Shakespeare’s Classic

Chapter 12 of Shakespeare, Shamans, and Show Biz: An Impolite Guide to Theater History: Shakespeare’s Classic. Kaplan discusses the difference between “progress” versus “progression” in theater history and exemplifies it with a study of Shakespeare’s plays set in Ancient Rome, specifically Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. The chapter studies how Shakespeare’s theatrical technique is emphatically different from Greek and Roman drama and how it does not correspond to Aristotle’s Poetics.