The play is based on historical events surrounding the conspiracy against the ancient Roman leader Julius Caesar (c.100-44B.C.) and the civil war that followed his death. Shakespeare portrays Caesar's assassination on the Ides of March (March 15) by a group of conspirators who feared the ambitious leader would turn the Roman Republic into a tyrannical monarchy. Shakespeare' s main source for the play is Plutarch's famous biography The Life of Julius Caesar, written in Greek in the 1st century and translated into English in 1579 by Sir Thomas North. Life of William Shakespeare is a biography of William Shakespeare by the eminent critic Sidney Lee. This book was one of the first major biographies of the Bard of Avon. It was published in 1898, based on the article contributed to the Dictionary of National Biography. William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, the authorship of some of which is uncertain. Sir Sidney Lee (1859 – 1926) was an English biographer and critic. He was a lifelong scholar and enthusiast of Shakespeare. His article on Shakespeare in the fifty-first volume of the Dictionary of National Biography formed the basis of his Life of William Shakespeare. This full-length life is often credited as the first modern biography of the poet.