Julius Caesar"s exciting plot, brilliant rhetoric, and searching characterisation have made it one of Shakespeare"s most popular plays with both readers and theatre-goers. Introducing this thoroughly reconsidered edition, Arthur Humphreys provides a fresh look at the play"s date and its place in the Shakespeare canon and examines Shakespeare"s transmutation of history into drama. He investigates the play"s ethical and moral concerns in a section on Roman values and analyses its fortunes in performance, from its immediately successful first staging to modern productions for cinema, television, and stage.