Julius Caesar Group Project

Julius Caesar Group Project: Analyzing Diction on Marc Antony’s Speech 1. Overall I would classify Marc Antony’s speech as largely monosyllabic as a whole in length. This took a much longer time to decide than it did of Brutus’ speech, this could be that Antony is a smarter and nobler person or that it’s just how Julius Caesar constructed the speech to persuade the crowd. One of the lines that demonstrate a great use of one syllable would be “My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar and I must pause ‘till it come back to me” (Shakespeare, Lines 108-109). This is just one of the many lines that uses a lot of one syllable words but in the end the speech was mainly one syllable in length. 2. Antony’s speech uses a very well use of both techniques of persuading and informing. I felt that there was more use of persuading in his speech than informing but that’s only because they love Antony at the end of the speech. An example of informing from Antony is, “I come to bury Caesar not praise him” (Shakespeare, Line 2) Here he is just telling the audience and conspirators that he is just trying to give a simple Funeral. Antony is clever with his words by bluntly saying things and letting the audience’s mind go off and feel that things are correct. It’s not just the Audience that persuades themselves he says, “Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?” (Shakespeare, Line 92). Giving examples and then asking questions to play with their minds was a very successful tactic of Antony’s. 3. I felt that Antony’s diction was very formal in his speech; unlike Brutus the crowd does not respond in his speech. Antony uses advance word choice, which makes him look more intelligent to the not so intelligent clump of Romans. An excellent example of his formal diction would be, “ 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” (Shakespeare, lines 79-82) the words such as grievous and ambitious show formal diction. Diction like Antony’s override’s Brutus’ speech with repititon which makes their mind believe that “WOW! This really is impressive and he’s right!” although he does fall short with not letting the audience get in some action of their own opinion. 4. Antony is very wise and really gets people in his speech in Act 3 Scene 2 by using denotative examples and not “what if” and “in general” meanings. He not only gives specific examples on how things should be but also on how things shouldn’t be which is genius like of Antony to portray pros and cons. Lines 90 and 91 are perfect examples of specifics he tells us, “He hath brought many captives home to Tome whose ransoms did the general coffers fill….” (Shakespeare, Line 90-91) Antony uses endless examples but this one stuck out to me most. 5. Going back to specifics, my feelings have not changed, Antony is lousy with specifics that make his speech concrete. Another one of his detailed specific would be from line 93 where he states, “ When the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:” (Shakespeare, Line 93). Not only is this fact dead one but also it involves pathos and makes Caesar look even better! 6. One of Antony’s tactics also for his great speech was the euphonious tone/ word choice he used. Typically when you use a nice/pleasant tone with people, they will give you what you want. One of the more highlighting parts of the euphonious words was in line 89 where he declares, “And Brutus is an honourable man.”. Even though Antony disagreed very highly of Brutus and the conspirators he still followed the rule Brutus gave him and used very appreciative words with the crowd. 7. According to Marc Antony’s diction I do feel that he does achieve his overall purpose for the crowd to like him, honor Caesar, and strongly hate Brutus and the conspirators. He succeeds this overall purpose by being clever and tricky with his words by speaking against Brutus he falls short by not using as much emotion. The greater part of his speech was most definitely greater than any other part of his speech.