Lend me your ears

I'm Antony. I'm a bit of a brown-noser when it comes to dealing with Caesar, but I stand up for what I think is right when it counts. I'm good with words and I'm really convincing when I talk. And you know what I think?

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
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.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
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 honorable man.
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 honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
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. (3.2.74-108)

Who Said It and Where

Poor Julius Caesar. He was stabbed in the back by his own buddies. Literally. He didn't even see it coming. Brutus and his friends decided to kill Caesar because the man might become a complete tyrant if he gains more power. Brutus reasons that, even though he and Caesar are BFFs, killing Caesar is the only way to save the Roman Republic.

Sure it is.

But after they do it, people start asking questions. Why is Caesar dead? How come no one told us? Who killed him? So Brutus and Cassius hit the streets to set the record straight. Brutus ascends to the pulpit and the crowd falls silent. He delivers an earnest, honest, and simple speech.

First, he says that the people should trust his honor, which they know to be true. He asks if anyone can say they loved Caesar more than he did. No one can. Brutus says he rose against Caesar not because he didn't love him, but because he loved Rome more. If Caesar were still living, they'd all be slaves.

While Caesar was a lot of good things, he had to die for his ambition. To have let him live would be to submit to slavery, and that's downright un-Roman. Brutus asks whether anyone doesn't love Rome and freedom, and of course the answer is no. So obviously Caesar had to die.

Everybody buys it. It doesn't really matter that the people loved Caesar so much that they wanted to crown him king. Brutus says he was bad so he must have been bad.

That's when Antony shows up with Caesar's body. Brutus introduces Antony to the crowd and closes his speech by restating that he slew his best friend for Rome's sake and that he will turn the same dagger on himself if his country ever needs his death. (Sounds like foreshadowing to Shmoop.)

Everyone is so happy with Brutus that there are some calls to give him a statue among his ancestors and to make him the new Caesar. (These folks are really missing the democratic message of his speech.) Brutus politely dismisses himself and asks everyone to stay and listen to Antony's speech.

That's when Antony takes over, with this famous beginning: "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears."

The crowd is as good as sold there, but Antony manages to stealthily bring it around to the opinion that Caesar has been killed wrongfully. He begins by insisting that Brutus and the other murderers are honorable, but then proceeds to slowly undermine that statement by pointing out how their chief gripe against Caesar, his ambition, could not be true. Antony gives examples of how Caesar loved his people, bringing in money to the country, weeping with the poor, and even refusing the crown three times. Clearly, he suggests, Caesar wasn't ambitious at all, but was devoted and loving to his citizens.