ABSTRACT
The Routledge Research Companion to Shakespeare and Classical Literature aims to inspire future writing and discussion about Shakespeare's relationship to "the classic" in two broad senses of this term. The challenge of upholding Shakespeare's "classic" status in this second, laudatory sense is complicated by modernity and its historical consciousness. As a result of this modern distancing of the past, Shakespeare's exaltation as a "classic" author in the second sense begins to put him in a category similar to that of "classics" in the first sense - especially as people's language and knowledge and artistic media evolve, becoming ever farther removed from his. Overviews and argumentative essays about the presence of Greco-Roman traditions in Shakespeare's writing stand alongside thought-pieces on the use of "the classical" as a historical and pedagogical category, and with practical essays on the place of ancient classics in our Shakespearean classrooms.
