Plutarch’s biographies provided the principal source material for Shakespeare’s Roman plays.
Shakespeare drew especially on Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, a collection pairing famous Greek and Roman statesmen. The Roman plays most directly associated with this source are Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. Plutarch supplied episodes, speeches, character details and historical anecdotes that Shakespeare reshaped for the stage.
Shakespeare used the English translation made by Sir Thomas North, published in 1579. North translated from Jacques Amyot’s French version rather than directly from Plutarch’s original Greek. Shakespeare often followed North’s wording closely while compressing events, combining characters and heightening dramatic conflict.
For example, Julius Caesar draws on Plutarch’s lives of Caesar, Brutus and Antony. Antony and Cleopatra uses material from the lives of Antony and Caesar, while Coriolanus adapts the life of Coriolanus. Tacitus, Livy and Suetonius were important Roman historians, but they are not the standard single answer to this quiz question. “Plutarch” identifies the author; “North’s translation of Parallel Lives” gives the more precise route by which Shakespeare encountered the biographies.