Ramsay – Campion Great Books Podcast: Episode 6 Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar – Part 2

Welcome to the 2023 Ramsay – Campion Great Books Podcast Series.

We continue our discussion on Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Julius Caesar, the story of Julius Caesar’s downfall, the demise of his assassins and the rise of Mark Antony.

In this podcast Dr Stephen McInerney, Director of the Centre for the Study of the Western Tradition at Campion College is joined by Dr Colin Dray, Lecturer in Literature at Campion College, together with Dr Kishore Saval, Senior Lecturer in the Western Civilisation Program at Australian Catholic University.

We begin this episode with a discussion of the two contrasting speeches made to the crowd by Brutus and Mark Antony in the immediate aftermath of Caesar’s assassination. Why do subtle nuances and differences of language, and a speaker’s sense of occasion, have such a dramatic influence over the crowd? How does Mark Antony create a shared space with the crowd, and how does he say what he is not supposed to say while maintaining plausible deniability? Why is Mark Antony’s poetic utterance more effective in persuading the crowd than Brutus’ prose speech?