Jonathan Bate is one of the world’s foremost authorities on Shakespeare. He is a senior research fellow and professor of English literature at Worcester College at the University of Oxford, as well as Arizona State University’s Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities. Any new book from him is significant, and his How the Classics Made Shakespeare is especially important. It is a sad commentary on the current state of Shakespeare criticism that this book needed to be written, but Bate has indeed performed a valuable service by reminding us that the achievement of the greatest English author was deeply rooted in traditions that go all the way back to the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. As Shakespeare criticism becomes increasingly redirected and limited to our own contemporary concerns, people are in danger of forgetting that Shakespeare drew a great deal of his wisdom and inspiration from the ancient past. It is not just that people today have lost sight of Shakespeare’s grounding in the classical tradition. They are on the verge of losing sight of the classical tradition itself. How can they appreciate the ways that Shakespeare drew sustenance from the Greek and Roman classics when they have never experienced for themselves the depth and grandeur of these works?
