Edwina Lionheart
Theatre of Blood was a 1973 horror film starring Vincent Price as vengeful actor Edward Lionheart and Diana Rigg as his daughter Edwina Lionheart.
Edward Lionheart, who sees himself as a great Shakespearean actor, is in fact an extremely hammy and over-the-top actor, much like Vincent Price who plays him. With the aid of his daughter, Lionheart murders a group of critics who fail to give him an award, and had ridiculed him his whole career one by one. The critics are played by a distinguished cast of British actors, including Harry Andrews, Jack Hawkins, Michael Hordern,
Arthur Lowe, Robert Morley and Dennis Price.
The manner of each critic's death is inspired by a death in a play in which Lionheart's performance was slated by that particular critic. The first is butchered on the 15th of March, similar to Julius Caesar. The next is speared and then dragged behind a horse, Hector's fate in Troilus and Cressida . Other murders include drowning one in a vat of wine, a la Richard the Third, a decapitation similar to Cymbeline, force feeding the camp Meredith Merridew his "babies" (his dogs) vaguely linked to Titus Andronicus, tricking one of the critics into murdering his wife (like Othello), a modern version of Joan of Arc being burnt in the stake (from Henry VI, part 1) and reworking The Merchant of Venice so Shylock gets his pound of flesh. There is also a duel scene inspired by Romeo and Juliet. Many of the deaths are appropriate to the critic (e.g. the one drowned in wine is an alcoholic).
Some critics have commented due to this that the film is simply a rehash of the Abominable Dr. Phibes, in which Price's character also systematically killed a group of people in a pattern method. Another similarity to Phibes is that the police force is depicted as being comical and incompetent. A major difference is that the Phibes films are set in the twenties and thirties, while Theatre of Blood is set in contemporary times. Some also say that a major difference is that while Phibes was motivated to murder by love; Lionheart was only motivated by egotism.
Before or after each death, Edward recites passages of Shakespeare, giving Price a chance to show his acting ability. These sequences often happen in an abandoned theatre that Lionheart has used as his hideout, which is where the title of the film originates (it was originally to be called Much ado about murder).
The film ends when Lionheart's attempt to blind one critic a la King Lear backfires. A group of tramps who helped Lionheart turn on him and kill Edwina. In his rage he sets fire to his theatre hideout, retreating to the roof and delivering Lear's final monologue. At that point the roof caves in and he dies.
This film is considered by many to be Vincent Price's greatest work, and it was a personal favourite of his, as he always wanted the chance to act in Shakespeare, but found himself being type cast due to his work in horror.
Some disliked the ending though, as Price made Lionheart such a sympathetic character, especially compared to the critics.
The film has been recently adapted to the stage, with Jim Broadbent playing Edward Lionheart and Rachael Stirling, Diana Rigg's daughter, playing her mother's role of Edwina. The play differs from the film as the critics are from the major British newspapers (examples including The Guardian and the Times), and it is all set within an abandoned theatre. The play is also set in the seventies rather then contemporary times, and makes fun of the politics of theatre at that time. Another change is the reduction in the number of deaths. The killings based on Othello and Cymbeline have been omitted, presumably because they would have to take place outside the theatre due to their impact on secondary characters.
External link
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Category:1973 films
Category:Horror films
Category:British films
Vincent Price, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1942. His long run in the play kept him off screen for three years. The play was filmed twice as Gaslight, but Price did not star in either version.]]
Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993), born in St. Louis, Missouri to Vincent Leonard Price and Marguerite Willcox Price, was an American film actor. He is most well remembered for his roles in a series of low-budget horror films where his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude were well used. In such films, his tall physique and polished urbane manner made him something of an American counterpart to the older Boris Karloff.
His father was president of the National Candy Company. Price Jr. was educated at Yale--where he was a member of Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity--and the Courtauld Institute, London in art history and fine art. He became interested in theater in the 1930s, appearing professionally on stage from 1935.
He made his film debut in 1938 with Service de Luxe and established himself as a competent player, notably in Laura (1944), directed by Otto Preminger. He acted as Joseph Smith, Jr. in the movie Brigham Young (1940).
In the 1950s he moved into horror films, enjoying the role in the successful curiosity House of Wax (1953), the first 3-D film to land in the year's top ten at the North American box office, and then the classic monster movie The Fly (1958). He also starred in the original House on Haunted Hill (1959) as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren. (The actor playing the same character in the 1999 remake was made to not only resemble, but was renamed after Price.)
In the 1960s, he had a number of low-budget successes with Roger Corman and AIP including the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1965). These were followed by numerous other roles throughout the 1960s where he played characters in horror films that were often closely modelled on the Corman Poe films. He has also appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Theatre of Blood (1973), where he created a series of campy tongue-in-cheek villains.
He often spoke of his joy at playing "Egghead" on the popular Batman television series. Another of his co-stars, Yvonne Craig (Batgirl), often said Price was her favorite co-star. Vincent, after a take was printed, started throwing eggs at Adam West and Burt Ward and when asked to stop replied "With a full artillery? Not a chance!", causing an eggfight on the soundstage.
He greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and increased his narrative and voice work. For example, Price's voiceover is heard on Alice Cooper's first solo album Welcome to My Nightmare; in Michael Jackson's semi-creepy music video, Thriller; and, in one of his last major and one of his favourite feature film roles, as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective.
In the summer of 1977 he began performing, as Oscar Wilde, in the one man stage play Diversions and Delights. Written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, the play is set in a Parisian theater, on a night about one year before Wilde's death. In an attempt to earn some much-needed money, he is speaking to the audience about his life, his works and, in the second act, about his love for Lord Alfred Douglas, which led to his downfall. The original tour of the play was a success in every city that it played, except for New York City. In the summer of 1979 he performed it at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado on the same stage that Wilde had spoken to the miners about art some 96 years before. Price would, eventually, perform the play worldwide and to many, including his daughter Victoria, it was the best acting that he ever did.
From 1981 to 1989, he hosted the PBS television series Mystery!. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990).
Price was married three times. Price fathered a son named Vincent, Jr. with his first wife, a former actress named Edith . Price and his second wife Mary donated hundreds of works of art and a large monetary gift to East Los Angeles College in the early 1960s in order to endow the Vincent and Mary Price Gallery there, which stands to this day. Price's daughter Victoria was born to the couple in 1962. Price's last marriage was to the actress Coral Browne who appeared with him in Theatre Of Blood (1973). People have said theirs was one of Hollywood's great love stories; he converted to Catholicism for her, and she became a U.S. citizen for him. Friends said Price never recovered from her death in 1991 from breast cancer.
