Lesson video

Hello and welcome to the Oak National Academy for English.

My name is Mr. James and today we're going to be continuing with Act III of "Julius Caesar".

Now I'm really excited because we're on the first of two lessons about my favourite scene in the whole play, and it is Antony's speech to the citizens of Rome.

So I'm really looking forward to teaching you today's lesson.

So let's get straight into it and look at what we're going to learn today.

Well, first of all, we're going to meet Mark Antony.

We've met him already, but only very briefly.

Secondly, we're going to learn about emotive language.

Thirdly, we're going to learn the word fickle.

Number four, we're going to read the text.

And last but not least, we're going to answer some questions on the text.

But before we do any of that, you need to make sure you have the correct equipment.

So make sure you've got a pen, paper, and also please your brain.

If you're missing any of those things please pause the video now, go and collect them and come back when you are done.

Okay.

Welcome back.

So now you have your equipment, the first thing I would like you to do is take your pen and on your paper, write down today's title.

It's on the screen now.

When you've done it, come back to me.

Welcome back.

So let's begin today's lesson by looking at Mark Antony, or just Antony.

Now a couple of things to note.

Antony is a great friend of Caesar and he is very loyal to Caesar.

So he's obviously not going to be too pleased about all the things the conspirators have been up to.

He's also a very good orator.

Now orator is just a fancy way of saying speaker.

He's very good at speaking.

And this is going to be really important because after Brutus speaks to the crowd, then Mark Antony speaks to the crowd.

And that's going to be really important.

As I've said, he gives a speech after Brutus and his speech, Antony's, is going to try and persuade the citizens of Rome that the conspirators were wrong.

So whereas Brutus was trying to persuade the citizens of Rome that what the conspirators did was right, Antony is going to try and persuade them that what the conspirators did was wrong.

Now what I would like you to do is pause the video and complete the sentences on the screen now.

All the information you need to complete these sentences I have just given you, or it's been on the screen.

So pause the video, write the sentences, fill in the missing words and come back to me when you are done.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at what you should have written.

Hopefully you wrote Mark Antony is a great friend of Caesar.

He is very loyal and he is also a great orator.

That means speaker.

I'm sure you did really well on that task.

So we've learned a little bit about Mark Antony there and obviously we'll find out more about Antony when we read today's scene.

But now we're going to move on and look at emotive language.

So the first thing we need to do is recap this concept of persuasion.

Now persuasion is about trying to get people to think what you want them to think or do what you want them to do.

And the way you speak can help you to persuade people.

Last time we looked at rhetorical questions and how they helped Brutus persuade the audience.

Today we're going to look at emotive language and how that might help Antony persuade the audience.

So emotive language is when words are used to try to make people experience certain emotions or feelings, okay? So it's trying to manipulate people into feeling particular things.

The things that you want them to feel.

Now emotive language is often used to make something seem either good or bad or, on the other hand, right or wrong.

So similar ideas.

So a speaker might make you feel angry if they want to present something as wrong, or happy, if they want to present something as good.

Now here's an example of emotive language.

So I could describe capital punishment, that means the death penalty, as murder.

Alternatively, I could describe capital punishment as justice.

Now what I would like you to think is what is the difference between these two descriptions of emotive language? And I'd like you to pause the video now and write your thoughts on your paper.

What's the difference between describing capital punishment as murder and justice? Pause the video, off you go, come back when you are done.

Okay.

Welcome back.

So let's have a look at the kind of thing you might have written.

Well, here's a couple of potential answers.

You could have put, if I describe capital punishment as murder, I'm trying to make people feel angry.

Murder makes capital punishment sound evil and wrong.

On the other hand you could also write if I describe capital punishment as justice, I'm trying to make people feel safe.

Justice makes capital punishment sound fair and right.

So you can see how I'm trying to manipulate the emotions of the people I'm speaking to in these examples, to make capital punishment seem either right or wrong.

Now what I would like you to do is pause the video and copy and complete these sentences.

Again, we've had all the information you need to fill in the missing gaps.

When you've done, un-pause the video and come back to me.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at the kind of thing you might have written.

Well, hopefully this is exactly what you've written, not the kind of thing.

Hopefully you've written emotive language is when words are used to try to make people experience certain emotions.

It is often used to make something seem either good or bad or right or wrong.

