Julius Caesar Traits

In the play Julius Caesar, Mark Antony is one of Julius Caesar’s good friends and his protege. His character really becomes clear in Act Three, after Caesar is assassinated. He is a very complicated character, with many interesting character traits. Three of these character traits of Mark Antony include duplicity(2-sided ness), manipulativeness, and loyalty to Julius Caesar. These traits are made clear in Scenes 1 and 2 of Act Three in Julius Caesar. First, Antony makes his duplicity clear in Scene 1, where he appears to be making peace with the conspirators by shaking their hands and agreeing to their restrictions about his speech at Caesar’s funeral. However, at the end of the scene, Antony shows the audience his true feelings in a soliloquy promising revenge for Caesar’s death. He is saying one thing to the conspirators, but …show more content…
Brutus has just told the plebeians in his speech that Caesar’s ambition led to his killing and that the people who killed Caesar did it for the good of Rome. Antony, following that restrictions set in place by Brutus, gives examples of Caesar being not ambitious and follows those examples with “But Brutus says he was ambitious, and Brutus is an honorable man.” The plebeians, however, figure out that Caesar was not ambitious, and that the conspirators were wrong in killing him. This was Antony’s original purpose, but he never lets anyone know. In fact, he uses verbal irony and says the exact opposite. He says in lines 211-213, “Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up/To such a sudden flood of mutiny.” But infact, this was his intention all along. He manipulates the crowd and makes them shift their support from Brutus to himself., because he needs the support of the public to wage a war against the conspirators. Lastly, Antony’s loyalty to Julius Caesar and want for revenge is the basis for everything he does from Scene 1 of Act 3