Shakespeare and the Cleopatra/Caesar Intertext Sequel, Conflation, Remake

Is William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra a sequel to the earlier Julius Caesar? If this question raises issues of authorship and reception, it also interrogates the construction of dramatic sequels: how does a playtext ultimately become the follow-up of another text? This book explores how dramatic works written before and after Shakespeare's time have encouraged us to view Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra as strongly interconnected plays, encouraging their sequelization in the theater and paving the way toward the filmic conflations of the twentieth century. Blending theories of literary and filmic intertextuality with issues of race and gender, and written by an author trained both in early modern and film studies, this book can easily find its place in any syllabus in Shakespeare or in media studies, as well as in a wide range of cultural and literary courses.

Sarah Hatchuel is professor of early modern English literature and director of the Research Group on Identities and Cultures (GRIC) at the University of Le Havre (France).