Comments on the Rhetoric of
Brutus and Marc Antony in
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

ASIATIC vs ATTIC?
In his oration, Antony denigrates Brutus with the label "orator."  The orator, he implies, is the moral opposite of the "plain blunt man" that speaks "right on," spontaneously, without assistance from the devious art of rhetoric. . . . Antony, the "Asiatic" stylist, lays claim to the "Attic" style that Brutus has just spoken and accuses Brutus of having spoken as he himself is now speaking, Asiatically.  Antony's prototypical orator manipulates his audience with calculated sophistry to "ruffle up their spirits." . . . But Brutus' oration is no less artificial, no less contrived to move the hearer.   . . . (55)

[Both Brutus and Marc Antony rely on] the combination of ad hominem innuendo [in spurious enthymemes] with rhetorical questions . . .."  (56)
(John W. Velz, "Orator and Imperator in Julius Caesar: Style and the Process of Roman History."  Shakespeare Studies 15: 55-74.)
____________

ENTHYMEMES

Representative enthymemes in Antony's oration:
--  Ambition is a grievous fault. (major premise)
    Caesar had ambition.  (minor premise)
    Caesar had a grievous fault.  (conclusion)
An argument Antony himself then counters through references to the "ransoms" secured by Caesar that filled Rome's "coffers," Caesar's tears "when the poor have cried," and the enthymeme regarding Caesar's refusal of "a kingly crown."

--  We should mourn for those we once loved.  (major premise)
     We once had cause to love Caesar.  (minor premise)
    Therefore, we should mourn Caesar.  (conclusion)

--  Those who kill their friends are the unkindest of men.  (major premise)
    Brutus killed his friend.  (minor premise)
    Brutus is the unkindest of men.  (conclusion)
____________

POLITICAL RHETORIC

To achieve persuasiveness, political rhetoric also relies on shtick. George W. Bush striding around the stage with dollar bills to illustrate his tax-cut plans, then giving one of the bills to a member of the audience--that's shtick. Al Gore dressing like your Uncle Walt at a Sunday picnic and high-fiving his way to the podium--more shtick.

Our candidates may never have read Aeschylus, but they (or most certainly their handlers) must have read Shakespeare, particularly that classic of podium manipulation and shtick, Marc Antony's speech at Caesar's funeral. You got your false modesty, you got your backhanded compliments to your opponent, you got your stage props to wave around like tax-free dollar bills. And you got your sudden revelation of gifts available to all--Caesar's will. Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, or modern politics, it's scare 'em, make 'em weep, and promise 'em the moon.
(Gary Carr, "Presidential Politics as Classical Drama")

__________________

PRAETERITIO

The classic example of a praeteritio [and apophasis] takes place in the Shakespeare tragedy, Julius Caesar.   After Caesar is murdered on the Ides of March by Brutus, Marc Antony begins his famous funeral oration by saying "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." He then delivers a tribute to his former leader that takes up most of Act III, Scene 2, of the play.

____________________

RHETORICAL QUESTIONS

Rhetorical questions are those so worded that one and only one answer can be generally expected from the audience you are addressing. In this sense, they are like the unmentioned premises in abbreviated reasoning, which can go unmentioned because they can be taken for granted as generally acknowledged.

Thus, for example, Brutus asks the citizens of Rome: "Who is here so base that would be a bondman?" adding at once: "If any, speak, for him have I offended." Again Brutus asks: "Who is here so vile that will not love his country?" Let him also speak, "for him I have offended." Brutus dares to ask these rhetorical questions, knowing full well that no one will answer his rhetorical questions in the wrong way.

So, too, Marc Antony, after describing how Caesar's conquests filled Rome's coffers, asks: "Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?" And after reminding the populace that Caesar thrice refused the crown that was offered him, Antony asks: "Was this ambition?" Both are rhetorical questions to which one and only one answer can be expected.
(Mortimer Adler, The Art of Persuasion)

__________________

THEATRICALITY

. . . In Julius Caesar, theatricality is concentrated fairly highly in the beginning of Act 3.  Brutus and his compatriots murder Caesar, and Brutus says, “Stoop, Romans, stoop,/ And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood/ Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords” (3.1.105-7).  Cassius recognizes the directorial efforts of Brutus when he replies, “How many ages hence/ Shall this our lofty scene be acted over” (3.1.111-2).  Antony then requests an audience, and Brutus tries to script the “spectacle” (3.1.223) of Caesar’s funeral.  He grants Mark Antony the chance to speak, despite Cassius’s advice to the contrary, and then tries to write Antony’s part:

You shall not in your funeral speech blame us,

But speak all good you can devise of Caesar,

And say you do’t by our permission;

Else you shall not have any hand at all

About his funeral.   And you shall speak

In the same pulpit whereto I am going,

After my speech is ended. (3.1.245-51)

In hindsight, of course, we can see that Brutus makes a huge mistake here: in his attempt to use theatricality to affect the body politic, Brutus succeeds only in bringing on civil war and political chaos.  Why?  Because Antony is better at theater than Brutus: Brutus sets up the play, but then speaks the truth; Antony is able to take the same situation and turn it into a moment of high theater.  The language the two characters use shows the opposition here: Brutus’s oration, simple, Stoic, and Senecan in its style, is to the point and written by Shakespeare in prose.  Antony’s performance, much more Ciceronian in it style, abetted by the props of Caesar’s body and his will, and written by Shakespeare in verse, directly involves and affects the audience.  Further, Brutus makes the simple mistake of leaving and abrogating his role as stagemanager; thus, he cannot ensure that Antony, an unwilling actor, will follow the script.

