Though she was growing weak in body, her power, especially after the glorious defeat of the Spanish Armada, had never been greater. After all, by that year Queen Elizabeth I had been on the throne forty-one years. It may have been Shakespeare’s own worries about the future of his own country that prompted him to tackle Julius Caesar for his next play in 1599. And it was probably this source, translated from Greek to French and French to English in 1579 by Thomas North, which fell into the hands of the ‘upstart crow’ playwright William Shakespeare. Of his examination Plutarch said, “It is not histories I am writing, but lives and in the most glorious deeds there is not always an indication of virtue of vice, indeed a small thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of a character than battles where thousands die” Plutarch ( Life of Alexander/Life of Julius Caesar, Parallel Lives, ). It was about 100 years after the death of the first Roman dictator Julius Caesar that the great historian Plutarch (46–120 CE) wrote a biography.
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