Today, March 15, is the Ides of March, the date a soothsayer omnisciently and ominously warns the Roman dictator about in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. In honor of Marc Antony's fabled and remarkably persuasive speech on the steps of the Roman Forum before "friends, Romans, countrymen," I'd like to look at three of his surprising sentences. In all but three sentences of Antony's 1,100-word speech, interrupted several times by his passionate audience's outbursts, he directly addresses them about Caesar, his assassins Brutus and Cassius, himself, or themselves. Antony brilliantly builds a case to transform his listeners from a self-righteous crowd praising Caesar's death to a vengeful mob seeking retribution for his unjust murder, and those three surprising sentences of uncertain intention and destination elevate Antony's entire speech to transcendent doctrine.
1. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. This sentence comes immediately after Antony's famous appeasement, "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." On the surface, we can believe that Antony is directly addressing the people assembled before him. Yet the pronouncement seems more targeted toward Fate while subtly positioning those gathered to feel a sense of guilt for their rush to judgment.
2. O judgment—thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason. Antony speaks these words nearly two minutes later, as he has mounted his line of reasoning to win Roman souls in avenging Caesar's death. But who is he speaking to? He utters this sentence after challenging his audience, "What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?" He cannot be too direct in his accusation for fear of throwing down the gauntlet too soon against volatile, potential allies. Perhaps he spits out these well-planned words to appear like a mournful child who just lost his friend. While making this incantation abundantly clear to his audience, he wants to make it appear like an emotional, irresponsible outburst, as he follows it with "Bear with me, my heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me."
3. Judge, O you Gods, how dearly Caesar loved him! Another four minutes later, Antony claims that an unsuspecting Caesar was killed by a man he loved, a man he trusted and respected. He pretends this statement to be an ephemeral plea to the gods, the ultimate, omnipotent audience. With this suggestion, Antony makes the execution of his friend—and a friend of all Romans—even more heinous, arousing the populace's sense of trust and justice. He now has his frenzied audience in the palm of his hands.
Ambiguity, both lexical (word meaning) and syntactical (word order), plays a large role in surprising an audience, but so does context. These three sentences from Julius Caesar surprise us because, quite literally, we are not sure where the speaker is coming from.
