Lesson video

Hello and welcome to the Oak National Academy for English.

My name is Mr. James and I'm really pleased that I'm continuing to teach you William Shakespeare's wonderful play, Julius Caesar about power and betrayal in ancient Rome.

So what are we going to be doing in today's lesson? Well, we're going to be doing a little bit of recapping to begin.

That's because we're going to look at the same extract as yesterday at the end of the lesson but we're going to look at it in Shakespeare's original language which means it's a bit more tricky.

So we're going to recap some of the material we've already done so we're in a great position to be able to really understand it and make some great analysis, do some great analysis.

So, first of all we're going to recap the characters of Brutus and Cassius.

Second, we're going to recap those terms, honour and ambition that we learned last lesson.

Number three, we're going to recap power in ancient Rome and how it works.

Number four, we're going to read the extract in the original Shakespearian language and last but not least number five, we're going to answer some questions on key quotations from the extract.

Now this is going to be tricky but I'm really confident that you guys are going to be able to do it brilliantly.

So in order to begin you're going to need a pen.

You're going to need some paper and of course you're going to need your brain and like last lesson, I hope your brain looks a little bit better than this guy's brain.

If you don't have these things, pause the video now, go and get them, come back and then we can move on with the lesson.

Welcome back.

Now you've got your pen and paper.

The first thing I would like you to do is write down today's title on your paper.

It's on the screen now.

So take your pen, write down the title and when you've done that, only pause your video and come back to me and we'll get on with the lesson proper.

Welcome back guys.

As you can see, the first thing we're going to do in today's lesson is recap honour and ambition and the second thing is recap Brutus and Cassius.

So let's get started.

Now here, we've got one column that says honour and we've got one column that says ambition.

Beneath that there's two definitions.

One is ambition and one definition is honour.

What I want you to do is read them and work out which is which.

I'm just going to give you a few seconds, so you'd be reading them now.

Which one's honour? Which one's ambition? Have you got it? Let's check.

Honour, you do what is right and deserve respect and ambition, you desperately want to achieve something.

Hopefully you got those rights.

I'm sure you did because you were great on it last time.

Okay.

That's honour and ambition.

Now let's have a look at Brutus and Cassius.

So Brutus, is he honourable or is he ambitious? Cassius, is he honourable or is he ambitious? Just be thinking in your mind which character goes with which and let's have a look.

We've got Brutus and Cassius.

Brutus is honourable and Cassius is ambitious.

Hopefully you got that right.

I'm sure you did, well done.

Okay.

Let's move on.

Now, last lesson we learned about Brutus and Cassius but what we're actually going to do now is learn a little bit more about them.

We're going to deepen our knowledge about Brutus and Cassius on who they were.

So let's get cracking.

First of all, the first thing to know is that Brutus and Cassius were members of the Senate and we learned about the Senate in lesson one.

Remember the Senate was the building where the senators met to make decisions about Rome.

Brutus and Cassius were senators, that meant they were members of the Senate and they made decisions about Rome and here you can see an artist's impression of what the Senate might have looked like.

So I want you to read through these four statements here and choose which two you think are correct.

These are all statements about the Senate.

So we're just recapping what we know about the Senate.

So read through them, pick the two you think are correct.

Pause the video, unpause it when you're done and we'll go through the correct answers.

Okay, which ones did you select? Hopefully you've selected option one and option four.

The Senate was made up of senators who were elected to rule Rome and option four, the Senate was the building where the senators met to make decisions.

So far so straightforward.

Okay.

Now I want you to read through these statements and decide which are true or false.

Pause the video so you've got a little bit of time to make your decisions, when you're done, come back to me.

Okay, let's see what you got.

Only one was false out of all of them.

We had five correct answers.

Five true answers, I should say and just one that was false.

Hopefully you did really well on that one but it was a bit tricky because only one of them was false.

Now the Senate are concerned that Caesar is becoming too powerful.

Now some of those senators are worried for Rome.

Someone like Brutus, who is honourable, he's worried that Caesar's becoming too powerful because he's worried about Rome.

Some of them such as Cassius, they're not so bothered about Rome.

Cassius, he just wants power for himself because he's ambitious.

