The late Elizabethan Period was marked by socio-economic discontent. Amid this,
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1599) featured a prominent debate: whether or not
tyrannicide could solve problems. Around 1599, Essex formulated a like-minded
political revolution only to dismiss it until 1601. Yet, as providentialist and
republican debates failed to provide solutions against misgovernment, the 1601 Essex
rebellion also proved abortive. Essex was considered another regicide Brutus rather
than a saviour. Contrary to the majority of apolitical or ahistorical critical analyses
about tyranny in the play, a historicized analysis of Julius Caesar, therefore,
illustrates how tyrannicide might have been perceived by Elizabethan playgoers.