In Act 3 of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Mark Antony
obtains permission from Brutus to speak in Caesar's funeral. Brutus leaves him alone
with Caesar's body, while he goes to speak to the people himself. When Antony is alone
with his friend Caesar's body he speaks his true thoughts and feelings which he has
previously been concealing. His speech to the dead Caesar begins with the
words:
O
pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these
butchers.
He then goes on to
prophesy that "blood and destruction" shall reign when his speech to the multitudes will
"let slip the dogs of war" and he turns justice towards Caesar's
betrayers:
readability="17">Over thy wounds now do I
prophesy--
Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips
To beg the
voice and utterance of my tongue--
A curse shall light upon the limbs of
men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the
parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And
dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they
behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity
choked with custom of fell deeds,
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for
revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these
confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "havoc!" and let slip the dogs of
war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion
men, groaning for
burial.Mark Antony will use
the analogy of Caesar's wounds to open mouths in his famous funeral oration. At one
point in that oration he says that if only he had the oratorical powers of Brutus he
could raise even the stones of Rome to rise against the
traitors:put
a tongue
in every wound of Caesar that should move
The stones of
Rome to rise and mutiny.This
is false modesty in Antony, to say the least. Antony's prophecy gives the audience a
foretaste of this man's formidable oratorical powers, which will be fully demonstrated
when he makes the funeral oration and turns the mob against the
conspirators.True to Antony's prophecy, there were years
of "domestic fury and fierce civil strife" throughout Italy, but Shakespeare compressed
the historical events in his play. Antony's prophecy serves, in part, to cover that
chaotic period and also to show that, although Caesar may be dead, his spirit lives on
and thereby justifies the play being titled "Julius Caesar." When Brutus and Cassius are
defeated in the battle at Philippi in Act 5, Brutus says in an apostrophe to Caesar that
he still hold his might and his spirit leads their avenging swords to the right
targets:O
Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet.
Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our
swords
In our own proper
entrails.In the end, first
Cassius commits suicide, and then a short time later Brutus does the same. It turns out
that everything Antony prophesied in Act 3 came true.
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