Shakespeare wanted to juxtapose the Messiah of the Christian biblical drama and the failed secular, like, analog of a Messiah in Coriolanus. So you see a Christian intervention there. I see Shakespeare as implicitly weighing Roman history against Christian history - sometimes going out of his way to build in an illusion or a structural kind of irony.
In the second of two programmes marking In Our Time's 20th anniversary on 15th October, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's versions of history, continuing with the Roman plays. Rome was the setting for Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus and parts of Antony and Cleopatra and these plays gave Shakespeare the chance to explore ideas too controversial for English histories. How was Shakespeare reimagining Roman history, and what impact has that had on how we see Rome today?
The image above is of Marlon Brando playing Mark Antony in a scene from the film version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, 1953
With
Sir Jonathan Bate
Provost of Worcester College, University of Oxford
Catherine Steel
Professor of Classics and Dean of Research in the College of Arts at the University of Glasgow
And
Patrick Gray
Associate Professor of English Studies at Durham University
Producer: Simon Tillotson