The Qualities Of Mark Antony In William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

Because Antony cannot speak negatively about the conspirators, he uses verbal irony and repetition in his speech to say one thing, but make the audience believe the opposite.  The tone of voice he uses in his speech is one indication that he does not mean what he says.  When Antony calls Brutus and Cassius "honorable men," he uses a sarcastic tone to show that they were actually not very honorable.  Again and again he repeats the phrase "honorable men," and each time the irony is more powerful.  Antony connects the audience's new belief that Cassius and Brutus were not honorable to his message that they should not mutiny.  He says, "O masters, if I were disposed to stir/Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,/I should do Brutus wrong and Cassius wrong,/Who (you all know) are honorable men" (III.ii.133-136).  The crowd thinks that the conspirators were not honorable, therefore they believe that mutiny would be acceptable.  To gain the full effect, Antony repeats that the crowd should not mutiny five times, so they lose the main point of his message, and only remember from the indignation in his voice that mutiny is a possible solution.

Brutus made his speech effective in persuading the people by using tone and rhetorical devices. Brutus was

Marc Antony, Brutus, and Cassius are all critical characters in William Shakespeare’s famous play, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Due to their distinctive personalities and values, there is no trait that all of these characters share, although they do share some traits with one another. Firstly, Marc Antony and Cassius are manipulative in nature, while Brutus is not. Secondly, the root of Brutus and Cassius’ failure is their personality flaw, while Marc Antony proves strong in all the ways they prove weak. Lastly, Antony and Cassius, unlike Brutus, do not separate their private affairs from their public actions while acts only with honor and virtue and completely ignores his personal concerns.

Many people know that Julius Caesar was betrayed and killed by many people who he had thought to be his friends. Some less common knowledge is that he did still have friends and others who stayed loyal to him. One man named Mark Antony was the most loyal of them all, even after Caesar’s death. When he found out Caesar had been killed, he began plotting to get on the traitor’s good sides and make it seem as if he had joined them so that he could convince the citizens to fight against them with him. He deceived the traitors and convinced them to let him speak at Caesar’s funeral, and in this speech he turned the citizens against them using very powerful rhetorical skills. After he had drove the traitors from the city, he took control of the city and led them to victory in a war against the conspirator’s armies. These are three telling examples that prove Antony’s skill and potential as a leader.

Unlike the common view of leaders, the potential leaders of Julius Caesar are not necessarily nice or giving. However, sometimes that is necessary. In the play Julius Caesar, a long tale of leadership shows the true qualities of the greatest leaders. Where the reader finds themselves started is at the point which Antony and Caesar, the overconfident leader of Rome, are discussing people around them. This discussion boils to a point in which Antony and Caesar discuss the possibility of Cassius being a threat to Caesar. Later, readers find Cassius is indeed a threat, as he and multiple others, including Brutus, stab Caesar to death. Antony then brings Caesar’s body to the multitude, and with a great speech inspires a hatred for those who wrongfully stabbed him. At the next point Antony is seen, he and Octavius are the new rulers of Rome. These two comrades go and finally eliminate the last of the traitors, Cassius and Brutus, in a battle that cements the two as the new leaders of Rome. Throughout all these actions, one man particularly showed that he should control the Roman Empire. Antony was created to be Rome’s leader in Julius Caesar, where William Shakespeare gave him inspirational abilities, persuasiveness, and fearlessness which are unparalleled.

Mark Antony, in the play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, was a brave, intelligent, pleasure-loving, and cunning man. He was loyal to his friend, Caesar, whom he considered a true friend. He looked at life as a game in which he had a signified part to play, and played that part with excellent refinement and skill.

Julius Caesar, a play by William Shakespeare, has many instances of great rhetoric in the speech of its characters. Marc Antony, a main character and a pupil of the great Julius Caesar, has a speech that shows many uses of rhetorical appeal and devices. He is able to sway the citizens easily because of how strong his rhetoric is and how persuasive he is. Antony uses devices like dramatic irony, appeals (ethos, logos, pathos), and repetition to make the citizens believe in him and Caesar to disregard the conspirators argument.

