dramatic recreations of ancient Rome in the light of considerations of place:</p><ul> <li>the places from which Shakespeare initiated his imaginative reconstructions where plays are written and performed</li> <li>the places he constructed within the plays the places the plays imagine and recreate together with the places from which he derived them</li> <li>the places within which we as readers and spectators experience those creations where such plays are read viewed and critically analysed.</li> </ul><p>Alongside this analysis the book explores contemporary critical debates and the uses of place and space in selected modern adaptations – the Taviani brothers’ Italian film <em>Caesar Must Die</em> Julie Taylor’s film <em>Titus</em> John Osborne’s play <em>A Place Calling Itself Rome</em> and Ahmed Shawqi’s Arabic <em>Death of Cleopatra</em>.</p><p>The book provides a descriptive palimpsestic map of the places within which Shakespeare’s Roman plays operate tracing the contours of Rome’s Republic and Empire overlaid with the Europe of Shakespeare’s day in which a Romanised London looked with fascination towards the East towards Rome and Alexandria. Equipped with such a map we can attempt to do what Shakespeare did: to recreate ancient Rome in conjunction and rapprochement with its early modern and modern counterparts.</p>