And if you've got all those words correct, you've got the answer 100%, so well done.

Now let's have a look at some examples.

The question here says which is more emotive, and the first sentence says the men were killed and the second sentence says the victims were executed.

So I'm going to give you about five seconds to make your choice.

Which sentence do you think is more emotive? Okay, so hopefully you have made a decision.

And the correct answer is of course the victims were executed.

Yes, because victims is more emotive than men and executed is more emotive than killed.

Here's another example.

It says Mo asked for assistance and the second one says Mo begged for help.

Which one here is more emotive? Again, five seconds, read the sentences, make your choice, and then we'll see which one's correct.

Okay, which one did you choose? Well hopefully you chose Mo begged for help because begged makes it sound as if he's desperate for help and help makes it sound like he needs it more than assistance.

So hopefully you chose this sentence.

Now we've learned about Mark Antony and we've learned about emotive language.

We're next going to learn about this word, fickle.

So if you are fickle, you change your mind a lot or are easy to persuade because you don't really know what you want.

It's considered bad to be fickle.

Now, of course, sometimes it's good to change your mind because perhaps you learn more about something and you update your opinion based on what you now know.

But fickle isn't a good thing, that isn't what fickle is about.

Fickle is just about someone who always changes their mind because they don't really know what they think, or they don't really know what they want.

So here is an example of fickle.

It says the citizens of Rome are fickle because one minute they love Caesar, when Antony tried to give him a crown, but they hate him after Brutus calls him ambitious.

So because they changed their opinion of Caesar very quickly, and just based on what they're being told, we could say they're quite fickle.

So here's some examples of sentences that use the word fickle correctly.

The first one says my sister is so fickle.

One minute she loves chocolate and the next she hates it.

Again, this is a correct sentence because she's just changing her mind.

Another one.

Teenagers can be very fickle with who they choose as their friends.

And you probably know this yourselves.

Teenagers are notorious for falling out very easily, making back up very quickly, and perhaps changing friendship groups from one week to the next.

But here's an example of a sentence that isn't correct.

Brutus is so fickle.

One minute he says he loves Caesar, but the next he wants to kill him.

This is not correct.

The reason this is not correct is because both things are genuinely true.

Brutus does love Caesar, but he also thinks he might have to assassinate him in the best interests of Rome.

He's not just changing his mind every five minutes about what he thinks.

He's having to come to a really difficult decision about what is the correct thing to do.

He's not being fickle.

He's not just randomly changing his mind.

Here's another incorrect sentence.

It says my dad is so fickle because he tells me I can't have crisps, but he's always eating them himself.

This is not fickle because he's not changing his mind.

You might say he's being a hypocrite, but even then, sometimes as adults or parents, you have to not allow your children to do things that you do yourself, because that's the difference between children and adults.

So he's not being fickle here.

Right, what I would now like you to do is write your own sentence about a family member or friend that uses the word fickle.

So pause the video, complete the task and when you're done, come back to me and I'll give you an example of the kind of thing you might have written.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

I'm sure you've got some great sentences.

So let's have a look at the kind of thing you might have written.

Well hopefully you wrote something like this.

My dad is so fickle because one minute he hates football and then next he loves it.

There you go, that's fickle because he's changing his mind about whether he loves football or not every minute.

Okay, so we've learned about Mark Antony.

We've learned about emotive language and we've also learned about the word fickle.

So we're now in a place where we can look at the play, the extract from the play.

So, before we begin, let's have a look at what happens in today's scene.

Well, first of all, Antony speaks to the citizens.

Now remember, in the last extract Brutus had spoken to the citizens and persuaded all the citizens that what the conspirators did was right.

Now Antony is going to speak to the citizens.

He's going to praise Caesar.

That means he's going to compliment him and say positive, nice things about him.

He's going to doubt that Caesar was ambitious.

Now this is important because one of the ways that Brutus persuaded the citizens of Rome that it was the right thing to do to assassinate him, was by saying Caesar was ambitious.

By saying he was ambitious for power himself.

Now what Antony's going to do is cast doubt on Brutus's claim.

He's going to suggest that maybe Caesar wasn't ambitious.

He's also going to question Brutus's honour, and he's going to turn the citizens against Brutus.

Now remember I said earlier in the lesson he's a very good orator and that's going to help Antony turn the citizens against Brutus.

