Comparing Brutus' and Mark Antony's Funeral Speeches in Julius Caeser by William Shakespeare
Julius Caeser is a well known play written by William Shakespeare. It is based on the life and after life of the great roman leader, Caeser. One of the most important and memorable scenes in the play is when Brutus and Mark Antony give their speeches at Caeser's funeral. In this essay I will be comparing to two, noting the key speech writing elements, and finally concluding which I think is most effective.
The first speech we hear is that of Brutus. In his speech he aims to justify his reasons for killing Caeser, and also hopefully gain the backing of his fellow Romans.
In Antony's speech he is
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Antony also uses hyperbole. He said 'when the poor hath cried, Caeser hath wept.' Again Caeser wouldn't literally have cried, although he may have been upset. This exaggeration helps to create the image that Caeser wasn't so bad after all.
Rhetorical questions are a very influential persuasive device, and can be pinpointed in both speeches. Brutus uses them to see if the listeners are proud to be Romans, 'who here is so vile that will not love his country?' This gives the audience something to contemplate on, and they all say 'non Brutus non.' Brutus gets his desired answer. Antony uses rhetorical devices also. He says 'did in this Caeser seem ambitious?' He is asking the crowd whether they think that refusing the crowd is ambition. Both of these questions are effective because they involve the audience in their speeches, by asking them an question.
In both speeches, the writers use 'threes', this is where they string three words together, thus making them memorable. Brutus uses 'friends, countrymen and lovers' when he refers to the crowd, he uses lovers, meaning lovers of Rome. Antony uses a similar combination calling the crowd 'friends Romans and countrymen.' This makes the crowd feel as if the speakers are their friends.
Brutus' speech is written in prose. I think this is because he wants to make the speech understandable to all the listeners, at all
According to picturequotes.com, “Words are powerful. They can create or they can destroy. So choose your words wisely.” In Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare, conspirators slay Julius Caesar, resulting in anarchy in Rome. Some agree with the death, while others oppose the sudden and violent death of Caesar. Unlike Antony, Brutus uses emotion rather than fact to sway the Roman people that Caesars death is justified. Although Brutus puts rules in place so he can not talk disrespectfully of the conspiracy, Antony, Caesar‘s closest friend, uses his slyness and manipulation in his funeral speech to persuade the Romans. Although both characters use analogies, parallelism, loaded words and hyperboles, their speeches convey very different
William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is a tragic story of the dog and the manger. After Caesar is killed Mark Antony, a good friend of Caesar, plots to revenge his bloody death. He knows there is strength in numbers, and through a speech at Caesar's funeral, Antony plans to win the crowd of Rome and turn them against Brutus and the other conspirators. Cassius is one of the leading conspirators and is weary of Antony; Brutus is confident that there is nothing to fear, but he speaks before Antony at the funeral just to be safe. These two speeches, vastly different in message but similar in delivery, move the emotions of the people. Brutus's and Antony's
The play Julius Caesar written by William Shakespeare in 1599, is about the murder of Julius Caesar, a great Roman general who conjured many lands, and helped to form the Great Empire that we read about today. Caesar was to be crowned king of Rome, but he was savagely murdered by a group of conspirators before he received the crown. After Caesar's brutal murder, Brutus a very honourable Roman, who helped in in Caesar's death, and Mark Antony, one of Caesar's closest friends, gave speeches at Caesar's funeral, trying to convince the crowd to agree with them and turn against the other. Brutus and Antony both made convincing speeches, but Antony came out on top, because Antony let the people make up their own mind, by appealing to their emotions.
In William Shakespeare's play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, two speeches are given to the people of Rome about Caesar's death. In Act 3, Scene 2 of this play Brutus and Antony both try to sway the minds of the Romans toward their views. Brutus tried to make the people believe he killed Caesar for a noble cause. Antony tried to persuade the people that the conspirators committed an act of brutality toward Caesar and were traitors. The effectiveness and ineffectiveness of both Antony's and Brutus's speech to the people are conveyed through tone and rhetorical devices.
Caesar’s funeral is a key point in the play and is dominated by long speeches by Brutus and Antony. Because the speeches are long and challenging, it is best to view, re-view, read, and analyze.
In the Tragedy Of Julius Caesar, Brutus and Anthony both presented a speech to the citizens of Rome. Brutus argued why his actions to kill Julius were acceptable while Antony contradicted Brutus’s views, arguing why Caesar should not have been murdered. Both speakers used ethos, logos, and pathos to persuade the people of Rome. Brutus’s speech was mainly based on logic, while Antony’s speech took more of an emotional approach . Overall, Antony had a sophistic style, he was much more artful and cunning than Brutus. He reeled in the crowd like a fish and captured them with his compelling diction.