Brutus' honour makes him worry about Rome.

Cassius' ambition makes him want power for himself but the thing that links them is they're both concerned that Caesar is becoming too powerful and they don't want him to be too powerful.

This is going to allow Cassius to try to manipulate Brutus.

Before we go on, let's just remind ourselves of a few things about Cassius.

Now, number one, Cassius wants power for himself, he's not concerned about Rome but Cassius does know that Brutus is honourable and he also knows that Brutus thinks it will be bad for Rome if Caesar becomes too powerful.

So Cassius can use what he knows to try and manipulate Brutus.

That's going to be very important, okay? So let's remind ourselves about honour in ancient Rome.

In ancient Rome if you wanted to be honourable you had to tell the truth.

You also could win military victories to get yourself some honour and you also had to be loyal to Rome.

Now, have a think about these three things, which of the three do you think Cassius is going to use in order to try to manipulate Brutus? Pause the video, read through them, remember what you already know about Julius Caesar the play and think which of these three will Cassius use to manipulate Brutus? Pause the video.

Come back to me in a minute.

Okay, welcome back.

Now, let's see which one you chose for your answer.

The correct answer is loyalty to Rome.

Of course it is because Cassius knows that Brutus is loyal to Rome so he's going to try and manipulate him by saying, "Hey Brutus, I think if Caesar gets power, if he gets more power, that's going to be bad for Rome, we should assassinate him in the best interests of Rome." Of course we know Cassius doesn't care about the best interests of Rome, he's just trying to take Caesar's power for himself.

Right, let's move on and look at the play.

Now just like last time I'm going to talk you through the play, talk you through the extract and I'll explain any tricky bits for you.

Once we're finished, we'll answer some questions.

So make sure you're listening really carefully.

So the extract begins, the play begins with Cassius speaking to Brutus and Cassius says, "Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear," basically Cassius is telling Brutus to listen to him.

He's saying listen to me.

"And since you know you cannot see yourself so well as by reflection, I, your glass will modestly discover to yourself that of yourself which you yet know not of." So in this bit Cassius is saying to Brutus that they can talk through Brutus' worries and I'll be like your mirror, I'll reflect back your feelings to you and then we get this italics which is a stage direction.

Now you will notice the language used here by Shakespeare is slightly different in the modern adapted version we looked at last time.

This says flourish and shout and it just means the crowds are excited.

Flourish means the trumpets are playing.

So there's this celebrations going on for Caesar because he's come back into Rome and he's won that great military victory.

Now Brutus replies to Cassius but he ignores what he says and he just notices all the commotion, all the shouting, all the trumpets and Brutus says "What means this shouting? I do fear the people choose Caesar for their King." And we can see here that Brutus is concerned about Caesar becoming too powerful and because we've studied this last time even though we've got Shakespeare's language, we know exactly what is going on.

So it's Cassius' turn to reply to Brutus and Cassius says, "Ay, do you fear it? Then must I think you would not have it so." To which Brutus says "I would not, Cassius, yet I love him well." Love Caesar well." "But wherefore do you hold me here so long?" Wherefore means why in Shakespearian language, wherefore, but why do you hold me here so long? Why are you keeping me? Why are you talking to me? "What is it that you would impart to me?" What do you want to say to me? "If it be aught toward the general good, set honour in one eye and deaf in the other and I will look on both indifferently.

For let the gods so speed me as I love the name of honour more than I fear death." Now, as we talked about yesterday, this is so important because Brutus is telling us who he is.

He's telling us how much he loves honour and he's also telling Cassius how much he loves honour.

He's saying honour to me and death, I will look on both of them indifferently.

Meaning if I have to die to remain honourable, I will do it.

In fact, he says he loves honour more than he fears death.

So Cassius really knows that he can use this to manipulate Brutus.

Let's move on.

Cassius says, "I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus," Now virtue means goodness and he's talking about honour.

He's saying, I know you're honourable, Brutus, of course I know that, everyone knows you're honourable.

He's flattering Brutus and the reason he's flattering him is because he wants to manipulate him in a minute.

"I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus, as well as I do know your outward favour." your face, how you are, what you look like.

I know you're honourable just as well as I know your face.

