Act 1 — Julius Caesar — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Act 1
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
The tribunes and the fickle crowd, the soothsayer's warning, Cassius working on Brutus while Caesar is offered a crown offstage,
Casca's report, and the night of storms and omens as Cassius gathers the conspiracy.
What each scene establishes about character and theme, with key quotations.
Key quotations: 'You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!', 'Beware the ides of March', 'poor Brutus, with himself at war', 'I love / The name of honour more than I fear death', 'Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus', 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings', 'Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; / He thinks too much: such men are dangerous', 'he put it by thrice, every time gentler than other', 'it was Greek to me', 'Thy honourable metal may be wrought / From that it is disposed', 'Against the Capitol I met a lion', 'Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius', 'O, he sits high in all the people's hearts'.
Form: Casca's prose report of the crown offered offstage, Cassius's soliloquy on how he will work on Brutus, and the storm that mirrors the disorder in Rome.
Context: the Lupercalia, and the tribunes' fear that Caesar means to make himself king.