Is it that Brutus is a less able thespian—or a less able rhetorician?   One complication of Shakespeare’s anxiety regarding political theatricality is the role theater played in rhetoric, the training that all politicians received.   Major rhetorical treatises, such as Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria and Ciceor’s De oratore, establish a close relationship between rhetoric and acting.  . . .
(from “Politics’ Strange Bedfellow: Shakespeare’s Theatrical Anxiety” © 2000, David A. Reinheimer. All rights reserved.)

_________________

POLITICAL RHETORIC

There's probably three things I would talk about in terms of directing Julius Caesar.   The first is just my conviction. I worked as an assistant director actually for many years before, so I knew Julius Caesar pretty well. I was convinced that it was a political play, and in essence, it was a play about political power and about political speech, forms of political action. That was very much my response to the text. It's almost unique among the great plays in that its central turning point is a political speech, and it's the response of the audience to the political speech that changes the dynamic of the whole play. Antony's speech is the big reversal of the play. . . .

. . . And clearly Shakespeare is setting up, in as clear dramaturgical terms as can be, the contrast between Brutus' speech and Antony's speech and the impact of the two speeches. Shakespeare is clearly setting up the idea that how Antony speaks and how he addresses his audience are the keys to why he wins at the end of the play, to put it crudely. That's an incredibly interesting idea. I was also aware of the fact that I had never seen a production where I felt that it was actually about political speech or politics. I think that to Elizabethans certainly, political speech was rhetoric and that the kind of rhetoric that Antony uses in that speech was instantly recognizable to Elizabethans as political speech.
(Interview with director Oskar Eustis)
___________________

THE MARC ANTONY PROBLEM

. . . The first, and perhaps most difficult, hurdle any district attorney would face in mounting a prosecution against this sort of communication would be to prove that the speakers or writers in question intended that their remarks be taken seriously and acted upon. This is sometimes referred to in the scholarship of the First Amendment as the Mark Antony problem -- recalling the famous speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar that school children used to memorize, beginning with "Friends, Romans, and Countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." What Mark Antony did, you may recall, his voice dripping with irony, was repeatedly describe Caesar's assassin, Brutus, as an "honorable man," and say to the audience that he would not tell them that Caesar had made them his heirs (which he, of course, had already done) because that would make them angrier than they already were about his assassination. Nor would he want to show them the bloody hole made in Caesar's toga by Brutus's knife (holding the toga up to their view as he said this), because that, too, would further fuel their anger. The net result of Mark Antony's speech was to incite his audience to riot, yet how could one prove from the words he spoke that this was his intention? Similarly, the author of the fictional Turner Diaries would surely deny that he intended for a Timothy McVeigh to bomb a federal building in real life, nor would Gordon Liddy ever concede that he meant literally for people to go out and kill federal agents. We have already heard the claim from those who sing cop killer songs, or other misanthropic lyrics, that they are simply giving cathartic voice to the rage that is felt by some in our society against their alleged oppressors and that in no way are they really intending to incite or produce imminent lawless action that is likely to occur. . . .
(Professor Franklyn Haiman, "The Rhetoric of Violence and Revolution")
_______________

ECHOIC and IRONIC UTTERANCES in MARC ANTONY'S SPEECH
(from Rhetoric and Relevance, by Sperber and Wilson)

Echoic utterances are a well-defined type. Ironical utterances, on the other hand, are a loosely defined sub-class of utterances of the echoic type: ironical attitudes are many; they shade off imperceptibly into other attitudes, anger or aloofness, for instance. Because of that, the same representation can be echoed several times in the same discourse, but with a changing attitude: the utterance type and content remain the same but the disposition evolves and relevance is renewed.

Four times, Shakespeare's Mark Antony repeats "Brutus is an honorable man." The first time, all agree, his audience is not intended to take these words ironically. The fourth occurrence, on the other hand, is blatantly sarcastic. What happens in between? Wayne Booth, however subtle an interpreter, is hampered by the classical model of irony, however much enriched:

Booth envisages only two alternatives: either Mark Antony is making a literal assertion, or else he is being ironical, and since irony is excluded at that stage, then a literal assertion it must be (and hence a lie). For lack of intermediate forms between literalness and irony, a total reversal of meaning must take place at the second or third occurrence of "Brutus is an honorable man." In order to give a richer account of the passage than classical rhetorical tools permit, Booth must resort to metaphor: Mark Antony's hearers, he writes,

Relevance theory provides a more powerful analytical tool and thus permits a more fine-grained explicit account of the rapidly evolving mood expressed by Mark Antony. When he first says that Brutus is an honorable man, we do not have to describe him as asserting his own opinion, and even less as asking his audience to agree. They are already on Brutus's side ("'Twere best he speak no harm of Brutus here," a citizen cautions). What Mark Antony does is echo their opinion with what they must take, at this stage, to be a conciliatory attitude. Considerations of relevance cause his audience to understand Mark Antony, not as telling them, but as granting them that Brutus is honorable (and granting what you do not believe is not lying and may even be the moral thing to do).

Then, as he gives his audience reasons to renounce the favorable opinion of Brutus which he repeatedly echoes, Mark Antony conveys a more and more scornful attitude to that opinion (and to Brutus himself who would like to be thought of as honorable). The utterance type is the same throughout: it is echoic. Only the attitude changes. The echoic character of the utterance and the speaker's evolving attitude are not encoded and therefore cannot be decoded; the audience recognizes them by looking for a relevant interpretation.

_______________