Act 3 Study Guide Questions
Name:
Period:
Directions: Answer each question using complete sentences. Please type or print (clearly) your answers on a
separate sheet of paper and attach to your study guide.
Scene 1 –
1. What dramatic effects does Shakespeare achieve in the scene’s opening lines?
2. What irony do you see in Caesar’s last speech, which begins, “I could well be mov’d”?
3. Earlier, in act 2, scene 1, Brutus presented the assassination as a sacrifice, not just a brutal murder.
What action in act 3, scene 1, echoes that view?
4. How does the scene of the assassination relate to Calpurnia’s dream?
5. What does the scene reveal about Mark Antony?
6. What does Mark Antony say he wants to do? How doe Brutus and Cassius react?
7. When all the conspirators have left the scene, Antony delivers a soliloquy. What does he say?
8. In light of the soliloquy, what do you expect Antony to attempt in his speech at Caesar’s funeral?
Scene 2 –
1. Both Brutus and Cassius plan to deliver speeches. What will be their main goal?
2. Cassius goes off stage, but Shakespeare includes Brutus’s speech in the scene. Is the speech written in
prose or in poetry? Why does Shakespeare use this form?
3. What does Brutus assert about his own attitude toward Caesar?
4. Brutus includes several rhetorical questions in his speech. What are they, and what answers does he
expect?
5. Why does he conclude that he has offended no one?
6. In the concluding lines, what does Brutus claim to be willing to do?
7. How would you describe the style and tone of the speech as a whole?
8. How do the citizens respond to Brutus’s words?
9. How might Antony’s second sentence surprise the audience?
10. He goes on to refute the idea that Caesar was ambitious. What evidence does he provide?
11. Do you hear irony—or even sarcasm—in Antony’s comments about Brutus and later about Cassius?
12. What seems to cause the first pause in the speech?
13. In the second part of the speech, before he descends to Caesar’s body, Antony refers to Caesar’s will.
What is his purpose?
14. How does Antony manage to bring the crowd to tears?
15. How do Antony’s words affect the crowd?
16. What does Antony claim about his skill as an orator? Is he correct?
17. Finally Antony shares the contents of Caesar’s will. What has Caesar left to the people?
18. Antony pauses several times in the course of his speech? What are the effects of these pauses?
19. What information at the end of the scene suggests that Mark Antony is not completely overwhelmed
with sorrow?
20. What has happened to Brutus and Cassius? Why?