"Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women is a 1997 book by Coppélia Kahn that reads Shakespearean texts from a gendered perspective, focusing on the construction of masculine identity in Roman ideology. It is part of the ""Feminist Readings of Shakespeare"" series. In her book, Kahn, Professor of English, Emerita, at Brown University, delivers a feminist critical study of William Shakespeare's Roman plays: ""Titus Andronicus"", ""Julius Caesar"", ""Antony and Cleopatra"", and ""Coriolanus"" (with a postscript on ""Cymbeline""). Shakespeare’s long narrative poem ""The Rape of Lucrece"" is also examined from a feminist approach. ""Roman Shakespeare"" is"
"corpse, he commits suicide. However, Brutus wins that stage of the battle, but his victory is not conclusive. With a heavy heart, Brutus battles again the next day. He loses and commits suicide by running on his own sword, held for him by a loyal soldier. The play ends with a tribute to Brutus by Antony, who proclaims that Brutus has remained ""the noblest Roman of them all"" because he was the only conspirator who acted, in his mind, for the good of Rome. There is then a small hint at the friction between Mark Antony and Octavius which characterises"
"and fragments, scholars have surmised that most, if not all, of these poems were tragic in nature, although Pliny the Younger ranks him among the erotic poets. Most of his poetical works were imitations or free translations of the Greek, especially Aeschylus. The earliest of these was most likely the ""Atreus"", which was performed in 140, but is now lost. He also wrote on some Roman subjects, one of which, an examination of the tyranny of L. Tarquinius Superbus and his expulsion by Lucius Junius Brutus, was titled ""Brutus"", and was probably written in honor of his patron D. Brutus."
"of events differs from Shakespeare's as well. In contrast, the Roman story of Brutus focuses on feigned madness. Its hero, Lucius ('shining, light'), changes his name and persona to Brutus ('dull, stupid'), playing the role to avoid the fate of his father and brothers, and eventually slaying his family's killer, King Tarquinius. In addition to writing in the Latin language of the Romans, Saxo adjusted the story to reflect classical Roman concepts of virtue and heroism. A reasonably accurate version of Saxo's story was translated into French in 1570 by François de Belleforest in his ""Histoires Tragiques"". Belleforest embellished Saxo's"
"Brutus called him a ""weathercock"" and Velleius Paterculus called him ""the most fickle of mankind"", and incapable of command. According to Cassius Dio, while Mark Antony and Octavian were away from Rome fighting Brutus and Cassius, Lepidus was nominally in control of the city, but Mark Antony's wife Fulvia was the real power. Dio wrote that ""She, the mother-in‑law of Octavian and wife of Antony, had no respect for Lepidus because of his slothfulness, and managed affairs herself, so that neither the senate nor the people transacted any business contrary to her pleasure."" These views are reflected in Shakespeare's portrayal"
"is the same as that of his birth, October 3. He was mourned by Brutus as ""the Last of the Romans"" and buried in Thasos. ""Among that select band of philosophers who have managed to change the world,"" writes David Sedley, ""it would be hard to find a pair with a higher public profile than Brutus and Cassius — brothers-in-law, fellow-assassins, and Shakespearian heroes,"" adding that ""it may not even be widely known that they ""were"" philosophers."" Like Brutus, whose Stoic proclivities are widely assumed but who is more accurately described as an Antiochean Platonist, Cassius exercised a long and"
"Roman de Brut Roman de Brut (meaning ""Romance of Brut"") or ""Brut"" is a verse literary history of Britain by the poet Wace. It is based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's ""Historia Regum Britanniae"", and was probably begun around 1150 and finished in 1155. Written in the Norman language, it consists of 14,866 lines. It was intended for a Norman audience interested in the legends and history of the new territories of the Anglo-Norman realm, covering the story of King Arthur and taking the history of Britain all the way back to the mythical Brutus of Troy. The ""Brut"" was the"
"Et tu, Brute? Et tu, Brute? () is a Latin phrase meaning """"even you, Brutus?"""" It is notable for its occurrence in William Shakespeare's play ""Julius Caesar"", where it is spoken by the Roman dictator Julius Caesar to his friend Marcus Junius Brutus at the moment of Caesar's assassination. The first known occurrences of the phrase are said to be in two earlier Elizabethan plays; Henry VI, Part 3 by Shakespeare, and an even earlier play, ""Caesar Interfectus"", by Richard Eedes. The phrase is often used apart from the plays to signify an unexpected betrayal by a friend. Caesar utters"
"Et tu, Brute? Et tu, Brute? () is a Latin phrase meaning """"even you, Brutus?"""" It is notable for its occurrence in William Shakespeare's play ""Julius Caesar"", where it is spoken by the Roman dictator Julius Caesar to his friend Marcus Junius Brutus at the moment of Caesar's assassination. The first known occurrences of the phrase are said to be in two earlier Elizabethan plays; Henry VI, Part 3 by Shakespeare, and an even earlier play, ""Caesar Interfectus"", by Richard Eedes. The phrase is often used apart from the plays to signify an unexpected betrayal by a friend. Caesar utters"