"Well, honour is the subject of my story." He's saying as it happened, honour is the thing I want to talk to you about.

Okay? Then there's another shout and a flourish and Brutus says "Another general shout!" Yet again, he ignores Cassius because he's so worried that the crowd might be trying to make Caesar into a King.

"Another general shout.

I do believe that these applauses are for some new honours that are heaped on Caesar." Again, the honours being more powers, making him like a King.

So Cassius can see just how concerned Brutus is about Caesar's power and Cassius thinks, now is my chance.

Now is the time I should try to manipulate him and try and bring him into my plot to assassinate Caesar, to help me assassinate him so I Cassius, can get power for myself and let's have a look at how Cassius does it.

He says, "Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus." Now doth is just does in Shakespearian in language or in middle English, okay? He says, "Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves, Men at some time are masters of their fates.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.

Brutus and Caesar, what should be in that Caesar? Why should that name be sounded more than yours?" Now there's a few things in here.

So let's pick them apart.

First thing he compares Caesar to the Colossus.

Now the Colossus is a huge statue and we'll talk about it in a little bit more detail later but he says Cesar is like a huge statue of a man who can walk around the world bestriding, doing what ever he wants and he says, by comparison to see that we are just petty men, we're small, tiny little petty man who have to walk under his huge legs and peep about, yeah, he's saying by comparison to Caesar we're tiny and insignificant and he says, this is dishonourable we have to find ourselves dishonourable graves and he's hoping that by saying this is dishonourable the situation of Caesar being powerful and senators such as themselves being less powerful that Brutus might think, yes, that is dishonourable.

I need to join his plan.

Then he continues by saying the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.

Now, stars is a reference to fate and underlings are people with no power.

Now this is a very interesting line because what he's saying, what Cassius is saying to Brutus is that Caesar hasn't been chosen to be the most powerful man by the fates or by the gods.

He's only the most powerful because other men such as us have allowed him to become too powerful.

So he's saying the fault isn't of fate or the fault isn't of the stars or the fault isn't of the gods.

It's our own fault that we've allowed Caesar to become this powerful and he compares themselves, he says, we are underlings, people with no power by comparison to how powerful Caesar has become.

Okay, so Brutus has listened to what Cassius has had to say and then he replies.

He begins by saying "That you do love me, I am nothing jealous." Don't worry too much about that.

Not important.

Then he says "What you would work me to do, I would have some aim." Now, what does Cassius want Brutus to do? What is he working him to do? Do you know? Can you remember? Yes, Cassius wants Brutus to join his plan to assassinate Caesar and Brutus is working it out.

He's saying ah, I think I understand what Cassius is trying to say to me.

Cassius is saying Caesar is too powerful and we need to stop him.

We need to assassinate him but Brutus, he doesn't agree to this.

He says "How I have thought of this and these times, I shall recant hereafter." Basically he's saying, okay, I'll let you know my thoughts on this at a later time, he's buying himself a little bit of time to think about what Cassius has said.

Now that we've read the extract, we're going to move on to looking at some quotations and answering some questions.

So the first question says, why does Cassius tell Brutus that honour is the subject of his story? And you can see above, we've got the quotation where Cassius says honour is the subject of my story.

So let's have a look at this quotation in a little bit of detail.

So the first thing to note is that Cassius talks about honour because he wants Brutus to think that killing Caesar is an honourable thing to do.

So he's trying to say this thing I'm talking to you about is honourable and he talks about my story because he's trying to make himself sound honourable because he knows that Brutus loves honour.

So let's go back to the question.

You can see the question.

You can see the quotation itself and also the annotations that correspond to what I said to you.

I want you to use the information on the slide to help you answer the question, why does Cassius tell Brutus that honour is the subject of his story? Write your answer on your paper.

Pause the video while you do it.

When you're finished, unpause and we'll see what you've got.

Okay, welcome back.

Well, let's have a look at your answer.

Hopefully you've got something like this.

Cassius tells Brutus that honour is the subject of my story because he is trying to convince Brutus that assassinating Caesar is the honourable thing to do.

Cassius also wants to make himself sound honourable so that his plan sounds less suspicious.

