OTHER ELEMENTS

SETTING

All scenes through Act IV, Scene i are set in Rome. Act IV, Scenes ii and iii, take place near Sardis in Asia Minor. All of Act V is set near the plains of Philippi in Greece. The play begins on February 15, 44
B.C., on the Feast of Lupercal; continues through the assassination of Caesar a month later; and concludes with the Battle of Philippi in 42 B.C., when Brutus and Cassius commit suicide and Caesar's heir, Octavius, assumes power. Shakespeare, of course, was a dramatist, not a playwright, and in order to preserve the dramatic unity of the action he telescoped a period of three years into six days.

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