"Richmond Theatre. Of all Shakespearean characters his favorite role was Brutus the slayer of a tyrant. Some critics called him ""the handsomest man in America,"" a ""natural genius"", and praised his ""astonishing memory"" while others gave mixed reviews of his acting. Historian Benjamin Platt Thomas wrote that Booth ""won celebrity with theater-goers by his romantic personal attraction."" Author Gene Smith wrote that Booth's acting may not have been as precise as his brother Edwin's, but his strikingly handsome appearance enthralled women. As the 1850s drew to a close, Booth was becoming wealthy as an actor, earning $20,000 a year (equivalent"
"ambition. He then looks at Brutus's Stoicism and Cassius's Epicureanism as the motivations behind the actions of each, and concludes that Caesar is the ""most complete man who ever lived [because he] combined the high-mindedness of the Stoic with the Epicurean's awareness of the low material substrate of political things."" In each of his contributions, Bloom looks for a binary or set of binaries within a play, and locates in the tension within those binaries the meaning of the entire play. Examples of this are the tension between Jew and Christian in ""The Merchant of Venice"", between citizen and cosmopolitan"
"epithets given to both Brutus and Caesar in his essay ""Ironic Epithet in Julius Caesar"". This author points out that Casca praises Brutus at face value, but then inadvertently compares him to a disreputable joke of a man by calling him an alchemist, ""Oh, he sits high in all the people's hearts,/And that which would appear offence in us/ His countenance, like richest alchemy,/ Will change to virtue and to worthiness"" (I.iii.158–60). Reynolds also talks about Caesar and his ""Colossus"" epithet, which he points out has its obvious connotations of power and manliness, but also lesser known connotations of an"
"candidate. (While the story of Julius Caesar was dramatised repeatedly in the Elizabethan/Jacobean period, none of the other plays known are as good a match with Platter's description as Shakespeare's play.) After the theatres re-opened at the start of the Restoration era, the play was revived by Thomas Killigrew's King's Company in 1672. Charles Hart initially played Brutus, as did Thomas Betterton in later productions. ""Julius Caesar"" was one of the very few Shakespearean plays that was not adapted during the Restoration period or the eighteenth century. One of the earliest cultural references to the play came in Shakespeare's own"
"tells Androgeus and Mandubratius to acknowledge Cassibelan as king of all the Britons. The ghosts of Brennus and Camillus return with the god Mercury. They debate the relative merits of the Britons and the Romans. Brennus insists that only a Caesar could beat the Britons, and that should Rome ever become tyrannous ""generous spirits will break this compact like a spider's web"". Mercury predicts that Britain's embrace of ""the world's fourth empire"" will usher in an age of universal peace. The attribution to Fisher is generally accepted, but it has sometimes been argued that the play predates Fisher's career at"
"""Hamlet"" can be identified. The first is the anonymous Scandinavian ""Saga of Hrolf Kraki"". In this, the murdered king has two sons—Hroar and Helgi—who spend most of the story in disguise, under false names, rather than feigning madness, in a sequence of events that differs from Shakespeare's. The second is the Roman legend of Brutus, recorded in two separate Latin works. Its hero, Lucius (""shining, light""), changes his name and persona to Brutus (""dull, stupid""), playing the role of a fool to avoid the fate of his father and brothers, and eventually slaying his family's killer, King Tarquinius. A 17th-century"
"routed. However the Etruscan forces eventually fled the field, the Romans claiming the victory. The surviving consul, Valerius, after celebrating a triumph for the victory, held a funeral for Brutus with much magnificence. The Roman noblewomen mourned him for one year, for his vengeance of Lucretia's violation. Lucius Junius Brutus is quite prominent in English literature, and he was quite popular among British and American Whigs. A reference to L. J. Brutus is in the following lines from Shakespeare's play ""The Tragedie of Julius Cæsar"", (Cassius to Marcus Brutus, Act 1, Scene 2). One of the main charges of the"
"Booth performed in 83 plays in 1858. Booth said that, of all Shakespearean characters, his favorite role was Brutus, the slayer of a tyrant. Some critics called Booth ""the handsomest man in America"" and a ""natural genius"", and noted his having an ""astonishing memory""; others were mixed in their estimation of his acting. He stood tall, had jet-black hair, and was lean and athletic. Noted Civil War reporter George Alfred Townsend described him as a ""muscular, perfect man"" with ""curling hair, like a Corinthian capital"". Booth's stage performances were often characterized by his contemporaries as acrobatic and intensely physical, with"
"after her death. Critics of Shakespeare's play ""Julius Caesar"" differ greatly on their views of Caesar and Brutus. Many have debated whether Caesar or Brutus is the protagonist of the play, because of the title character's death in Act Three, Scene One. But Caesar compares himself to the Northern Star, and perhaps it would be foolish not to consider him as the axial character of the play, around whom the entire story turns. Intertwined in this debate is a smattering of philosophical and psychological ideologies on republicanism and monarchism. One author, Robert C. Reynolds, devotes attention to the names or"
