Julius Caesar (The New Cambridge Shakespeare) [Hardcover]

William Shakespeare (Author), Marvin Spevack (Editor)

Book Description

Series: The New Cambridge Shakespeare | Publication Date: August 26, 1988

Spevack emphasizes the complexity of Julius Caesar's seemingly straightforward theatrical experience to focus on the inextricability of private desires and public affairs. The play's stage history supports the work's rich design, and Spevack's commentary is remarkably attentive to questions of production, precise lexical glossing, and the peculiarities of Shakespearean grammar. An extensive appendix, provides lengthy, coherent excerpts from Plutarch's Lives, Shakepeare's main source include images of Caesar from the Renaissance onwards as well as photographs of modern productions and reconstructions of likely Elizbethan stagings of Caesar's entry into Rome, his assassination, Anthony's funeral oration, and the Act 4 meeting between Brutus and Cassius.

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Professor Spevack's critical discussion shows how private desires and public affairs are inextricable in Julius Caesar and how Shakespeare frames the world of this play - person, action, place, time - within the operations of larger forces, mysterious, ironical, and undeniable.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; First Thus edition (August 26, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521222206
• ISBN-13: 978-0521222204
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,977,426 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, and his birth is traditionally celebrated on April 23. The facts of his life, known from surviving documents, are sparse. He was one of eight children born to John Shakespeare, a merchant of some standing in his community. William probably went to the King's New School in Stratford, but he had no university education. In November 1582, at the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, who was pregnant with their first child, Susanna. She was born on May 26, 1583. Twins, a boy, Hamnet ( who would die at age eleven), and a girl, Judith, were born in 1585. By 1592 Shakespeare had gone to London working as an actor and already known as a playwright. A rival dramatist, Robert Greene, referred to him as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers." Shakespeare became a principal shareholder and playwright of the successful acting troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later under James I, called the King's Men). In 1599 the Lord Chamberlain's Men built and occupied the Globe Theater in Southwark near the Thames River. Here many of Shakespeare's plays were performed by the most famous actors of his time, including Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, and Robert Armin. In addition to his 37 plays, Shakespeare had a hand in others, including Sir Thomas More and The Two Noble Kinsmen, and he wrote poems, including Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. His 154 sonnets were published, probably without his authorization, in 1609. In 1611 or 1612 he gave up his lodgings in London and devoted more and more time to retirement in Stratford, though he continued writing such plays as The Tempest and Henry VII until about 1613. He died on April 23 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. No collected edition of his plays was published during his life-time, but in 1623 two members of his acting company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, put together the great collection now called the First Folio.