Portia and Calpurnia — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Portia and Calpurnia
Characters
What you need to know
How Shakespeare presents Portia and Calpurnia, and how the character develops across the text: two wives kept outside their husbands' public lives, whose fears and warnings go unheeded.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Dwell I but in the suburbs / Of your good pleasure?', 'I grant I am a woman; but withal / A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife', 'I have made strong proof of my constancy', 'You are my true and honourable wife, / As dear to me as are the ruddy drops / That visit my sad heart', 'I have a man's mind, but a woman's might', 'How hard it is for women to keep counsel!', 'Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies, / Yet now they fright me', 'Your wisdom is consumed in confidence', 'Call it my fear / That keeps you in the house, and not your own', 'Impatient of my absence'.
Two wives as foils: Portia demands her husband's secrets, Calpurnia kneels to keep hers at home, and both are overruled.
Context: the historical Calpurnia's dream and her pleas to Caesar on the morning of the Ides of March.