Plato once wrote that, “Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.” Rhetoric is the foundation of any solid argument, and any good speaker must learn to use it effectively. Creating a strong argument is a difficult task for any speaker, but Mark Antony’s eulogy for Caesar shows us that it can be done with the use of rhetorical strategies and arguments. Antony argues that Caesar was killed unfairly, and wants tells rome to revolt. He accomplishes this argument by using a combination of appeals to the audience's emotions, logic and facts, as well as reasoning and humility.

Mark Antony appeals to the audience by using a pathos strategy to make the audience feel something. In his speech he talks about how great of friends he was with Caesar and how devastated he is at his death. Caesar uses language like, “He was my friend” and “My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar” to make the audience feel sympathetic towards him. He makes his pathos approach very clear when he starts to relate to the citizens by saying how he knew how much Caesar loved them and how they loved him too. This pathos strategy strengthens Antony’s appeal by making himself out to be an equal of the citizens rather than a higher authority.

Mark Antony’s use of rhetorical devices helped turn the crowd against the conspirators in multiple ways in the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Mark Antony was Caesar’s best friend and right hand man. Caesar was killed by the conspirators because they thought he was ambitious and was trying to take all the power and become king. The conspirators gave Antony specific rules for what he could and could not say when he gave his speech at Caesar’s funeral. Mark Antony’s use of motifs, personality traits, and rhetorical devices such as the appeal to ethos, logos, and pathos, and repetition in Julius Caesar help convince the crowd to rebel against the conspirators.

It was, however, the most apparent example of repetition in the epistrophe, “Brutus is an honourable man” (III, ii, 84, 89,) that outlines the heart of Antony’s speech – that the conspirators were, in fact, not the least bit honourable in their murder of Caesar. Antony uses the epistrophe again to illustrate the other major concept in his speech; Caesar wasn’t ambitious – he didn’t deserve to die. “Brutus says he was ambitious.” (III, ii, 88, 96, 100). Through the heavy-handed use of repetition in Antony’s eulogy to Caesar, he delivers a strong message to the crowd. More importantly, however, such repetition was able to compel the audience into believing his words instead of Brutus’.

Antony repeats the word “honorable” several times in his speech. He is doing this in order to emphasize Brutus’ honorability, and make the citizens question it. Antony also repeats the word “ambitious” a signifacant amount of times. Through the repition of “ambitious”, Antony mocks Brutus trying to justify his actions by saying that Caesar was too ambitious. Every time he was that word, he describes an honorable trait of Caesar that contradicts Brutus’ accusation. For example, he mentions that Caesar refused the crown three times , and asks the citizens whether if that would be considered ambitious. “My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me,”[He weeps](Shakspeare, III,ii 116-117). Antony uses pathos to draw emotions out of the citizens. This quote emphasizes how many Antony loved Caesar, and the sadness he is feeling now that he is dead. Antony’s grief makes the people of Rome sympathetic to him, which leads to them

The tragic and untimely death of Julius Caesar, a condemned Roman tyrant, triggered William Shakespeare's creativity. In his play Julius Caesar Shakespeare writes of the treacherous conspirators, Marcus Brutus and Caius Cassius, and their plans to assassinate their Roman leader, Julius Caesar. The story continues to explain how Caesar's loyal friend, Marc Antony, helps avenge the brutal murder. After Antony receives soldiers to fight his battle, his character begins to change. The  fair and faithful Marc Antony transforms to a darker and more deceitful character. Marc Antony is not suitable to rule Rome because he holds a grand desire of great power, his conceit

Cassius, Brutus, and Antony use rhetoric successfully in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, albeit each differently and for different causes. Each of these men uses his skills in rhetoric to convince each other and at some points the entire population of Rome to follow his beliefs. However, each of these men has different motivations to do so, as well as different characteristics and general worldviews.

William Shakespeare, one of the most profound writers in all of history, skillfully used the character of Mark Antony in his play, Julius Caesar, in order to verify true the theme that loyalty and respect are two of the most extremely convincing tactics. He demonstrates the power of speech as he is manipulating words in order to prove a certain point in the speaker’s favor, whoever that may be. Mark Antony was a man who enjoyed spending the majority of his time at extravagant parties and receiving everything he wanted at his sudden demand. Shakespeare created Antony to be an expert in speech manipulation, which ended up making Julius Caesar to be what