He is trying to hide his ambition because he does not want Brutus to suspect that he just wants Caesar to take power for himself.

Now, if you've got an answer like that, that's really good.

That'll be a brilliant answer.

If there's anything in here that you think you would like to add to your own answer, pause the video now, pick up your pen and change your answer.

Okay, let's move on.

Let's look at question two.

This question says, why does Cassius compare Caesar to the Colossus of Rhodes? And let's have a look at the quotation.

It says "Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus." Now he is Caesar and bestride means to stand above something or to dominate it, okay? Now the first thing that we need to be aware of is what the statue of Rhodes even is.

Now, if you look at the picture on the right of your screen, you can see an artist's impression of what the Colossus of Rhodes might have looked like.

Now, no one actually knows what it looks like because it's thousands of years ago that it was destroyed.

So we just have to imagine and artists have read descriptions of it and from those descriptions, they've drawn things that they think that the Colossus of Rhodes would look like and people think it roughly looks like this.

So it's a giant statue of the Greek God Helios that stood at the entrance to the city of Rhodes, ships had to pass beneath it when they entered the city and more generally, a Colossus is something that is huge.

So if we described something as colossal, we mean it's massive.

So that's what Colossus means, something huge.

So Cassius is comparing Caesar to the Colossus of Rhodes or something massive and huge.

So Cassius says "Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus" And at the beginning, Cassius is simply saying that Caesar is able to do whatever he wants.

He can stand above things.

He can bestride them.

He can dominate them and then he compares him to the Colossus and here he's able to do whatever he wants because he's so big, so powerful, like a giant, like a giant statue or perhaps even like a tyrant.

This idea he can do whatever he wants kind of suggests that Caesar might be able to become like a tyrant.

So let's use the information we've talked about and I want you to try and answer the question, why does Cassius compare Caesar to the Colossus of Rhodes? Now the information is on the screen.

So use it when you pause the video in a minute to write your answer.

When you're done, unpause the video and we'll go through some of the things you might have written.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's go through a kind of answer you might have written.

So Cassius compares Caesar to the Colossus of Rhodes because he wants Brutus to think that Caesar is too powerful and must be stopped.

By comparing Cassius to a Colossus who bestrides the narrow world, Cassius makes Caesar sound like someone who is so big and powerful that he can do whatever he wants.

Perhaps Cassius is suggesting that with all that power, Caesar could become a tyrant.

Now look at your answer, look at mine.

Do you think you did well? Did you get all that information in there? Did you talk about how he's trying to make Brutus think that Caesar was too powerful? Did you mention that he's being compared to the Colossus? Did you talk about how Cassius makes Caesar sound like someone who's so big and powerful that he can do whatever he wants and suggests at the end perhaps, maybe Cassius is suggesting that Caesar could become a tyrant? If there's anything you missed and you want to put it in your answer, take your pen and improve it now.

If not, we can move on.

Okay, let's look at the next question.

It says, what is Cassius trying to tell Brutus in this quotation? And the quotation is "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings." Now we've already talked a little bit about this quotation, so hopefully you've got some great things to say about it but we will investigate it together.

So the first thing is that Cassius refers to himself and Brutus as underlings.

Now, remember underlings are people with no power.

Cassius is saying that the Senate have no power because Caesar has become too powerful and he knows that Brutus won't like this because Brutus believes in the Senate because he believes that power should be shared and it shouldn't be all in the hands of one man.

So he's calling them underlings to suggest that senators like themselves have become powerless and they shouldn't be powerless because it's allowed Caesar to become more powerful and he also says the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves.

So as we've already mentioned stars is a reference to fate.

Cassius is saying it's their own fault that they are underlings.

It's not the fault of fate, it's not the fault of the gods but this also means they have the power to change things.

They can do it themselves because it's not in the hands of the gods.

So, answer the following question using the information.

What is Cassius trying to tell Brutus in this quotation? Once you've had a go, unpause the video, come back to me and I'll go through some of the kind of things you might have written.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's see how you did.

This is the kind of answer you might have written.

Cassius is trying to convince Brutus that if they want to, they can change things so Caesar doesn't have all the power.

