Shakespeare’s dramatisation of the conspiracy surrounding the grisly assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC reflects many of the big questions that gripped the playwright’s age. Indeed, the incident – widely regarded in the west as the most famous non-Biblical historical event – was already popular with Elizabethan writers. At least four other plays about Caesar had been produced in the two decades prior to Shakespeare’s, which was written c1599.
Those who lived through the religious and political upheaval triggered by the Protestant Reformation saw parallels with the chaos of the late Roman republic. For Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the notion of life without a monarch would have been inconceivable. His portrayal of Caesar as a would-be king whose untimely death and lack of nominated successor plunged the Roman world into chaos would have resonated with spectators mindful of the unresolved matter of Elizabeth I’s successor.
Shakespeare’s use of anachronism in the play serves to reinforce the symmetry between ancient events and contemporary questions about the nature of power. For example, in Act 2, Scene 1, a clock chimes – perhaps to nudge his early modern audience to consider how concerns of their own time echoed those of ancient Rome.