Act Three Secene 2 Lines 71-105
Context: Antony is giving his speech to the crowd to try to convince and persuade them to turn against the conspirators.
Significance of the passage: This passage is very important because this characterizes a character that hasn't been mentioned much yet, Antony, and we get to know a bit more about the crowd and the people of Rome. From this passage, we can see that the people of Rome are like sheep, they will follow whoever is speaking to them and whoever says something that makes sense to them. They were supporting Brutus a few moments before Antony made the speech and now after Antony has talked, the people of Rome hate him. This passage also introduces us to Antony, and what his personality is like. From this speech, Antony is charactereized as sly because he manages to make the crowd hate the conspirators and to begina mutiny against them. We also get introduced to the fact of a new conflict, between Antony and Brutus, and his speech is foreshadowing a fight that will happen, Antony versus the conspirators. The ideas that Antony gives in his speech about how he contredicts what Brutus said about Caesar can also have an impact on the audience, because his speech makes you realize that maybe Caesar wasn't such a bad person after all and maybe he wasn't the things Brutus said he was. Maybe Brutus made a mistake. Finally, this passage is important because we can tell that not everyone thought that Caesar was someone who was worth to kill.
Antony (lines 71-105) :
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.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable 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 honourable man.
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.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable 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:
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.
