Rhetorical Structure Of Irony In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

In the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Mark Antony, a loyal friend of Caesar’s, announces a speech to persuade the Roman citizens to turn against the conspirators who murdered his beloved ruler. Embedded in Mark Antony’s speech, Shakespeare uses imagery when describing Caesar's wounds, rhetorical structures like metaphors while describing the blood of Caesar, and a mournful tone, to emotionally impact the audience. In creating a well-organized speech, Mark Antony is easily able to manipulate the Romans to sympathize for Caesar, rather than siding with the conspirators. The counterclaim to that, however, is that Mark Antony actually uses the rhetorical structure of irony, when he claims that Caesar was not ambitious, when in fact