PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource
PlayShakespeare.com: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Resource

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Mark Antony is Caesar’s closest companion. A young man much given to reveling, enjoying music and plays, he runs in the sacred race of the Feast of Lupercal, touching Calpurnia on the way in the hopes of curing her barrenness. 

A great upholder of obedience to Caesar, he is not as good a judge of men as his mentor, discounting Caesar’s opinion of Cassius. Brutus underestimates him severely, considering little more than an extension of Caesar. Antony manages to con the conspirators, particularly Brutus, into letting him speak to the crowd after the murder. He accepts to say nothing negative about the conspirators in his funeral oration, and circumvents this by his constant references to them as ‘honorable men’. In contrast to Brutus’s prose logic-chopping, he gives a shrewdly emotional speech to the crowd, showing them Caesar’s body and reading them his will, whipping them to a fury. He is ruthless enough to add his own nephew to the list of Romans to be purged once he, Octavius and Lepidus join forces to resist the conspirators. He has little use for Lepidus and does not appreciate Octavius’s lack of respect for his greater age and experience. Once Brutus is dead, he is willing to praise him for his idealism. His further adventures can be found in Antony & Cleopatra.

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