In his later years, Price spoke out against modern horror films that glorified violence, pointing out that his films were harmless spoofs by comparison.
Price was also a noted gourmet cook and art collector. From 1962 to 1971, Sears, Roebuck offered the Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art, selling about 50,000 pieces of fine art to the general public. Price selected and comissioned works for the collection, including works by Rembrant, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dali. [http://www.searsarchives.com/history/art/]
Vincent Price died of lung cancer on October 25, 1993, at 82 years of age, just six days before Halloween and, eerily, just three days before his biography, Conversations With Vincent, directed by and featuring Tim Burton, was aired on the Arts and Entertainment Network. It was never distributed for home use due to a conflict over certain rights. He had also long suffered from emphysema and Parkinson's disease, which had forced his role in Edward Scissorhands to be much smaller than intended.
Vincent Twice Vincent Twice was a Price lookalike character on Sesame Street.
In 1999 a frank and detailed biography of Vincent Price, written by his daughter Victoria Price, was published by St Martin's Griffin Press.
St Martin's Griffin Press
Filmography
External links
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- [http://www.angelfire.com/film/rdsquires The Vincent Price Exhibit]
- [http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/7537/egghead.htm The 1966 Batman TV Villain Page - Vincent Price]
- [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=838&pt Find-A-Grave profile for Vincent Price]
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Shakespeare, artist and authenticity unconfirmed.]]
William Shakespeare (baptised April 26, 1564 – died April 23, 1616) was an English poet and playwright. Shakespeare has the reputation of one of the greatest writers in the English language and in Western literature, as well as one of the world's preeminent dramatists. Indeed, some critics have raised their praise of him to the level of bardolatry.
Shakespeare wrote his works between 1586 and 1616, although the exact dates and chronology of the plays attributed to him are often uncertain. Shakespeare is among the very few playwrights who have excelled in both tragedy and comedy, and his plays combine popular appeal with complex characterisation, poetic grandeur and philosophical depth.
Shakespeare's works have been translated into every major living language, and his plays are continually performed all around the world. In addition, quotations from his plays have passed into everyday usage in many languages. Over the years, many people have speculated about Shakespeare's life, raising questions about his sexuality and debating whether someone else wrote his plays and poetry.
Life
Early life
Shakespeare (also spelled Shakspere, Shaksper, and Shake-speare, due to the fact that Elizabethan spelling was very erratic) was born in and lived on Henley Street, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, in April 1564, the son of John Shakespeare, a successful tradesman and alderman, and of Mary Arden, a daughter of the gentry. Shakespeare's baptismal record dates to April 26 of that year. Because baptisms were performed within a few days of birth, tradition has settled on April 23 as his birthday. This date provides a convenient symmetry because Shakespeare died on the same day in 1616.
As the son of a prominent town official, Shakespeare was entitled to attend King Edward VI Grammar School in central Stratford, which may have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and literature. Also, mainstream scholars assume that Shakespeare was a student at the Stratford Free School, since he would have been entitled to attend it, and textbooks used at the Stratford Free School are alluded to in the plays. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, who was 26, on November 28, 1582 at Temple Grafton, near Stratford. Two neighbours of Anne posted bond that there were no impediments to the marriage. There appears to have been some haste in arranging the ceremony, presumably due to the fact that Anne was three months pregnant.
Temple Grafton
After his marriage, William Shakespeare left few traces in the historical record until he appeared on the London theatrical scene. Indeed, the late 1580s are known as Shakespeare's "Lost Years" because no evidence has survived to show exactly where he was or why he left Stratford for London. On May 26, 1583, Shakespeare's first child, Susannah, was baptised at Stratford. A son, Hamnet, and a daughter, Judith, were baptised on February 2, 1585.
Later years
1585
Shakespeare's last two plays were written in 1613, after which he appears to have retired to Stratford. He died on April 23, 1616, at the age of 52. He remained married to Anne until his death and was survived by his two daughters, Susannah and Judith. Susannah married Dr John Hall, but there are no direct descendants of the poet and playwright alive today.
Shakespeare is buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was granted the honour of burial in the chancel not on account of his fame as a playwright but for purchasing a share of the tithe of the church for £440 (a considerable sum of money at the time). A bust of him placed by his family on the wall nearest his grave shows him posed in the act of writing. Each year on his claimed birthday, a new quill pen is placed in the writing hand of the bust.
He is believed to have written the epitaph on his tombstone:
:Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
:To dig the dust enclosed here.
:Blest be the man that spares these stones,
:But cursed be he that moves my bones.
Works
Plays
A number of Shakespeare's plays have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature. His plays cover tragedy, history, and comedy and have been translated into every major living language, in addition to being continually performed all around the world.
As was normal in the period, Shakespeare based many of his plays on the work of other playwrights and recycled older stories and historical material. For example, Hamlet (c. 1601) is probably a reworking of an older, lost play (the so-called Ur-Hamlet), and King Lear is an adaptation of an older play, King Leir. For plays on historical subjects, Shakespeare relied heavily on two principal texts. Most of the Roman and Greek plays are based on Plutarch's Parallel Lives (from the 1579 English translation by Sir Thomas North), and the English history plays are indebted to Raphael Holinshed's 1587 Chronicles.
Shakespeare's plays tend to be placed into three main stylistic groups: his early comedies and histories (such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and Henry IV, Part 1), his middle period (which includes his most famous tragedies, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear), and his other romance, The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet.later romances (such as The Winter's Tale and The Tempest). The earlier plays tend to be more light-hearted, while the middle-period plays tend to be darker, addressing such issues as betrayal, murder, lust, power, and egotism. By contrast, his late romances feature a redemptive plotline with a happy ending and the use of magic and other fantastical elements. However, the borders between these groups are extremely blurry.
Some of Shakespeare's plays first appeared in print as a series of quartos, but most remained unpublished until 1623 when the posthumous First Folio was published. The traditional division of his plays into tragedies, comedies, and histories follows the logic of the First Folio. However, modern criticism has labelled some of these plays "problem plays" as they elude easy categorisation, or perhaps purposefully break generic conventions, and has introduced the term "romances" for the later comedies.
