Antony's Speech IV

Bill Long

Making it Visual I (3.2.169-230)

After creating doubt and desire in the hearers, Antony does what litigation attorneys and preachers know is the most effective form of persuasion: he puts the evidence right before their eyes. And, when he does so, he gently rewrites history in explaining to the people what they behold. In no less than eight instances in these fifty-plus lines Antony either reinterprets the past or supplies visual testimony or images that lead the people to clamor for the conspirators' heads. This and the next mini-essay explore the powerful peroration of the speech.

Rewriting History

The value of controlling the podium in front of a group of people is that it gives the speaker a chance to put his or her construction on what is before them. Despite the cliche that things often "speak for themselves," they really do not. Things need a voice, an interpreter, a hermeneutician. Antony becomes that voice in the speech's concluding lines. He does so by redefining history in three ways:

1) The Torn Mantle

He points to the torn mantle of Caesar and says, "I remember/ The first time ever Caesar put it on;/ 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,/ That day he overcame the Nervii (3.2.170-173)." Mention of the "Nervii" would have struck a "nerve" among the people, for Caesar's victory over this Gallic tribe in 57 B.C. was like the D-Day of the Allied invasion in WWII. It was the turning point of Caesar's western campaign. When someone mentioned this victory, it would electrify the hearts of the hearers. Antony's intimate portrait of Caesar, in a summer night putting on this robe for the first time, is very moving but is completely bogus. Antony didn't even meet Caesar until 54 B.C., after which time he quickly joined his ranks. But, now it is ten or more years later (44 B.C.), and no one is going to quibble with Antony at this meaning-fraught moment.

**2) The Torn Mantle**

Antony then holds the mantle, identifying the tears in the garment as the result of specific knife-thrusts. "Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through;/ See what a rent the envious Casca made (3.2.174-175)." He is reliving the event, much as a sports commentator, with help of video footage, interprets a great athletic move while the amazed viewers watch in stunned and appreciative silence. Only thing is, Antony was not there when Caesar was killed. Shakespeare makes a point of having Cassius say, just a few lines before the assassination, "He (Trebonius) draws Mark Antony out of the way (3.1.26)," and then the stage directions follow: [Exeunt Antony and Trebonius.] Antony never witnessed Caesar's murder, but the crowd not only does not know this but doesn't care. Antony is constructing a story that has an air of plausibility to it, and the crowd hears him gladly.

3) "Private Griefs" (3.2.213)

Near the end of the speech Antony lets drop a line that is easy to miss but prodigious in its implications. He has made his points, and then reiterates the idea that the conspirators are "honorable" men (3.2.212,214), but the references to honor sandwich another crucial reference: "What private griefs they have, alas, I know not (3.2.213). What Antony is doing at the end of his speech is redefining the entire nature of the conspiracy in this one line. The conspiracy is not a public act, as Brutus would have it--"not that I loved Caesar less but that I loved Rome more (3.1.21-22)," but is a private act whose reasons escape Antony. Thus, Antony tries to collapse the entire conspiracy into an act of private (hence personal) pique when the conspirators in fact saw it as launching an era of liberty, freedom and enfranchisement for the whole people (3.1.81).

The effect of Antony's rereading of history is to take the broad middle ground, as well as the moral high ground, away from the conspirators. First, by personalizing his references to Caesar, Antony sets himself up as the authoritative eyewitness to the event. As such an eyewitness, what he says about the murder must be "true." Then, once this authority has been granted him, he takes away the conspirators' central point--that their attack on Caesar was a supreme act of patriotism. By reducing it to an expression of "private griefs," Antony has taken away any reason why the people should show sympathy for the conspirators' actions. He has perfectly prepared the ground for mutiny, which quickly follows.

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