The plebeians

Ordinary citizens with extraordinary political importance

The plebeians are Rome's common people. Shakespeare presents them as a collective presence rather than one continuously developed individual: the carpenter and cobbler appear at the beginning, while numbered citizens dominate the funeral and the attack on Cinna. Their changing loyalties help determine who can control Rome. Leaders may make decisions in private, but they need public support to make those decisions effective.

The crowd's development moves from celebration and comedy to political persuasion and finally violence. Yet calling the citizens merely foolish misses part of Shakespeare's presentation. They can be witty, ask for explanations and recognise persuasive arguments. The danger emerges when shared excitement or anger overwhelms independent judgement.

The cobbler's wit and the tribunes' authority

In Act 1 Scene 1, working people have dressed for a holiday to celebrate Caesar's triumph. Flavius and Marullus, the tribunes, challenge them for being away from work. Tribunes were officials who represented the common people, but these two speak down to the citizens they are supposed to protect. Flavius's opening commands establish a struggle over who controls Rome's streets.

The Second Commoner, a cobbler, calls himself “a mender of bad soles”. The pun joins shoe soles with human souls: repairing shoes sounds like correcting people's moral faults. His reference to a safe conscience strengthens the joke. This gives a working man verbal ingenuity, not simply ignorance, while Marullus's irritated demands suggest that the official cannot comfortably control the exchange.

The cobbler continues with wordplay about being out: Marullus may be out of temper, while shoes may be worn out and need mending. His prose sounds conversational and playful beside the tribunes' formal verse. Prose has no regular metrical pattern; here it helps make the commoner's voice lively and recognisably different from official public speech. The comic opening therefore allows an audience to enjoy a citizen's resistance to authority before confronting the crowd's political instability.

From Pompey to Caesar: changing loyalty and elite contempt

Marullus asks “Knew you not Pompey?” in Act 1 Scene 1. Pompey was Caesar's rival, and Marullus recalls how these citizens once waited eagerly to cheer him. Now they celebrate Caesar's triumph over Pompey's blood. The rhetorical question accuses them of forgetting their former hero: their enthusiasm seems attached to the latest victorious leader rather than a lasting principle.

However, this judgement comes through Marullus's angry perspective. He calls them “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!”, treating them as unthinking objects. The tribunes fear that popular enthusiasm will raise Caesar above everyone else, so they disperse the commoners and remove decorations from Caesar's images. In Act 1 Scene 2, Casca reports that the tribunes have been “put to silence”. Their attempt to restrain Caesar's public prestige has consequences, showing that control of popular celebration is politically serious.

Casca also describes the crowd at the Lupercal festival in Act 1 Scene 2: “the rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands”. “Rabblement” is a contemptuous collective label; “hooted” reduces their response to a crude noise, while their rough hands suggest manual labour. His wider description emphasises sweat and bad breath, revealing disgust towards poorer Romans.

Crucially, Casca says they cheer when Caesar refuses the crown. Their support for Caesar does not automatically mean support for monarchy. Casca says they applaud and hiss “as they use to do the players in the theatre”. This comparison makes politics seem like a performance, with Caesar responding to an audience's approval. It also invites Shakespeare's own theatre audience to recognise something of itself in the Roman spectators: people watching this play are themselves responding to performers who can influence their feelings. Shakespeare lets us see both the crowd's influence and an elite observer's prejudice against it.

Brutus wins approval, but not understanding

After Caesar's assassination, the citizens demand an explanation in Act 3 Scene 2. The Second Citizen initially proposes hearing and comparing the conspirators' reasons. This suggests a capacity for political judgement, rather than immediate blind obedience.

Brutus's funeral address uses prose and balanced statements to present the killing as a reasoned defence of Roman freedom. He also draws on his reputation and the citizens' pride in being Romans. The crowd's collective reply, “None, Brutus, none.”, appears to confirm agreement, but it gives no explanation of what individual listeners have understood. Shakespeare then lets their excited responses reveal the limits of Brutus's success.

