Is Caesar, in Shakespeare’s story, really a tyrant who needed to be killed? Is Brutus a noble political hero or a misguided egoist? With Professor Dobson, you’ll discover how Shakespeare restructured this familiar story to make easy judgments impossible.

Part 2 focuses on the play’s key interpretive questions: how we are invited to judge the central characters. This summary is told using the language of the play itself, placing key quotations in context to help you understand where these lines come from and what they mean.

Professor Dobson discusses the Roman history behind Julius Caesar and the cultural role of classical Rome during the Renaissance, when Shakespeare was writing. In Part 1, you’ll be guided through a detailed account of the story with commentary by Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon and Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Birmingham. You’ll also hear the play’s key speeches performed and analyzed by world-class Shakespearean actors and literary scholars. In this course, you’ll learn how Shakespeare dramatized the historical event of Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE, and particularly how he linked refined political rhetoric, aspiration toward Roman ideals, and acts of savage violence. In this tense political thriller, the Roman senator Brutus must decide whether to assassinate the powerful military general Julius Caesar in order to save Roman Republic - and the audience must decide whether Brutus made the right choice. Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, telling the story of one of history’s most famous events. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984, reissued 2008. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 1998, reprinted 2018. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus and Gordon McMullan. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Suzanne Gossett, Jean E. Maus, Katharine Eisaman, “Introduction,” Julius Caesar, in Shakespeare, William. “ Julius Caesar: A Modern Perspective.” Folger Shakespeare Library. The characters’ distinctive rhetorical styles and where they draw their persuasive powerĮpisode 1: Julius Caesar - the Story and the ContextĮpisode 2: Julius Caesar - the Characters and the Questions The strategies Shakespeare uses to render historical figures as morally and psychologically complex dramatic characters The story of Julius Caesar and its relationship to Roman history and Renaissance culture

Julius caesar shakespeare book