Honour and loyalty

How Shakespeare explores honour, friendship, loyalty and betrayal across the text, and why it matters to the text's meaning.
Where it appears, the key quotations that show it, and different ways it can be interpreted.
Evidence from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'I love / The name of honour more than I fear death', 'What need we any spur but our own cause', 'So are they all, all honourable men', 'Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel', 'Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!', 'When love begins to sicken and decay, / It useth an enforced ceremony', 'Brutus only overcame himself', 'He will be found like Brutus, like himself', 'Thou art a fellow of a good respect; / Thy life hath had some smatch of honour in it'.
Brutus's sense of honour against Antony's ironic repetition of the word, and loyalty between friends, soldiers and servants at Philippi.

What you need to know