There are many controversies about the exact chronology of Shakespeare's plays. In addition, the fact that Shakespeare did not produce an authoritative print version of his plays during his life accounts for part of the textual problem often noted with his plays, which means that for several of the plays there are different textual versions. As a result, the problem of identifying what Shakespeare actually wrote became a major concern for most modern editions. Textual corruptions also stem from printers' errors, compositors' misreadings or wrongly scanned lines from the source material. Additionally, in an age before standardised spelling, Shakespeare often wrote a word several times in a different spelling, contributing further to the transcribers' confusions. Modern scholars also believe Shakespeare revised his plays throughout the years, sometimes leading to two existing versions of one play.
Sonnets
Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 poems that deal with such themes as love, beauty, politics, and mortality. All but two first appeared in the 1609 publication entitled Shakespeare's Sonnets; numbers 138 ("When my love swears that she is made of truth") and 144 ("Two loves have I, of comfort and despair") had previously been published in a 1599 miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim.
The conditions under which the sonnets were published is unclear. The 1609 text is dedicated to one "Mr. W. H.", who is described as "the only begetter" of the poems by the publisher Thomas Thorpe. It is not known who this man was although there are many theories. In addition, it is not known whether the publication of the sonnets was authorised by Shakespeare. The poems were probably written over a period of several years.
Other poems
In addition to his sonnets, Shakespeare also wrote several longer narrative poems, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and A Lover's Complaint. These poems appear to have been written either in an attempt to win the patronage of a rich benefactor (as was common at the time) or as the result of such patronage. For example, The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis were both dedicated to Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.
In addition, Shakespeare wrote the short poem The Phoenix and the Turtle. The anthology The Passionate Pilgrim was attributed to him upon its first publication in 1599, but in fact only five of its poems are by Shakespeare and the attribution was withdrawn in the second edition.
Style
Shakespeare's impact on modern theatre cannot be overestimated. Not only did Shakespeare create some of the most admired plays in Western literature, he also transformed English theatre by expanding expectations about what could be accomplished through characterisation, plot, action, language and genre. His poetic artistry helped raise the status of popular theatre, permitting it to be admired by intellectuals as well as by those seeking pure entertainment.
Theatre was changing when Shakespeare first arrived in London in the late 1580s or early 1590s. Previously, the commonest forms of popular English theatre were the Tudor morality plays. These plays, which blend piety with farce and slapstick, were allegories in which the characters are personified moral attributes who validate the virtues of Godly life by prompting the protagonist to choose such a life over evil. The characters and plot situations are symbolic rather than realistic. As a child, Shakespeare would likely have been exposed to this type of play (along with mystery plays and miracle plays). Meanwhile, at the universities, academic plays were being staged based on Roman closet dramas. These plays, often performed in Latin, used a more exact and academically respectable poetic style than the morality plays, but they were also more static, valuing lengthy speeches over physical action.
By the late 1500s the popularity of morality and academic plays waned as the English Renaissance took hold, and playwrights like Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe began to revolutionize theatre. Their plays blended the old morality drama with academic theatre to produce a new secular form. The new drama had the poetic grandeur and philosophical depth of the academic play and the bawdy populism of the moralities. However, it was more ambiguous and complex in its meanings, and less concerned with simple moral allegories. Inspired by this new style, Shakespeare took these changes to a new level, creating plays that not only resonated on an emotional level with audiences but also explored and debated the basic elements of what it meant to be human.
Reputation
Shakespeare's reputation has grown considerably since his own time. During his lifetime and shortly after his death, Shakespeare was well-regarded but not considered the supreme poet of his age. He was included in some contemporary lists of leading poets, but he lacked the stature of Edmund Spenser or Philip Sidney. After the Interregnum stage ban of 1642–60, the new Restoration theatre companies had the previous generation of playwrights as the mainstay of their repertory, most of all the phenomenally popular Beaumont and Fletcher team, but also Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. As with other older playwrights, Shakespeare's plays were mercilessly adapted by later dramatists for the Restoration stage with little of the reverence that would later develop.
Beginning in the late 17th century, Shakespeare began to be considered the supreme English-language playwright (and, to a lesser extent, poet). Initially this reputation focused on Shakespeare as a dramatic poet, to be studied on the printed page rather than in the theatre. By the early 19th century, though, Shakespeare began hitting peaks of fame and popularity. During this time, theatrical productions of Shakespeare provided spectacle and melodrama for the masses and were extremely popular. Romantics critics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge then raised admiration for Shakespeare to adulation or bardolatry (from bard + idolatry), in line with the Romantic reverence for the poet as prophet and genius. In the middle to late 19th century, Shakespeare also became an emblem of English pride and a "rallying-sign", as Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1841, for the whole British empire.
This reverence has of course provoked a negative reaction. In the 21st century most inhabitants of the English-speaking world encounter Shakespeare at school at a young age, and there is a common association of his work with boredom and incomprehension. At the same time, Shakespeare's plays remain more frequently staged than the works of any other playwright and are frequently adapted into film.
See also: Timeline of Shakespeare criticism
Speculations about Shakespeare
Identity
Over the years such figures as Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Sigmund Freud have expressed disbelief that the man from Stratford-upon-Avon actually produced the works attributed to him. These claims necessarily rely on conspiracy theories to explain the lack of direct historical evidence for them, although their advocates also point to evidentiary gaps in the orthodox history. Most professional scholars consider the argument baseless, and attribute the debate to the scarcity and ambiguity of many of the historical records of Shakespeare's life.
Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, an English nobleman and intimate of Queen Elizabeth, became the most prominent alternative candidate for authorship of the Shakespeare canon, after having been identified in the 1920s. Oxford partisans note the similarities between the Earl's life, and events and sentiments depicted in the plays and sonnets. The principal hurdle for Oxfordian theory is the evidence that many of the Shakespeare plays were written after their candidate's death, but well within the lifespan of William Shakespeare. Christopher Marlowe is considered by some to be the most highly qualified to have written the works of Shakespeare. It has been speculated that Marlowe's recorded death in 1593 was faked for various reasons and that Marlowe went into hiding, subsequently writing under the name of William Shakespeare.
