Emeritus professor’s edition of ‘Julius Caesar’ launches new Arden Shakespeare series
Andrew Hartley, Emeritus Robinson Distinguished Professor of Shakespeare Studies, is the volume editor for the new Arden Shakespeare edition of “Julius Caesar.” Released on May 14 by Bloomsbury Publishing, “Julius Caesar” is, along with “Titus Andronicus,” the first volume issued in The Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series.
With its first series launched in 1899, Arden Shakespeare has presented acclaimed scholarly editions of Shakespeare’s plays and poems for more than a century. Each edition in the Fourth Series will include an illustrated critical introduction and feature an improved page layout with extensive on-page explanatory notes.
Hartley has a long history with “Julius Caesar” and is the editor of The Arden Shakespeare’s 2016 publication, “Julius Caesar: A Critical Reader.” Now more than 425 years old, the play still demands new study and interpretation, he said in an interview with Bloomsbury.
“Scholarship evolves, and that changes the way we see the plays, even changes the nature of the play itself. The editions we work with as scholars and teachers should reflect the best of current thought on the play and its place in culture. And, of course, we change too. Since reading Shakespeare is in some ways about reading ourselves, editions need to evolve with the larger culture.”
While “Julius Caesar” depicts historical events in Ancient Rome, Hartley said the play “has always had a knack for contemporary resonance” and that it feels “fresh and clear-sighted, even as it balances high-minded principle and profound cynicism.”
In “Julius Caesar,” Shakespeare “reflects darkly on authoritarianism and the manipulation of the populace,” he said and added that he hopes this new edition conveys “a sense of political immediacy, even urgency, and—somewhat paradoxically—a sense of actual people moving against the antique backdrop.”
Hartley retired from UNC Charlotte in 2022 after 18 years on the faculty. He is the author of various scholarly books, including “The Shakespearean Dramaturg” and “Shakespeare and Political Theatre,” and was the editor of the performance journal Shakespeare Bulletin (Johns Hopkins UP) for a decade.
Under the names A.J. Hartley and Andrew Hart, he is also the award-winning author of nearly 30 works of fiction. His most recent series is “Hideki Smith”; the third book in that series is underway.
Even with all of his academic and literary accomplishments, Hartley said in a recent blog post that the publication of the new “Julius Caesar” volume, which he began working on in 2017, is a “very big deal: the highlight of my career and the chance to shape discussion, classroom teaching, research and theatre/film productions of this play for something like the next three decades.”
The earliest known productions of “Julius Caesar” date from 1599, but the play was not published until 1623. Hartley’s new volume presents the text based on those earliest performances, which required a line-by-line study of the Folio text of 1623, “addressing its errors and ambiguities and restoring elements which—based on external evidence—seem to have been changed between the play’s first appearance on stage and the Folio’s printing,” he told Storied Charlotte.
Hartley will discuss the new edition at a book signing event on June 3 at Park Road Books.