Teaching Dramatic Terms in Julius Ceasar
High School Students' Study Guide for Shakespeare's Tragedy
Feb 28, 2009
Teaching William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is challenging, particularly because of the archaic language and sentence structures. In order to help students access this difficult text, you can teach them dramatic concepts in advance. Students should first thoroughly understand the meaning of these terms so that they can later apply this knowledge by identifying examples of each. Below is a study guide you can share with students to help them prepare for critical analysis of drama.
Dramatic Terms
The following dramatic terms will help orient students toward a study of drama before they begin reading the play Julius Caesar. You can define these terms with students in advance. Then, instruct students to identify examples of each term as they are encountered during their reading. These terms have been chunked into categories to facilitate student learning.
General Dramatic Terms
You have several options when imparting factual information to students. Rather than give students a list of terms and definitions or have them copy a long list of definitions from a PowerPoint presentation, consider a more proactive technique: provide students with a matching activity containing the following terms and definitions and encourage them to make an educated guess for each word. This is an easy way to access prior knowledge while instantly putting students in the driver’s seat at the beginning of the drama unit.
- drama: A story written to be acted out on a stage.
- tragedy: A literary work dealing with very serious and important themes, in which a dignified tragic figure meets destruction, usually through some personal flaw or weakness.
- aside: This type of speech occurs when a character speaks directly to the audience. Though other characters may be on stage, they cannot hear what the speaker is saying.
- catharsis: In tragedy, the release of strong emotion in the audience.
- monologue: A long speech delivered by one character to one or more other characters on stage.
- dialogue: A back-and-forth conversation between two or more characters
- soliloquy: A long speech given by one character alone on stage. The purpose is to reveal to the audience a character’s intimate thoughts and desires
Character Terms
Once students are aware of the different functions of characters, they will know what to look for during their analysis of a play. Notice that examples from the play are listed after the definition of each character term to help students develop clear connections with the characters they will soon encounter.
- tragic hero: A character whose basic goodness and superiority is marred by a tragic flaw—a fatal error in judgment that leads this character’s downfall. In Julius Caesar, Brutus is arguably the tragic hero of the play.
- foil characters: A character that is used to contrast with another character. This contrast usually involves opposite characteristics. Two foil characters in Julius Caesar are Brutus and Cassius.
- protagonist: The character who is the object of the conflict. This character is usually the central character in a story or drama, the one with whom readers are supposed to sympathize. In Julius Caesar, Brutus is considered the protagonist since he is the character who experiences the greatest internal conflict.
- antagonist: The character who initiates the conflict and can be considered an enemy of the hero. Cassius, the lead conspirator against Julius Caesar, is considered the antagonist.
- supporting characters: minor characters in the play who help move the plot along. Many supporting characters exist in Julius Caesar, including the patricians and co-conspirators Casca, Cinna and Decius as well as Calpurnia, Caesar’s wife, and Portia, Brutus’ wife.
Students may find it odd or surprising that so much of the plot of this tragedy is revealed before the play even begins. However, as is the with Romeo and Juliet and other Shakespearean tragedies, reading Shakespeare is less about the what and more about the how. That is, the plot is often articulated in advance so that the audience may focus on the language, characterization, and ongoing complications of situation that drive characters toward the inevitable end. By preparing students with the above general dramatic and character terms, you can communicate the importance of the process rather than the end result.
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