Julius Caesar (Shakespeare Play)
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50 free Julius Caesar (Shakespeare Play) trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Shakespeare's Roman tragedy is the one most people meet first at school, and its lines have never left the language. A murder plot among friends, two rival speeches over one body, and a republic that tears itself apart: the play packs all of it into five fast acts. This quiz covers the whole tragedy. You will be asked to finish famous quotations, match characters to what they say and do, recall the warnings and omens of the opening acts, follow the funeral speeches line by line, and track who falls on the battlefield. A few questions step outside the text to the play's sources and its life on stage and screen. It suits students revising act by act, teachers who want a ready check on the reading, and anyone who remembers the big speeches and wants to see how much of the rest has stuck.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which date does a soothsayer twice warn the dictator to beware in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar?
The ides of March
The ides of March is simply the 15th in the Roman calendar. When the day arrives he taunts the soothsayer that it has come, and gets the reply: 'Ay, Caesar; but not gone.'
Q 02Which Latin words does the dying dictator speak to a trusted friend in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar?
Et tu, Brute
Et tu, Brute, meaning 'You too, Brutus?', comes just before his last line, 'Then fall, Caesar.' Ancient biographers reported that the real man died saying nothing at all.
Q 03Mark Antony begins his funeral speech in Julius Caesar by asking the crowd to lend him what?
Their ears
Their ears are what he asks for in 'Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears', a line that runs straight on to his claim that he comes to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
Q 04In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Cassius tells Brutus the fault that they are underlings lies not in what?
Our stars
Our stars are not to blame, Cassius argues, but ourselves: 'Men at some time are masters of their fates.' He is working on Brutus to stop accepting one man's rule.
Q 05Which kind of look does the dictator in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar say makes Cassius a dangerous man?
Lean and hungry
Lean and hungry is how Cassius looks to him, a man who 'thinks too much'. He would rather be surrounded by fat, sleek-headed men who sleep soundly at night.
Q 06Which language does Cicero speak in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar that a listener says he could not follow?
Greek
Greek is what Cicero speaks after the crown is refused, and the baffled report of it, 'it was Greek to me', is the phrase English still uses for anything incomprehensible.
Q 07In Julius Caesar, Mark Antony foresees a vengeful spirit crying 'Havoc' and letting slip which creatures?
The dogs of war
The dogs of war are loosed in a prophecy he speaks alone over the corpse. Moments earlier he was shaking the assassins' bloody hands; now he calls them butchers.
Q 08Who, according to the dictator in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, 'die many times before their deaths'?
Cowards
Cowards die many times, he tells his frightened wife, while 'the valiant never taste of death but once'. Within the hour he has ignored her pleas and set off for the Senate.
Q 09In Mark Antony's funeral speech in Julius Caesar, the stab from Brutus is 'the most unkindest' what 'of all'?
Cut
Cut is the word, and the double superlative is deliberate: Brutus was 'Caesar's angel', so his dagger hurt most. Antony says it while pointing out each rent the blades made.
Q 10In Julius Caesar, the dictator's wife dreams of smiling Romans bathing their hands in blood pouring from what?
His statue
His statue runs blood 'like a fountain with an hundred spouts' in her dream. A conspirator talks him out of staying home by recasting it as Rome drawing new life from him.
Q 11Which tradesman jokes to the tribunes in the opening scene of Julius Caesar that he lives 'with the awl'?
A cobbler
A cobbler is his trade, though he teases the tribunes first by calling himself 'a mender of bad soles'. The first workman the tribunes question is a carpenter.
Q 12The tribunes who open Julius Caesar scold the crowd for forgetting which general they once cheered?
Pompey
Pompey once drew these same crowds onto walls and chimney-tops just to watch him pass. Now they strew flowers for the man who 'comes in triumph over Pompey's blood'.
Q 13Shakespeare's Julius Caesar begins during which Roman festival, when Mark Antony runs a ceremonial race?
Lupercal
Lupercal was a fertility rite, which is why the dictator tells Antony to touch his childless wife as he runs past: a runner's touch was said to shake off 'the sterile curse'.
Q 21Which young servant of Brutus in Julius Caesar is forever being woken, and nods off while playing music?
Lucius
Lucius is the boy Brutus treats with unusual tenderness, easing the instrument from his hands as he dozes and promising 'I will be good to thee'.
