A Short Analysis of Mark Antony

A Short Analysis of Mark Antony’s ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ Speech
Mark Antony’s ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ speech from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a

masterclass of irony and the way rhetoric can be used to say one thing but imply something quite
different without ever naming it. Mark Antony delivers a funeral speech for Julius Caesar following
Caesar’s assassination at the hands of Brutus and the conspirators, but he is only allowed to do so as long
as he does not badmouth the conspirators for their role in Caesar’s death. Antony’s references to Brutus
as an honourable man subtly and ingeniously show that Brutus is anything but honourable, while also
serving to show that Caesar was not the ambitious man Brutus has painted him to be.
The best way to analyse this key speech from the play is to go through it, summarising it section by
section.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
Immediately we see Mark Antony’s brilliant rhetorical skills, which he uses to get the crowd ‘on side’. As
David Daniell observes in his note to that opening line, ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your
ears’, Mark Antony begins with the more intimate address ‘Friends’, before moving from the personal to
the national, a move that, for Daniell, is ‘reinforced by expansion’: ‘Friends’ (one syllable), ‘Romans’
(two syllables), ‘countrymen’ (three syllables). (See Julius Caesar (The Arden Shakespeare); we
thoroughly recommend this edition of Julius Caesar, by the way).
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
Mark Antony has ‘read the room’ and knows the mood among the crowd: they still support the
assassination of Julius Caesar and so side with Brutus and the other conspirators. Mark Antony treads
carefully, brilliantly going against their expectations and reassuring him that he is simply there to deliver
a funeral oration, not to take the dead general’s side (it’s worth remembering that Julius Caesar was a
general, not an emperor: although he was called Caesar, he wasn’t ‘a’ Caesar, the name given to later
emperors of Rome in his honour).
The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;
Daniell notes helpfully that these lines, which have become much more famous thanks to Shakespeare’s
play, are proverbial and their sentiment (albeit with different wording) predate Shakespeare.
The meaning is obvious enough: when people die, the bad things they did often stick in people’s
memories, while their good deeds are forgotten. As Antony goes on to say, ‘So let it be with Caesar’.
Immediately, then, he is cleverly saying that he is happy for everyone to focus on Caesar’s bad points and
forget the good the man did; but in referring to the latter, he is subtly reminding them that
Caesar did good as well as evil things. (By the way, a note on scansion or metre: because Mark Antony is
addressing the crowd using blank verse or unrhymed iambic pentameter, ‘interred’ should be
pronounced as three syllables, not two.)
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus

Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Mark Antony now takes up Brutus’ words about Julius Caesar and responds to them. He doesn’t
contradict Brutus, but instead uses the subjunctive ‘If’: ‘If it were so’. He refuses to say that Caesar was
ambitious, but grants that if it were true, it was a terrible fault. The purpose of this is to cast doubt on the
very idea that Caesar was ambitious (supposedly the very reason for his assassination), but in such a way
that doesn’t rub the crowd (which still supports Brutus) up the wrong way. He then goes on to point out,
however, that if Caesar was ambitious, he’s now dead, so has ‘answer’d’ or paid the penalty for his fault.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–

(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
Mark Antony makes a performative gesture to Brutus’ supposed generosity in letting him, Mark Antony,
speak at Caesar’s funeral. He says that such generosity is a sign of Brutus’ honour: he, and the rest of the
conspirators, are ‘honourable men’.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:

But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
Antony now slowly begins to ease in some praise for Caesar, but keeps it personal to him, rather than
making grand, universal statements about Caesar’s good qualities: he was his friend, and faithful and
just to him. But then, Brutus says Caesar was ambitious, and Brutus
is honourable, so ‘I guess I was wrong (but I know I’m

not)’. Obviously this last bit is implied, not spoken aloud – but that’s what Mark Antony is building
towards.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome

Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
Let’s look at what Caesar did: he took many enemies prisoner and brought them here to Rome, and these
captives’ ransoms, when paid, helped to make Rome rich. Does this seem ‘ambitious’ behaviour to you?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
When the poor of the city suffered, Caesar wept with pity for them. Hardly the actions of an ambitious
man, who should be harder-hearted than this! But Brutus says Caesar was ambitious, and Brutus is
honourable, so … it must be true … right? Note how Antony continues to sow the seeds of doubt in the
crowd’s mind.
You all did see that on the Lupercal

I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
Antony reminds the Romans that at the festival of Lupercalia (held in mid-February, around the same
time as our modern Valentine’s Day; so just a month before Caesar was assassinated), he publicly
presented Julius Caesar with a crown, but Caesar refused it three times (remember, he was ‘just’ a
general, a military leader: not an emperor). Again, Antony appeals to the crowd: does this seem like the
action of an ambitious man?
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know.
Although he clearly is disproving what Brutus claimed of Caesar, Antony maintains that this isn’t his
aim: he’s merely telling the truth based on what he knows of Caesar.
You all did love him once, not without cause:

What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
Antony reminds the crowd of Romans that they all loved Caesar once too, and they had reasons for doing
so: Caesar was clearly a good leader. So why do they now not mourn for him in death? (Note Antony’s
skilful use of ‘cause’ twice here: they loved Caesar with good cause, but what cause is responsible for
their failure to shed a tear at his passing?)
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
Observe the clever pun on Brutus’ name in ‘brutish beasts’: Antony stops short of calling Brutus a beast,
but it’s clear enough that he thinks the crowd has been manipulated with violent thugs and everyone has
lost their ability to think rationally about Caesar. The mob spirit has been fomented and everyone has
made Caesar, even in death, the target of their hatred.
Mark Antony brings his ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ speech, a masterly piece of oratory, to a rousing
end with an appeal to personal emotion, claiming that seeing Rome so corrupted by hatred and blinded by
unreason has broken his heart. He concludes, however, with a final line that offers a glimmer of hope,
implying that if Rome would only recover itself, he would be all right again.

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A Short Analysis of Mark Antony’s ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ Speech

Mark Antony’s ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ speech from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them;

So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus

Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–

He was my friend, faithful and just to me:

is honourable, so ‘I guess I was wrong (but I know I’m

He hath brought many captives home to Rome

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:

You all did see that on the Lupercal

I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,

You all did love him once, not without cause:

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

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