Julius Caesar (AQA GCSE English Literature): Exam Questions

They stab Caesar 

CAESAR 

Et tu, Brute? – Then fall, Caesar! 

Dies 

CINNA 

Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead! 

Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets. 

CASSIUS 

Some to the common pulpits, and cry out, 

‘Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!’ 

BRUTUS 

People and senators, be not affrighted, 

Fly not, stand still! Ambition’s debt is paid. 

CASCA 

Go to the pulpit, Brutus. 

DECIUS 

And Cassius too. 

BRUTUS 

Where’s Publius? 

CINNA 

Here, quite confounded with this mutiny. 

METELLUS 

Stand fast together lest some friend of Caesar’s 

Should chance – 

BRUTUS 

Talk not of standing. Publius, good cheer, 

There is no harm intended to your person, 

Nor to no Roman else. So tell them, Publius. 

CASSIUS 

And leave us, Publius, lest that the people, 

Rushing on us, should do your age some mischief. 

BRUTUS 

Do so, and let no man abide this deed 

But we the doers.

CASSIUS 

The torrent roared, and we did buffet it 

With lusty sinews, throwing it aside 

And stemming it with hearts of controversy. 

But ere we could arrive the point proposed, 

Caesar cried, ‘Help me, Cassius, or I sink!’ 

Ay, as Aeneas, our great ancestor, 

Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder 

The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber 

Did I the tired Caesar. And this man 

Is now become a god, and Cassius is 

A wretched creature and must bend his body 

If Caesar carelessly but nod on him. 

He had a fever when he was in Spain, 

And when the fit was on him I did mark 

How he did shake. ’Tis true, this god did shake, 

His coward lips did from their colour fly, 

And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world 

Did lose his lustre. I did hear him groan, 

Ay, and that tongue of his that bade the Romans 

Mark him and write his speeches in their books, 

‘Alas’, it cried, ‘give me some drink, Titinius’, 

As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me 

A man of such a feeble temper should 

So get the start of the majestic world 

And bear the palm alone.

ANTONY 

I doubt not of your wisdom.

Let each man render me his bloody hand. 

First, Marcus Brutus, will I shake with you; 

Next, Caius Cassius, do I take your hand; 

Now, Decius Brutus, yours; now yours, Metellus; 

Yours, Cinna; and, my valiant Casca, yours; 

Though last, not least in love, yours, good Trebonius. 

Gentlemen all – alas, what shall I say? 

My credit now stands on such slippery ground 

That one of two bad ways you must conceit me, 

Either a coward or a flatterer. 

That I did love thee, Caesar, O, ’tis true. 

If then thy spirit look upon us now, 

Shall it not grieve thee dearer than thy death 

To see thy Antony making his peace, 

Shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes – 

Most noble – in the presence of thy corse? 

Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds, 

Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood, 

It would become me better than to close 

In terms of friendship with thine enemies. 

Pardon me, Julius! Here wast thou bayed, brave hart, 

Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand, 

Signed in thy spoil and crimsoned in thy Lethe. 

O world! Thou wast the forest to this hart, 

And this indeed, O world, the heart of thee. 

How like a deer strucken by many princes

 Dost thou here lie!

MESSALA 

How died my master, Strato? 

STRATO 

I held the sword, and he did run on it. 

MESSALA 

Octavius, then take him to follow thee, 

That did the latest service to my master. 

ANTONY 

This was the noblest Roman of them all: 

All the conspirators, save only he, 

Did that they did in envy of great Caesar. 

He only, in a general honest thought 

And common good to all, made one of them. 

His life was gentle, and the elements 

So mixed in him that Nature might stand up 

And say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’ 

OCTAVIUS 

According to his virtue let us use him, 

With all respect and rites of burial. 

Within my tent his bones tonight shall lie, 

Most like a soldier, ordered honourably. 

So call the field to rest, and let’s away 

To part the glories of this happy day.