Antony: That’s all I seek:
And am moreover suitor that I may
Produce his body to the market place,
And in the pulpit, as becomes a friend,
Speak in the order of his funeral.
Brutus: You shall, Mark Antony.
And now, strong in his right, as he thinks, and trusting to the honour of Antony, he only stipulates that he (Brutus) shall go on to the platform first and explain things; and that Antony shall speak all the good he can of Caesar, but not abuse Brutus and his friends.
And Antony (mark you) agrees and promises and breaks his promise immediately afterwards. Maybe he was only gaining time for his good friend Octavius Caesar, but time gained by such foul means is time lost through all eternity. Did Mark think of these things years afterwards in Egypt when he was doubly ruined and doubly betrayed to his good friend Octavius by that hot, jealous, selfish, shallow, shifty, strumpet, Cleopatra, and Octavius was after his scalp with a certainty of getting it? He did—and he spoke of it, too.
Brutus made his speech, a straightforward, manly speech in prose, and the gist of the matter was that he did what he did (killed Caesar), not because he loved Caesar less, but because he loved Rome more. And I believe he told the simple honest truth.
Then he acts as Antony’s chairman, or introducer, in a manly straightforward manner, and then he goes off and leaves the stage to him, which is another generous act; though it was lucky for Brutus, as it happened afterwards, that he was out of the way.
Mark Antony gets all the limelight and blank verse. He had the “gift of the gab” all right. Old Cassius referred to it later on in one of those “words-before-blows” barneys they had on the battlefield where they hurt each other a damned sight more with their tongues than they did with their swords afterwards.
We’ve all heard of Antony’s speech:
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
Which was a lie to start with.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.