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150 multiple-choice questions and 45 flashcards, written to the Common Core ELA 9-12 reading drama blueprint. Every question carries a full rationale.
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Common Core ELA 9-12 reading drama, AP English Literature, IB English A: Literature
CoStudy's Julius Caesar (Shakespeare) bank holds 195 items. Every multiple-choice question carries a written rationale explaining why the correct answer is correct and why each distractor is tempting but wrong.
A sample of 12 multiple-choice questions from the bank, with the full rationale shown.
Act 4 opens with the Triumvirate:
Answer: D — Coldly drawing up a proscription list, including each other's relatives
A/C/B) Wrong. D) Correct — moral chill of the new order.
Cicero's role in the play is:
Answer: B — Marginal — appears briefly during the storm, then killed offstage in the proscriptions
A/C/D) Wrong. B) Correct — historical figure sidelined dramatically.
During the night storm in Act 1, Casca reports seeing:
Answer: B — A slave whose hand burned without harm, a lion in the Capitol, men on fire walking the streets
A) Wrong omen. C) Different play. D) Too narrow. B) Correct — accumulated prodigies.
The Elizabethan resonance of the play depends on:
Answer: D — An aging Queen with no clear heir, making any drama about regicide and succession politically charged at a safe Roman distance
A/C/B) Adjacent but not the lever. D) Correct.
Caesar tells Antony that he prefers around him men who:
Answer: C — Are fat, sleep o' nights, and look content
A) The opposite. B) Not the criterion. D) Not the criterion. C) Correct — full men are unthreatening to him.
Cassius's recruitment of Brutus mostly relies on the appeal that:
Answer: D — Brutus's ancestor expelled the Tarquin kings, and his Roman name binds him to act against tyranny
A) Brutus is not motivated by gain — that is the classic motive-reversal distractor. C) Not the pitch. B) Not the pitch. D) Correct — name and ancestry.
The ghost of Caesar appears to Brutus + says:
Answer: A — 'I am thy evil spirit, Brutus' — and promises to meet him at Philippi
B/C/D) Wrong. A) Correct — the dead Caesar continues to determine events.
Calpurnia's most vivid omen of the night is a dream that:
Answer: A — Caesar's statue runs blood from a hundred spouts while Romans bathe their hands in it
B) Caesar refused the crown; not the dream. C) Cassius's swimming story. D) Wrong image. A) Correct — Decius reinterprets it.
In the parley, Antony accuses Brutus's faction of being:
Answer: A — Flatterers who hailed Caesar before stabbing him
B/C/D) Wrong. A) Correct — bitter charge of hypocrisy.
Caesar's response to the soothsayer is to call him:
Answer: D — A dreamer and pass on
A) No accusation. C/B) No such recognition. D) Correct — dismissive, the first ignored omen.
Suicide functions in the play as:
Answer: C — A Roman ideal of self-determined death preferable to capture, claimed by Cassius, Titinius, Portia, and Brutus
A/B/D) Wrong. C) Correct — Stoic and Roman context.
Decius's flattery turns Caesar with the additional jab that:
Answer: C — Senators might mock him as henpecked by his wife's fears
A) False at this point. B) Wrong angle. D) Reveal comes later. C) Correct — wounded pride flips Caesar.
6 sample cards from the 45 in the bank.
The night of portents?
Strange weather + lions in the streets + graves opening. Casca + Cassius interpret as divine warning. Cassius uses them to recruit other conspirators.
Who is Mark Antony?
Caesar's friend + lieutenant. After the assassination delivers the famous funeral oration that turns the people against the conspirators. Joins the Triumvirate.
The Battle of Philippi?
Brutus + Cassius's forces vs. Antony + Octavius. Two engagements. Cassius believes Titinius is captured + has Pindarus kill him. Brutus loses + falls on his sword.
Famous adaptations?
Mankiewicz's 1953 film (Brando as Antony); Marlon Brando + James Mason; modern-dress productions in dictator settings; Mark Antony's funeral oration adapted in countless films.
Setting?
Rome, 44 BCE, plus the battlefields of Philippi (42 BCE). The play covers events from the Lupercalia through the second civil war.
Genre?
Roman tragedy / history play. Shakespeare's most-studied of the four Roman plays (with Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus).
These samples are a small slice. The full bank runs flashcards, multiple choice and timed mock exams with per-chapter progress tracking, on the web and in the iOS app.
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The Julius Caesar (Shakespeare) bank holds 195 items: 150 multiple-choice questions, 45 flashcards. 18 of them are on this page to read free, with no signup.
Yes. Every multiple-choice item carries a written rationale that states the controlling principle behind the correct answer and then addresses each wrong option in turn — why it tempts and precisely where it fails. Knowing why the plausible answer was wrong is worth more than knowing which letter was right.
The samples on this page are free to read in full, rationales included, with no account. The complete 195-item bank, the timed mock exams and per-chapter progress tracking are part of CoStudy on the web and in the iOS app.
Last reviewed 2026-08-22. Banks are written against the certifying body's published exam outline and re-checked when that outline changes — exams get renumbered, retired and reweighted, and a bank written to a superseded outline teaches the wrong proportions. Figures that are re-indexed annually are deliberately not asserted as rules; the questions test the governing principle instead.