Although Brutus initially was the approval of the Roman citizens Antony’s sarcastic speech made the Romans second guess if the assassination of Caesar was right. In the speech Mark Antony gave in Act 3 Scene 2 he was speaking about Caesar being ambitious and Brutus being an honorable man but keeps repeating it in a sarcastic tone. For instances Antony said “But Brutus says he is ambitious and Brutus is a honorable man”, then again Brutus said “Yet Brutus says he was ambitious and Brutus is an honorable man” because it’s repeated a couple throughout Antony’s speech. As well in Act 3 Scene 2 Brutus said “And for my sake, stay here with Antony Do grace to Caesar’s corpse, and grace his speech. Tending to Caesar’s glories, which Mark Antony By our permission is allowed to make.
ii. 105-106). He wants the crowd to feel sympathetic toward him, and it works. Antony also manipulates them by describing the conspirators’ stabbing Caesar. “Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through; / See what a rent the envious Casca made; / Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed” (III.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is a honourable man. By this it shows that Antony is intelligent and has courage for he mocks Brutus and his accusations. And it shows how he can manipulate the crowd by telling of Caesars wonderful accomplishments. Antony then shows his anger towards the conspirators by getting the mob to release their anger by rioting and going out and killing the conspirators.
The commoners, the Plebeians, wish to hear Brutus’ reasons, to be “satisfied” with an explanation of the assassination from Brutus, first. To gain credibility, Brutus builds his ethos by saying, “Believe me for mine honor, and have respect to my honor, that you may believe.” (870) Brutus knows it will help his speech if his credibility is established first, thus he stating that his words are true, by his honor. Then, with a clever antithesis, Brutus gives an explanation of Caesar’s assassination telling the Plebeians, “Not that I loved Caesar less but that I loved Rome more.” (870) The antithesis shows despite the love Brutus had for Caesar, Brutus’ love for Rome required Caesar’s death. Brutus continues his speech with various rhetorical questions structured with parallelism of epimones. Brutus asks the men, “ Had
All through out the play Shakespeare portrays this through many speeches. Rhetorical devices are used to support the Aristotelian rhetoric through four main examples: Cassius manipulating Brutus, Caesar manipulating Rome, Brutus’ eulogy, and Antony’s emotional appeal. Ethos can be found when Cassius convinces Brutus to kill Caesar and Caesar manipulating Rome. Cassius states "I had as lief not be as live to be. In awe of such thing as I myself.
Persuasion at Its Best During chaotic times, a man’s words have the ability to strongly inspire those who feel apprehensive about a crisis. After the shocking assassination of the great leader, Julius Caesar, in William Shakepeare’s Julius Caesar, Marcus Antonius (Antony) cleverly motivates the plebeians to join his side in order to fight the evil conspirators, Brutus and Cassius. Using persuasion, the use of language to influence people to behave in a certain way, he easily rallies the naïve people. Like any good, influential speaker, Marc Antony uses persuasive devices such as specific evidence, verbal irony, and loaded words to inflame the Roman citizens to mutiny against the cowardly yet savage senators who assassinated Caesar. Speakers today continue to use persuasive devices such as these in order to inspire groups of people to act.
Antony’s eulogy to the plebeians is used as a device to show Antony’s opinion of Caesar as a noble and worthy leader and contradict Brutus’s tyrannical classification. Brutus revolves his speech around Caesar’s ambitions and their damage to Rome. Contrastingly, Antony repetitively presents the rhetorical question, “Was this ambition” to the audience which refutes the core of Brutus’s argument and encourages the audience to question Brutus, helping Antony build up imagery of a faultless Caesar brutally murdered. Furthermore, Antony repetitively directs the audience towards the body of the murdered Caesar stating “what a rent the envious Casca made”. While this device may be devalued in the textual format of the play, when performed in the theatrical environment with effective props, it is highly confronting to the audience and further directs the
Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, retells the actions of the title character's assassination for the benefit of Rome and the aftermath of said event. The audience follows the lead up to the Assassination as well as taking a glimpse of the post-Caesar world via the perspectives of several characters, namely Brutus and Cassius, the two main conspirators of the assassination plot. Brutus and Cassius are both polar opposites, but due to careful analysis by the audience, Brutus would be a better leader in the public eye, has significant respect from the people and is nobler in his actions than Cassius. Cassius would be seem as the more devious of the two, but he lacks integrity and only assassinates Caesar out of jealously, rather than the greater good like Brutus. But due to Brutus being mislead and easily manipulated by Cassius, Brutus would be a more suitable leader to lead Post-Caesar Rome than Cassius, but not to convincingly lead the conspiracy against Caesar.
The passage begins with a speech given by Brutus to the conspirators, followed by the debate of involving Cicero in the conspiracy, and the dilemma of whether Marc Antony should be killed along with Caesar. Shakespeare uses dialogue and various figures of speech to bring out an emotional response in the audience. Brutus’s speeches show us the power of his words and how easily they can have an influence on the rest of the conspirators. He delivers a highly effective speech on why Romans like them must not take oaths, because the thought of the future state of Rome under Caesar’s tyrannical rule must motivate them to keep their word. He states that oaths are only for cowards and feeble old people, and people who cannot be trusted for they would otherwise have broken it.
An Analysis of Marcus Brutus’ character Julius Caesar is a historical play written by the famous playwright William Shakespeare. The central theme of the play is the conspiracy hatched against Caesar, his assassination, the subsequent civil war and the ultimate defeat of the conspirators by the loyalists led by Mark Antony, Caesar’s best friend. Marcus Brutus, a principal character in the play, is a very much respected member of the Roman nobility. He is a close friend of Caesar; yet he does not like Caesar’s rising power as a dictator. He lives a life adhering to a set of high moral principals.