Analyse the rhetoric used by Brutus and Antony in their speeches (III, II). Consider the effect of their rhetoric on the mob and how it affects their own characters.

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Keeley Webb

Analyse the rhetoric used by Brutus and Antony in their speeches (III, II). Consider the effect of their rhetoric on the mob and how it affects their own characters.

        Julius Caesar has just been assassinated by a group of conspirators led by Brutus.  Cassius wants to kill Mark Antony too “Let Antony and Caesar fall together.”(II, I, 161). Brutus is politically naïve, unlike Cassius and Antony, so he turns down Cassius’s advice, “Our course will seem too bloody.”(II, I, 162). He ignores Cassius’s advice not to let Antony speak.

Brutus wants to persuade the crowd that Caesar had to die because his ambition would make him a tyrant and he would have brought suffering to them all. Antony has a harder task; he has to persuade the mob first, that he is on their side, then to persuade them of the conspirator’s injustice, gaining their political support. They both use the power of rhetoric and oratory to achieve this. The mob can be easily manipulated by skilful oratory and mass hysteria. Stirring emotion, altering opinion, and inducing action in the process. Rhetoric is defined as the whole art of using language so as to persuade others.

Brutus speaks to the people in prose rather than in verse, presumably trying to make his speech seem plain, and to keep himself on the same level as the crowd. But his speech is too intellectual. The mob are dumb and will not be able to make their own minds up, they need to be told. He has a beautifully patterned speech, but its affects are lost on the mob.

 When he first addresses the crowd he places Rome first, (The reason he assassinated Caesar was for the good of Rome) “Romans, countrymen, and lovers!” (III, II, 13). He carries along the theme of Rome, answering his own hypothetical question with, “not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.” (III, II, 22). He quickly starts to convince the crowd that Caesar would have become a tyrant and brought suffering to them all, using a balanced argument with positives and negatives, “Had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men?” (III, II, 23). This is a lie, but I think that Brutus really believes himself because he speaks in an open and honest manner.

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Brutus uses equilibrium to build up a crescendo, “As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him.”(III, II, 25). This is the climax of Brutus’s speech, which only takes him sixteen lines to reach. He uses the word ‘slew’ as a shock, and to show that Caesar’s ambition was terrible, so it deserved a terrible fate. Brutus uses several rhetorical questions, such as line 34, where he uses the power of Rome again, “Who is here so vile ...

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