Shakespeare's Classical Heroes

Abstract

Despite Jonson's famous dictum that Shakespeare knew "small Latine and lesse Greeke", classical material can be found throughout the canon of his works. The sources of this material is not my concern. The relation of it to Shakespeare's value system is. This topic tor a paper was suggested to me by Dr. Walter Waring and has tied in well with the larger question of the morality of classical heroes which has interested me. Hence, the form of this paper was arrived at from two directions and its limitations to an analysis of Caesar and Coriolanus, Shakespeare's two greatest classical heroes, were set. For this study I have used the Globe Edition of Shakespeare and the Nonesuch edition or Plutarch.