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Julius Caesar · William Shakespeare · c. 1599
ANTONY
Caesar's lieutenant is allowed to speak at the funeral only if he blames no one. He obeys the letter of that promise while dismantling it word by word.
The speech148 words · 4 beats
0:00 / 1:28
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
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 an honourable man.turn
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
- Speaking to
- A hostile Roman crowd that currently sides with the assassins.
- What just happened
- Brutus has just told the mob that Caesar was ambitious and won their approval. Antony climbs to the pulpit over Caesar's body with the crowd against him and permission to praise nothing.
- Objective
- To turn the crowd against Brutus without once appearing to attack him.
- The turn
- 'But Brutus says he was ambitious' — the refrain repeats until its own irony curdles the word 'honourable.'
- Watch out for
- The trap is starting at full oratorical blast. He begins quietly, almost conceding; the power is in the repetition doing the work while he pretends to hold back. 'Honourable' must stay outwardly sincere as it rots.