ABSTRACT
The parallels between II Cesare and Julius ClBsar are close, but Shakespeare could have got from Appian and Plutarch most of what Boecker thought he took from Pescetti. The Portia parallel is striking, but, being obliged to develop her part in the play, which otherwise would contain only one woman, Shakespeare would easily hit on such a scene as that between Portia and Brutus in II. I .233ff. The timing of this conversation, in the early morning, and her insistence on her masculine reliability (II.I.29I-8) are both close to Pescetti. But Shakespeare makes short work of her 'voluntary wound'.
