Late in July
The New York Times's Michael Paulson wrote an article comparing Ted Cruz's speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention to that of Mark Antony in Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar. By repeatedly alternating the statement that Brutus and the other assassins are "honorable men" with moving citations of their victim Caesar's virtues, Antony uses words that come to mean the opposite of what they literally say. Brutus, he implies, is in fact a dishonorable murderer, undeserving of praise or followers. Likewise, in appealing to Americans to vote their consciences rather than telling them to vote for Trump, Cruz was sending Americans a coded message: vote your consciences
instead of voting for Trump. Paulson's Antony-Cruz analogy was echoed (perhaps even initiated) by the Washington Shakespeare Theater's artistic director Michael Khan and the New York Public Theater's director Oskar Eutis, both of whom he interviewed for his article. Both directors agreed that Cruz's speech, which the crowd thought was going to end one way (in a Trump endorsement) but in fact ended in another (without one), ran parallel to Mark Antony's, in which the speaker seems aligned with the crowd in his praise for Brutus until his words turn the mob's mood in another direction, from applause to cries of outrage.
In fact, Paulson and the directors have it half right. The Roman mob was there, but it wasn't created or manipulated by Cruz. If we are drawing
Julius Caesar comparisons, and listening and reading with care, it shouldn't take us long to see that Cruz was playing logical, unflashy Brutus, not flamboyant Antony, to this crowd.