Now here is an image of someone speaking in Rome, talking to the people, talking to the citizens.

So I want you to imagine Mark Antony standing in front of the Roman citizens and delivering his speech, okay? So he begins by saying "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears." Please listen to me.

"I have come here to bury Caesar, not to praise him." Now notice he begins by saying I haven't come here to praise him.

He goes on to say, "We remember the evil that men do after they die.

But the good is often buried with them." He's saying we forget the good things that men do in their lives after they die.

For some reason, we remember the bad.

And then he says "It will be the same with Caesar." He says I'm sure it'll be the same way with Caesar.

"The noble Brutus has told you that Caesar was ambitious.

If that's true, it's a serious fault, and Caesar has paid seriously for it." Meaning if it's true, that Caesar was ambitious, that would be a serious fault and he's paid for it seriously with his death.

Then Antony continues.

"With the permission of Brutus and the other men," meaning the other conspirators, "because Brutus is an honourable man and so they all are honourable men, I've come here to speak at Caesar's funeral.

He was my friend.

He was faithful and fair with me.

But Brutus says he was ambitious and Brutus is an honourable man." Now this is emotive.

We talked about emotive language earlier.

And again, he's trying to appeal to the emotions of the crowd.

He's trying to say feel sad for me, my friend is dead.

And he also says my friend was faithful and fair, meaning good and fair.

Which doesn't seem like the kind of behaviour of someone who's ambitious.

So he's trying to use emotive language here to make the crowd, to make the citizens feel sad for him.

Now remember Antony's delivering this speech to the citizens of Rome.

He continues, "He," meaning Caesar, "brought many captives home to Rome." This is people he captured during war, "whose ransoms he gave to the city." Now he's saying here that when Caesar brought people he had captured for war, the money that was generated through that he allowed the citizens of Rome to have.

He didn't keep it to himself.

And Antony says, "Does this seem ambitious?" Notice Antony uses rhetorical questions in the same way that Brutus did.

Then Antony continues, "When the poor have cried, Caesar cried with them.

Ambitious men should be made of harder stuff." Antony is saying ambitious men wouldn't really seem to be the kind who would cry when other people cry.

Then he says "Yet Brutus says he was ambitious and Brutus is an honourable man." So he's being sarcastic here, he's saying well, it doesn't seem like he was ambitious but Brutus is honourable, so we better believe him.

But does Antony really think that? I don't think so, I think he's being a bit sarcastic, trying to make the crowd think the opposite.

Then he says to the crowd, "You all saw that on the day of the Lupercal three times I offered him a kingly crown, but three times he refused it.

Was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious and be sure, Brutus is an honourable man." So he begins by giving a reason that Brutus is wrong and he asks a rhetorical question.

And then he cast doubt on whether Caesar really was ambitious.

And he also questions how honourable Brutus is.

He says, "I'm not here to go against what Brutus has said, but just to say what I do know.

You all loved Caesar once and you had good reasons to love him.

What reason stops you then from mourning him? Oh, good judgement has left you and men have become brutish beasts and lost their minds." So here he's saying, this is really sad.

Just a few days ago you loved Caesar and now he's been assassinated and you can't even mourn for him.

And then we get some emotive language.

He says, "Men have become brutish beasts and lost their minds." So at this point Antony's starting to get angry because his friend has been assassinated.

So he's trying to make the crowd feel angry as well, and of talking about brutish beasts.

Men have become brutish beasts.

Perhaps he's referring to the conspirators here that are brutal when they murdered him.

And then he ends by saying "My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar.

And I must pause till it returns to me." Again this emotive language.

My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, this metaphor is his heart weeping for Caesar, being in the coffin with him.

It's almost as Antony feels as if he has died as well.

So again he's using emotive language to try and make the crowd feel sympathy for him.

Then we get first plebeian.

Now a plebeian just means a citizen of Rome who's not rich, okay.

Don't worry too much about that.

The first plebeian says, I know, "I think there's a lot of sense in what he says." So perhaps Antony's persuaded them.

And the second plebeian says, "If you think about it correctly, Caesar has suffered a great wrong." And then the fourth plebeian says, "Did you hear Antony? Caesar wouldn't take the crown.

Therefore it's certain he wasn't ambitious." So Antony's reasons here are starting to persuade the citizens that what the conspirators did was wrong.

