Shakespeare and a Place Calling Itself Rome

<p>This new examination of Shakespeare’s four Roman tragedies (<i>Julius Caesar, Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus</i> and <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>), 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 <i>Caesar Must Die</i>, Julie Taylor’s film <i>Titus</i>, John Osborne’s play <i>A Place Calling Itself Rome </i>and Ahmed Shawqi’s Arabic <i>Death of Cleopatra</i>.</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, overlayed with the Europe of Shakespeare’s day, in which a Romanized 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>