Julius Caesar (Shakespeare Series) - Softcover

Shakespeare, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0867090235 ISBN 13: 9780867090239

Publisher: Boynton/Cook Publishers Inc US, 1990

Synopsis

The Boynton/Cook editions of four of Shakespeare's most popular plays have been reissued with attractive new cover designs and printed on more opaque, easy-to-read paper. This series is specifically designed for high school classes.

• Students will be able to see each play as a whole. In their introduction to each of the plays, editors Mack and Boynton suggest ways of approaching the text that allow the reader a broad range of imaginative involvement. Their observations are intended to help students read and experience the play, not to discourage them with critical jargon or peripheral historical information.
• Students will be reading the best text both in terms of visual excellence and quality of scholarship. They'll immediately appreciate the large page format and highly readable typography. Each volume is consistent with the most authoritative early edition of each play. The glosses are full and clear but don't belabor the obvious or clutter the text.
• Background information includes the editors' detailed analysis of the Elizabethan theatre and its relation to Shakespeare's dramaturgy, C. W. Hodges's drawing re-creating the original Globe Playhouse, a brief account of Shakespeare's life and a chronological listing of his works, and a bibliography, lists of videotapes (VHS), records, and tapes of the complete plays.
• Students will experience added critical and imaginative dimensions. An essay following each play suggests ways of approaching it as a live dramatic experience in the theatre of the mind. The concern is not how the play might be produced in a theatre, but rather how parts of it may be realized in the imagination through close attention to what the language is saying and suggesting.
• Students can get a deeper understanding of each scene through helpful, detailed questions included at the back of each volume. These questions encourage group discussion or written response. Also included are topics for longer papers.

About this title

Review

One of Shakespeare's most political plays, Julius Caesar continued Shakespeare's interest in Roman history, first developed in Titus Andronicus. Drawing on Plutarch, the great historian of Rome, Shakespeare dramatises one of the most crucial moments in Roman history--the assassination of Julius Caesar. Loved by the Roman crowd but increasingly feared by the Senators, Caesar increasingly shows signs of his desire to abolish the Republic and crown himself emperor. A conspiracy is hatched, led by Cassius and Brutus, who murder Caesar on the steps of the Capitol. Mourning over his dead friend's body, Mark Antony gives one of the famous rhetorical speeches in literature, asking "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" to lament Caesar's death, privately vowing to "let slip the dogs of war" against those who have shed Caesar's blood. Antony joins forces with Caesar's son Octavius to defeat Cassius and Brutus in battle, and establish an uneasy alliance whose collapse is dramatised in Shakespeare's later play Antony and Cleopatra. Written at the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, Julius Caesar has been seen by many as a radically pro-Republican play which sailed close to the political wind of the time. --Jerry Brotton

Review

Praise for "William Shakespeare: Complete Works"

"Remarkable . . . makes Shakespeare's extraordinary accomplishment more vivid than ever."--James Shapiro, professor, Columbia University, bestselling author of "A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599"

"A feast of literary and historical information."--"The Wall Street Journal
"
"From the Trade Paperback edition."

Praise for "William Shakespeare: Complete Works"
Remarkable . . .makes Shakespeare s extraordinary accomplishment more vivid than ever. James Shapiro, professor, Columbia University, bestselling author of "A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599"
A feast of literary and historical information. "The Wall Street Journal
""

Praise for William Shakespeare: Complete Works
"Remarkable . . . makes Shakespeare's extraordinary accomplishment more vivid than ever."--James Shapiro, professor, Columbia University, bestselling author of A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599
"A feast of literary and historical information."--The Wall Street Journal

Edition details

• Publisher: Boynton/Cook Publishers Inc US
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0867090235
• ISBN 13: 9780867090239
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 156