Mark Antony makes no direct reply to the offer of loot, but proceeds to strike those attitudes of nobility he knows will impress Brutus. He ostentatiously shakes the bloody hands of the conspirators yet speaks eloquently of his love for Caesar, once Brutus professes that he himself had loved Caesar.
Cassius, rather desperately, breaks into the flow of rhetoric with a practical question to Mark Antony:
But what compact mean you to have with us?
Will you be pricked in number of our friends,
Or shall we on, and not depend on you?
- Act III, scene i, lines 215-17
Where we write names with chalk on slate, or with pen and pencil on paper, the Romans were apt to scratch them in the wax coated on a wooden tablet. Where we check off names with a /, they would prick a little hole next to the name. Hence the question "Will you be pricked in number of our friends..."
... do not consent ...
Again, Mark Antony evades a direct commitment. He still wants an explanation of Caesar's crimes, which Brutus is still confident he can give. What's more, Antony adds a casual request:
... that / may
Produce his [Caesar's] body to the market place,
And in the pulpit, as becomes a friend,
Speak in the order of his funeral.
- Act III, scene i, lines 227-30
It seems a moderate request. After all, Caesar, though assassinated, deserves an honorable funeral and a eulogy by a good friend; especially a friend who seems to have joined the conspiracy. Brutus agrees at once.
The clear-seeing Cassius is horrified. He pulls Brutus aside and whispers urgently:
You know not what you do; do not consent
That Antony speak in his funeral.
- Act III, scene i, lines 232-33
Cassius knows, after all, that Mark Antony is a skillful orator and that if he catches the attention of the populace he can become dangerous.
Nothing, however, can win out over Brutus' vanity. It is the mainspring of all the action. Brutus points out that he will speak first and explain the assassination (he is always sure that he has but to explain the deed and everyone will understand and be satisfied) and that Mark Antony can, after that, do nothing. To make doubly sure, Brutus sets conditions, saying to Antony:
You shall not in your funeral speech blame us,
But speak all good you can devise of Caesar
And say you do't by our permission;
- Act III, scene i, lines 245-48
Brutus was worse than vain; he was a fool to think that such conditions could for one moment stop an accomplished orator and force him to make the conspirators seem noble and magnanimous. Later on, when Mark Antony does speak, he keeps to those conditions rigorously, and it does the conspirators no good at all.
... Caesar's spirit...
Mark Antony is left alone with Caesar's body and, in an emotional soliloquy, apologizes to the corpse for his show of affection with the conspirators. He predicts the coming of civil war and says:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of war,
- Act III, scene i, lines 270-73
Ate is visualized here as the personified goddess of retribution, and "Havoc" is the fearful cry that sounds out at the final fall of a besieged city. It is the signal for unrestrained killing and looting when all real fighting is done. (The word "hawk" is from the same root and one can see in the swoop of the hawk the symbol of the surge of a conquering army on its helpless victims.)
The reference to "Caesar's spirit" may be taken literally in any society that believes in ghosts, and these include both Mark Antony's and Shakespeare's. Indeed, Caesar's spirit makes an actual appearance in Plutarch's tale and therefore in this play as well.
... Octavius Caesar...
It is but a small leap, however, to interpret "Caesar's spirit" in another way too. His spirit may be the spirit of his reforms and his attempt to reorganize the Roman government under a strong and centralized rule. This could live on and come "ranging for revenge." And that spirit might well be embodied in another man.
As though to indicate this, Antony's soliloquy is followed by the immediate entrance of a "Servant"; a messenger coming to announce his master is on his way. It follows only six lines after the reference to "Caesar's spirit" and Mark Antony recognizes the