Brutus has just given the pulpit to Antony. Antony is taking Brutus’s speech points a manipulating it so it is beneficial to him.
Act Three Scene 2
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(85)
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious;
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest—
For Brutus is an honorable man;(90)
So are they all, all honorable men—
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me;
But Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honorable man.(95)
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.(100)
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?(105)
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
And sure he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause;(110)
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement, 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.(115)
Antony manipulates the crowd by twisting Brutus’s words he uses a lot of persuasive techniques that allow the crowd to believe in him and also plants the idea of mutiny amongst the people. They go wild because so much passion has been stirred up inside them by this speech that is why this speech is significant. It shows Antony as a well spoken person, it also shows that he cares about Caesar a lot. That he is willing to start war in his own country just for his best friend. People believed Antony more because his speech had more techniques and emotion. Brutus’s speech is very unlike Antony’s though he does use techniques they are not as effective and he lacks emotion. Antony executed his speech in a strategic way, he made himself sound weak and the Romans superior which flattered the crowd even more, but the most effective technique, the one that contradicted Brutus’s speech was when Antony went down and made the crowd circle around and see the stabs of the conspirators, it also allows the crowd to see how brutally Caesar was attack therefore making the death of Caesar less honorable and loosing the cause of Brutus’s speech. Overall this passage had a great effect on me I enjoyed reading it and since it is filled with so much emotion I will be able to act it out easily.
