Lesson video

Hello and welcome to the Oak National Academy for English.

My name is Mr. James.

And in today's lesson, we are looking at unit two of "Julius Caesar" We're moving on to Act two, about one of Shakespeare's most famous plays.

Hopefully you've already studied Act one, so you'll be able to pick straight up from where we begin.

So let's have a look at what we're going to be doing in today's lesson.

First of all, we're going to have a quick tour through Act one, to make sure everyone is up to speed.

Secondly, we're going to learn about the word conspiracy.

Number three, we're going to learn about the word motivation.

Number four, we're going to read the text.

And number five, we're going to answer some questions on the text.

So before we begin, there's just a few things we need to make sure we've got.

Number one, have you got a pen? Number two, have you got some paper? And number three, have you got your brain? Hopefully yours is a little better than the brain on this guy.

Now, if you're missing any of this equipment, pause the video now, go and get it and come back when you are ready.

Okay, welcome back.

Now you've got your equipment.

The first thing I would like you to do is take your pen, and on your paper write down the title of today's lesson, which is on the screen now.

Pause the video, come back when you're done.

So the first thing we're going to do, is take that quick tour through Act one, just to make sure everyone is up to speed and in the same place.

Now I'm going to talk you through a few things in Act one, just to make sure everyone knows what they need to know.

And then we're going to answer some questions at the end.

So the first thing we need to remember or we need to know, is that there's two really important characters, one called Brutus, and one called Cassius.

Now, in some ways, Brutus and Cassius are the opposite of each other, because Brutus is honourable and Cassius is ambitious.

Brutus wants to do things that are in the interest of Rome.

And Cassius wants to do things that are in his own interest, he wants power for himself.

Now, Brutus doesn't know that Cassius is trying to manipulate him in order to get the power for himself.

He's trying to bring Brutus into a conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar, as we'll see in a minute.

So a couple of things honour means doing what is right, and ambition means wanting success or power for yourself.

So Cassius' scheming.

Cassius is trying to persuade Brutus to join a plot to assassinate Caesar.

He's trying to convince Brutus assassinating Caesar is an honourable thing to do, even though that seems strange.

But really he just wants power for himself.

He's trying to persuade Brutus to assassinating Caesar, would be in the best interest of Rome, 'cause he's saying Caesar is a tyrant and dangerous, so it's best that we assassinate him.

But really Cassius wants to assassinate Caesar because he wants to take Caesar's power for himself.

Now there's two more characters who are really important, on the left here we have Julius Caesar, and to the right we have his good friend, Mark Antony.

Now Cesar was popular leader because he brings home lots of loot from his military victories.

He's popular with the people.

He's also possibly a tyrant.

He seems to want to become the King of Rome, rather than a member of the Senate.

In Rome power was divided between senators rather than in the hands of one person such as a King.

Because of this, he's ignoring the Senate and he's doing what ever he wants.

Also, despite all this, he does seem in some ways to be a bit of a coward, because he seems quite scared of Cassius.

And he's also suspicious of Cassius because he correctly assumes that Cassius is trying to take his power.

Well, Mark Antony tells him he disagrees with that, which is a bit of a problem really for Caesar.

So coward is someone who is easily frightened or avoid danger.

And tyrant is a cruel leader who rules over his people with cruelty.

So, here are five quick questions.

I'd like you to pause the video now answer the questions, and when you finish unpause the video and come back.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at how you did in these questions.

So question one, which character is ambitious? That is Cassius.

Question two, which character is honourable? That's Brutus.

Number three, who is trying to manipulate Brutus? That's Cassius.

Number four, name two traits that might be associated with Caesar, that is coward and tyrant.

And number five, who is Caesar suspicious of? Caesar is suspicious of Cassius correctly in my opinion.

So let's now move on and we're going to learn this word conspiracy.

We have recapped Act one, we've revisited Act one.

And we're now going to learn some new things related to Act two.

And the first thing is the word conspiracy.

So, here's a couple of sentences that related to Julius Caesar that use the word conspiracy.

The first sentence says, will Brutus join the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar? And the second sentence says, will Brutus become one of the conspirators? Now I conspiracy is a secret plan or plot to do something illegal.

