That may seem pretty obvious, but it is a quite different structure from that employed by Shakespeare for similar story types in other plays. Shakespeare deals with regicide, or the assassination of a political leader, repeatedly, but two examples, one earlier and one later than Julius Caesar, will serve here. Richard II, the earlier play, ends with Richard’s own death, which, as discussed in Chapter 4, has two immediate effects on the play’s politics. First, it constructs the narrative as a tragedy, organized around the life and death of the title character. And second, it means that there
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