Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic: Selfhood, Stoicism, and Civil War by Patrick Gray (review)

Abstract

other, exploring everything from the negotiation of space, to shared emotion, to sympathy’s (generally undeliverable) promise of affinity (15). The next four essays examine how Shakespeare responds to the emotional content in his source material. Gwynne Kennedy and Indira Ghose’s chapters on anger and pride find Shakespeare reflecting on and rewriting those emotions in his own work; chapters like these provide particularly good preparation for the final group of three essays in part 2, which tackle feelings we do not necessarily readily identify as emotions. Hester Lees-Jeffries considers nostalgia, while Tom Bishop’s chapter considers wonder and Timothy M. Harrison’s closing chapter explores confusion. These final essays propose a set of ideas that has been active throughout the collection: that emotions are never singular, that the experience of emotion is messy and difficult, and that Shakespeare actively resists any neat ordering of emotional experience. This collection’s reliance on such a wide variety of perspectives, drawing as it does on political, religious, ethical, and practical resources, results in a generous and timely contribution of scholarship that seeks to do what the authors see Shakespeare doing: these chapters “reflect upon, and reimagine, the ways art can revitalise the way we experience the world” (7).