Dramatic Techniques

Abstract

No other of Shakespeare’s major plays owes so much to its source as Julius Caesar does to Plutarch’s Lives (see p. 3). Not only are the characters developed from the brief studies Plutarch gives of the leading figures, but the Lives also provided much of the dramatic background for the events they record, such as the portents preceding the murder of Caesar, and more personal episodes such as the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius and Portia’s appeal to Brutus. In Plutarch’s account one can already hear the elevated tone of Shakespeare’s Brutus: