Context — Julius Caesar — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Context
Introduction
What you need to know
The context of Julius Caesar: the Roman Republic and Caesar's rise to dictator, Shakespeare's source in Plutarch's Lives,
Elizabethan fears about the succession and rebellion, rhetoric and the art of persuasion, and Roman belief in omens.
How to use this context in an answer about the play rather than as background.
The Roman Republic and Caesar's rise: the First Triumvirate, the Gallic Wars, crossing the Rubicon, civil war with Pompey, and the title of dictator for life in 44 BC.
Why Romans feared a king: Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Republic who drove out the last king, and the crown Antony offered Caesar at the Lupercalia.
Shakespeare's source, Plutarch's Lives in Thomas North's English translation, and what Shakespeare changed, such as setting the funeral, the will and Octavius's arrival on the day of the murder.
Elizabethan anxieties: a childless queen who would not name an heir, fear of rebellion and civil war, the play as one of the first staged at the Globe in 1599, and the Earl of Essex's failed rising in 1601.
Rhetoric as the art of persuasion: appeals to reason, to the speaker's character and to emotion, and how the funeral speeches use them.
Omens and fate: the seer who warned Caesar about the Ides of March, Calpurnia's dream, and the portents Roman writers recorded before his death.