"of his enemies."" Certain characters were changed from their traditional images; for instance, while Brutus has been portrayed as the noblest Roman, Heller and historical consultant Jonathan Stamp thought it would be interesting to have him forced into his later role through his ancestry. Alluding to the fact that Brutus' great great great grandfather ""drove the last king out of Rome"", Stamp said that ""his family history was pushing him in one direction, his emotions in another."" The producers cast relatively unknown British actors for the series. Scottish actress Lindsay Duncan, who was cast as Servilia, believed that she and"
"play out. The earliest of the mature soliloquies occur in ""Julius Caesar"" where Shakespeare develops Brutus as a forerunner of Hamlet: the self-critical and honest man struggling to do what’s right in unpropitious circumstances. Hamlet’s seven soliloquies, and the single major soliloquy of Claudius in ""Hamlet"" can all be described as ‘a search for a difficult sincerity’, and represent Shakespeare’s most extended study of the workings of the human mind; it is not until the novels of Dostoyevsky that a character’s inner self is examined with such power, discrimination and technical skill. Shakespeare’s soliloquies are written in blank verse of"
"who has been near the gates of death is able to find sweetness in life. In ""Bruto minore"" (""Brutus the Younger""), Brutus the assassin of Caesar is depicted as a man who has always believed in honor, virtue and liberty and who has ultimately sacrificed everything for these ideals. He has come to the realization, too late to change things, that everything was done in vain, that everything has been pointless, that he will even die dishonoured and disgraced for his well-intentioned actions. His meditations bring him to the conclusion that morality is meaningless; Jove rewards only the selfish and"
"nothing. Plutarch also reports that Caesar said nothing, pulling his toga over his head when he saw Brutus among the conspirators. The version best known in the English-speaking world is the Latin phrase """"Et tu, Brute?"""" (""And you, Brutus?"", commonly rendered as ""You too, Brutus?""); best known from Shakespeare's ""Julius Caesar"", where it actually forms the first half of a macaronic line: """"Et tu, Brute?"" Then fall, Caesar."" This version was already popular when the play was written, as it appears in Richard Edes's Latin play ""Caesar Interfectus"" of 1582 and ""The True Tragedie of Richarde Duke of Yorke &"
"vivid production of Shakespeare seen in New York in this generation,"" wrote ""The Nation"". In the ""New York Herald Tribune"", critic Richard Watts called it ""a production so exciting and imaginative, so completely fascinating in all its phases, there is nothing to do but let ourselves go and applaud it unreservedly. Here, splendidly acted and thrillingly produced is what must certainly be the great ""Julius Caesar"" of our time."" ""Stage"" magazine awarded Welles the palm, its citation of excellence, and featured him (as Brutus) on the cover of its June 1938 issue: To Orson Welles, director, man of letters, disciple"
"of some of Schlegel's opinions, yet he says nothing in ""Characters of Shakespear's Plays"" about any stage performances of this play. Hazlitt believed that because tragedy engages our emotions most profoundly, it is the greatest kind of drama. Of the tragedies based on Greek and Roman history, he ranked ""Julius Caesar"" beneath the other Roman tragedies, ""Coriolanus"" and ""Antony and Cleopatra"". But, as elsewhere, he expresses admiration for the fine discrimination of character, the depiction of ""the manners of the common people, and the jealousies and heart-burnings of the different factions"" in ""Julius Caesar"". In ""Antony and Cleopatra"", ""Shakespear's genius"
"adapted as ""The Venetian Twins"" in 1979). Shakespeare's ""Twelfth Night"" also features mistaken twins, the sister dressed as a boy. Menaechmi Menaechmi, a Latin-language play, is often considered Plautus' greatest play. The title is sometimes translated as The Brothers Menaechmus or The Two Menaechmuses. The ""Menaechmi"" is a comedy about mistaken identity, involving a set of twins, Menaechmus of Epidamnus and Menaechmus of Syracuse. It incorporates various Roman stock characters including the parasite, the comic courtesan, the comic servant, the domineering wife, the doddering father-in-law and the quack doctor. As with most of Plautus' plays, much of the dialogue was"
"Brutus (Cicero) Cicero's Brutus (also known as ""De claris oratibus"") is a history of Roman oratory. It is written in the form of a dialogue, in which Brutus and Atticus ask Cicero to describe the qualities of all the leading Roman orators up to their time. Cicero then attempts to propose a reconstruction of Roman history. Although it is written in the form of a dialogue, the majority of the talking is done by Cicero with occasional intervention by Brutus and Atticus. The work was probably composed in 46 BC, with the purpose of defending Cicero's own oratory. He begins"
"Ergasilus, to keep a Roman audience from souring on his “noble” aspirations. The German poet and philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing famously pronounced ""Captivi"" to be the finest play ever staged. This hyperbolic praise has been deprecated by later critics, but the play has still earned plaudits for treating important ethical issues. Ben Jonson indirectly paid tribute to the play by adapting the plot of ""Captivi"" for his early comedy ""The Case is Altered"". The lack of obvious sexual humor, so common in Plautus’ other works, has also occasioned much critical comment and occasional approval. Less sympathetic critics, such as E.F."