A related question in mainstream academia addresses whether Shakespeare himself wrote every word of his commonly accepted plays, given that collaboration between dramatists routinely occurred in the Elizabethan theatre. Serious academic work continues to attempt to ascertain the authorship of plays and poems of the time, both those attributed to Shakespeare and others.
Sexuality
The content of Shakespeare's works has raised the question of whether he may have been bisexual. It should be noted that the question of whether an Elizabethan was "gay" in a modern sense is anachronistic, as the concepts of homosexuality and bisexuality did not emerge until the 19th century; while sodomy was a crime in the period, there was no word for an exclusively homosexual identity (see History of homosexuality). Elizabethans also frequently wrote about friendship in more intense language than is common today.
Although twenty-six of the sonnets are love poems addressed to a married woman (the "Dark Lady"), one hundred and twenty-six are addressed to a young man (known as the "Fair Lord"). The amorous tone of the latter group, which focus on the young man's beauty, has been interpreted as evidence for Shakespeare's bisexuality, although others interpret them as referring to intense friendship, not sexual love. Another explanation is that the poems are not autobiographical, but mere fiction, so that the "speaker" of the Sonnets should not be simplistically identified with Shakespeare himself. Despite these alternative interpretations, many readers have suspected otherwise. For example, in 1954, C.S. Lewis wrote that the sonnets are "too lover-like for ordinary male friendship" (although he added that they are not the poetry of "full-blown pederasty") and that he "found no real parallel to such language between friends in the sixteenth-century literature" .
Some readers have found similar evidence in the plays. The most commonly cited example is a number of comedies such as Twelfth Night and As You Like It, which contain comic situations in which a woman poses as a man, a device that exploits the fact that in Shakespeare's day women's roles were played by boys. While the situations thus presented are heterosexual in terms of the story, the stage image of men wooing and kissing may well have been titillating to those of a homosexual orientation, and while other dramatists occasionally used the same device, Shakespeare seems to have had an exceptional preference for it, using it in five of his plays.
See also
- Shakespeare's life
- Shakespeare's reputation
- Shakespeare's plays
- Shakespeare's sonnets
- Anne Hathaway (Shakespeare's wife)
- Shakespeare's late romances
- Chronology of Shakespeare plays
- Elizabethan era
- Elizabethan theatre
- Globe Theatre
- Shakespeare on screen
- Shakespeare characters
- Complete Works of Shakespeare
- Bard on the Beach
Bibliography
Comedies
- The Tempest
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- Measure for Measure
- The Comedy of Errors
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Love's Labour's Lost
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- The Merchant of Venice
- As You Like It
- Taming of the Shrew
- All's Well That Ends Well
- Twelfth Night or What You Will
- The Winter's Tale
- Pericles, Prince of Tyre
- The Two Noble Kinsmen
Histories
- King John
- Richard II
- Henry IV, part 1
- Henry IV, part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, part 1
- Henry VI, part 2
- Henry VI, part 3
- Richard III
- Henry VIII
Tragedies
- Troilus and Cressida
- Coriolanus
- Titus Andronicus
- Romeo and Juliet
- Timon of Athens
- Julius Caesar
- Macbeth
- Hamlet
- King Lear
- Othello
- Antony and Cleopatra
- Cymbeline
Lost plays
- Love's Labour's Won
- Cardenio
Poems
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- Venus and Adonis
- The Rape of Lucrece
- The Passionate Pilgrim
- The Phoenix and the Turtle
- A Lover's Complaint
Apocrypha
- Edward III
- Sir Thomas More
Notes
# [http://shakespeareauthorship.com/name1.html The Spelling and Pronunciation of Shakespeare's Name by David Kathman]. Accessed 10/22/05.
# [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/JC/plutarch.north.html Plutarch's Parallel Lives]. Accessed 10/23/05.
# Shakespeare's Reading by Robert S. Miola, Oxford University Press, 2000.
# Ibid.
# [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3709/is_199810/ai_n8827074 Was Shakespeare gay? Sonnet 20 and the politics of pedagogy.]
Further reading
- Mark Anderson, Shakespeare by Another Name (2005). Biography of Edward de Vere
- Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like The Sun (1964). Fictionalised biography
- Anthony Burgess, Shakespeare (1970). Biography
- Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World (2004). Biography
- Bertram Fields, Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare (2005)
- John Pemble, Shakespeare Goes to Paris: How the Bard Conquered France (2005)
- [http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/ShakespeareBib.html Shakespeare on Film Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)]
External links
- [http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org Open Source Shakespeare]
- [http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/xShakeSph.html#top Study Guides for all the plays and poems]
- [http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html British Library; Original 93 copies in quarto]
- [http://william-shakespeare.classic-literature.co.uk/ Classic-literature.co.uk ]
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- [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/search?author=Shakespeare%2C+William Upenn.edu online books page for Shakespeare]
- [http://www.shakespeare-literature.com Chapter-indexed, searchable versions of Shakespeare's works]
- [http://www.touchstone.bham.ac.uk/index.html Touchstone - UK Shakespeare collections]
- [http://shakespeare-1.com/doubtful/ Full text of plays erroneously attributed to Shakespeare]
- [http://literalsystems.com/abooks/doku.php?id=author:shakespeare_william "Sonnets 29, 40, 55, 100, 106, 116" Creative Commons audio recording.]
- [http://shakespeare.nowheres.com/ The original shakespeare.com]
- [http://www.cosmoetica.com/S3-DES3.htm Essay on Shakespeare and Wallace Stevens]
- [http://wiredforbooks.org/shakespeare/ Shakespeare's plays and poems in audio and video]
- [http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/IllusShake The Illustrated Shakespeare]
- [http://shakespeareforums.com William Shakespeare Forums]
- [http://www.shakespeare-online.com/ Shakespeare Online]
- [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0419_040419_shakespeare.html National Geographic Article About Shakespeare's Coinages]
ko:윌리엄 셰익스피어
ms:William Shakespeare
ja:ウィリアム・シェイクスピア
simple:William Shakespeare
th:วิลเลียม เชกสเปียร์
Jack HawkinsJohn Edward Hawkins (September 14, 1910 - July 18, 1973) was a British film actor of the 1950s and 1960s.
Hawkins made his London stage debut aged 12, and was appearing on Broadway in Journey's End by the age of 18. Although he appeared in several films during the 1930s, it was only after service in The Second World War that he began to build a successful career in the cinema, often playing stern but sympathetic authority figures in films like Angels One Five (1952), The Long Arm (1956) and The Cruel Sea (1953), the film that made him a star.
