Irony in Julius Caesar

Once again, a stunning oratorical move by Antony. By depicting himself as plainspoken, he is concealing the subtle trickery woven throughout his speech. Antony knew precisely how to turn the crowd’s favor to his side. But, having done so, he pretends to be blind to his own charisma, which makes him all the more popular.

Here is another brilliant rhetorical move by Antony. What he wishes to do is stir the hearts and minds of the public to mutiny and rage. By framing the possibility of mutiny as a hypothetical condition, he plants the seed in the mind of the public. He then deftly backs away, citing the nobility of Brutus and Cassius once more.

Thus Antony begins to unspool a brilliant line of rhetoric. He punctuates his speech by returning again and again to the idea that “Brutus is an honorable man.” As Antony comes to reveal his true beliefs, the statement of Brutus’s nobility becomes increasingly ironic.

Brutus’s rhetorical question drips with irony. In the wake of Brutus’s murderous treatment of Caesar, whom he had also considered a brother, these words offer no reassurance.

While both Brutus and Cassius berate the poet for his sappy message of love and communion, it turns out that Brutus and Cassius finally come together over this shared disgust. Indeed, this instance of irony is the turning point in the scene. Note how the two men patch up their disagreements in the lines to follow.

The irony in this exchange is in the infantile nature of the back and forth between Brutus and Cassius. Their dispute is over which man is older and more able, and yet they argue the point much in the way a pair of schoolboys would.

The driving force of this scene lies in the confusion Lucilius creates by convincing Antony’s soldiers that he is Brutus. In a touch of dramatic irony, the audience sees clearly that Lucilius is not Brutus. The trick works until, as we’ll see at the scene’s end, Antony recognizes the fraud.