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William Shakespeare’sJulius Caesar
ACT 3 SCENE 3
At the end of Act 3 Scene 2, Mark Antony says, after getting the crowd worked up
and letting them loose like “dogs of war” upon the conspirators, “Now let it work.
Mischief, thou art afoot, / Take thou what course thou wilt.” We see now, in Act 3 Scene
3, the real consequences of his actions.
What happens in this scene?
- Cinna the Poet wanders the streets
of Rome, compelled by “something”
that “leads me forth”.
He has had a dream, where he “did
feast with Caesar”,and his mind is
weighed down with things of bad
omen.
- a mob, comprising of plebians
enflamed by Antony’s passionate
speech, find him and interrogate
him, suspecting that he is a
conspirator. They mistake him for
Cinna the Conspirator. Despite his
protests that he is Cinna the Poet
and not a conspirator, his pleas fall
on deaf ears as they “tear him to
pieces”.
What is it with
dreams and
ill omens anyway?
Well, the
Elizabethans were
a pretty
superstitious lot,
and believed that
their lives were
controlled by Fate.
Dreams and
prophecies were
a reminder of
a greater power that
controlled their lives.
Does this scene remind you of another terrifying scene
involving a killing of an innocent person by a crazed
mob? Remember poor Simon in our other text, Lord of
the Flies? What are the similarities and differences
between these two scenes?
IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE:
Transition - this is the last public scene in the streets of Rome. The furious mob
at the end of Act 3 Scene 2 have run amok, pledging to “pluck down forms,
windows, anything”. This scene shows us the immediate and horrifying
consequences of Antony’s speech.
Impression of Mob/Plebians - In Act 3 Scene 2, we saw how fickle the plebians
could be, switching from supporting Brutus and the conspirators to calling for
their blood. Perhaps Marullus and Flavius weren’t too far off when they called
the Plebians “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!” way
back in Act 1 Scene 1.
In the original account in the historian Plutarch’s work, Cinna is similarly
brutally murdered because the mob mistakes him for Cinna the conspirator.
The difference though, is that in Shakespeare’s play, the mob murders Cinna
even though they are told that they have the wrong man. Why do you think
Shakespeare made this change? What effect does the change have on our
impression of the mob/plebians?