Patrick Gray

Explores Shakespeare's representation of the failure of democracy in ancient RomeShakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic introduces Shakespeare as a historian of ancient Rome alongside figures such as Sallust, Cicero, St Augustine, Machiavelli, Gibbon, Hegel and Nietzsche. In Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare shows Rome's transition from Republic to Empire. Why did Rome degenerate into an autocracy? Alternating between ruthless...