Rhetorical Analysis Of Mark Antony's Speech

Mark Antony, who adored Julius Caesar and was a loyal subject of Caesar’s, speaks at Caesar’s funeral after Caesar’s murder. Throughout this speech, using his cunning, he causes the peasants to be enraged towards the conspirators by showing them his emotions towards Caesar’s death. Impressing negative impressions of the conspirators, and causing curiosity among the people. In the beginning of Mark Antony’s speech he launches into it. He starts his speech by making the people feel for Caesar, “When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept” (3.2.100). Mark Antony is telling the people of Caesar’s mourning for them. Whenever the peasants were in pain Caesar was also. He uses the word “wept”. The connotation of that word sounds even more terrible than “cried”. It

Cried sounds more like he shed a couple of tears, and wept is that he was sobbing and in pain. A little while after that he presents logic to the crowds, “I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?” (3.2.105-106). He asked Caesar to be king three times, and he said no each time. In a very sarcastic tone he asks, how is this ambitious? He is pointing out the fault in the conspirators' claims, without outright saying the conspirators were wrong. Caesar never did anything that made people see him as a dictator. He is swaying the crowd towards anger at the conspirators with disguised tactics. He is also using logic to point out the fact Caesar would not have become a dictator since he never desired to be king anyway. Then, Antony expresses his heart-wrenching sadness with Caesar’s death, “My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar '' (3.2.116). Antony makes it sound as if he died along