English Assessment Term 4 Year 9

Question 1

Traditionally, individuals relied upon the certainties of Medieval Providentialism

Answer 1

to determine their fate.

Question 2

The emergence of Humanist ideals, however, challenged this established world view

Answer 2

and instead encouraged individuals to exercise their own free will

Question 3

William Shakespeare’s tragic play Julius Caesar explores the shifting ideological struggle arising

Answer 3

from the transition from Medieval to Renaissance values, through a dramatisation of the turbulent Roman governmental structure, to advocate for a mediation between extreme agency and the reliance on traditional authority structures.

Question 4

Conceived as a response to the sociopolitical tensions of the late Elizabethan era

Answer 4

and the anxieties engendered by the imminent death of a monarch.

Question 5

Shakespeare dramatises the fall of the Roman Republic as an allegory for

Answer 5

the tyranny of egregious political change and revolution.

Question 6

Cassius’ resentment toward Caesar’s tyranny encapsulated in the simile

Answer 6

describing him “like a colossus.”

Question 7

Coupled with the juxtaposition of the members of the Senate who are reduced to

Answer 7

“petty men” left to “walk under his legs and peep about.”

Question 8

This positions Cassius as a Machiavellian archetype

Answer 8

advocating the need to temper authority centralised on a single individual.

Question 9

Shakespeare exposes Cassius’ unscrupulous nature through a representation of

Answer 9

his propensity for artifice.

Question 10

Cassius’ rhetorical questions asking “why his name should be sounded more than yours” as he

Answer 10

implores Brutus to consider the metaphorical “weight” of his name, asserting “it is as heavy.”

Question 11

This allows Shakespeare to act as a mouthpiece for

Answer 11

orthodox monarchs who saw individualism as a corrosive element in the Elizabethan era.

Question 12

These ambitions coalesce in Cassius’ capacity for self-serving machinations and

Answer 12

his willingness to shape political narratives to align with personal motivation.

Question 13

Affirming himself as the prototypical Renaissance man, Cassius’ allusion to the Divine Right of Kings

Answer 13

suggesting “men at some time are masters of their own fate,” refutes the traditional belief in providentialism.

Question 14

Cassius advocates for personal agency in the face of tyranny

Answer 14

mimetic of Renaissance Humanist ideals.

Question 15

In a new world order defined by self-determination, individuals are empowered to enact

Answer 15

their own subjective justice.

Question 16

As a direct result of the uncertainty arising from the epistemological shift from Medieval to Renaissance values

Answer 16

the syntactical inversion Brutus’ poignant metaphorical admission he is “with himself at war,” gives voice to the disorientating landscape of freewill.

Question 17

This foreshadows Brutus’ inability to see beyond his personal ideological motivation and subjective views

Answer 17

of justice untempered by the stability of the monarchy.

Question 18

In defiance of his loyalty to Caesar, Brutus begins to doubt Caesar’s rule as

Answer 18

non-tyrannical.

Question 19

Revealing his speculation as mere conjecture, the biblical allusion to the Edenic fall, as Brutus asserts to himself

Answer 19

to “think him as a serpent’s egg.”

Question 20

This positions Caesar as vulnerable to the temptation of absolute power, preemptively envisioning Caesar as tyrannical once

Answer 20

he usurps the throne.

Question 21

Allowing Shakespeare to warn against

Answer 21

individualism that interferes with divine providence.

Question 22

Brutus’ interference in the stabilising force of the monarchy catalyses a period of

Answer 22

existential discord.

Question 23

Brutus’ soliloquy revealing his inability to rest, denoted through the extended metaphor of sleep

Answer 23

describing how “since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar, I have not slept.”

Question 24

Acknowledges his feelings of

Answer 24

guilt and self reproach for his part in plotting the death of his friend

Question 25

Offering a warning to the Renaissance individuals who attempt to

Answer 25

transgress the Divine will of God in pursuit of their own designs.

Question 26

In this way, Shakespeare implements Brutus as a vehicle to expose

Answer 26

the chaotic repercussions in the pursuit of one’s own system of subjective morality and falsely justified individualism.