The fact that Shakespeare rarely composed original plots is as universally known as the fact that it is his treatment of old plots that sets his work so far above his sources. One cannot but wonder, however, at the reasons which may have led him to the choice of each particular story, or avoid pondering on the influence which may have weighed on the decision about the dramatic tone of the play at hand. Obviously, most themes carry in themselves the seed of their own dramatic category, but a certain element of personal conception is always present: Richard II and Richard III, for example, contain dramatic tendencies which are absent in Henry VI, Henry IV and Henry V, and yet Shakespeare went to the same sources for all of them; and there is an indisputable element of personal approach in Shakespeare’s use of Roman historic material in the tragic or quasi-tragic Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.