A conspiracy is a secret plan or plot to do something illegal.

And the conspirator, is someone who takes part in a conspiracy.

So, which two options or features of a conspiracy? Option one, they all needed to happen a long time ago.

Number two, they are famous.

Number three, they involved doing something illegal.

Or number four, they are secret.

Two of these are features of a conspiracy.

Pause the video, have a think.

And when you think you've got the right answer unpause, and we'll go through the answer.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's have a look.

What did you choose? Let's see the answer, it's three and four.

Features of a conspiracy, they involve doing something illegal and they are secret.

Generally people involve in a conspiracy, don't want to tell too many people about the illegal activities they're up to, so they keep them a secret.

So here's some sentences, that use the words conspiracy or conspirators correctly.

The criminals were arrested for being part of the conspiracy.

That's because they're trying to do something illegal and they were arrested for it, as they should be.

Number two, the conspirators try to run when the police knocked on the door.

So those people involved in the conspiracy, they were the conspirators and they run away, when the police knocked on their door.

After investigating the police didn't have enough evidence to prove there was a conspiracy.

Well, isn't that a shame? The police here not doing their job properly and they couldn't prove the conspiracy, even after they had arrested the conspirators.

So what I would like you to do now is pause the video and complete this task.

It says, write your own sentence that uses the word conspiracy or conspirator.

Now, if you need a little help, here's a couple of sentences that I prepared to give you an idea of the kind of thing you might write.

So pause the video, have a go yourself and come back when you are done.

Okay, how did you do? Well, let's have a look at the kinds of things you might have written.

The conspirators were found, not guilty by the court.

Or you could have, there was not enough evidence to prove the conspiracy.

Both of those sentences would be fine.

And I'm sure you've got some great sentences yourself using the word conspiracy or conspirators.

Now, we've learned the word conspiracy, and we're going to have a look at this word motivation, because that is also important in today's lesson.

So here's some sentences related to Julius Caesar that used the word motivation.

What is Brutus' motivation to join the conspiracy? Cassius tries to motivate Brutus to join the conspiracy.

Will honour motivate Brutus to join the conspiracy? And we can see here, we've got the word motivation and the word motivate, which are different forms of the same word, motivate being a verb.

So what is motivation? Well, your motivation is your reason for doing something.

So if you work hard at school, perhaps motivation for doing that is to get good exam results at the end.

Now, if you motivate someone to do something, you encourage them to do it.

You're encouraging someone to do something by motivating them.

So let's apply this word motivation or motivate to the play "Julius Caesar" And we're going to ask the following question.

How does Cassius try to motivate Brutus to join a conspiracy? Now there's four options here, two of them are correct.

Let's go through them one by one.

Number one, he claims the senators are underlings.

Number two, he tells Brutus about his ambition.

Number three, he gives Brutus some loot as a bribe.

Or number four, he suggests that Caesar is too powerful and that is bad for Rome.

Which two of these four do you think are correct? Have a read through them and choose the numbers you think are correct.

Which options, which two of the four do you think are correct? Five seconds.

And the correct answers are, is number one.

He claims the senators are underlings.

And number four, he suggests to that is too powerful and that is bad for Rome.

Underlings because he suggesting that senators have lost their power.

And also it's obvious, isn't it? Too powerful that would motivate Brutus because he is honourable.

So here's some sentences that use the word motivate or motivation correctly.

The first one says, Bukayo's motivation is to play for Arsenal.

And any of you who are football fans, will know how I'm referring to, Bukayo Saka and I'm an Arsenal fan.

So Bukayo's motivation is to play for Arsenal.

That's why he worked hard at playing football and training.

Number two, teachers often have to motivate their pupils to work hard.

Because sometimes children simply they don't want to do any hard work.

And unfortunately that isn't a good tactic for life.

So teachers have to motivate the pupils to get them to do their work.

Number three, if you can't find the motivation to revise for your exams, you might not get the grade that you want.

Okay, so this is about having the motivation or finding the motivation that you need in order to achieve something.

So in a minute, you're going to pause the video and complete this task.

It says, write your own sentence about a family member or a friend that uses the word motivation or motivate.

