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In this episode, we use Freyja Cox Jensen's Reading the Roman Republic in Early Modern England to explore how early modern readers encountered, studied, and understood ancient Rome, and what that means for how we read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

First, we ask whether early modern people were truly obsessed with Julius Caesar and ancient Rome, and how Rome became so omnipresent in the early modern imagination. We then trace the roots of that obsession: how Roman history was embedded in early modern education and pedagogical theory, which Roman authors Shakespeare and his contemporaries were actually reading, and how the rise of the printing industry accelerated the spread of classical texts across England.

From there, we explore what early modern people actually thought about Rome: how they understood it, idealized it, and argued about it. Last but not least, we'll examine how ancient Rome was reimagined on the early modern stage, and what all of this tells us about Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp.

Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander.

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Works referenced:

Cox Jensen, Freyja. Reading the Roman Republic in Early Modern England. Brill, 2012.