Context: Republican Rome & Elizabethan England
Why Shakespeare Wrote About Rome
Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar around 1599, drawing heavily on Sir Thomas North’s English translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Plutarch provided the historical detail — the assassination, the funeral speeches, the civil war — but Shakespeare transformed dry biography into a gripping political thriller. He compressed timelines, invented dialogue, and gave far more dramatic weight to moments he found in his source, such as the soothsayer’s warning.
The play was first performed at the newly built Globe Theatre. It was one of Shakespeare’s most popular works in his lifetime, partly because Roman history was central to Elizabethan education. Grammar school students studied Plutarch, Cicero, and Seneca. An Elizabethan audience would have recognised the historical figures instantly and understood the political parallels Shakespeare was drawing.
Shakespeare’s primary source was Plutarch’s Lives, translated by Sir Thomas North in 1579. Shakespeare drew on North’s 1579 translation of Plutarch for the broad outline of events, though Antony’s funeral speech is Shakespeare’s own rhetorical invention — Plutarch’s account summarises the funeral in only a few lines.
The Roman Republic
To understand the play, you need to understand what Rome was in 44 BC. Rome was a republic — a state governed not by a king but by elected senators and consuls. The Romans had overthrown their last king, Tarquin the Proud, in 509 BC and were fiercely proud of their republican system. The very idea of one man holding permanent, unchecked power was considered tyranny — the worst political crime imaginable.
Julius Caesar had been appointed ‘dictator perpetuo’ (dictator for life) by the Senate. To his supporters, he was a brilliant military leader who had expanded the empire and given land to soldiers and the poor. To his enemies, he was destroying the republic by concentrating power in himself. This is the central tension of the play: was Caesar a tyrant who deserved to die, or a great leader murdered by jealous men?
Senate: The governing body of Rome, made up of around 600 wealthy, aristocratic men (the patricians). Senators like Brutus and Cassius saw themselves as guardians of the republic.
Consul: The two annually elected leaders of Rome. Power was deliberately shared to prevent any one person becoming a king. Caesar’s appointment as permanent dictator violated this principle.
Plebeians: The common people of Rome. In the play, they are fickle and easily swayed — first cheering Brutus, then turning on the conspirators after Antony’s speech. Shakespeare uses them to explore how easily the public can be manipulated.
Elizabethan Parallels: Succession and Anxiety
Shakespeare was not writing about Rome for its own sake. In 1599, Queen Elizabeth I was sixty-six years old, unmarried, and had no heir. The question of who would succeed her dominated English politics. There was genuine fear that her death would trigger a power struggle, even civil war. A play about the assassination of a powerful leader and the chaos that followed would have felt dangerously relevant to an Elizabethan audience.
Elizabeth’s government was nervous about public discussions of succession. The censorship laws meant that plays touching on sensitive political themes had to be disguised. By setting his story in ancient Rome, Shakespeare could explore power, assassination, and political instability without directly criticising the English government. The Roman setting was a protective veil.
Elizabeth I had no heir in 1599. The play’s depiction of political assassination and civil war mirrored genuine English anxieties about what would happen when the queen died. Shakespeare used Rome as a safe setting to explore dangerous political questions about power, legitimacy, and the consequences of removing a leader.
In 1601, just two years after Julius Caesar was first performed, the Earl of Essex launched a failed rebellion against Elizabeth I. Essex’s supporters paid Shakespeare’s company to perform Richard II (a play about the deposition of a king) the night before the uprising, hoping to inspire public support. The incident shows how seriously the Elizabethan government took the power of theatre to influence politics. Julius Caesar’s themes of political assassination and mob manipulation were not abstract — they were live, dangerous topics.
Key Contextual Themes for the Exam
For AQA’s AO3 (context), you need to connect the play to its historical and political background. The most important contextual threads are: the Roman republican ideal that no one man should hold absolute power; the Elizabethan succession crisis and fear of political instability; the divine right debate about whether rulers hold power from God or from the people; and Shakespeare’s use of Plutarch to give historical authority to his drama.
Shakespeare does not give a simple answer to the play’s central question. He presents arguments on both sides — Brutus’s honourable intentions, Cassius’s jealousy, Antony’s grief and political cunning, the mob’s violence. The audience must decide for themselves whether the assassination was justified. This ambiguity is what makes the play so powerful for exam analysis.