That combination of reasons why he wasn't ambitious, and emotive language, trying to make them feel sad, as if this was the wrong thing to have done.

Then Antony continues.

He says, "Here's some paper I found in Caesar's room.

It's his will." Now a will is the document that gets read out after you die.

"If only you could hear it, but I don't intend to read it aloud.

You would kiss dead Caesar's wounds." And here he's saying well, I found his will, I'm not going to read it to you though because it would make you too sad.

But of course, if he's not intending to read it why is he even mentioned it? He's trying to manipulate the crowd here because the crowd of course are going to go, as the fourth plebeian does, "Read it Antony, read his will." What do you mean you're not going to tell us what it says, we want to hear it.

And they all start shouting "The will, the will.

We want to hear the will." To which Antony replies, "Please be patient, will you wait? I'm afraid that I've done wrong to the honourable man whose daggers stabbed Caesar." Again, we get some emotive language here.

He doesn't say from the men who killed Caesar because they thought it was in the best interest of Rome.

He says the men whose daggers stabbed Caesar.

So he describes it in a very negative and very emotive way.

And by this point he's really whipped up the citizens of Rome into a rage and a second plebeian saying "Murderers, they were villains, read the will." So he's really got under the skin and got into the emotions with that emotive language of the citizens.

And you can see the effect the emotive language is having on them.

It's persuading them that actually no, the conspirators are murderers.

They were murderers, they were villains.

We want to hear what's in that will.

So Antony says oh you force me to read the will.

Of course they haven't forced him, he's manipulated the audience into it, the crowd into it.

He says, "Make a circle then around Caesar's corpse.

Shall I come down, will you let me?" So I want you to imagine Caesar's corpse is there, it's his funeral.

And all the crowds say come down, come down.

Third plebeian says yes, we'll let you come down.

And here you can see an image of Antony with the will in his hand, with the body of Caesar just beside him.

Again, very emotive isn't it? It's at the funeral, Caesar's dead body is right there as he's talking to the citizens, reading the will, and using this very emotive language.

And then Antony says "If you have tears prepare to shed them now.

Look, this is where Cassius's dagger pierced him." So he doesn't read the will at all.

He just points to the, he said look, that's where Cassius stabbed him.

Look there.

So he doesn't actually even read the will.

Then he says "See the stab wound that Casca made." And then he points at a third one.

"Through this hole, the beloved Brutus stabbed." Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel.

Now why is this emotive, this is really emotive? What's emotive about this, do you know? Well this is emotive because firstly he's pointing at the stab wound made by Brutus and then he's describing Brutus as Caesar's angel.

As if Caesar loved him more than anybody else.

But look, this person who Caesar loved the most stabbed him.

That's very emotive, really tugging on the heartstrings of the citizens of Rome.

He continues "The gods know how dearly Caesar loved him.

This was the most unkind cut of all.

Look at the man," look at Caesar, "scarred, as you can see, by traitors." Again all this emotive language, traitors, the gods know how dearly Caesar loved Brutus.

It was the most unkind cut of all, he's scarred.

And you can see here, he's giving the speech and someone's lifting up Caesar's cloak to show the citizens of Rome the stab wounds, as he talks.

So the fourth plebeian says "Traitors, villains!" And a second plebeian says, "We must have revenge." And then they all start shouting revenge, revenge.

"Find them, seek them, burn them, fire, kill, slay.

No traitors left alive." So Antony here has totally turned the crowd around A minute ago Brutus had persuaded them that it was the right thing to do to assassinate Caesar.

And in just a few minutes Antony has completely turned the crowd around, so we could call them fickle.

Because it's happened so quickly.

They went from loving Caesar, to being happy he was assassinated, to now hating the conspirators.

We can say they're fickle.

Okay.

So now we've looked at the extract, it's time to have a look at some questions.

So the first question says which words in the quotation contain emotive language? And the quotation from Antony is "I have done wrong to the honourable men whose daggers stabbed Caesar." So all I would like you to do is pause the video and write down a sentence that says which words in this quotation contain emotive language.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at the kind of thing you might have written.

Well hopefully you wrote something like this.

The words in the quotation that contain emotive language are daggers, stabbed, Caesar.

And if you've got that, that's an excellent answer.

So let's move on to the next question.