By making reference to the stars, Cassius is suggesting that Caesars power has nothing to do with fate.

Caesar's power is not God given.

By asserting that the situation is their own fault, Cassius is suggesting that they can make the decision to change things and take power from Caesar.

Once again, look at my answer and compare it to yours.

Is there any information you would like to add to your answer? Would you like to rewrite anything? If there is, pause the video now and improve your answer.

If not, wait a second and we'll move on.

Now we're onto the big question because all the way through this lesson we've really been talking about how Brutus is trying to persuade Cassius to assassinate Caesar, to join his assassination attempt.

So we're going to now do a slightly longer answer and I want you to answer this question.

How does Cassius try to persuade Brutus to help him assassinate Caesar? Now I want you to use everything we've learned.

Everything we've learned this lesson, everything we've learned last lesson and anything that you think is relevant from the background we learned in lesson one about the Senate, about power in Rome, about how honour works.

Okay? So how is Cassius trying to persuade Brutus to help him assassinate Caesar? Give yourself about 10 minutes or so to write this answer, hopefully you'll get a good paragraph or perhaps even a couple of paragraphs.

After you've finished, come back to me and I'll talk you through the kind of thing you might have written.

Off you go.

okay, welcome back.

Now the first thing that I'm going to do is talk you through some of the things you may have included in your answer.

After I've done that, I'm going to talk you through a model answer.

I'm going to read you an answer I wrote myself that includes some of the things you might've included in a paragraph, okay? But let's have a look in bullet points first.

So some of the things you might , are number one, Cassius tries to make assassinating Caesar sound honourable.

Number two, Cassius tries to make Caesar seem very powerful by comparing him to a Colossus.

Number three, Cassius tried to convince Brutus it is their own fault Caesar has more power than they do.

Number four, Cassius says it is not the fault of fate that they have less power than Caesar.

Number five, Cassius tries to make Caesar seem like a tyrant and number six, Cassius tried to hide his ambition to get power for himself.

He tries to hide his ambition to keep the power for himself.

So those are some of the things you might have talked about in your answer but what might your answer or those things look like in a paragraph? Well, let's have a look.

Here's a paragraph.

I'm going to read it through with you.

Make sure you're paying attention because you might use some of it to change your answer after we've finished.

So Cassius tries to persuade Brutus to help him assassinate Caesar in a number of ways.

First of all, he tries to hide his ambition to make it seem as though assassinating Caesar is honourable.

He does this by telling Brutus that honour is the subject of my story.

Cassius also makes it sound as though Caesar is a threat to Rome because he describes how Cesar can bestride the narrow world like a Colossus.

This makes Caesar sound incredibly powerful and perhaps even dangerous.

Cassius is suggesting that Caesar has so much power he is able to do whatever he wants which means Caesar could turn into a tyrant.

Cassius knows how much Brutus cares about honour and letting a tyrant take over Rome would be a dishonourable thing to do.

Cassius hopes this might convince Brutus that assassinating Caesar is honourable whereas letting him live is dishonourable even though those would usually seem very strange.

Finally, Cassius says that the stars, meaning fate, have not given Caesar his power or made them underlings.

He says the fault is in ourselves.

Meaning they have let the situation happen but they could change it if they want.

Cassius is hoping that Brutus will feel guilty for letting Caesar become more powerful than the Senate because that is not in the best interests of Rome.

So how did you do? How was your answer compared to the one that I just read? If there's any information you would like to add to yours or if you want to rewrite it based on what I've written, pause the video now and improve your answer.

Guys, well done.

You've made it to the end of the lesson.

You've done really well today and there was some really tricky questions at the end of that lesson.

So I'm sure you've got some really great answers and I'm really proud of how well you've worked.

Now the only thing to remind you is the last task which is when the video is finished, log on to the review quiz so you can see everything you've learned.

I've really enjoyed teaching you today.

I'm looking forward to teaching you next lesson when we're going to meet the characters of Julius Caesar himself, as well as his friend, Mark Anthony and we're going to see why Caesar is suspicious and perhaps even cowardly.

That's strange, not what you would think because he's such a powerful man.

Anyway, do your review quiz and I'll see you next time for some more learning about Julius Caesar.