Tuesday, December 18, 2012

In Julius Caesar, Antony's servant brings a letter to Brutus. What does he say?

I suspect you are referring to Act III, scene i, just
after the Conspirators have murdered Caesar.  Antony has made himself scare and sends
his servant ahead of him to ask the Conspirators if he might speak with them.  There is
no letter, that I can see, involved.  Also, when you say "he," I'm assuming that you
mean the servant, but will also look at what Antony says upon his entrance into the
scene at line 147.


Here is the upshot of the servants
words:


readability="16.728624535316">

Thus, Brutus, did my master bid me
kneel,
Thus did Mark Antony bid me fall down,
And, href="../../julius-caesar-text/act-iii-scene-i#prestwick-vocab-3-1-63">being
prostrate, thus he bade me say. . .
Say I love Brutus and I honor
him;
Say I fear'd Caesar, honor'd him, and loved him.
If Brutus
will href="../../julius-caesar-text/act-iii-scene-i#prestwick-vocab-3-1-74">vouchsafe
that Antony
May safely come to him and be href="../../julius-caesar-text/act-iii-scene-i#prestwick-gloss-3-1-18">resolved

How Caesar hath deserved to lie in death,
Mark Antony shall not
love Caesar dead
So well as Brutus living, but will follow
The
fortunes and affairs of noble Brutus
Thorough the hazards of this href="../../julius-caesar-text/act-iii-scene-i#prestwick-gloss-3-1-19">untrod
state
With all true faith. So says my master
Antony.



So Antony, by way of
his servant, says a few things.  First he directs the servant to prostrate himself
before Brutus, something one would usually do before royalty.  In this way, he flatters
Brutus as a "kingly" figure.  The servant then describes how Antony loved Caesar, but
will devote himself to Brutus and his cause if the
Conspirators can satisfy him as to why Caesar "deserved to lie in death."  In effect, he
pledges to be a loyal follower of Brutus as he was a loyal follower of Caesar.  The rest
of the play and history lets us know that this is simply not true.  It must be a ruse, a
ploy, and part of Antony's scheme to overcome the Conspirators and gain power
himself.


Upon his entrance after Brutus and Cassius agree
to hear Antony, he has a speech in which he bids goodbye to Caesar and all but dares the
Conspirators to kill him also if they wish, saying:


readability="11">

I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard,

Now, whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke,
Fulfill your
pleasure. Live a thousand years,
I shall not find myself so apt to
die.



When they do not, Antony
proceeds to "bloody" his own hands by shaking the bloody hand of each conspirator, all
the while plotting his own ascension and revolt against Brutus and his
co-conspirators.


For more on Antony and this scene, please
follow the links below.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Calculate tan(x-y), if sin x=1/2 and sin y=1/3. 0

We'll write the formula of the tangent of difference of 2 angles. tan (x-y) = (tan x - tan y)/(1 + tan x*tan y) ...