ABSTRACT
He used English translations whenever possible. I t is likely that he wrote with North's Plutarch by his side; that he consulted the translation of Appian; and for the portents before the assassination remembered, or consulted again, the end of Golding's version of the Metamorphoses, Virgil's Georgics, Bk. I, and Lucan's account of the portents of civil war after Cresar had crossed the Rubicon. 2
Other works probably used included the Mirror for Magistrates, Sir Thomas Elyot's The Governour, Kyd's Cornelia and maybe Gesar's Revenge, but the main source for Julius CtBsar, AntOlry and Cleopatra and Coriolanus was Plutarch's Lives in which can be found almost everything historical in these plays. For Julius CtBsar he used at least the Lives of CtBsar, Brutus and Mark Alltorry, and he may also have read the biographies of Cato and Cicero. All three major Lives contain the main incidents of his plot, and treat Cresar, the conspirators and Antony in much the same way, although the emphasis naturally changes in each biography [Texts I, II, III and AC Text I].
