Talking Books Update

Classical mythology is so far outside the mainstream that most people cannot tell a Titan from a Muse. Former “Talking Books” guest, Virginia Mason Vaughan, wanted to better know Classical mythology in order understand how Shakespeare’s Classical allusions deepened the meaning of his work. The result is Shakespeare and the Gods published by Arden in 2019. After a chapter called “Contexts,” Vaughan writes detailed explanations of Jupiter, Venus, Hercules, Diana, Mars, and Ceres. In each case, she examines the Classical identities of these gods and the ways that Shakespeare and other early modern writers appropriated them. There are, in addition, much briefer looks at Neptune, Pluto, Vulcan, Minerva, Bacchus, Apollo, Juno, and Mercury. Vaughan finds that early modern cultural concerns such as misogyny, female sexual desire, and male violence have early incarnations in Classical mythology, and Shakespeare’s Classical allusions exploit these concepts. Vaughan concludes, “the more familiar we are with what Homer, Virgil and Ovid wrote, the richer Shakespeare’s works become” (221). This fine book is highly recommended.

A macro approach is taken by another former “Talking Books” guest, Sir Jonathan Bate, in How the Classics Made Shakespeare, published by Princeton University Press, also in 2019, expanded from his lectures at the Warburg Institute in London. Bate in part made his reputation with the brilliant Shakespeare and Ovid (Oxford University Press, 1994), so this is something of a homecoming. He shows that in addition to the well-known influence of writers such as Ovid and Plutarch, Shakespeare also appropriated Cicero and…