As a result, critics have long debated whether Brutus or Caesar is the chief protagonist of Julius Caesar and whether either of them qualifies as a tragic hero. Shakespeare carefully designed his play in such a way that it seems to support, or at least allows for, both views. One held that Brutus and the other conspirators were ruthless murderers who unjustly killed their would-be emperor the other interpreted their actions as the rightful deposing of a tyrant. By Elizabethan times, two sharply contrasting views of this period in Roman history had emerged. While the action of Julius Caesar closely follows the events described by Plutarch, Shakespeare greatly modified the significance of those events. According to some academic studies, Shakespeare was not especially interested in the details of history addressed by Plutarch rather, he focused on the underlying character strengths and weaknesses, as well as the motives, that Plutarch noted in many of the great ancient leaders. Plutarch was a Greek historian and essayist whose work constitutes a record of the historical tradition, the moral views, and the ethical judgments of ancient Greek and Roman cultures.
In writing Julius Caesar, Shakespeare chiefly drew on the events in the lives of the historical figures of Brutus, Caesar, and Antony, which he took from biographies written by Plutarch, called Parallel Lives (translated by Thomas North as The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans in 1579). In other words, Shakespeare's audiences were well experienced with the material that made up this tragic drama even the stories of English history that they studied in school were colored by the conquests of the play's title military genius. Also, neither political assassinations nor ambitious tyranny, which are topics covered in the play, were novel concepts. Other aspects of this play that Shakespeare's audiences could relate to included civil wars, which they were forced to endure, and the wide gap between the powerful, wealthy aristocracy and the working class populace. The drama was apparently quite popular among Elizabethan audiences, most of whom were familiar, from numerous other literary sources, with the historical Julius Caesar. Scholars generally agree that Julius Caesar was first written and performed in 1599 and may have been the first of Shakespeare's plays to be presented in the newly constructed Globe theater in London.
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