From the late 1950s he mostly appeared in character roles, often in epic films like The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)..
Some of his more unusual roles included an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh in Land of the Pharaohs (1955), Quintus Arrius, Ben Hur's adopted Roman father, in Ben-Hur (1959), and Zulu (1964), where he played against type as the fanatical Rev. Otto Witt.
He was married to Jessica Tandy from 1932 to 1942 and later to Doreen Lawrence from 1946 until his death in 1973. In 1966, Hawkins was diagnosed with throat cancer and his entire larynx was removed; thereafter his performances were dubbed, usually by actor Charles Gray. Hawkins died in 1973 following an operation to insert an artificial voicebox. He was 62.
Selected films
- Theatre of Blood (1973)
- Young Winston (1972)
- Kidnapped (1971)
- Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)
- Jane Eyre (1970)
- Waterloo (1970)
- Monte Carlo or Bust (1969)
- Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)
- Lord Jim (1965)
- Guns at Batasi (1964)
- Zulu (1964)
- Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
- Ben-Hur (1959)
- The League of Gentlemen (1959)
- Gideon's Day (1958)
- The Two-Headed Spy (1958)
- The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
- The Man in the Sky (1957)
- The Long Arm (1956)
- The Prisoner (1955)
- Land of the Pharaohs (1955)
- Front Page Story (1954)
- The Intruder (1954)
- Angels One Five (1953)
- The Cruel Sea (1953)
- Malta Story (1953)
- Mandy (1952)
- No Highway (1951)
- The Black Rose (1950)
- State Secret (1950)
- The Elusive Pimpernel (1950)
- The Small Back Room (1949)
- Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948)
- The Fallen Idol (1948)
- Next of Kin (1942)
- Peg of Old Drury (1935)
- The Good Companions (1933)
- The Lodger (1932)
External links
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Hawkins, John Edward
Hawkins, John Edward
Hawkins, John Edward
Hawkins, John Edward
Hawkins, John Edward
Hawkins, John Edward
Arthur LoweArthur Lowe (September 22, 1915—April 15, 1982) was a British actor. He was best known for playing Captain George Mainwaring in the popular British sitcom Dad's Army; he also played the Captain's drunken brother Barry in one episode.
Arthur Lowe was born in Hayfield, Derbyshire. Lowe’s original intention was to join the Merchant Navy but this idea was thwarted due to his poor eyesight. Working at an aeroplane factory he joined the army on the eve of World War II, but not before experiencing his first brush with the acting world by working as a stagehand at the Manchester Palace of Varieties.
While serving in the Middle East, he began to take part in shows put on for the troops, which appears to have sparked his desire to act. Lowe became known for his character roles, making his debut at Manchester rep in 1946. He appeared on stage in many roles including parts in Call Me Madam, Pal Joey and The Pyjama Game and eventually featured in no less than fifty films.
By the 1960s Lowe had successfully made the transition to television and landed a regular role as draper/lay preacher Leonard Swindley in the Northern drama series Coronation Street. So popular was his role with viewers that he was eventually given his own spin off series Pardon the Expression. However, Leonard Swindley was not a role Arthur relished and he longed to move on to other parts, so it's no surprise that the months he was not playing Swindley he was busy on stage or making guest roles in other TV series including Z Cars and The Avengers.
In 1968, Lowe landed perhaps his most famous role, Captain George Mainwaring. It has often been remarked by his former colleague Bill Pertwee that this was the role Lowe played which most resembled himself: pompous and bumbling. His comic timing in the role could never be faulted and he went on to take the character into a radio series, stage play and feature length film.
When not filming Dad's Army Lowe would frequently be making films such as No Sex Please We're British and O Lucky Man!. He was in great demand for guest appearances on other TV shows such as The Morecambe and Wise Show.
He employed a multitude of voices on the 1975 BBC animated television series Mr. Men, where he voiced all the characters as well as narrated.
When Dad's Army ended in 1977, Lowe was still very much in demand with starring roles in TV programmes such as Bless Me Father and Potter. He also carried on working on the stage and films. An unusual role he had was in a silent film, 1979's 'The Plank', alongside Eric Sykes. Arthur Lowe reprised his role as George Mainwaring for the pilot episode of It Sticks Out Half a Mile, a radio sequel to Dad's Army.
In his spare time he would sail his restored 19th century boat, "The Amazon", across Europe accompanied by his wife Joan and would lead a very active life.
Lowe died of a stroke in his dressing room before a performance of Home at Seven in 1982 aged 66.
Two biographies on Arthur Lowe are available, Arthur Lowe - Dad's Memory by his son Stephen which was released in 1997 and more recently Arthur Lowe by Graham Lord.
Lowe, Arthur
Lowe, Arthur
Lowe, Arthur
Lowe, Arthur
Lowe, Arthur
Lowe, Arthur
Dennis PriceDennistoun Franklyn John Rose-Price (June 23, 1915 – October 6, 1973) was a British actor.
He was born in Berkshire on 23 June 1915. Taking the stage name Dennis Price, he enjoyed a long and successful film career, the high point of which was his performance as the suave murderer in the British comedy classic, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). His first starring part was in A Canterbury Tale in 1944, and he went on to appear in dozens of British films.
He was married to the actress Joan Schofield from 1939 to 1950. They had two children.
In 1959, he was the original "No.1" in charge of the crew of HMS Troughtbridge in the first series of the long-running radio comedy The Navy Lark but was unable to continue the role in the second series owing to other work commitments and was replaced by Stephen Murray.
In 1965, he became popular with television audiences for his performance as Jeeves opposite Ian Carmichael as Bertie Wooster in The World of Wooster. He died of cirrhosis of the liver in Guernsey on 6 October 1973, aged 58.