So pause the video now, have a go at the question and come back when you are done.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at how you did or a couple of the kinds of sentences you might have written.

You could have written something like, my parents had to motivate me to work hard at school, or my brother always had the motivation to play football on Sundays.

Both of those answers would be perfectly acceptable and I'm sure you've got some great answers yourself.

So we've learned the word motivate.

We have learned the word conspiracy, and we have had a quick tour through Act one, and we are now ready to begin looking at the play.

But just before we do, we're going to have a look at what happens in today's scene, so we make sure we all understand what is going on.

First of all, Brutus is at home alone.

Second of all, he thinks about, whether or not he's going to join the conspiracy.

And he decides that he should.

Number three, the other conspirators arrive at his home.

Number four, they discuss the plans for the plot.

And then number five, the conspirators leave.

So in the scene, we have Brutus honourable and Cassius ambitious who we've already met.

But there will also be a few other characters.

And these are the characters are the other conspirators, that's Casca, Decius, Cinna, Metellus, Trebonius, and of course, Brutus and Cassius themselves are part of the conspiracy.

Now the most important one out of these is Decius because we will also hear him speak during the scene, okay? So let's move on.

So the first thing at the top, we get the stage directions in Italian and it tells us it is night and enter Brutus in his garden.

So we're now in Brutus' garden.

And the first thing that happens is Brutus comes on stage and he starts talking.

He says, "The only way is for us to kill Caesar.

"I have no personal motivation to kill him, "but I think it is in the best interest of the people.

"He wants to be King.

"But how would being King change him? "Good can turn evil, "just like a poisonous snake "comes into the sunlight on bright days, "which means we have to tread with caution.

"If we allow him to become King, "we will be giving him the power "to cause great harm to Rome.

"We should compare him to a serpent's egg.

"Once it hatches like all serpents, it will kill.

"We must kill him before he leaves the shell." Now Brutus is alone in his garden and he's speaking his thoughts here.

So this is the audience being able to hear what Brutus is thinking.

He's saying it because it's a play.

And we obviously can't get inside his head and listened to his thoughts.

So in order to communicate Brutus' thoughts to the audience, he's alone on stage, and he speaks to them and the audience hear his thoughts.

Two things to be aware of.

The first thing he says in bold at the top, is that "I have no personal motivation to kill him, "but I think it's in the best interest of the people." So Brutus' motivation for joining the conspiracy, for joining the assassination is honourable.

He thinks to kill Caesar would be in the best interest of Rome.

So Cassius has done a fairly good job of manipulating him.

Although perhaps Cassius is correct.

Perhaps Caesar is a tyrant.

Then just halfway through the paragraph.

We get some more bold text and it says, "Good can turn evil, "just like a poisonous snake "comes into the sunlight on bright days." Now, why do we think Brutus is comparing Caesar to a poisonous snake? Do you have any ideas? Okay, I'm sure you have a few, but I'll go through them with you.

The main reason is because he's comparing Caesar to a poisonous snake to say that Caesar could be dangerous.

He could metaphorically poison Rome, if he becomes too powerful.

And just like a poisonous snake can bite you and kill you, Cesar could do great damage to Rome because he's too powerful, if he becomes King.

And then at the end, he gives us his motivation for joining the conspiracy very clearly.

He says, "If we allow him Cesar it to become King, "we will be giving him the power "to cause great harm to Rome." So very clearly we get his motivation for joining a conspiracy.

And we now know Brutus' decision.

So move on, Lucius enters.

Now Lucius is essentially Brutus' butler if you like.

And Lucius says, "Sir, Cassius and others are at the door.

"They wish to see you." And Brutus says, "Let them in." Lucius exists.

And then the conspirators, as we can see in the stage direction at the bottom, All come in and enter the stage.

So after the other conspirators come on stage and join Brutus in his garden.

It's Cassius who speaks.

And Cassius says, "We should swear an oath to our plan." Now an oath is essentially a fancy promise.

So he's saying we should make a promise to each other, that we will carry out this conspiracy.

To which Brutus responds, "No, let's not.