"Marcus Junius Brutus (Rome character) Marcus Junius Brutus is a historical figure who features as a character in the HBO/BBC2 original television series ""Rome"", played by Tobias Menzies. He is depicted as a young man torn between what he believes is right, and his loyalty and love of a man who has been like a father to him. The real Marcus Junius Brutus was the most famous of Julius Caesar's assassins, and one of the key figures in the civil wars that followed the assassination. He is a haughty but an awkward young noble; it is unclear which parts of"
"by the king's nephew. This incited a full-scale revolt against the Tarquins led by Lucius Junius Brutus, the banishment of the royal family, and the founding of the Roman Republic. Shakespeare retains the essence of the classic story, incorporating Livy's account that Tarquin's lust for Lucrece sprang from her husband's own praise of her. Shakespeare later used the same idea in the late romance ""Cymbeline"" (circa 1609–1610). In this play, Iachimo bets Posthumus (Imogen's husband) that he can make Imogen commit adultery with him. He does not succeed. However, Iachimo convinces Posthumus otherwise using information about Imogen's bedchamber and body."
"of people in love. The highlight of the play is considered by some to be Launce, the clownish servant of Proteus, and his dog Crab, to whom ""the most scene-stealing non-speaking role in the canon"" has been attributed. ""Two Gentlemen"" is often regarded as one of Shakespeare's weakest plays. It has the smallest named cast of any play by Shakespeare. As the play begins, Valentine is preparing to leave Verona for Milan so as to broaden his horizons. He begs his best friend, Proteus, to come with him, but Proteus is in love with Julia, and refuses to leave. Disappointed,"
"such scholar was Jan Kott. Speaking of its apparent gratuitous violence, Kott argued that ""Titus Andronicus"" is by no means the most brutal of Shakespeare's plays. More people die in ""Richard III"". ""King Lear"" is a much more cruel play. In the whole Shakespearean repertory I can find no scene so revolting as Cordelia's death. In reading, the cruelties of ""Titus"" can seem ridiculous. But I have seen it on the stage and found it a moving experience. Why? In watching ""Titus Andronicus"" we come to understand – perhaps more than by looking at any other Shakespeare play – the"
"Britannicus (play) Britannicus is a five-act tragic play by the French dramatist Jean Racine. It was first performed on 13 December 1669 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris. ""Britannicus"" is the first play in which Racine depicted Roman history. The tale of moral choice takes as its subject Britannicus, the son of the Roman emperor Claudius, and heir to the imperial throne. Britannicus' succession to the throne is however usurped by Lucius, later known as Nero, and the son of Claudius' wife Agrippina the Younger. Racine portrays Nero's true nature as revealed by his sudden desire for Britannicus's fiancée"
"Decebalus ""the greatest barbarian king of all time, more worthy to be on the throne of Rome than the rascally descendants of Augustus!"" Alecu Russo compared him to the medieval hero Stephen the Great, saying ""The one and the other both had the same aim, the same sublime idea: the independence of their country! Both are heroes, but Stephen is a more local hero, a Moldavian hero, while Decebalus is the hero of the world."" Mihai Eminescu, the Romanian national poet, wrote the historical drama ""Decebalus"". George Coșbuc's 1896 poem "" Decebal către popor"" (Decebalus to his People) lauds the"