Q 22Alone before dawn in Julius Caesar, Brutus resolves to think of the uncrowned dictator as what?
A serpent's egg
A serpent's egg is harmless until it hatches, so Brutus argues for killing him 'in the shell': not for anything he has done, but for what a crown might make him.
Q 23What does Brutus stop the conspirators doing in Julius Caesar when they gather at his house by night?
Swearing an oath
Q 14In Julius Caesar, Cassius complains that the dictator bestrides the narrow world like which giant figure?
A Colossus
A Colossus is his image for a ruler so vast that 'we petty men' can only 'peep about' between his huge legs. It borrows from the giant bronze sun god of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders.
Q 15Cassius tells Brutus in Julius Caesar that he once pulled the exhausted dictator out of which river?
The Tiber
The Tiber was running high on 'a raw and gusty day' when the two swam it on a dare. Cassius cannot stomach that the man who cried 'Help me, Cassius, or I sink!' is now treated as a god.
Q 16What happens to the dictator in Julius Caesar straight after he refuses a crown for the third time?
He faints
He faints in the market-place, foaming at the mouth and speechless, in front of the whole crowd. Brutus puts it down to 'the falling sickness', the Elizabethan name for epilepsy.
Q 17Which beast does a frightened Roman in Julius Caesar say he met by the Capitol on the stormy eve of the murder?
A lion
A lion glared at him and 'went surly by' without attacking. The same night he reports a slave whose hand blazed like twenty torches yet was left unscorched.
Q 18How does Cassius plan to win Brutus over to the plot as Act 1 of Julius Caesar ends?
With forged letters
With forged letters, written in different hands and thrown in at his window as if from ordinary citizens. Each one praises the name of Brutus and hints that Caesar is reaching too high.
Q 19Which Trojan hero does Cassius compare himself to in Julius Caesar for carrying the tired dictator to safety?
Aeneas
Aeneas carried his aged father Anchises out of burning Troy on his shoulders, and Romans claimed him as their ancestor. Cassius casts Caesar as the helpless old man.
Q 20Brutus recalls in Julius Caesar that his ancestors drove which royal house out of Rome?
The Tarquins
The Tarquins were Rome's last kings, expelled by an earlier Brutus. Cassius works on that family pride, reminding him there 'was a Brutus once' who would never have borne a king.
Swearing an oath is what Cassius proposes, and Brutus overrules him: Romans who have given their word need no other bond. It is the first of several times he gets his way.
Q 24Which famous anachronism is heard during the conspirators' night meeting in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar?
A striking clock
A striking clock sounds three and Brutus says 'Peace! count the clock', though such machines lay more than a thousand years in the future. The play's Caesar also wears a doublet.
Q 25What is the name of Brutus's wife in Julius Caesar, who claims a share in his secret as Cato's daughter?
Portia
Portia argues that a woman 'so father'd and so husbanded' is stronger than her sex. Shakespeare gave the same name to the quick-witted heiress of The Merchant of Venice.
Q 26Where does Brutus's wife give herself a 'voluntary wound' in Julius Caesar to prove she can keep a secret?
In the thigh
In the thigh, she tells him, and if she can bear that in silence she can bear his secrets too. Brutus is so moved that he prays to be made worthy of her.
Q 27What is the name of Caesar's wife in Shakespeare's play, who begs him on her knees not to go to the Senate?
Calpurnia
Calpurnia has cried out three times in her sleep, and briefly wins: he agrees to stay home 'for thy humour'. Minutes later a visitor's flattery changes his mind.
Q 28What do the priests in Julius Caesar fail to find inside the animal they sacrifice on the morning of the murder?
Its heart
Its heart is missing, a dreadful sign, yet Caesar turns the omen on its head: the gods, he says, are telling him that only a beast with no courage would stay at home.
Q 29Which conspirator in Julius Caesar recasts the wife's nightmare as good news and coaxes the dictator out?
Decius
Decius had boasted he could do it, since a man who says he hates flatterers is the easiest to flatter. His clinching argument is that the Senate means to offer a crown that very day.
Q 30Who waits outside the Capitol in Julius Caesar with a written warning that lists every plotter by name?
Artemidorus
Artemidorus signs himself 'Thy lover' and begs to be read first, but his urgency backfires and he is waved away as a madman. The paper might have saved the dictator's life.