Selected films
- A Place of One's Own (1943)
- A Canterbury Tale (1944)
- Dear Murderer (1947)
- Jassy (1947)
- Holiday Camp (1948)
- The Bad Lord Byron (1948)
- Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
- The Magic Box (1951)
- Oh... Rosalinda!! (1955)
- Charley Moon (1956)
- Private's Progress (1956)
- The Naked Truth (1957)
- I'm All Right Jack (1959)
- The Millionairess (1960)
- Oscar Wilde (1960)
- The Pure Hell of St Trinian's (1960)
- School for Scoundrels (1960)
- Tunes of Glory (1960)
- Victim (1961)
- The Amorous Prawn (1962)
- Go to Blazes (1962)
- A Jolly Bad Fellow (1964)
- A High Wind in Jamaica (1965)
- Rocket to the Moon (1967)
- The Magic Christian (1969)
- Vampyros Lesbos (1971)
- Pulp (1972)
- Theatre of Blood (1973)
External links
- [http://www.pgwodehousebooks.com/ Jeeves and Wooster] on TV
Price, Dennis
Price, Dennis
Price, Dennis
Price, Dennis
Price, Dennis
Price, Dennis
Price, Dennis
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (Classical Latin: IMP·C·IVLIVS·CAESAR·DIVVS) (b. July 13, 100 BC; d. March 15, 44 BC) was a Roman military and political leader. He played an important part in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. His conquest of Gaul extended the Roman world all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, with the first Roman invasion of Britain in 55 BC. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest military geniuses of all time, as well as a brilliant politician; and one of the ancient world's strongest leaders along with Alexander the Great.
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great
Caesar fought and won a civil war which left him undisputed master of the Roman world, and began extensive reforms of Roman society and government. He was proclaimed dictator for life, and heavily centralized the already faltering government of the weak Republic. Caesar's friend Marcus Brutus conspired with others to assassinate Caesar in hopes of saving the Republic. The dramatic assassination on the Ides of March sparked a new civil war between the Caesarians: Octavian, Mark Antony, Lepidus, and Republicans: Brutus, Cassius, and Cicero among others. This conflict ended with a Caesarian victory at the Battle of Philippi, and the formal establishment of the Second Triumvirate in which Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus shared control of Rome. Tensions between Octavian and Antony soon plunged Rome into further civil war, culminating in Antony's defeat at the Battle of Actium, and leaving Octavian as the undisputed leader of the Roman world.
This period of civil wars transformed the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire with Caesar's great nephew and adopted son Octavian, later known as Caesar Augustus, installed as the first Emperor.
Caesar's military campaigns are known in detail from his own written Commentaries (Commentarii), and many details of his life are recorded by later historians such as Suetonius, Plutarch, and Cassius Dio.
Early Life
Caesar was born in Rome into a well-known patrician family (gens Julia), which supposedly traced its ancestry to Julus, the son of the Trojan prince Aeneas, who according to myth was the son of Venus. According to legend, Caesar was born by Caesarian section and is its namesake, though this is unlikely because it was only performed on dead women, and his mother lived long after he was born, this legend is more likely a modern invention, as the origin of the Caesarian section is in the Latin word for to cut, caedo, -ere, caesus sum. Caesar was raised in a modest apartment building (insula) in the Suburra, a lower-class neighborhood of Rome.
The Julii Caesares, although of impeccable aristocratic patrician stock, were not rich by the standards of the Roman nobility. Thus, no member of his family had achieved any outstanding prominence in recent times, though in his father's generation there was a renaissance of their fortunes. He was the namesake of his father (a praetor, who died in 85-84 BC) and his mother was Aurelia Cotta. His elder sister Julia Caesaris, was grandmother to Caesar Augustus. His paternal aunt, Julia, married Gaius Marius, a talented general and reformer of the Roman army. Marius became one of the richest men in Rome at the time and while he gained political influence, the Caesar family gained the wealth.
Towards the end of Marius' life in 86 BC, internal politics reached a breaking point. During this period Roman politicians were generally divided into two factions: the Populares, which included Marius, and the Optimates, which included Lucius Cornelius Sulla. A string of disputes between these two factions led to civil war and eventually opened the way to Sulla's dictatorship. Caesar was tied to the Populares through family connections. Not only was he Marius' nephew, he was also married to Cornelia, the youngest daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, Marius' greatest supporter and Sulla's enemy. To make matters worse, in the year 85 BC, just after Caesar turned 15, his father grew ill and soon died. Both Marius and his father had left Caesar much of their property and wealth in their wills.
Thus, when Sulla emerged as the winner of this civil war and began his program of proscriptions, Caesar, not yet 20 years old, was in a bad position. Sulla ordered Caesar to divorce Cornelia in 82 BC, but Caesar refused and prudently left Rome to hide. Sulla pardoned Caesar and his family and allowed him to return to Rome. In a prophetic moment, Sulla was said to comment on the dangers of letting Caesar live. According to Suetonius, the dictator in relenting on Caesar's proscription said, "He whose life you so much desire will one day be the overthrow of the part of nobles, whose cause you have sustained with me; for in this one Caesar, you will find many a Marius."
Despite Sulla's pardon, Caesar did not remain in Rome and left for military service in Asia and Cilicia. While still in Asia Minor, Caesar was involved in several military operations. In 80 BC, while still serving under Marcus Minucius Thermus, he played a pivotal role in the siege of Miletus. During the course of the battle Caesar showed such personal bravery in saving the lives of legionaries, that he was later awarded the corona civica (oak crown). The award was of the highest honor given to a non-commander, and when worn in public, even in the presence of the Roman Senate, all were forced to stand and applaud his presence.
Back in Rome in 78 BC, when Sulla died, Caesar began his political career in the Forum at Rome as an advocate, known for his oratory and ruthless prosecution of former governors notorious for extortion and corruption. The great orator Cicero even commented, "Does anyone have the ability to speak better than Caesar?" Aiming at rhetorical perfection, Caesar traveled to Rhodes in 75 BC for philosophical and oratorical studies with the famous teacher Apollonius Molo.
On the way, Caesar was kidnapped by Cilician pirates
Caesar's cursus honorum
pirates
Caesar was elected quaestor by the Assembly of the People in 70 BC, at the age of 30, as stipulated in the Roman cursus honorum. This office brought with it membership in the senate. He drew the lots and was assigned with a quaestorship in Hispania Ulterior, a Roman province roughly situated in modern Portugal and southern Spain. As an administrative and financial officer, the trip was largely uneventful, but while in Hispania he had the now famous encounter with a statue of Alexander the Great. Perhaps because of his weakened emotional state coupled with a growing and now obvious personal ambition, he had a definitive and prophetic reaction to the site of the statue. At the temple of Hercules in Gades, it was said that he either broke down and cried or at the very least was deeply saddened in reaction to it. When asked why he would react so, he responded: "Do you think I have not just cause to weep, when I consider that Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable."
