SASA Master Class: Shakespeare and the Ancient World

Shakespeare was described by rival playwright Ben Jonson as having known only "small Latin and less Greek," a reference to his relative lack of formal education. As the "poet of nature," he has often been thought of as drawing his inspiration from real life rather than from books. But as a literal Renaissance man, Shakespeare was in fact deeply inspired by the art and literature of ancient Greece and Rome: he sets many of his plays in ancient times and uses ancient sources for many of his plots. The ideas and poetic techniques of the ancients also pervade his work. In this masterclass, we will look at brief selections from some of Shakespeare's works along with the ancient texts that inspired them. Questions to consider include: just what was Shakespeare's relationship to antiquity? How and why does Shakespeare transform the materials he finds in the classics? And now that Shakespeare…