The Third Citizen responds, “Let him be Caesar.” The Fourth Citizen adds, “Caesar's better parts / Shall be crown'd in Brutus.” Both speak in Act 3 Scene 2. These responses are ironic: Brutus has defended the assassination as protection against domination by one man, yet the citizens immediately offer him Caesar's position. They seem to want a better personal ruler rather than grasping Brutus's republican ideal of government without a king.

The language of crowning makes this contradiction particularly clear. Their admiration transfers from Caesar to Brutus with remarkable speed. Brutus wins their applause, but their words show that applause is not the same as understanding.

Antony turns judgement into outrage

Brutus leaves before Antony speaks, asking the citizens to remain. Antony must not openly blame the conspirators, so he gradually undermines them while repeatedly calling them honourable. His speech is predominantly blank verse: unrhymed verse generally built around five pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables. This gives his sustained address a different form from Brutus's central prose argument.

Antony challenges the accusation of ambition with examples of Caesar benefiting Rome, caring for the poor and refusing the crown. He also pauses in grief, drawing the citizens' attention to his feelings. The First Citizen's response in Act 3 Scene 2, “Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.”, shows that Antony's appeal works through apparent reasoning as well as emotion. The crowd believes it is reaching a considered judgement even as its allegiance shifts.

Antony then mentions Caesar's will but delays reading it. This creates anticipation and makes the citizens demand the very evidence he wants them to hear. The Fourth Citizen exclaims, “They were traitors: honourable men!” The clash between “traitors” and “honourable” shows that the crowd has adopted Antony's implied sarcasm. Praise of the conspirators has become condemnation.

The citizens' anger has an understandable basis. Historically, Caesar was popular with Rome's lower classes, who became enraged that a small group of aristocrats had killed him. This gives the funeral conflict a social dimension: the conspirators claim to have freed Rome, but poorer citizens may experience the assassination as the loss of their champion. Antony exploits that attachment by presenting Caesar's death as a betrayal of the people as well as of a friend.

In the play, the will leaves seventy-five drachmas to each Roman citizen and makes Caesar's walks, arbours and orchards available for public enjoyment. These concrete benefits make the loss personal. Their response need not be read as simple greed: the gifts also appear to confirm Caesar's affection for them.

Before revealing those gifts, Antony displays Caesar's damaged mantle and body. The funeral becomes a visible spectacle of suffering. The citizens' short cries interrupt his longer speech, and their collective commands accelerate towards revenge. In Act 3 Scene 2, they shout “Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay!” The rapid sequence of exclamations replaces discussion with demands for action. Individual voices merge into a collective threat.

From funeral mourning to riot

At the end of Act 3 Scene 2, the First Citizen declares, “We'll burn his body in the holy place,” and then proposes using the burning brands to set the traitors' houses alight. Burning Caesar's body means funeral cremation, not an attack on Caesar. However, the planned movement from sacred funeral rites to arson shows mourning turning into destructive revenge.

The riot takes physical shape as the citizens seize Caesar's body and call for fuel. The Third Citizen orders “Pluck down benches.” The Fourth Citizen adds “Pluck down forms, windows, any thing.” These commands show ordinary objects being torn from their surroundings to serve the crowd's anger. The public gathering has become a force that destroys the city's order rather than deliberating about its future.

Brutus and Cassius flee Rome. Antony's comment after the citizens leave, “Now let it work.”, in Act 3 Scene 2, suggests satisfaction that his persuasion has unleashed a force against his enemies. Public opinion has become violence that the conspirators cannot control; the next scene shows that its victims need not even be conspirators.

Cinna the poet: the failure of evidence and justice

Act 3 Scene 3 immediately exposes the consequences of the funeral. Citizens surround Cinna the poet and bombard him with questions. Their insistence on direct, brief and truthful answers resembles an investigation, but they do not genuinely weigh his responses.