Caesar was released early from his office as quaestor, and allowed to return to Rome. Despite any personal grief over the loss of his wife, whom all accounts suggest he loved dearly, Caesar was set to remarry in 67 BC for political gain. This time, however, he chose an odd alliance. The granddaughter of Sulla, and daughter of Quintus Pompey, Pompeia became his next wife. Although seeming to align himself with the Senatorial optimates, Caesar's other actions had little to do with conservative policy and he continued his course of support for a populares policy. Caesar supported the Lex Gabinia which granted Pompey the Great unlimited powers in dealing with Cilician Pirates. Later, and once again in the face of bitter Optimate resistance, Caesar supported the Lex Manilia which granted Pompey the unique and comprehensive command of the entire east against Mithridates. Obviously building a relationship with Rome’s great general would play into his hands later. The rivalry between Pompey and Caesar’s benefactor Crassus, seemed to have little effect on Caesar. Crassus continued to support Caesar’s enormous debts over the next few years.
Between the support of the two laws regarding Pompey’s command, Caesar served as the curator of the Appian Way. The maintenance of this road, which stretched from Rome through Cumae to the heel of Italy’s boot, was an important and high profile position. While it was enormously expensive to him personally, it gave a great deal of prestige to the young Senator, and Crassus’ support made it an achievable task for Caesar. All the while, Caesar continued pursuing his judicial career until his election as curule aedile in 65 BC, along with Bibulus, a young rival and member of the optimate faction.
This magisterial position was the next step in the Roman cursus honorum and provided a grand opportunity for the master of the public spectacle. The curule aediles were responsible for the construction and care of temples, maintenance of public buildings, traffic, and other aspects of Rome's daily life. Perhaps most importantly, the aediles staged public games on state holidays and managed the Circus Maximus. Caesar indebted himself to the point of near financial ruin during this time, but enhanced his image irreversibly with the common people. His games were spectacular affairs, and building projects during his term were ambitious. In a spectacle to honor his father, Caesar displayed 320 pairs of gladiators clad in silver armor at an enormous expense.
Caesar pushed his agenda further by erecting statues of Marius for public display. The senate was outraged, but Caesar’s popularity made him nearly untouchable. They could, however, attempt to block his political path through other means. Caesar may have been nominated to take charge of quelling a disturbance in Egypt but was unable to win enough support to take the position. Caesar ended his year as aedile in both glory and bankruptcy. His debts reached several hundred gold talents (millions of Euros in today's currency) and threatened to hinder his future political career. His co-aedile Bibulus was so unspectacular in comparison that he later commented in frustration that the entire year’s aedile ship was credited to Caesar alone, instead of both. Roman satirists ever after referred to the year as "the consulship of Julius and Caesar".
His success as aedile, however, enormously helped his election as Pontifex Maximus (high priest) in 63 BC, following the death of the previous pontifex Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius. This office came with a house — the Domus Publica (public house) — in the Forum, the responsibility of all Roman religious affairs and the custody of the Vestal virgins under his roof. For Caesar, it also meant a relief of his debts. This election bestowed considerable power on Caesar, with the opportunity for income. The Pontifex was elected to a lifetime term. While technically not a political office, the pontificate provided considerable advantages in dealing with the Senate and legislation.
Scandal marred Caesar's debut as Pontifex. Following Cornelia's death, Caesar had married Pompeia, a granddaughter of Sulla, in 67 BC. As the wife of the Pontifex and an important matrona, Pompeia was responsible for the organization of the Bona Dea festival in December. These sacred rites were exclusive to women. However, Publius Clodius Pulcher managed to sneak in the house disguised as a woman. This was absolute sacrilege and Pompeia received a letter of divorce. Caesar himself admitted that she might be innocent of wrongdoing, but that: "Caesar's wife, like the rest of Caesar's family, must be above suspicion."
Sixty-three BC proved especially difficult, not only for Caesar, but for the Roman Republic itself. Caesar won the office of urban Praetor, but before he could take office, the Catiline Conspiracy erupted, putting Caesar in direct conflict with the optimates once again. Lucius Sergius Catilina, twice a candidate for consul, faced charges of plotting to overthrow the Republic through armed rebellion. Catiline's guilt is disputed. In the elections held in late 63 BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero defeated Catiline in the consular election.
Soon afterwards, Crassus received anonymous letters informing various Senators to leave Rome in order to avoid a coming massacre of government leaders. Crassus took the letters to Cicero, who presented the conspiracy concept to the Senate. Many in the Senate disbelieved him, thinking that Cicero fabricated the affair for political gain. Cicero’s oratorical eloquence, however, convinced the Senate that plot warranted extreme steps. Senatus consultum ultimum followed granting Cicero the authority to deal with the conspirators. Catiline, among others, became the prime target. In response he decided to flee Rome, but not before being implicated in a plot to assassinate Cicero. The plot failed, and Catiline left to join the rebellion in Etruria.
Five notable Romans, allies of Catiline, were sentenced to death without trial. Imprisonment before trial was unheard of and if banished the men might have joined Catiline's armies in Etruria. During the Senate's deliberation, Caesar was one of the few men to argue against a death sentence. His position was defeated, due to Cato the younger's insistence, and the men were executed on the same day. This was also the day on which Caesar's affair with Servilia Caepionis was exposed to the public eye. Caesar's opposition prompted accusations — never proved — of his involvement with the conspiracy.
If Caesar was implicated in the Catiline affair, it did him no lasting damage. In the following year, Caesar began a term as urban praetor. From this elite position, he once again pushed his populares policies. He asked for an account of the cost of restoring the capital, in which he was opposed by the optimates. Unsuccessful in that attempt, he strengthened his standing with Pompey, who was soon to return to Rome from his eastern campaigns. Pompey’s return troubled the optimates, who feared a Sullan-style march to Rome and dictatorship. They needed to present the city, and the surrounding countryside, as a stable environment not in need of Pompey to ‘restore order’. Pompey’s ally, Caecilius Metellus Nepos, however, took the matter to the Senate demanding that Pompey be allowed to land in Italy and do just that. Caesar supported Nepos and Pompey, but Cato defeated the motion. Nepos fled Rome to join Pompey, and Caesar was eventually stripped of the Praetorship. When a mob in support of Caesar threatened violence his position was restored. Caesar quelled the mob before any violence ensued.
Towards the end of his Praetorship, Caesar again faced the serious jeopardy of prosecution for his debts. Crassus, rescuing his ally, paid off a quarter of his 20 million denarii balance. By 61 BC, Caesar was assigned the Propraetorian governorship of further Hispania, the province in which he had served as quaestor. With this appointment to a potentially profitable position, his creditors relaxed their demands. Not taking chances, Caesar left Rome earlier than this new responsibility required.
Caesar and his staff rode hard, reaching the Rhone in only 8 days, and presaging his future ability to move armies at remarkable speeds. On the way, several members of his entourage noted the barbaric, and, in their view, wretched standard of living in the local villages. Caesar, demonstrating his ambition replied, "For my part, I’d rather be the first man among these fellows than the second man in Rome." During his term as governor, Caesar strengthened his relationship with these Gallic peoples, which proved to be an important factor in his later plans.
Arriving in Hispania, Caesar earned a remarkable reputation for military command. Between 61 BC and 60 BC, he won considerable victories over the Gallaecians and Lusitanians. He advanced to the Atlantic Ocean and subdued tribes in the northwest part of the country that had never before bowed to the Romans. He secured sufficient spoils of war to pay off all of his debts, provide his men a considerable share of booty, and add to the Roman treasury. During one of his victories, his men hailed him as Imperator in the field, which was a vital consideration in being eligible for a triumph back in Rome. But a terrible dilemma faced Caesar. He wanted to run for Consul for 59 BC, which required his presence in Rome, but he also wanted the honor of a triumph. The optimates could use this against him, forcing him to wait outside the city, as was the custom, until they confirmed his triumph. This delay could force Caesar to miss his chance to run for Consul. In the summer of 60 BC, Caesar entered Rome to run for the highest political office in the Roman Republic, foregoing his triumph.
The First Triumvirate and the Gallic War
In 60 BC (or 59 BC) the Centuriate Assembly elected Caesar senior Consul of the Roman Republic. His junior partner was his political enemy Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, an Optimate and personal friend of Marcus Porcius Cato. Bibulus' first act as Consul was to retire from all political activity in order to search the skies for omens. This apparently pious decision was designed to make Caesar's life difficult during his Consulship. Thus leading to the informal name of the two consuls in the consulship "Julius and Caesar." Caesar needed allies and he found them where none of his enemies expected.
The leading general of the day, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great), was unsuccessfully fighting the Senate for farmlands for his veterans. A former Consul, Marcus Licinius Crassus, allegedly the richest man in Rome, was also having problems in obtaining his long-desired military command against the Parthian Empire. Caesar desperately needed Crassus's money and Pompey's influence, and an informal alliance soon followed: The First Triumvirate (rule by three men). To confirm the alliance, Pompey married Julia Caesaris, Caesar's only daughter. Despite their differences in age and upbringing, this political marriage proved to be a love match.
Following a difficult year as Consul, Caesar was appointed to a five year term as Proconsular Governor of Transalpine Gaul (current southern France) and Illyria (the coast of Dalmatia). Not content with an idle governorship, Caesar started the Gallic Wars (58 BC–49 BC) in which he conquered all of Gaul (the rest of current France) and parts of Germania and annexed them to Rome. Among his legates were his cousins Lucius Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, Titus Labienus and Quintus Tullius Cicero, the younger brother of Caesar's political opponent, Cicero.
Caesar defeated the Helvetii (in Switzerland) in 58 BC, the Belgic confederacy and the Nervii in 57 BC and the Veneti in 56 BC. On August 26th 55 BC he attempted an invasion of Britain and, in 52 BC he defeated a union of Gauls led by Vercingetorix at the battle of Alesia. He recorded his own accounts of these campaigns in De Bello Gallico ("On the Gallic War").
According to Plutarch, the whole campaign resulted in 800 conquered cities, 300 subdued tribes, one million men sold to slavery and another three million dead in battle fields. Ancient historians notoriously exaggerated numbers of this kind, but Caesar's conquest of Gaul was certainly the greatest military invasion since the campaigns of Alexander the Great. The victory was also far more lasting than those of Alexander's - Gaul never regained its Celtic identity, never attempted another nationalist rebellion, and remained loyal to Rome until the fall of the Western Empire in 476.
Despite his successes and the benefits to Rome, Caesar remained unpopular among his peers, especially the conservative faction, who suspected him of wanting to be king. In 55 BC, his partners Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls and honored their agreement with Caesar by prolonging his proconsulship for another five years. This was the last act of the First Triumvirate.
In 54 BC, Julia Caesaris died in childbirth, leaving both Pompey and Caesar heartbroken. Crassus was killed in 53 BC during his campaign in Parthia. Without Crassus or Julia, Pompey drifted towards the Optimates. Still in Gaul, Caesar tried to secure Pompey's support by offering him one of his nieces in marriage, but Pompey refused. Instead, Pompey married Cornelia Metella, the daughter of Metellus Scipio, one of Caesar's greatest enemies.
The civil war
Metellus Scipio
In 50 BC, the Senate, led by Pompey, ordered Caesar to return to Rome and disband his army because his term as Proconsul had finished. Moreover, the Senate forbade Caesar to stand for a second consulship in absentia. Caesar thought he would be prosecuted and politically marginalized if he entered Rome without the immunity enjoyed by a Consul or without the power of his army. Pompey accused Caesar of insubordination and treason. On January 10, 49 BC Caesar crossed the Rubicon (the frontier boundary of Italy) with only one legion and ignited civil war. Historians differ as to what Caesar said upon crossing the Rubicon; the two competing lines are
"Alea iacta est" ("The die is cast"), and "Let the dice fly high!" (a line from the New Comedy poet Menander). This minor controversy is occasionally seen in modern literature when an author attributes the less popular Menander line to Caesar.
The Optimates, including Metellus Scipio and Cato the Younger, fled to the south, not knowing that Caesar had only his Tenth Legion with him. Caesar pursued Pompey to Brundisium, hoping to restore their alliance of ten years prior. Pompey eluded him, however, and Caesar made an astonishing 27-day route-march to Hispania where he defeated Pompey's lieutenants. He then returned east, to challenge Pompey in Greece where on July 10, 48 BC at |
