“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…” captures the same passion and emotion cultivated by Antony’s oration. While the speech he actually gave is unknown, Shakespeare’s version is often remembered and held as true.
The intense public reaction to his assassination can be traced to his funeral specifically, as Marc Antony gave a stirring funeral oration to rouse the crowd. Often, Caesar is remembered simply as the ambitious dictator assassinated by the senators of Rome.Ĭaesar’s funeral was a massive event. Surprisingly, the play about the famed Roman dictator focuses far more on his death and funeral rather than his lifetime achievements. The end of his life is described in Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. “Beware the Ides of March” echoes the tension of Caesar’s last day in 44 BC. You can watch Damian Lewis reciting this famous speech here.The death of legendary Julius Caesar is brought to mind every year on March 15th. He concludes, however, with a final line that offers a glimmer of hope, implying that if Rome would only recover itself, he would be all right again. Mark Antony brings his ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ speech, a masterly piece of oratory, to a rousing end with an appeal to personal emotion, claiming that seeing Rome so corrupted by hatred and blinded by unreason has broken his heart. The mob spirit has been fomented and everyone has made Caesar, even in death, the target of their hatred. Observe the clever pun on Brutus’ name in ‘brutish beasts’: Antony stops short of calling Brutus a beast, but it’s clear enough that he thinks the crowd has been manipulated with violent thugs and everyone has lost their ability to think rationally about Caesar. My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,Īnd I must pause till it come back to me. O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,Īnd men have lost their reason. So why do they now not mourn for him in death? (Note Antony’s skilful use of ‘cause’ twice here: they loved Caesar with good cause, but what cause is responsible for their failure to shed a tear at his passing?) What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?Īntony reminds the crowd of Romans that they all loved Caesar once too, and they had reasons for doing so: Caesar was clearly a good leader. You all did love him once, not without cause: I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,Īlthough he clearly is disproving what Brutus claimed of Caesar, Antony maintains that this isn’t his aim: he’s merely telling the truth based on what he knows of Caesar. Again, Antony appeals to the crowd: does this seem like the action of an ambitious man? Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?Īntony reminds the Romans that at the festival of Lupercalia (held in mid-February, around the same time as our modern Valentine’s Day so just a month before Caesar was assassinated), he publicly presented Julius Caesar with a crown, but Caesar refused it three times (remember, he was ‘just’ a general, a military leader: not an emperor). Hardly the actions of an ambitious man, who should be harder-hearted than this! But Brutus says Caesar was ambitious, and Brutus is honourable, so … it must be true … right? Note how Antony continues to sow the seeds of doubt in the crowd’s mind. When the poor of the city suffered, Caesar wept with pity for them.
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