Act 2 — Julius Caesar — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Act 2
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Brutus's soliloquy and decision, the conspirators in his orchard, Portia's plea, Calpurnia's dream and Decius's flattery,
Artemidorus's letter, and Caesar setting out for the Capitol.
Key quotations: 'It must be by his death', 'He would be crown'd: / How that might change his nature, there's the question', 'lowliness is young ambition's ladder', 'think him as a serpent's egg / Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous, / And kill him in the shell', 'Between the acting of a dreadful thing / And the first motion, all the interim is / Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream', 'Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius', 'For Antony is but a limb of Caesar', 'Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife', 'Giving myself a voluntary wound / Here, in the thigh', 'When beggars die, there are no comets seen; / The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes', 'Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once', 'She dreamt to-night she saw my statue, / Which, like a fountain with an hundred spouts, / Did run pure blood', 'This dream is all amiss interpreted', 'Caesar, beware of Brutus'.
Structure: Brutus reasoning his way to murder in soliloquy, the night setting, and two wives pleading with their husbands in parallel scenes.
Context: the historical Calpurnia's dream on the night before the Ides of March.
