Hailey Dowdy Mrs. Gibson English II H November 2, 2017 Brothers M and Comedy of Errors Comparison Essay Little is know about the life of Titus Maccius Plautus, however it is known that he was born in Sarsina, Umbria in 254 B.C. and was named after Titus, his father. It is believed that as a young boy he traveled to Rome and worked as a stage assistant. He got his other two names, Maccius and Plautus, when his potential as an actor was found out. He began a business as a merchant shipper, but it was when this fell through that Plautus worked as a miller’s laborer and he studied Greek drama in his free time. He gained much success from being an adaptor of Greek comedies for the Romans from the age of forty and on. However, his works seemed to be more original than pure translations. According to Cicero he died in 184 B.C. after being granted Roman citizenship. Shakespeare expands the story line of The Brother Menaechmus for his Comedy of Errors. The Brother Menaechmus starts off with a rather humorous prologue in which a know-it all character with a bubbly personality recaps the overall plot of this play by Plautus. The chaos and confusion begins when two seven year old twin boys, Menaechmus and Sosicles, split up with their parents. Menaechmus goes with his father on a business trip while his brother stays home. It is while he is away that Menaechmus is taken in my a businessman who lives in Epidamnus, thus separating the twins. …show more content…
This added chaos and confusion of identities and lost loved ones being added to the plot makes it even more exciting and enjoyable for the audience to endure. Also, the addition of the twin slaves for each of the twins creates an ironic and delightful situation of chance. All in all, the addition to by Shakespeare to the Brother Menaechmus to create his own Comedy of Errors was a good literary
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” (George Orwell, 1984). William Shakespeare intensified his quality of work by insinuating manipulative and persuasive language within his writing. Cassius, a loyal server to Brutus, was easy to coax Brutus into rebelling against Julius Caesar, gaining an additional member to his group of conspirators. Cassius altered Brutus’ thoughts of Caesar’s ruling, within the use of multiple effective rhetorical techniques.
Aristophane created a comedy about how Socrates theories were absurd and how his philosophy
Idealistic Brutus misplaces his trust on his army and the conspirators. Manipulated, Brutus joins into the conspiracy without knowing the hidden intentions. By the time conspirators had brief meeting at Brutus’s house before the plan, Brutus addresses that “they are all welcome” (2.1.97) and shakes hands with the conspirators without any doubt. He misplaces his trust on the conspirators thinking that everyone share same purpose and intention. After the death of Caesar and Antony’s funeral speech, Brutus and Cassius run away from Rome and set up a camp where they can fight against the army of Antony.
Plautus was a play writer and an actor born in Italy in 254 BCE and died 184 BCE, he was a great Roman comic dramatist whose work was sparsely adapted from Greek plays; he began his carrier as an actor. Pseudolus is one of the works of Plautus which was first shown in 191 BCE at the megalesian festival. Pseudolus is play about a soldier who put down 60 pounds of token to come back later to pay the balance of 20 pounds for a girl whose pimp wanted 80pounds for her to be sold. She sends a letter to her lover (Calidorus) who is heartbroken and confused because he can’t afford to watch her leave and also couldn’t afford to buy her from the pimp.
Does a hero know when they will fall to their own mistakes? Many men and women throughout history have been defined as tragic heroes and died because of the mistakes they have made in their lifetime. One of these men is Marcus Brutus. Brutus had many flaws and mistakes that he made in his judgment of people and his logic. One of these many flaws was the fact he put himself above the people around him because of his political standing and education.
Because Brutus uses prose, it is a reflection of his rational argument defending his reasoning for assassinating Caesar and his own rational thought process. Mark Antony however, approaches the audience with a more emotional and tactful oration. He speaks in iambic pentameter, which is common when one is speaking emotionally and passionately, as in the case of Mark Antony. This is an illustration of his emotion eliciting speech and passionate rebuttal of Brutus' accusation of Caesar's ambition. As for the actual content of the speeches, Brutus presented a group of more rational and intentional ideas rather than Mark Antony's sympathy and tact.