"If the sad faces of our fellow Romans "are not enough to motivate us, we should break it off now, "and each of us go back to bed.

"Then we can let this tyrant continue "until he murders each one of us.

"But if we have good reasons and I believe we do, "then my fellow Romans, what else do we need to spur us on?" So Brutus here is saying, no, we should not take an oath.

We don't need to make a promise with this.

He thinks it would be dishonourable to take an oath.

Have you got any ideas why Brutus thinks it's so dishonourable to take an oath? Can you tell from what he says? Well, I'm sure you have a couple of thoughts on it.

The main reason why Brutus thinks no, they shouldn't.

Is he saying we shouldn't need to make a promise with each other, because we want to do what's in the best interest of Rome.

And if we really genuinely want to do what's in the best interest of Rome, the sad faces of our fellow Romans who are being ruled by this tyrant will be motivation enough.

To stop this tyrant Caesar should be enough motivation.

We shouldn't need to make promises to each other.

And he thinks it would be dishonourable to have to make a promise.

So that's why Brutus says, no, we shouldn't.

And then a Decius, he pipes up and he says, "Should we only kill Caesar?" So he suggesting perhaps there's others they should kill.

To which Cassius responds, "Good thinking Decius.

"It would not be wise to let Mark Antony live.

"He might plot against us." So why is this? Why does Cassius not want Antony to live? Why doesn't Cassius want Antony to live? Do you have any ideas? Well, I think one of the reasons why Cassius doesn't want Antony to live.

I mean, he says very clearly he might plot against us.

He's thinking, well, if we murder Caesar, perhaps Caesar's great friend, Antony, will want revenge himself or the very least do something to stop me, Cassius taking power.

Perhaps Antony would say, hang on a minute.

Cassius has just murdered assassinated Caesar.

Are we now going to let this person take power? And he might try and turn people against Cassius.

So that is why Cassius doesn't want Antony to live.

Brutus listens to what Cassius says, "Codswallop! "It will look like we murdered Caesar for anger "and Antony for jealousy.

"It will appear to bloody, "if we cut off Caesar's head and then hack at his limbs.

"Antony is simply one of Caesar's arms. "Caesar must bleed if we're to rid Rome of tyranny, "but let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Cassius." Then he addresses everyone else.

He says, "My Nobel friends, let's kill him boldly, "but not with anger.

"Let's carve him up like a dish fit for the gods, "not hew him like a carcass fit for dogs.

"Forget about Antony, "he'll be as useless after we've killed Caesar." And then everyone leaves the stage except for Brutus.

Everyone else goes home.

So the first thing to say, is that Brutus does not see himself as a murderer for assassinating Caesar.

He says it will look like we murdered Caesar, but he doesn't see himself as a murderer, because he sees himself as someone who assassinating Caesar in the best interests of Rome.

That's an important point.

And the second thing to say is, if we look at the quotation in bold in the middle of the paragraph.

He says, Caesar must bleed if we're to rid Rome of tyranny, "but let us be sacrificers, not butchers." And here Brutus is saying, Well, okay, Caesar must die for the good of Rome, but let's not go too far.

And start murdering lots of other people as well.

Otherwise it will just seem like a group of butchers who are just bloodthirsty and happy to kill anyone.

And he doesn't want to do that, because remember he's doing what he believes is honourable.

So we've read through today's extract and now let's have a look at some questions and quotations.

Now, the first thing we're going to do is really quickly answer these three questions.

So I want you to read the quotation at the top and use that quotation to help you answer the three questions underneath.

Pause the video now, answer the questions on your paper and return when you are done.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's have a look at the kinds of things you might have written for your answers.

For question one, it says, what is Brutus' motivation for joining the conspiracy? And you could have written something like this.

Brutus is motivated to join a conspiracy because he thinks it is in the best interests of the people.

And you can see we've got that vocabulary in the answer that we learned earlier in the lesson.

Now, question two says, to what does Brutus compare Caesar? And you can really simply say Brutus' compares Caesar to poisonous snake.

And number three, this one's a bit more tricky.

It says, why does Brutus make this comparison? Well, Brutus makes this comparison because poisonous snakes are very dangerous and can even kill people.

