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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.
It is well known that Shakespeare lived in an age of monarchy and wrote powerfully in his English history plays about the duties of the sovereign. In this lecture, Jonathan Bate will tell another, forgotten story: of how Shakespeare was also fascinated by Roman political models.
The campaign to achieve the parliamentary vote for women (6 February 1918) took 52 years, from 1866 to 1918. During that time women and their male supporters employed both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary tactics, ranging from the presentation of petitions to the detonation of bombs.
The Rape of Lucrece set the mould for Shakespeare’s exploration of the tragic consequences of sexual desire turning to violence. Jonathan Bate will show how Shakespeare developed these themes from his reading of the great Roman poet Ovid.
Simon Thurley, Visiting Professor of the Built Environment unearths the lost mercantile buildings of medieval London and shows how influential they were.
In the first of two lectures with the theme ‘Merchants, Money and Megalomania’, Simon Thurley will unearth the lost mercantile buildings of medieval London and show how influential they were.
What do we mean by a hero and where does our understanding of the ‘heroic’ idiom come from? In this lecture, Jonathan Bate will show how Shakespeare’s idea of the hero was shaped by the classical tradition, going back to the ancient tale of Troy and Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid.
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.
The times they are a-changing - or are they? Do female lawyers need to be Superwoman to survive? This lecture will explore the reality of life at the Bar and why vocation matters.