Rhetorical Differences The reason Brutus failed to continue to have the citizens of Rome persuaded is simplified in this quote by Robert A Heinlein: “You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.” Brutus failed while Antony succeeded because Brutus relied on logic whereas Antony relied on the emotions of the people. Despite the fact that Antony did it for the wrong reasons, he obviously was more skilled in rhetoric than Brutus.
“And public reasons shall be rendered Of Caesar’s death.” (Act III, Scene II) In the play, “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar was killed by a group of conspirators who believed that his rule would result in the downfall of Rome, and that his death was the best solution. Marcus Brutus, who was viewed as the leader of the plot to kill Caesar, was the first to speak at his funeral, followed by Marc Antony. Each man’s speech included several examples of rhetorical strategies that ultimately swayed the audience to be in favor of one side or another. Marcus Brutus gave the better, more argumentative speech due to his effective use of rhetorical strategies.
In William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, Cassius is a foil to Marcus Brutus, for Brutus is consistently described as honorable and kind, contrasting the always clever and self-centered, Cassius. Cassius acts as a character who goes against the virtues and weaknesses of the main character. Brutus announces, “Why man, he doth bestride the narrow World like a Colossus, and we pretty men Walk under his huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves” (Shakespeare I. 2. 142-145). By appealing to Brutus' feeling of honor and loyalty to Rome, Cassius hopes to persuade him to join the conspiracy against Caesar.
In tragedy plays, there is always a tragic hero who has a tragic flaw in his personality such as excessive pride or poor judgement that leads to the hero’s downfall until he or she realizes it too late. In Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Marcus Brutus is the tragic hero because of his tragic flaw, naivety and too trusting personality, which he eventually realizes but too late before he can fix anything. William Shakespeare illustrates Brutus to have good morals but also displays Brutus’s naivety and too trusting personality which becomes his tragic flaw. For example, when Brutus has an internal conflict on deciding if Caesar should be emperor or not, Cassius took advantage of his confusion and naive personality to act as the “glass [that]
Keep Power or Kill If you believed that the only way to save your state was to kill one of your friends, would you? The character Brutus killed one of his friends in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar(JC) by William Shakespeare. Some people believe that he is a villain and only killed Caesar to keep his own power in the government. However many people think that he killed Julius Caesar to help prevent Rome from becoming dictatorship.
Brutus and Antony speak in Caesar's funeral, they use ethos, pathos, and logos to get their point across. With the use of the pathos, logos, and ethos Brutus gets the attention of the commoners. He asks the commoners if what he is going to say is going to offend them, if it does he asks of them to leave there and they all tell Brutus no. Antony speaks before Brutus and gets his point across but fails at his point and just gets the crowd thinking. Brutus than uses his speech techniques to win over the commoner’s ears to listen to him.
Brutus and Cassius are two prominent conspirators in the play Julius Caesar; one of these two fits Aristotle's depiction of a tragic hero. The difference between a normal hero and a tragic hero is that the latter will have a tragic flaw that keeps them from succeeding. These characters are often sympathetic and will cleave to the reader's pity. Firstly, we shall discuss Cassius. He was a man of questionable character.
Brutus 's speech: Brutus speaks to the people of rome why he killed caesar so they will not turn on him. He talked about how he didnt kill him because he didn 't love him but because it was for the better of rome. He also tells the people of rome that letting caesar become king would mean the government type would change and all the wars and hard work his family had put into the government would go away. He also states, for the welfare of rome that he would die for rome if rome demands his death Rhetorical devices: Brutus used questions, logos, parallelism, and pathos to stir the people of rhome. Question-
The conventions of tragedy and comedy, such as the tragedy in Oedipus Rex and the comedy in The Taming of the Shrew, can shape the way the play is developed. Thorough analysis can reveal these dramas to be discussions of human experience. As Laurence Olivier once said: “The office of drama is to exercise, possibly exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass.”