Brutus is suggesting if Caesar was crowned King, he might cause great harm, okay? In the same way that a snake can cause harm by biting people.

So, we're going to look at this quotation now from Cassius, who says, "It would not be wise to like Mark Antony live." And the question says, why do you think Cassius wants to kill Antony as well as Caesar? So pause the video now, answer the question and return once you have finished.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at the kind of thing you might have written.

You might have written an answer like this, Cassius wants to kill Antony as well as Caesar, because he knows that Antony is loyal to Caesar.

Antony will be angry that the conspirators are assassinated Caesar.

Cassius wants to try and take power for himself after assassinating Caesar.

But he knows the Antony will probably try to stop him from doing this.

Antony might even want revenge against the conspirators.

And you can see all the language we've learned in Julius Caesar so far, we're using in our answer.

We're using that knowledge that we've previously learned to inform what we're writing now.

Now is your answer something similar? If there's anything you've missed, and you would like to include in your answer, pause the video now, and you can improve your answer using the one that I've provided for you.

Okay, so let's move on to the next question.

And this question says, what does Brutus mean when he says, let us be sacrificers, but not butchers? And this comes from a quote above by Brutus says, "Caesar must bleed if we're to rid Rome of tyranny, "but let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Cassius." But what does he mean when he says, "Let us be sacrificers but not butchers." Well, let's have a look.

First thing we need to know, is we need to make sure we know what sacrifice is.

Now sacrifice has two meanings, the first one, if you sacrifice something, you give it up to get something better in the future.

But there's another meaning of sacrifice as well.

And it's a more religious meaning.

So to sacrifice an animal or a person means to kill them in a special ceremony, as an offering to a god.

An offering to a god, so you say here, it almost like a present to the god.

Now that seems slightly strange.

Now that you would kill a person or an animal to give them as a present or an offering to the god, but that's just the way things were done in the olden times.

And we can kind of all be fairly happy that this doesn't really happen anymore.

Now you can see on the image on the right, you can see an artistic depiction of a sacrifice, and this is from the Bible.

And we can see we've got an angel in the picture.

So you can see that link between a sacrifice and religion and something, or someone being used as an offering to a god.

Now, this is the meaning that we're mostly interested in.

We're mostly interested in this meaning where he says, "Let us be sacrificers and not butchers." So let's have a look at the image that we've just looked up and also compare it to another painting that has been done.

Now on the left, you can see here, some people, some butchers carving up bits of meat, carving up bits of meat to be served in their shop.

And if you compare the two images, you can see the one on the left.

The image of the butchers seems a lot more brutal than the image on the right.

So it's about giving something to the gods rather than to carving something up or carving lots of meat up to be eaten, and carving it in a brutal way.

And that contrast is really important when we're looking at this quotation.

Okay, so we're going to keep that in mind.

And what I'm going to do guys, is I'm actually going to talk you through how I might go about writing this because it is quite a difficult question.

So it says, what does Brutus mean when he says, "Let us be sacrificers but not butchers." If I was writing this, there would be three things I would want to say in my answer.

The first thing I would want to say, is that Brutus is making a comparison.

He compares sacrificers to butchers.

The second thing I would say, is that he wants to be seen as a sacrificer.

Someone who offers something to the gods.

And the third thing I want to say, is that he doesn't want to seem or be seen as a butcher, someone who brutally chops up animals, okay.

And then in order, to make these ideas into a good answer, I would say something like this, I would start off with number one say, when Brutus makes the comparison between sacrificers and butchers, I've now used point one.

He means that he wants the conspirators to be seen as people who offer Caesar to the gods, I've used point two.

He does not want them to be seen as the sort of people, who chop up animals like butchers.

So you can see I've gone through one, two, three, bit by bit and used each one after the other, in order to build up quite a nice answer.

And I might just add a nice little sentence on the end just to bring it all together.

I might just say something like, this is because he wants the people to sympathise with what they have done.

Okay, guys, well done.

You've done really well today.

The only thing left from me is to remind you to do the end of lesson one quiz.

You'll find the button somewhere down below.

I've been really privileged to teach you today, and you've done great work as always.

And I'll see you in the next lesson.