“This was a man!” Goethe’s <i>Egmont </i>and Shakespeare’s<i> Julius Caesar</i>

While it is well known that passages in Goethe's Egmont owe a debt to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the relationship between the two plays has not been examined systematically. Additional intertextual evidence makes it probable that Goethe referred to Julius Caesar while writing Egmont. The plays have a strikingly similar constellation of characters: the politically naive hero (Brutus and Egmont) contrasts with the brilliant schemer (Cassius and Oranien). Although the historical context of the two plays is very different, reading Egmont intertextually in this way sheds light on its peculiar politics and much-maligned anti-illusionistic ending