Terms for “Julius Caesar”

Tragedy• A play, novel or other narrative

that depicts serious and important events in which the main character(s) comes to an unhappy end.

Anachronism• Event or detail that is

inappropriate for the time period.

• Example:“…he plucked me ope his doublet and

offered them his throat to cut”Casca to Brutus & Cassius about Caesar (I.ii.265)

Elizabethans wore doublets (a tight, short jacket) while Caesar probably would have been wearing a toga or robe.

Apostrophe• A technique by which a writer addresses

an inanimate object, an idea, or a person who is either dead or absent.

Examples: Antony addresses Caesar's corpse immediately following the assassination in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!Thou art the ruins of the noblest manThat ever lived in the tide of times.—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 3.1.254-257

Blank Verse• Poetry written in unrhymed

iambic pentameter.

-Iambic pentameter- a line of poetry that contains 5 metric feet (iambs) consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable.

Iambic Pentameter

Let me have men about me that are fat,

Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;

He thinks too much, such men are dangerous.

(I. ii. 192-195)

Dialogue

• Conversation between two or more characters.

Aside

A quiet remark to the audience or another character that no one else on stage is supposed to hear.

Example:CAESAR: Good friends, go in, and taste some wine with me;

And we, like friends, will straightway go together.

BRUTUS: [Aside] That every like is not the same, O Caesar,The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon!

(II. ii. 125-130)

Soliloquy• A long speech given by a

character alone on stage to reveal his or her private thoughts.

Example: Antony’s speech over Caesar's dead body

in Act 3 scene 1.

Monologue• An extended speech presented by an actor in a drama or narrative.

Example:

Antony’s funeral speech to the Roman crowds in Act 3 scene 2.

Shakespearian SpeechesRhetorical Devices are used to make speech

appeal to a person’s emotions and to make speech more convincing and memorable. (Antony’s funeral speech is full of rhetorical devices and appeals.)

• Repetition: the repeated use of words and sounds “Honorable men”

• Parallelism: repeated grammatical structures (pharses, clauses, compound parts) (EX: “Veni, vidi, vici “(I came, I saw, I conquered)- a comment reportedly written by the real Julius Caesar.

• Rhetorical Questions: questions that need no answer. “Did this in Caesar seam ambitious?”

• Irony- Contrast or discrepancy between expectation and reality.

3 Types of Irony• Verbal- Discrepancy between what is said and

what is meant. (EX: “But Brutus is an honorable man/So are they all, all honorable men " (Said with verbal  irony since the audience knows

only what has been told them, but Antony knows of the conspiracy.) • Situational- Contrast between what would seem

appropriate and what really happens, or when there is a contradiction between what we expect to happen and what really takes place. (EX: Caesar is going to stay home on his assination day but Decius changes Caesar’s mind.)

• Dramatic- When the audience or reader knows something that a character in a narrative does not know.

( EX: The audience, knowing that Caesar will be assassinated watches him set out on the Ides of March.)

Extended Metaphor• A comparison made over

many lines.Example: “But ‘tis a common proof, That lowliness is young

ambition’s ladder, Whereto the climber upward turns his face; But when he once attains the upmost round, He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scourning the base degrees By which he did ascend.” (II, i, 21-27)

Brutus uses of an extended metaphor when comparing Caesar's rise to power to someone climbing a ladder.

Foreshadowing• The use of clues to hint at

events that will occur later in a plot.

• The soothsayer warns Caesar about the Ides of March, but he ignores the seer. 

•  Marullus remarks that Caesar keep the Romans in "servile fearfulness foreshadowing danger to Caesar. 

• Caesar notices that Cassius "has a lean and hungry look such men are dangerous” (I,ii,194-195).

Pun• Play on the multiple meanings of a

word.Example: In Act 1, Scene 1, Marullus mentions Pompey. Julius Caesar defeated

Pompey, which led to JC's sole rule of Rome

A pun is the humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasize or suggest its different meanings or applications, or the use of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning; a play on words.

Second Commoner:

A trade, sir, that, I hope, I may use with a safeconscience; which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.(Lines 13-14)

**bad soles (bottom of your shoes), bad souls (a person in a poor moral state)