Julius Caesar Act One

Study Guide

1. Where does the first scene take place?

2. What are Flavius and Marullus doing?

3. Who claims to be a “mender of bad soles,” a “surgeon to old shoes,” and one who lives by the “awl?”

4. According to a laborer, why have the people left their shops and assembled?

5. Who was Pompey?

6. How do Marullus and Flavius rebuke the people?

7. Who was Lupercal, and when did the Feast of Lupercal occur?

8. What character establishes the notion that Caesar is ambitious, and that he flies too high and is a danger to free men?

9. The purpose of the Feast of Lupercal was to secure purification and fertility for the spring planting. What other purpose did it serve for women as well?

10. In scene two, who, in particular, is instructed to stand in Antony's way and why?

11. What warning does the fortuneteller give to Caesar?

12. What is Caesar’s response to the fortuneteller’s warning?

13. What do Cassius and Brutus discuss after Caesar and his followers leave?

14. With who is Brutus upset and why?

15. Cassius openly works on contrasting Brutus’s humility to Caesar’s presumptuousness and arrogance. Why?

16. What fear does Brutus blurt out when shots are heard and a trumpet sounds?

17. When Caesar returns from the race, which character’s countenance seems to disturb him?

18. How does Caesar contrast Cassius with Antony?

19. Why does Antony have to speak to Caesar from his right side?

20. Why does Brutus grasp Casca’s cloak? What does he want to know?

21. What does Casca tell him has happened?

22. What other physical impairment does Caesar have?

23. According to Casca, did the Roman people seem to want Caesar to be king?

24. What dramatic action had Caesar taken in front of the people before his fainting?

25. How did Casca react to the events at the Lupercal Festival?

26. What has happened to Marullus and Flavius and why?

27. Cassius’s major plan involves Brutus. What is it?

28. What secretive means does Cassius intend to use to persuade Brutus he is more noble than Caesar?

29. In scene three, it is the evening of the Ides of March. Describe the weather.

30. Casca meets Cicero on the streets. State two unexplainable events.

31. What is Caesar to do tomorrow?

32. Cassius compared the storm to whom?

33. According to Casca, what do the senators plan to do tomorrow?

34. What pledge does Casca give to Cassius?

35. Who is Cinna?

36. According to Cinna, acquiring the cooperation of who would be more beneficial?

37. Cinna is to deliver the forged letters to what three places?

38. According to Cassius, what fraction of Brutus remains to be won over?

39. Who “sits high in all the people’s hearts?”

Julius Caesar

Act One Quotations

1. “O you hard-hearted people, you cruel men of Rome,

didn’t you know Pompey the Great?”

2. “If we can pluck these growing feathers out of Caesar’s wing,

we can force him to fly lower.”

3. “barren women, when touched in this holy race,

are able to shake off the curse of sterility.”

4. “I shall remember

When Caesar says ‘Do this,’

It is done.”

5. “Beware the Ides of March.”

6. “I fear that the people choose Caesar

for their king.”

7. “I was born as free as Caesar and so were you.

We both have eaten as well, and we can both

Suffer the winter’s cold as well as Caesar.”

8. “Cassius over there is too lean and hungry looking;

he things too much. Such men are dangerous.”

9. “Such and such are reasons, they are natural occurrences,

because I believe that they are completely strange events, full of meaning

for the place where they occur.”

10. “It’s a very pleasing night to honest men.”

11. “O, he has a high place in the hearts of the Roman people,

and what would appear offensive if we did it,

his approval, like precious alchemy,

will transform it to something virtuous and worthy.”