And this one says, what is the effect of the emotive language in this sentence? It says in your answer, explain what Antony is trying to make the citizens feel and why.

Now the quotation is exactly the same as last time.

So pause the video, have a go at answering the question.

There's some vocab on the right hand side that you might wish to use.

And come back to me when you are done.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at the kind of thing you might have written.

So hopefully you wrote something like this.

The effect of the emotive language is to make it seem as though the conspirators murdered Caesar.

Daggers stabbed makes the act seem bloody and horrible, as if the conspirators were more like butchers than sacrificers.

Antony is trying to make the citizens feel angry that the conspirators assassinated Caesar, because he wants to persuade the citizens that it was wrong.

Now if you've got anything like that, that's a really good answer.

And the one thing I want to draw your attention to is sentence two.

Daggers stabbed makes the act seem bloody and horrible, as if the conspirators were more like, quote, butchers than sacrificers.

Now remember, that's a quote from Brutus earlier in the play.

Now all I'm doing is I'm using that quote and I'm bringing it in to this question here which is later, and I'm using it to back up the point I'm making.

So Antony is trying to make the conspirator sound like butchers whereas Brutus was trying to make them sound like sacrificers.

Okay, so I'm using that quotation to, I'm bringing it from what we've learned before, and I'm using it here to back up the point I'm making about what Antony is doing.

Now, if there's anything you want to add to your answer, of course pause the video now and improve your answer using some of this information.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's move on to the next question.

Now this one says which words in the quotation contain emotive language and the quotation this time is "Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel." So pause the video really quickly, write a sentence telling me which words in the quotation contain emotive language.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at what hopefully you have written.

Hopefully you've said the words in the quotation that contain emotive language are, quote, Caesar's angel, and if you've got that you've got exactly the right answer.

Well done.

So we've got a follow up question.

Same as the last one.

It says what is the effect of the emotive language in this sentence? And again we talked about it when we were going through the extract.

So we've got some vocab on the right, you've got loved, favourite, disgusted, cold-blooded and evil.

And if you can, in your answer, explain what Antony is trying to make the citizens feel and why.

So what's the effect of the emotive language in this sentence, "Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel." Pause the video, write your answer and come back to me when you are done.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at the kind of thing you might have written.

Well hopefully you wrote something like this.

The effect of the emotive language, Caesar's angel, is to make it sound as though Caesar loved Brutus very much.

Antony is even making it seem as though Brutus was Caesar's favourite friend.

Antony is trying to make the citizens feel disgusted that Brutus would assassinate someone who loved him so much.

Antony wants the citizens to feel like this because he wants the citizens to think that what the conspirators did was cold-blooded and evil.

And you can see I've used that vocab that I was suggesting in the answer here.

Okay, so hopefully you got something along those lines, but if you didn't, you can pause the video now and improve your answer using the information in mine.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

So it's now time for the final task of today's lesson.

Now it's really straightforward.

All you need to do is copy and complete the sentences on screen.

The first sentence says the citizens are fickle because.

The second sentence says the citizens are fickle but.

And the third sentence says the citizens are fickle, so.

And there's a quote at the top, a quotation, to help you if you would like, but you don't have to use it.

So pause the video now, complete these three sentences and come back to me for the answers when you are done.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at the kinds of things you might have written.

Well you might've written for number one, the citizens are fickle because they change their minds very easily about whether the conspirators did the right thing or not.

If you wrote that for number one, that would be a great sentence.

Number two.

You might've said something like the citizens are fickle but perhaps they came to the right decision in the end.

Now I'm not saying they did, saying perhaps they did.

If you wrote something like that, that would be perfect for number two.

And number three, the hardest one.

You might have struggled a little bit with number three.

If you did, write something like this now.

The citizens are fickle so both Antony and Brutus are able to influence and persuade them.

And if you've got anything like that, you've done really well on number three.

Okay guys, that brings us to the end of today's lesson and as always, I'm really proud of the work you've done.

You've learned some great things about the word fickle, about emotive language, and about Antony, and how he persuaded the citizens of Rome that what Brutus and the conspirators did was wrong.

So the only thing left for me to remind you to do is to complete today's quiz.

Now, of course, you can press the button down below to find the quiz.

Guys, as always, it's been a real privilege to teach you.

I'm really proud of the work you've done.

And I'll see you next time for another lesson on Julius Caesar.