Power and ambition — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Power and ambition
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores power, ambition and tyranny, and whether Caesar's ambition justifies his murder 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: 'And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?', 'It is the bright day that brings forth the adder', 'Shall Rome stand under one man's awe?', 'You all did see that on the Lupercal / I thrice presented him a kingly crown, / Which he did thrice refuse', 'When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept', 'Ambition should be made of sterner stuff', 'we are at the stake, / And bay'd about with many enemies', 'Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe'.
Caesar's power before his death and Octavius's power after it, and whether the play shows assassination as a cure for tyranny or a cause of civil war.
Context: Caesar as dictator for life, and Elizabethan fears of a ruler with no named heir and of civil war.
