Julius+Caesar

In the exerpt from Shakespeare's __Julius Caesar__, Marc Anthony speaks mostly of the goodness of Caesar, but I get the sense that he has alternative motives. I counted four times in such a short passage where Anthony says different variations of "Brutus says [Caesar] was ambitious/ And Brutus is an honorable man." Even though at the end he says, "I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke," I still think that disproving Brutus is exactly what he was trying to do. He knows that Brutus killed Caesar, and it seems with every repetition of "Brutus says he was ambitious/And Brutus is an honorable man," he is both mocking Brutus and trying to make him feel guilty for murdering Caesar. Did you get this impression? 1204240229

This passage of //Julius Caesar// proved to be a challenging one, at least for me. I had to read through it a couple times. I do find, lma, that Marc Anthony was mocking Brutus. After all, he kept saying that Brutus was an "honourable man." After reading this phrase repeatedly throughout the poem, the tone seems to become more sarcastic (at least to me). Brutus was not as "honourable" as he seemed; he killed Caesar, after all. Near the end, Marc Anthony states that people once loved Brutus, but sometimes men lose their reason.

What I am unsure about, though, is that Marc Anthony states that Caesar "was my friend, faithful and just to me." However, he goes on to describe Caesar weeping for his people, then states that "Ambition should be made of sterner stuff." Is he not insulting his friend Caesar? Then, in the final lines, he states that his heart is buried in the coffin with Caesar. Any ideas?? 1204243574

I think Marc Anthony was completely mocking Brutus. At the funeral, Marc Anthony got to speak last (according to Br. Tom), and the last speech is what everyone remembers anyway. So he probably used his speech to discredit Brutus. AWr, I get the impression that when he says "Ambition should be made of sterner stuff", that it is a more sarcastic comment, basically claiming that Caesar was NOT too ambitious, which further mocks Marc Anthony. But why would he conclude it with "I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke"? 1204247551

I know that you don't like it, Br. Tom, but this excerpt did nothing to dissuade my interest in this play. Shakespeare would have to be one of the few authors in the last five hundred years that could see one of his soliloquys found in a book on poetry. What he wrote was not poetry by design, which only magnifies how well he wrote. Actually, when I read this, it somewhat reminded me of the funeral scene in __Invisible Man__. A friend of the deceased, in that case Tod Clifton, delivers a speech that does not deliberately antagonize the people whom he knows to be watching. Yet at the same time, his words spark hostility within the people listening. He is able to subtly (or not so, in Antony's case) instill his perspective into the people and gravitate them towards his own cause.

As we hae pretty much exhausted the stated question, I would like to take this conversation in a new direction. If an actor were to play Marc Antony, would he have to speak subtly here? Would hamming up the sarcasm and the mock emotional lines ("O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts") be a stylistic rape of Shakespeare's intent? Or could such a performance add something? 1204251071

Well, in my opinion, Marc Antony, although may be mocking Brutus, is at the funeral for one reason, and that is to atest to Caesar. Although he does talk a lot of Brutus and what Brutus thinks of him, he also offers his own opinion and view on Caesar and his actions. Although he says he doesn't want to disprove him, I still think he disagrees with him. He obviously thinks very highly of Caesar. "He was my friend, faithful and just to me. . . . When the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept." When he makes positives statements such as these atesting to Caesar's good moral character, he's also making a statement on the fact that Brutus judged Caesar based on the wrong notions. Did anyone else get that feeling? The mocking of Brutus is more aimed at the mere fact that he is a murderer and nobody should believe a word he says. Oh, and TRu, to answer the question that you posed, I think the more emotion in this scene the better.1204251920

In response to tru's question, I believe that the actor playing Antony would have to make it sound somewhat serious, and not make his sarcasm too obvious. This would make it more believable, since he probably would have been killed if he made it too obvious. Hamming it up, as you say, would be overkill of Shakespeare's intention. The words are not subtle in their intent, but I believe the reading must be so as to balance that. Obviously, you wouldn't want to err on the other side either, since you would want your audience to pick up the mocking as well. user:PSp-c

I really enjoyed this poem. I completely agree with you Lma that Marc Antony has alterior motives. He knows that Caesar was murdered, yet he is in the presence of the murderers and cannot call them out without risking his own head. Rather, I thought of this speech as almost a sarcastic confrontation to them. The entire time Antony attests that Brutus is an honorable man. Yet he also tells us things about Caesar that contradict what Brutus said about him. Throughout the whole speech, he never directly insults Brutus. That's the genius of this. If one of his enemies were to confront him with anger at the speech, they would have little distinct evidence that Antony was trying to "disprove what Brutus spoke." Antony merely upheld Brutus's honor. Reading something like this leaves no doubt in my mind of Shakespeare's immense talent. 1204843264

What Mark Anthony is trying to a very clever political ploy to try and get popular support for himself while trying to not get murderd like Julius Ceasar did. Brutus and his allies at the time still had alot of power so he couldn't go out and say outright "they murdered Julius Ceasar lets do an uprising right now and kill those who killed him!" Instead what he does is play along with Brutus in the beggining and them later on remind them of the good things that Ceasar has done but always telling them that because Brutus says that he was ambitious and because Brutus is an honerable man then Ceasar must have been ambitious. In reminding them of all that Ceasar had did and in repeatedly putting the accusation that he was ambitious on Brutus feet he is changeing the syllabism into Ceasar was not ambitious but Brutus said he was so Brutus is not an honerable man without actually saying the syllabism at all. It really is a clever ploy of language when you think about it and even though it become obvious what he is trying to do by the end by then the damage has already been done and nothing can stop people who have heard those words from thinking them over in the quiet recesses of their minds. user:DGr-c