During the funeral scene of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, human beings are revealed as stupid and fickle.
First, the crowd wholeheartedly accepts Brutus's version of events, and the reasons for those events. The crowd is probably ready at this point to kill for Brutus. But within a matter of minutes, they become ready to kill Brutus, as well as the other conspirators. Such a quick reversal on the part of the crowd, regardless of whose argument is correct, shows stupidity, and a willingness to be played with and manipulated, intellectually speaking. It shows a willingness to commit too easily to extremes.
Antony's speech, however, is not primarily emotional. Emotion finishes what intellect starts. The main part of his argument is rational and based on reason. He uses irony, created with juxtaposition (the placing of opposites side by side) to create a powerful rational and reasonable argument.
Antony does this with the following logical steps:
- He describes an unambitious action by Caesar
- He uses the refrain: But Brutus says he was ambitious, and...
- Brutus is an honorable man.
One example looks like this:
- Caesar turned down the crown three times
- But Brutus says he was ambitious, and
- Brutus is an honorable man.
This is a rational argument, not an emotional one. It may create emotion in the listeners, but it is an argument that uses reason.
And the crowd gets it, demonstrating that it is capable of reasoning. It is also fickle, however, and is eager to leap from one extreme to the other without considering the consequences. Though capable of using reason, they neglect to do so, and thereby demonstrate ignorance and stupidity.
This ignorance and stupidity reaches new heights when the crowd, turned into a mob, kills Cinna the Poet, thinking, at first, that he is Cinna the conspirator. Even after the mobsters become aware that they have the wrong man, though, they kill him anyway. This mob doesn't need a reason to kill; it just wants to kill.
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