'Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corruptsabsolulely,. Three centuries before this memorablephrase was coined by Lord Acton, Shakespeare haddemonstrated its dramatic truth in lulius Caesar.To the events surrounding the assassination of luliusCaesar in 44BC, Shakespeare introduces the dangerousthemes of thwarted ambition, political reaction andcrude demagoguery in a brilliant indictment of realpolitik.Although the play is a sharp comment on corruptedpolitical motives, it contains some of Shakespeare'sfinest speeches, and remains as relevant today as in theseventeenth century.

Shakespeare composed Julius Caesar in about 1599, using as his source Sir Thomas North"s translation of Plutarch"s Lives, which had been published about twenty years earlier. He constructed the plot as a familiar peg on which to hang the dramatic interest which arises from the interplay of the three main characters, Brutus,Cassius and Antony.

  After nearly a century of bloody civil war, Rome"s most successful general, Julius Caesar, has been appointed dictator to restore order to the Republic. When he returns in triumph from a campaign in Spain, the pomp of his reception makes two leading senators, Caesar"s friend Brutus and the envious Cassius, fear that Caesar will have himself proclaimed king. Brutus is descended from the Marcus Junius Brutus who was instrumental in ejecting the kings of Rome five centuries earlier, and the prospect of the overthrow of the Republic is anathema to him, so he reluctantly joins Cassius and other conspirators in a plot to murder Caesar when he attends the Senate. The assassination is successfully accomplished, and Brutus brilliantly justifies this savage act to the Roman mob. But Mark Antony, who has been allowed to deliver the funeral oration to the same mob, surpasses Brutus"s eloquence with a speech of fiery oratory, combining such demagoguery,irony and mock humility that the plebs turn against the conspirators, who flee Rome. They raise an army, but are defeated at Philippi by the combined forces of Antony and Caesar"s heir Octavian, afterwards Augustus. Brutus and Cassius subsequently commit suicide.