Marc Anthony's Speech

Marc Antony's uses all different types of communication in his speech to the crowd during his infamous "honorable men" speech. Julius Caesar had just been murdered by a group of conspirators and Marc Anthony, Julius's dead friend, is now trying to reveal the real story to the public. However, Marc Anthony is in quite a tight spot, he can not directly accuse Brutus and others of this heinous crime because of there high positions and there power. He must work the crowd and use different types of strategies and communication to let them see what happened without just bluntly telling them. Marc Anthony uses everything in his repertoire, from sarcasm to gesticulations, and from repetition to antidotes.

Marc Anthony perfectly performs this speech and from the first hand account of Appian, we can see this. Once Marc Anthony started his speech it seemed like he already had them under his spell. They reacted just as he had wished and he just continued to put down Julius Caesar's killers more and more. He used several different descriptions but they all had the same meaning. The Appian account told the reader how the crowd was responding as well. It seemed like the event with the biggest impact was the visual one that Marc Anthony created when he took the sheet from Caesar's body, "Whereupon the people, like a chorus, mourned with him in the most doleful manner, and from sorrow became again filled with anger." Marc Anthony used this strategy a number of times, instilling the crowd with sadness then morphing it into anger. From this point on, the Appian account makes us believe that the crowd had its temper rise and rise until they went on there burning journey.

Shakespeare's version is a little different because of what he emphasizes. A tactic which seems more evident during the film is the teasing effect Marc Anthony has on the crowd with Julius's will. Each time Marc Anthony says he will read it and then backs away informing the crowd that they wouldn't want to hear it, and then somehow turns the anger of the crowd towards the "honorable men" of Brutus and the conspirators. The repetition of "honorable men" is quite obvious throughout the speech in the film, with each successive time he uses it the crowd picks up more on the sarcasm and gets more furious with "the conspirators". Exactly what Marc Anthony wants.

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