Do you guys think that the extent so which Julius Caesar is known was heavily altered by his depiction in the Shakespearean play? To clarify, was it possible that Caesar’s legacy and influence had slipped into obscurity in the centuries that passed and was later revamped after the play potentially drew attention to that time period? I ask this because both Caesar and Shakespeare are widely known (arguably to an equal extent of notoriety in the western world) and due to other cases in history of people swiftly gaining popularity centuries after they’ve ruled (I refer to King Tut). Obviously the influence King Tut had is vastly overshadowed by everything Caesar had done so I’m well aware that the two aren’t exactly comparable but perhaps they’re similar in principle. Thanks.
Broadly speaking, there was widespread knowledge of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare's time - educated Europeans in the early modern period were expected to be able to read Latin, and so people reading Latin did often come across Julius Caesar. What with him being one of the more pivotal people in Rome's history and all. So many plays of the era, and not just Shakespeare's, refer to events in Ancient Rome and Greece; I discussed this kind of stuff more in this answer to the question: Shakespeare has Brutus kill Caesar to prevent a monarchy. How did that go down in 1500s England?