Shakespeare and the Classics

Compiled by an international team of Shakespeareans and classicists, this study investigates Shakespeare's classicism and demonstrates how he used a variety of classical books to explore such crucial areas of human experience as love, politics, ethics, and history. It offers a comprehensive analysis of Shakespeare's classicism that will also serve as a useful introduction for students and others approaching the subject for the first time.

This book demonstrates that the classics are of central importance in Shakespeare's plays and in the structure of his imagination.

Charles Martindale is Professor of Latin in the Department of Classics and Ancient History and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Bristol. His most recent publications include The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (1997), Classics and the Uses of Reception (2006, edited with Richard Thomas) and Latin Poetry and the Judgement of Taste: An Essay in Aesthetics (2005).