Compare Brutus's and Antony's funeral speeches and identify an early, informal use of ethos, pathos, and logos in each, previewing the full rhetorical treatment later this year.
Brutus speaks to the crowd first, and notably in prose rather than Shakespeare's usual verse -- a deliberate signal that he is offering plain, rational argument rather than emotional performance. He explains that he loved Caesar personally but loved Rome's freedom more, appealing to the crowd's reason and their own love of liberty; the crowd, satisfied by this logic, very nearly makes Brutus their new hero on the spot. Then Antony rises to speak, by agreement allowed to address the crowd but only after promising not to blame the conspirators -- and Shakespeare returns immediately to verse, signaling an entirely different, more emotionally charged mode is beginning.
Antony's speech is built around a single repeated refrain, calling Brutus an honorable man, which starts as apparent agreement and grows steadily more devastating through sheer repetition and mounting contradiction: each time Antony repeats the phrase, he has just presented another piece of evidence that makes it harder to believe -- Caesar's will leaving money directly to Roman citizens, Caesar's refusal of the crown three times, the wounds visible on Caesar's own body. Antony never technically breaks his promise not to directly blame the conspirators; he simply lets the crowd draw the conclusion he has carefully engineered every piece of evidence to produce. By the speech's end, the same crowd that nearly cheered for Brutus is rioting against him. This full unit on ethos (a speaker's credibility), pathos (emotional appeal), and logos (logical appeal) returns for formal treatment later this year -- for now, simply notice that Brutus leans almost entirely on logos while Antony builds pathos on top of a foundation of carefully selected evidence.
Mastery looks like: They can contrast Brutus's and Antony's rhetorical approaches, explain how Antony's refrain builds meaning through repetition and evidence, and name an early, informal example of pathos and logos in each speech.
Common stumbles: Assuming Brutus's reasonable-sounding speech must be the more honest one simply because it is calmer; missing that Antony's power comes from combining real evidence with emotional appeal, not from emotional appeal alone.
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