(from Julius Caesar, spoken by Marc 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.
Scene Explanation:
After Julius Caesar was stabbed by a group of conspirators( Brutus, Cassius etc..), Mark Antony urges them to allow him to give a speech in Caesar's Funeral after his handshake with the group. Cassius warns not to allow him to do so but Brutus allowed him thinking that he has no power to make a change. In the funeral speech Brutus justifies the assassination of Julius Caesar is simply for the goodness of Rome, he says that he loves Caesar but loves his country even more in order to catch the minds of the Rome crowd. After this Antony gives the most famous speech to the crowd, at the beginning the part of the crowd is not ready to hear his words but the rest of them are interested in.
Why the Speech is So Special
Shakespeare has showed in excellence in the rhetorical irony form. The one speech that can change the entire crowd must be so powerful than anyone can imagine, that work has been exceptionally carried out by the Bard of Avon. It has illustrated one of the greatest moment in the Roman period. He played with the words so well that every reader impressed to the words in deep.
Julius Caesar is a famous historical play written by William Shakespeare in the year of 1599 approximately.
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