In the play Julius Caesar written by the whimsical, sophisticated William Shakespeare both beloved Brutus and noble Antony deliver their most thorough attempts to win over the delicate citizens of Rome into what they believed was correct. Brutus gave it a valiant effort in trying to convince the citizens that murdering the noble Caesar was the best thing to do for the people. In the end Brutus’ effort was not enough because Antony was able to turn every Roman against Brutus and the other deceitful conspirators during his speech with his extraordinary use of logos, pathos, and ethos.
Eulogy, noun. – A well versed, powerful speech which praises someone after their death. In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, there are two of the most famous, and repeated eulogies ever spoken. These eulogies are very powerful and speak to everyone. They are both written very eloquently, but very different at the same time. One is written as a sadness for Caesar, while the other is written as a man who wants to make others feel guilty for his doing. Both speeches seem to tug on the heart strings of Rome’s public. They both use different techniques of drawing the crowd into their thinking. In the speeches we can see notes of verbal irony, speech structure, and repetition of words that help to persuade the crowds of plebeians.
The most predominate and important aspect In the play Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare are the speeches given to the Roman citizens by Brutus and Antony, the two main charaters, following the death of Caesar. Brutus and Antony both spoke to the crowd,using the same rhetorical devices to express their thoughts. Both speakers used the three classical appeals employed in the speeches: ethos, which is an appeal to credibility; pathos, which is an appeal to the emotion of the audience; and logos, which is an appeal to the content and arrangement of the argument itself. Even though both speeches have the same structure Antony’s speech is significantly more effective than Brutus’s.
Julius Caesar is an historical tragedy, written by Shakespeare in 1599. Set in ancient Rome it depicts the rise and fall of an emperor and a time of vast political change. Presenting a tale of manipulation and a struggle for power Shakespeare uses the uses the art of the orator and rhetoric to describe key moments in Rome’s history. Structurally central to the play is Act III, scene 2, as it is at this pivotal moment, after the conspiracy and assassination of Caesar that the battle for power begins.
Brutus and Antony's speeches were both very different. Brutus tried to get the people to understand that Caesar was corrupt and wasn't the right leader so they would forgive him for killing Caesar, while Antony grieved and began a mutiny against Brutus and the other killers. They both did show their affection towards Caesar and what a great friend he was to them.
In the tragic play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, the ruler of Rome, Julius Caesar, is stabbed to death by some of his so-called friends. Brutus, one of Caesar's best friends, is approached by some of the other senators to join the conspiracy to kill Caesar. Brutus weighs his options and decides to join the conspirators for the good of Rome. At Caesars's funeral, Brutus gives a speech to convince the citizens that the conspirators were right to kill Caesar. In contrast, Antony gives a speech to convince the Romans that there was no real reason to kill Caesar. Both characters try to persuade the audience, but they achieve different tones using literary and rhetorical devices. The tone of Brutus' speech is prideful, while the tone of Antony's speech is dramatic and inflammatory.
The speeches given by both Brutus and Mark Antony in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar are very persuasive to the audience that they are given to, but rhetorical devices were used in different ways in order for each to have an effect on the people of Rome. In Brutus’s speech, he uses devices such as rhetorical question and antithesis to convince the Romans that he and the conpirators did a good deed by killing Caesar. In Mark Antony’s speech, he sways them to believe that Caesar did not deserve to die, and that the conpirators were the real enemies by using rhetorical devices like rhetorical question and apostrophe. Both speeches were very
The formal tone in Brutus’s speech starts out in the beginning because he address the people as Friends, Romans, and lovers. This sets the tone of the speech, it shows that his was thought through and planned out because he was trying to justify his part in the murder. Even though the thorough and thought through speech did convey a message to the roman people, Antony’s sparked a passion through his love for Caesar and even counter reacted Brutus. He poked fun at him, by using the word “honourable’ to describe Brutus himself.
Julius Caesar and Brutus are more similar than meets the eye. One could argue that both Julius and Brutus are tragic heroes in the tragic play Julius Caesar. This argument is false because Brutus is the one, and only, tragic hero. Brutus is the tragic hero because he possesses the heroic qualities of equality and respect, integrity, and concern for his county, as well as possessing a tragic flaw, which is his own naivety. Heroic qualities can be hard to define, but to simply put it, they are the defining qualities and famed features that define a conqueror. These beliefs often tell the customs and beliefs of the society the hero is from, because this is the way of life for the tragic hero. Every tragic also embeds himself with a tragic flaw. The tragic flaw is the one negative and shameful character trait found throughout that the character just cannot quite seem to control and will lead to their demise, no doubt about it.