Download the lecture video here
William Shakespeare spent his schooldays learning Latin. When he arrived in London and became an actor and playwright, he discovered a city and a culture that modelled itself on ancient Rome.
Jonathan Bate tells the story of how and why Shakespeare was steeped in the classics, from his earliest plays such as Titus Andronicus and The Comedy of Errors to his dramatisations of the stories of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.
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
