Public and private life — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Public and private life
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores the gap between public roles and private selves, and what politics costs friendship and marriage 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: 'Brutus, thou sleep'st: awake, and see thyself', 'Is Brutus sick?', 'Kneel not, gentle Portia', 'Brutus hath a suit / That Caesar will not grant', 'Do not go forth to-day', 'How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown!', 'Hath Cassius lived / To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus', 'Why, farewell, Portia. We must die, Messala'.
Public speeches against private soliloquies, letters and night scenes, and how politics strains marriages and friendships.
