English Literature
Drama – Julius Caesar
Name:________________________ Std.8 ______ Roll No: _______ Date: ___________
ACT I SCENE 1
C
O
B
B
M A R U L L U S
E
U
C A R P E N T E R
I
V
A
L
F
Characters: Flavius
Marullus
Citizen 1 (A Carpenter)
Citizen 2 (A Cobbler)
Some citizens
Setting:
A street in Rome
Plot:
- The Romans are celebrating a holiday in
honour of Julius Caesar’s victory
along with the Feast of Lupercal.
- Two tribunes; Flavius and Marullus are angry. They encounter and
interrogate two citizens. They try to disperse the crowd gathered and take
down the decorations.
Significance: - This scene introduces a major theme in the play: how easily the people of
Rome change their opinions.
- This scene also depicts that besides Caesar’s winsome popularity there are
some people in Rome who fear Caesar’s tyranny.
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Answer the following questions with reference to the context:
Ref.1.
Flavius:
“Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home.
Is this a holiday? ………………………………..”
Q.1. Who does „idle creatures‟ refer to in this extract?
Ans. ‘Idle creatures’ refer to the common people of Rome, who are rejoicing Caesar’s
triumph over Pompey’s sons.
Q.2. What does Flavius accuse the common people of?
Ans. Flavius shuns the common people for idling away their time in the street,
especially on a labouring day without the sign of their profession. He questions
their work ethics.
Q.3. Who are the citizens that Flavius and Marullus encounter in the street?
Ans. Flavius and Marullus encounter two citizens in the street; the first citizen was a
carpenter, while the second citizen was a cobbler.
Ref.2.
“You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless
things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome.
Knew you not Pompey?.................................”
Q.1. Who speaks these words and to whom?
Ans. Marullus speaks these words to the common people of Rome who are celebrating
Caesar’s victory on the street.
Q.2. Why and how did the speaker ridicule the common people?
Ans. Marullus is upset with the common people due to their lack of loyalty for their former
ruler, Pompey. He calls them ‘hard hearts’ as the people seem cold-hearted towards the
loss of their ruler.
Marullus wonders how the people now cheer Caesar when a few days ago they climbed
up walls, battlements, towers and chimney-tops with infants in their arms waiting in
patient expectation to see the great Pompey pass the streets of Rome. “He also reminded
them when Pompey’s chariot appeared how they made a universal shout and how Tiber
trembled underneath her banks owing to the replication of their sounds made in her
concave shores.
Q.3. What did Marullus order the people to do?
Ans. Marullus ordered the people to run to their houses, fall upon their knees and pray to the
Gods to intermit the plague that needs must light on this ingratitude.
Q.4. How does Flavius urge the people to be guilty for the wrong they have done?
Ans. Flavius urges the good countrymen to go and assemble all the poor men of their sort;
draw them to Tiber banks, and weep their tears into the channel, unto the lowest stream
did kiss the most exalted shores of all.
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Q.5. What did Flavius want Marullus to do and what would he himself do? Why?
Ans. Flavius told Marullus to go down towards the capitol and disrobe all the images if he did
find them deck’d with ceremonies.
Flavius himself would walk about and drive the vulgar from the streets and asked
Marullus to do so where he perceived them thick.
Flavius felt that if they suppressed the people’s enthusiasm for Caesar, it would make
him fly an ordinary pitch, who else would soar above the view of men and keep them
all in servile fearfulness.
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