Where do the ghosts in Shakespeare come from? And what about the magic? In this lecture, Jonathan Bate will summon up the ghosts of Old Hamlet, the victims of Richard III and Julius Caesar, revealing their origins in the bloody plays of Seneca. He will then show how such figures from classical mythology as Theseus and Medea provide a key to the association between supernatural powers and Shakespearean art.
Professor Bate was Gresham Professor of Rhetoric from 2017-19. He is a British academic, biographer, critic, broadcaster, novelist and scholar. He specialises in Shakespeare, Romanticism and Ecocriticism. He is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, and Honorary Fellow of Creativity at Warwick Business School.
Professor Bate began his tenure as Gresham Professor of Rhetoric with a series on Shakespeare. The topic for his second lecture series was Wordsworth and the Romantics.
All of Jonathan's Gresham Lectures can be accessed here
