Julius Caesar

New syllabus (first HSC 2027). This text is prescribed for the 2027 to 2030 HSC under the English Advanced 11-12 (2024) syllabus (focus area: Textual conversations, paired with Machiavelli's The Prince).
It was not on the 2019 to 2026 list. The Advanced Shakespeare texts then were King Richard III and The Tempest (Module A), King Henry IV, Part 1 (Module B) and The Merchant of Venice (Common Module). Sitting the 2026 HSC? See the 2019 to 2026 text list.

Why this text suits Textual conversations

In Textual conversations you argue about how two texts speak to each other and what reading them together reveals. Julius Caesar and The Prince make an unusually productive pair because one dramatises the very questions the other tries to answer in the abstract: how is power won, how is it kept, and what does it cost to behave well while seeking it? Your partner text is on its own page: Machiavelli, The Prince.

Structure at a glance

• Act 1 sets Rome on edge: festival crowds, Caesar's growing power, a warning about the Ides of March, and Cassius working on Brutus.
• Act 2 follows the conspirators' decision in Brutus's orchard, the argument over who else to kill, and Caesar's household on the morning of the assassination.
• Act 3 is the hinge. Caesar is killed in the Senate, and then the Forum scene turns the crowd with two rival speeches.
• Act 4 shows the new rulers dividing the spoils and the conspirators quarrelling in their camp.
• Act 5 moves the action to Philippi, where the conspirators lose and Brutus ends his own life.

Rhetoric as political action

The central lesson of the Forum scene is that speech is a form of power. Brutus speaks first in plain, balanced prose and is trusting that reason alone will be enough. Antony follows in verse, and his famous opening, "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;", sounds modest while it takes control of the room. Pay attention to his refrain "For Brutus is an honourable man,", which is repeated until the praise turns to irony. Name the technique (repetition, irony, staged emotion, use of a prop in the shape of Caesar's body and will) and say what it does to the crowd and to the audience watching the crowd.

Brutus, ideals and misjudgement

Brutus is a man who wants to act well. Shakespeare makes his errors not those of a villain but those of an idealist: he spares Antony, allows him to speak, and trusts that Romans will see the logic of the act. A strong essay explains how the play builds sympathy for him and still shows his political misjudgement. Antony's closing verdict, "This was the noblest Roman of them all.", is an invitation to weigh both sides, because it honours his intentions while the plot has shown their failure.

Fortune, fate and character

Cassius's line, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,", argues that people make their own history. Set that against the omens, storms and dreams of the early acts, and the play becomes an argument about how much of political life is chosen and how much is imposed. Caesar's own bravado, "Cowards die many times before their deaths;", is a moment of public self-fashioning that the audience reads against the warnings he has just been given. This tension between agency and fate is the clearest link to Machiavelli's thinking about fortune.

The conversation with its pair

Machiavelli's treatise advises a ruler on how to gain and keep power, and it is famous for separating effective political action from conventional morality. Put the two texts together and several exchanges open up.

• Ends and means. Brutus believes a noble motive justifies the killing. A reader schooled in The Prince can ask whether the assassination was a good plan as well as an honourable one. The play invites that question and gives a bleak answer.
• Image and reality. Machiavelli is alert to how rulers are seen. In the Forum, Antony succeeds because he manages appearance better than Brutus does.
• Fortune and virtue. Both texts care about the part of political life that cannot be controlled and the part that can. Place the play's omens beside the treatise's discussion of fortune, and ask whether Shakespeare agrees with Machiavelli that bold, adaptable action can answer chance.
• Form. A treatise addresses a single reader with confident instruction. A play shows many speakers, each partly right, and leaves the audience to judge. Ask what a drama can show that a manual cannot.

Make the dialogue run both ways. The Prince can sharpen how you read Antony's calculation; Julius Caesar can complicate The Prince by showing human beings acting from loyalty, pride and fear, and by making the consequences visible.

Context as a driver of argument

Shakespeare wrote the play in the late 1590s, when audiences were anxious about succession and about what a state should do with an overmighty leader. The Prince was written in the early sixteenth century in Italy, by a man who had served the Florentine republic. Use these contexts to explain why each text frames power as it does, and avoid treating them as a list of dates.

Common pitfalls

• Casting Brutus as simply good and Antony as simply bad, or the reverse.
• Quoting Machiavelli's famous phrases without relating them to a scene.
• Writing about the two texts in separate halves with a comparison paragraph bolted on.
• Treating the play as a history lesson and ignoring dramatic technique.
• Giving line references from memory. Use the NESA edition, since line numbers differ between editions.

Essay scaffold

Introduction. State a claim about what the pairing reveals, for example that the play tests Machiavellian ideas about power against the weight of conscience and consequence.

Body 1. The Forum sequence (3.2) as a study in persuasion: track how the repeated "For Brutus is an honourable man," turns from praise to irony, and name the effect on the crowd.

Body 2. Brutus's idealism and misjudgement, in light of the treatise's account of how a leader must act.

Body 3. Fortune and agency across both texts, set Cassius's "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars," (1.2) against the treatise's account of fortune.

Conclusion. Argue that Shakespeare stages Brutus as a man undone by his own virtue: he spares Antony, lets him speak at the funeral and trusts the crowd to weigh motives, and the Forum scene shows how quickly a better orator turns honour into irony. Set that against The Prince, which would call each of those choices a mistake, and decide whether the play endorses Machiavelli's realism or mourns what it costs.

Read the text

Julius Caesar is in the public domain. NESA sets the Cambridge University Press edition (2014, ISBN 9781107615519); use it, since act, scene and line numbering differ between editions. A free plain-text version is on Project Gutenberg, and the Folger Shakespeare Library also publishes free editions.

Sources

• NESA, HSC English prescriptions (checked 7 October 2026, year 2026).
• NESA, English Advanced Year 12 content pages: page 1, page 2, page 3 (prescription lists, checked 7 October 2026).