When they hear his name, the First Citizen commands, “Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.” Cinna replies, “I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.” His repetition sounds urgent and frightened: he must establish that he is not the conspirator who shares his name. The Fourth Citizen instead suggests tearing him for his bad verses and then declares “It is no matter, his name's Cinna”.

This changes the meaning of the violence. It begins with mistaken identity, but continues after the correction. The citizens choose a victim rather than establish guilt. The imperative “Tear” imagines brutal physical destruction, while the repeated commands and threats turn their prose into an instrument of intimidation. The Third Citizen's final commands direct them towards the conspirators' houses with firebrands, linking this attack to the wider riot.

Structurally, the scene follows Antony's triumph almost at once. His successful persuasion is therefore judged by its human consequence: an innocent man becomes the target of the revenge he has encouraged. There is also a disturbing reversal of the opening. Marullus demanded a direct answer from the witty cobbler; now citizens demand direct answers from a vulnerable poet. Those subjected to authority have become coercive authorities themselves. The opening allowed language to challenge power through comedy; here, explanations cannot protect a speaker from violence.

What the crowd suggests about political power

The plebeians' main dramatic arc is complete by the end of Act 3. Later civil war develops the disorder their violence helps unleash. Their movement from cheering leaders to attacking an innocent man warns against mob rule: collective certainty is dangerous when it abandons evidence and restraint.

Yet responsibility does not belong to the crowd alone. Brutus relies on his reputation and misjudges what the citizens understand; Antony skilfully intensifies their grief and anger. In Act 4 Scene 1, Antony even proposes reducing the cost of Caesar's legacies, complicating his earlier presentation of those gifts. The people have helped him gain power, but that does not guarantee that he will protect their interests.

A convincing interpretation can therefore hold two ideas together: Shakespeare exposes the crowd's unstable loyalties and capacity for cruelty, while also exposing leaders who manipulate popular feeling and elites who dismiss ordinary citizens. The tragedy shows the distance between claiming to act for Rome and securing the people's lasting welfare.

Turning a quotation into an essay argument

An analytical paragraph connects a claim about the crowd to a precise moment, explores Shakespeare's choices and explains their wider significance. For example:

Shakespeare presents the plebeians' violence as a collapse of political judgement. In Act 3 Scene 3, the First Citizen orders, “Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.” The brutal imperative “Tear” replaces the search for truth with an immediate demand for destruction. Although Cinna repeatedly identifies himself as the poet, the citizens continue threatening him, suggesting that revenge matters more than guilt. By placing this encounter directly after the funeral, Shakespeare reveals the dangerous consequences of Antony's persuasion. The crowd's anger at the aristocrats who killed the popular Caesar may be understandable, but its attack on an innocent Roman destroys any claim to be delivering justice.

The crowd's changing loyalties

• Act 1 Scene 1: celebrates Caesar after previously cheering Pompey. The cobbler's wit challenges the tribunes' authority.
• Act 1 Scene 2: Casca reports applause for Caesar's refusal of the crown; his contempt reveals elite prejudice.
• Act 3 Scene 2: demands reasons, supports Brutus, then follows Antony into revenge and riot.
• Act 3 Scene 3: attacks Cinna the poet despite his correction of its mistake. Revenge replaces justice.

Quotation anchors

• Second Commoner, Act 1 Scene 1: “a mender of bad soles” — soles/souls pun; verbal intelligence.
• Marullus, Act 1 Scene 1: “Knew you not Pompey?” — accusation of disloyalty.
• Casca, Act 1 Scene 2: “the rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands” — contemptuous account, not a neutral judgement.
• Third Citizen, Act 3 Scene 2: “Let him be Caesar.” — ironic misunderstanding of Brutus's defence of freedom.
• First Citizen, Act 3 Scene 2: “Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.” — Antony appears reasonable as allegiance changes.