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Answer (1 of 3): The lines may literally mean~ Now let it work. Mischief you are astir, do what you intend. Antony is very satisfied with the reaction of the people. He had instigated the entire …
Antony's remark Mischief, thou art afoot, Take thou what course thou wilt! , shows him to bea a ruthless manipulatorb an honourable manc a loyal friendd a tactful man. Login. ... thou art …
Now let it work. Mischief thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt! Antony seeks justice by getting the mob to kill the conspirators. But to correct a wrong, one cannot commit another …
| ACT III SCENE III | A street. |
|---|---|
| Fourth Citizen | Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses. |
| CINNA THE POET | I am not Cinna the conspirator. |
| Fourth Citizen | It is no matter, his name's Cinna; pluck but his |
| name out of his heart, and turn him going. |
He manages to turn the mob against the conspirators. Antony uses many rhetorical questions to persuade the people to go against the conspirators and support him and Caesar's goals. This entire speech won over the crowd and turned them against the conspirators. When Antony delivered this speech, his words melted with those of Caesar's to rouse the masses against the injustice of the assassination.
From Julius Caesar Act II, sc 2. Calpurnia is pleading with Caesar to heed the ill omens for the day (the Ides of March, the day he is prophesied to die). He replies:
He has, it turns out, good reason to be afraid. Two good reasons, in fact. First, Birnam Wood has indeed come to Dunsinane, in the form of the English host. That’s bad, bad, bad news, especially for anyone who has no assurances of being invulnerable by any man of woman born (i.e., for anyone who hasn’t received equivocal prophetic assurances from the Weird Sisters). Second, he has to report this information to Macbeth, who has grown terrible and terrifying as events move toward their horrible conclusion. Just look how Macbeth treats the servant before he’s even opened his mouth; you’d cower too.
The OED defines it (earliest instance in Wychif’s translation of the Bible, 1382) as “A clasp, buckle, fibula, or brooch, for holding together the two sides of a garment; hence, a clasped necklace, bracelet, or the like; also, a buckle or brooch worn as an ornament” A second meaning is “The gold or silver setting of a precious stone”; a third “ A carbuncle or other tumour or sore on the skin.” Given that Falstaff is speaking to Doll Tearsheet, a prostitute, the third meaning may be implied, as a sign of venereal disease.
Where indeed? First the basic point, in case we’ve missed it: The reason the servant’s face is “cream”-colored is that all the blood has drained from it; the poor man is terrified. But why? Where’d he get that “goose look”? What caused it?
The schemes that have been set in motion by the conspirators have finally been actualized and what will come of that is not known as clearly as they might want it to be.
It can be seen, from this Google Ngram Viewer plot, that “thou” is virtually extinct in modern English.
Antony, on the other hand, knows the path to insurrection. The fickle masses, so present in act 1, scenes 1 and 2, and in act 3, scene 2, now erupt in the pathos evoked by Antony in his sarcasm toward the “honorable man, Brutus,” along with his own relentless visual menu of the will, the mantle, and the body of Caesar, interspersed with finger-in-the-eye tears over the pathetic corpse. “I will not do them wrong,” he says of the conspirators; “I rather choose / To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and YOU! (3.2.128–29, emphasis added). Then follows, “I do not mean to read [the will]”; “If you have tears, prepare to shed them now”; “This was the most unkindest cut of all”; and “Here is himself, marred as you see with traitors” (3.2.133, 170, 184, 198).
He’s as willing to dispose of his own relatives as he is to cement his brotherhood with Octavius. The seemingly simultaneous quarrel between Brutus and Cassius reveals that “Cassius is aweary of the world” with “that rash humor which my mother gave me,” and that stoic Brutus is “sick of many griefs” and that “Portia is dead” (4.3.95, 120, 143, 146).
The seemingly simultaneous quarrel between Brutus and Cassius reveals that “Cassius is aweary of the world ” with “that rash humor which my mother gave me,” and that stoic Brutus is “sick of many griefs” and that “Portia is dead” (4.3.95, 120, 143, 146).
Act 5 concludes with Cassius’s ill-informed, near-sighted (5.3.21) suicide on mistaking Titanius’s success as capture, which catapults Titanius into his own suicide at the futility of his efforts. Brutus arrives to declare, “O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!
Shakespeare cleverly avoids portraying the Feast of the Lupercal in order to ambiguate the events through Cassius’s recital of Caesar’s weaknesses while the fickle crowds cheer off-s tage, and then through the eye-witness account of conspirator Casca, sneering at Caesar’s infirmities.
The third mouth, of course, masticated the Christian world’s greatest traitor: Judas Iscariot. By contrast, Julius Caesar floats in Limbo, in the Circle of Virtuous Pagans; and Mark Antony—no surprise—occupies the Circle of Lust with Cleopatra (Ciardi translation, Canto XXXIV).
Brutus here displays his greatest weakness: believing that his virtuousness, his rationalism, and his evenness of temper are the normal state of the human spirit. He was not present in act 1, scene 1, where the populace ripped down the tributes to Pompey to supplant them with Caesar’s. Brutus doesn’t recognize them as “idle creatures,” “blocks . . . stones . . . worse than senseless things,/ O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome” (1.1.1, 35). He doesn’t see a fickle, inconstant mob mentality.
CASSIUS exits with some of the PLEBEIANS. BRUTUS gets up on the platform.
BRUTUS and CASSIUS enter with a crowd of PLEBEIANS.
75 Nay, that’s certain. We are blest that Rome is rid of him.
Stay, ho! and let us hear Mark Antony.
Brutus delivers a speech justifying the murder of Caesar to the Roman public, which applauds him and offers to crown him as they wished to crown Caesar. Antony arrives, and Brutus asks the crowd to hear him speak.
With a flourish, Antony then reads from Caesar’s will, which bequeaths money to every citizen of Rome. The crowd begins to riot and goes off to burn the assassins' homes. A servant informs Antony that Octavius Caesar has arrived in Rome, and that Brutus and Cassius have been driven out of the city.
Julius Caesar Act 3 Scene 2. Brutus delivers a speech justifying the murder of Caesar to the Roman public, which applauds him and offers to crown him as they wished to crown Caesar. Antony arrives, and…. Read More.