Similarities Between Shakespeare And Plutarch

Shakespeare and Plutarch:

Two Similar Yet Different Looks on Julius Caesar’s Life Plutarch was a prominent Greek biographer who was born in the small town of Chaeronea in 46 AD and died in 120 AD. His most recognized piece of writing was the Livesof Noble Grecians and Romanoes which first published in 1579. Since Lives was written in Plutarch’s native tongue Greek, it was later translated into French by Jacques Amyot of Melun. Amyot’s French translation was then translated into English by Sir Thomas North. According to Geoffrey Bullough’s Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Sir Thomas North’s translated version of Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Grecians and Romanoes is where Shakespeare draws most of his information from for his famous tragedy Julius Caesar. (Bullough 12) In the Lives of Noble Grecians and Romanoes, Plutarch takes the lives of several influential and prominent Greek and Roman men and describes their lives as a whole. He then compares them to each other based on “similar characteristics, situations, or periods in History.” It is believed that Alexander the Great biography was written parallel to that of Julius Caesar. Bullough described Plutrach’s Lives series as being “interested

However, in Plutarch’s Life of Julius Caesar, Caesar is directly forwarned of the conspiracy against him and in Shakespeare’s Caesar he is not. In Plutarch’s Life of Julius Caesar, it is written that Caesar was directly forewarned of the conspirators plot to kill him and that Brutus was the leader. His response to this information according to Plutarch was “… and once, when the conspiracy was already formed and some people were accusing Brutus to Caesar of being involved in it, Caesar laid his hand on his body and said to the accusers: ‘Brutus will wait for this skin of mine’” (www.