Against a recent tendency to exaggerate Shakespeare's classical learning, this study examines how the playwright used his relatively restricted knowledge to create an unusually convincing picture of Rome.

Although a third of his plays are set in the ancient world and he constantly used classical mythology, history, and ideas, Shakespeare received a simple grammar school education and did not have a scholar's knowledge of the classics. The critical implications of this are the subject of Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity. Against a recent academic tendency to exaggerate Shakespeare's learning, the authors investigate how he used his comparatively restricted knowledge to create, for example, an unusually convincing picture of Rome, and analyse, by presenting us with careful readings of specific passages, the styles Shakespeare employed under the influence of classical writers, especially Ovid, Seneca, and (in translation) Homer and Plutarch.

This book explains for students and scholars the nature and extent of Shakespeare's classical learning. It shows why Ben Jonson was wrong to claim that he had 'small Latin and less Greek', and demonstrates that Shakespeare acquired the central foundations of his art from his classical reading. It explores in detail his relationship to Virgil, Ovid, Plautus, Terence, Seneca, and Plutarch, as well as showing how his beliefs about and attitudes towards classicalliterature changed in the course of his career.

Excerpt from Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity: Greek and Latin Antiquity as Presented in Shakespeare's Plays (Crowned by the French Academy) For those readers who only care for discussion of some Obscure passage or Obsolete word, there will, I fear, be nothing but disappointment in store; the aim of the book is of a purely literary character, and it Offers no information Of an etymological or philological nature. But though this may render it valueless to one class of readers, it enables it, I trust, to appeal the more surely to those by whom literature - in contradistinction to science, history, and to all books written entirely for the sake of imparting information, without the devotion Of any special care to the manner in which the informa tion is given - is prized as one Of the most precious forms of art. It is no easy task to translate a book in which so great a part is played by the style Of the author, the charm of which, with all its lightness, point, and grace, it must be vain to hope to render in a translation. I have endeavoured, as far as might be, to convey some slight notion of it, and although the echoes of the original sound can, at best, be only few and faint, I hope the impression may somehow make itself felt that the book in its original form aims at being a work of art. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity: Greek and Latin Antiquity as Presented in Shakespeare's Plays (Crowned by the French Academy) A few words to explain why it has been thought well to add, to the already overwhelming number of Shakespeare studies, this translation of the first part of M. Stapfer's "Shakespeare et l'Antiquite," seem not uncalled for in these days, when Shakespeare criticism has already reached such huge proportions as to cause its very name to be received with a half weary, half impatient sigh. We have heard a good deal lately of German commentators on Shakespeare, but no word has for a long time come to us from France - that land peculiarly famed for literary skill and for acute and delicate criticism; and, therefore, to hear what one of the first French literary critics of the day has to say concerning our great English poet can hardly fail to be of great interest and value. Moreover, the subject of M. Stapfer's book - not Shakespeare, but Greek and Roman antiquity as represented in Shakespeare's plays - invests it with a special character, and offers many fresh and suggestive points of view; the comparative smallness of the framework admitting also of a more minute and thorough mode of treatment than would otherwise be possible. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

M. L. Stapleton's Harmful Eloquence: Ovid's Amores from Antiquity to Shakespeare traces the influence of the early elegiac poetry of Publius Ovidius Naso (43 B.C.E.-17 C.E.) on European literature from 500-1600 C.E. The Amores served as a classical model for love poetry in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and were essential to the formation of fin' Amors, or "courtly love". Medieval Latin poets, the troubadours, Dante, Petrarch, and Shakespeare were all familiar with Ovid in his various forms, and all depended greatly upon his Amores in composing their cansos, canzoniere, and sonnets. Harmful Eloquence begins with a detailed analysis of the Amores themselves and their artistic unity. It moves on to explain the fragmentary transmission of the Amores fragments in the "Latin Anthology" and the cohesion of the fragments into the conventions of medieval Latin and troubadour "courtly love" poetry. Two subsequent chapters explain the use of the Amores, their narrator, and the conventions of "courtly love" in the poetry of both Dante and Petrarch. The final chapter concentrates on Shakespeare's reprocessing and parody of this material in his sonnets. Medievalists, classicists, and scholars of Renaissance studies will find Harmful Eloquence particularly engaging and useful. This work has received early praise for its Shakespearean content and is vital to scholars in this area. Stapleton's scholarship is both enjoyable and readable with a contemporary approach.

"This book grew from the inaugural E. H. Gombrich Lectures in the Classical Tradition that I delivered in the autumn of 2013 at the Warburg Institute of the University of London, under the title, "Ancient Strength: Shakespeare and the Classical Tradition"--Preface, page ix.