Rhetorical cunning and a lesson from history: Mark Antony's funeral oration in Julius Caesar
Mark Antony’s funeral oration (Act III, Sc 2) in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
The course of history, Shakespeare reminds us, can be decided by the power of rhetoric – one individual may inspire, cajole, move others. At the end of the 1590s, he wrote two masterpieces – Henry V and Julius Caesar – that contain what have become among his best-loved speeches, at the heart of which lie exhortations to others to take action.
They offer a fascinating point of comparison. In Henry V, the young king strives to bring his French foes to heel and does so by rallying his troops with morale-boosting rhetoric of unflinching resolve. Firstly, outside Harfleur, he urges his men into the fray with “Once more unto the breach, dear friends” – then, on the eve of Agincourt, he envisages the glory that awaits his outnumbered cohort – the “St Crispin’s Day” speech: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”.
That is thought to have been written in 1599, the same year that Julius Caesar appears to have been first presented. In the latter, Shakespeare alighted on an even more momentous and epoch-defining address: the oration delivered by Mark Antony in the wake of Caesar’s assassination (March 15, 44BC). Antony’s valediction mobilised forces against the assassins, thereby ushering in a period of civil war, the fall of the Republic and the onset of the Roman Empire.
Whereas King Henry’s mission is to rouse his listeners’ valour, Antony achieves a call to arms by the opposite means – offering apparently placatory remarks that initially serve the function of a meek, transient tribute but stealthily goad audience sympathies into vengeful outrage. Shakespeare seems to have part-based it on an account by the Greek historian Appian and partly on Plutarch. But he went with the flow of his own invention, creating a model of super-subtle persuasion.
The context
The most famous assassination in ancient history is re-enacted at the start of Act III. Antony is kept outside the senate, doesn’t see the bloodbath, and is reported to have fled but then returns warily to consult with the conspirators and behold the corpse, obtaining an assurance that he may produce it “to the marketplace/ And in the pulpit, as becomes a friend,/ Speak in the order of his funeral”. Brutus agrees on condition that he will speak to the plebeians first. Antony, addressing the body alone, foresees civil war (Caesar’s spirit shall “cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war”). At the forum, after Brutus has given a measured explanation (“As he was ambitious, I slew him”), Antony arrives with the body and makes himself heard amid the Roman rabble.
What’s in the speech?
“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.” Offering fluent, unforced blank verse after Brutus’s high-minded prose, that introduction is solemn, balanced, deferential. He’s here seemingly to ask questions.
Ten lines in comes an aside that’s lulling in its sing-song simplicity: “For Brutus is an honourable man,/ So are they all, all honourable men”. That adjective is repeated 10 times in all like a refrain, its substance gradually drained from it, until it’s eventually adopted by one attendant citizen as a term of scoffing disbelief (“They were traitors. Honourable men!”).
Brutus’s core justification for the murder (“ambition”) is dismantled with an amicable citing of evidence that’s more anecdotal than legalistic: the financial value of Caesar’s captives to Rome, his tears for the poor, his thrice-refusal of the crown. “Here I am to speak what I do know,” says this apparently artless man of the people.
All this is enough to ignite flickers of doubt in the onlookers – fuel is added by referring to Caesar’s will and displaying the deceased’s bloodstained mantle (“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now”). As the crowd grows agitated, Antony reiterates his inarticulacy. The rhetorical pièce de résistance sees him transfer the exhortation to an uprising into the imagined mouth of his rival (“Were I Brutus,/ And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony/ Would ruffle up your spirits…”) It’s a consummate act of self-effacement and back-stabbing sleight of hand, turning Brutus into the hypothetical agent of his own condemnation. Off the mob goes and Antony crows: “Mischief, thou art afoot,/ Take thou what course thou wilt!”
Why is it so powerful?
It’s thrilling not only in its verbal panache but also in its theatrical force. As with Iago working upon Othello, we have the satisfaction of watching as someone sows seeds of doubt and discord, letting their own apparent modesty and reserve stand in as guarantors of their trustworthiness.
But this isn’t pure malignancy: there’s no clear-cut interpretation. Is this speech premeditated craft or passion-prompted spontaneity? Both? We can see Caesar through Antony’s eyes and he ceases to be a tyrant (or therefore a legitimate target). As if drawn into a civil war ourselves, our response is divided: we’re part of the throng yet outside the fray; acted-upon but also conscious that this is a performance. It’s a masterclass in public speaking and political wile and a warning from history: once unleashed, those forces of violence can’t be checked.
In performance
The first record of it comes from Thomas Platter, a Swiss traveller who saw it (most likely at the newly built Globe) on September 21, 1599: – “an excellent performance”. The most notorious inhabitant of the role was John Wilkes Booth, who in 1864 took part in a fundraiser (with his brothers) for a Shakespeare statue in Central Park (it stands there today); five months later, he assassinated Lincoln.
The play has been much revived in the past decade, with riveting turns from first Cush Jumbo then Jade Anouka – impassioned, controlled, fearsome – in Phyllida Lloyd’s mighty all-female, prison-set Donmar version (2012/2016). At the Bridge in 2018, David Morrissey stood vulnerable and alone – robustly plaintive, ardent, urgent – above the standing multitudes of Nick Hytner’s promenade revival. The best screen performance is Marlon Brando in the 1953 MGM epic – a stalwart warrior who lets a shifty look steal over him when he pauses his spiel.
Why it matters now
Whether it’s Dominic Cummings in the Rose Garden justifying his questionable actions, Trump addressing the nation to vow military intervention to quell the riots, or John Boyega calling for racial justice via a loud-hailer on London’s streets, 2020 has already yielded many moments that recall Antony’s decisive bid to sway the populace and channel the tide of opinion – and instances too of how, once roused, a mob can become a law unto itself.
“How many ages hence/ Shall this our lofty scene be acted over?” declares Brutus’s manipulative accomplice Cassius. A play more than 400 years old, reflecting on events of more than 2,000 years ago, looks good for hundreds more.
TELL DOMINIC YOUR THOUGHTS
Is there a cleverer or more rousing speech in Shakespeare? Or in theatre full-stop? Dominic Cavendish will be in the comments section at the foot of this article between 4pm and 5pm on June 16
Video examples
Barn Theatre, recent series ‘Bard from the Barn’
THE FULL SPEECH
ANTONY
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…
