Julius Caesar
Antony's speech. line-to-line analysis:
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Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
From a rhythmic perspective, the trochaic feel of this opening immediately commands attention. The succession of hard stresses is also Shakespeare's way of using the verse to help Antony cut through the din of the crowd. Antony also echoes the opening line that Brutus uses ("Romans, countrymen, and lovers!"), but conspicuously rearranges it; where Brutus begins with "Romans" to reflect his appeal to their reason, Antony begins with "friends," which reflects the more emotional tact he will take throughout the rest of his speech. Remember also that Antony has entered the Forum with Caesar's body in tow and will use the corpse as a prop throughout his oration.
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I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
Antony follows with a line of straight iambic pentameter punctuated with a feminine ending. Here's the first irony of Antony's speech, in that he is unequivocally here to praise Caesar. Antony is, in fact, lying. This is a calculated tactic to disarm a crowd firmly on the side of Brutus when Antony takes the pulpit.
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The evil that men do lives after them;
This is a line harder to scan than it might seem at first. The hardest word to scan is lives; if you scan it as stressed, you have four consecutive stresses in a row, and the line scans iamb/pyrrhic/spondee/spondee/iamb. While that isn't completely out of the realm of possibility, it's a bit of a stretch. Besides, the real subject of Antony's rhetorical parallelism is good and evil, not living and dying. Also, while Antony is clearly referring to Caesar in the line and the one that follows, it's not hard to imagine him making a subtle innuendo here about the conspirators.
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The good is oft interréd with their bones;
Here is a case where the regular iambic rhythm
/ / - / - - / - - /
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
From a rhythmic perspective, the trochaic feel of this opening immediately commands attention. The succession of hard stresses is also Shakespeare's way of using the verse to help Antony cut through the din of the crowd. Antony also echoes the opening line that Brutus uses ("Romans, countrymen, and lovers!"), but conspicuously rearranges it; where Brutus begins with "Romans" to reflect his appeal to their reason, Antony begins with "friends," which reflects the more emotional tact he will take throughout the rest of his speech. Remember also that Antony has entered the Forum with Caesar's body in tow and will use the corpse as a prop throughout his oration.
- / - / - / - / - / -
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
Antony follows with a line of straight iambic pentameter punctuated with a feminine ending. Here's the first irony of Antony's speech, in that he is unequivocally here to praise Caesar. Antony is, in fact, lying. This is a calculated tactic to disarm a crowd firmly on the side of Brutus when Antony takes the pulpit.
- / - - / / - / - /
The evil that men do lives after them;
This is a line harder to scan than it might seem at first. The hardest word to scan is lives; if you scan it as stressed, you have four consecutive stresses in a row, and the line scans iamb/pyrrhic/spondee/spondee/iamb. While that isn't completely out of the realm of possibility, it's a bit of a stretch. Besides, the real subject of Antony's rhetorical parallelism is good and evil, not living and dying. Also, while Antony is clearly referring to Caesar in the line and the one that follows, it's not hard to imagine him making a subtle innuendo here about the conspirators.
- / - / - / - / - /
The good is oft interréd with their bones;
Here is a case where the regular iambic rhythm