Julius Caesar: Act 1

by William Shakespeare
Brutus is a trusted confidant of the Roman general Julius Caesar, but when he becomes convinced that Caesar's ambitions are a threat to the republic, he plots his friend's assassination. Read the full text here.

Here are links to our lists for the play: Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, Act 4, Act 5

Here are links to our lists for other plays by William Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Hamlet, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. knave
    a deceitful and unreliable scoundrel
    What trade, thou knave? Thou naughty knave, what trade?
  2. servile
    submissive or fawning in attitude or behavior
    These growing feathers plucked from Caesar’s wing
    Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,
    Who else would soar above the view of men
    And keep us all in servile fearfulness.
  3. soothsayer
    someone who makes predictions of the future
    A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.
  4. construe
    make sense of; assign a meaning to
    But let not therefore my good friends be grieved
    (Among which number, Cassius, be you one)
    Nor construe any further my neglect
    Than that poor Brutus, with himself at war,
    Forgets the shows of love to other men.
  5. cogitation
    attentive consideration and thought
    Then, Brutus, I have much mistook your passion,
    By means whereof this breast of mine hath buried
    Thoughts of great value, worthy cogitations.
  6. entreat
    ask for or request earnestly
    For this present,
    I would not, so with love I might entreat you,
    Be any further moved.
  7. fain
    in a willing manner
    I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown (yet ’twas not a crown neither; ’twas one of these coronets), and, as I told you, he put it by once; but for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it.
  8. loath
    strongly opposed
    Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again; but to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it.
  9. doublet
    a man's close-fitting jacket, worn during the Renaissance
    Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the common herd was glad he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet and offered them his throat to cut.
  10. amiss
    in an improper or mistaken manner
    When he came to himself again, he said if he had done or said anything amiss, he desired their Worships to think it was his infirmity.
  11. infirmity
    the state of being weak in health or body
    When he came to himself again, he said if he had done or said anything amiss, he desired their Worships to think it was his infirmity.
  12. portentous
    ominously prophetic
    ...When these prodigies
    Do so conjointly meet, let not men say,
    “These are their reasons, they are natural,”
    For I believe they are portentous things
    Unto the climate that they point upon.
  13. prodigious
    great in size, force, extent, or degree
    Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man
    Most like this dreadful night,
    That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
    As doth the lion in the Capitol;
    A man no mightier than thyself or me
    In personal action, yet prodigious grown,
    And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.
  14. sufferance
    patient endurance especially of pain or distress
    But, woe the while, our fathers’ minds are dead,
    And we are governed with our mothers’ spirits.
    Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.
  15. redress
    act of correcting an error or a fault or an evil
    Be factious for redress of all these griefs,
    And I will set this foot of mine as far
    As who goes farthest.
Created on Mon Mar 11 13:30:33 EDT 2019 (updated Tue Jul 15 17:04:54 EDT 2025)

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