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Who really said it

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears

Written by William Shakespeare 1564–1616 · English playwright · play written 1599
Verified Free to reuse

The opening line of Mark Antony’s funeral oration in Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 2 — a play believed to have been written and first performed in 1599. It survives only because Shakespeare’s colleagues printed it in the First Folio of 1623; no quarto edition predates the Folio, so that volume is the play’s only authoritative text. The wording is confirmed identically across independent modern editions.

Last verified 29 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 2 (written 1599; first printed in the First Folio, 1623). Spoken by Mark Antony, not by Caesar. Verified at quotle.info

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Provenance

The source

Work
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 2
Speaker
Mark Antony — opening his funeral oration over Caesar’s body
Written
1599 — believed written and first performed that year
First printed
The First Folio, London, 1623 — no earlier quarto exists

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious. ↑ the famous quotation is the first line alone

Modern editions differ only in trifles: the Folger, MIT and 1919 Yale texts all read “I come to bury Caesar”, while the Academy of American Poets prints “I have come to bury Caesar”. The 1623 Folio keeps its own spelling: “The euill that men do, liues after them, / The good is oft enterred with their bones.”

Source artifact · earliest text (First Folio, 1623)
Read Act 3, scene 2 in the 1623 First Folio text at Internet Shakespeare Editions
Read the whole scene at the Folger Shakespeare Library

How we verified this

  • The line is printed in Antony’s mouth at Act 3, scene 2 in the Folger Shakespeare Library edition and, word for word, in the 1919 Yale edition edited by Lawrence Mason on Wikisource — two independent editions, identical wording.
  • It is present in the play’s earliest text: the First Folio of 1623, transcribed at Internet Shakespeare Editions in its original spelling (“The euill that men do, liues after them”).
  • Wikipedia’s article on the play records that it is believed to have been written and first performed in 1599, that it was originally published in the First Folio of 1623, and that the Folio text — with no quarto predating it — is the only authoritative text.
  • Wikiquote lists the line under Julius Caesar (1599) among genuine Shakespeare, not in that page’s “Misattributed” section.
  • No ancient writer supplies these words. Thomas North’s Plutarch, Shakespeare’s source, describes only the effect of Antony’s oration, and Appian’s fuller ancient version has Antony address the crowd as “my fellow-citizens.”
Public domain

Julius Caesar was first published in the First Folio of 1623, centuries before any surviving copyright interest could attach, so the play and this line are firmly in the public domain in the United States. The comparison text quoted above, the 1919 Yale edition edited by Lawrence Mason, was itself published before 1931 and is public domain as well.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What people get wrong

Unusually for a line this famous, the credit to Shakespeare is sound — this one is not a fake. The confusions are about who speaks it and whether any real Roman ever did.

Julius Caesar Wrong speaker

A play named for Caesar, a speech delivered over his body — the slip is an easy one, but Caesar is the corpse, not the orator. Both the Folger Shakespeare edition and Wikiquote assign the line to Antony at Act 3, scene 2, after the assassination.

Mark Antony, the historical man Not a real speech

Antony did speak at Caesar’s funeral in 44 BC, but these are Shakespeare’s words, not a transcript. North’s Plutarch — the source Shakespeare worked from — reports only the gesture, that Antony took “Caesar’s gown all bloody in his hand” and laid it open to the crowd; it gives no text of the oration at all. The fullest ancient version, Appian’s, opens quite differently, with Antony addressing the crowd as “my fellow-citizens.”

Shakespeare wrote it for the stage in 1599, and it reaches us through the First Folio of 1623 — spoken by Mark Antony, standing over Caesar’s body.

Context

Why it mattered

Brutus has just told the crowd that Caesar was ambitious and that the killing was necessary, and the crowd has believed him. Antony then steps up to the same corpse and turns the mob completely around without ever calling Brutus a liar — he keeps calling the conspirators honourable men until the phrase curdles into sarcasm, then withholds Caesar’s will until the crowd demands it.

That is why the speech is still the standard example of persuasion by indirection: the argument is never stated outright, it is handed to the audience to make for itself. The opening seven words are pure setup — three flattering nouns, then a request too modest to refuse.

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

Did the real Mark Antony say this?

Caesar was killed in 44 BC and Antony did speak over his body, but no ancient writer preserves the words. Shakespeare’s own source, Thomas North’s Plutarch, records the effect and the theatre of it — Antony “taking Caesar’s gown all bloody in his hand” and laying it open to the sight of them all — and stops there.

The most detailed ancient version of the oration is Appian’s, and it begins nothing like the play: Appian’s Antony, in John Carter’s translation, addresses the crowd as “my fellow-citizens.” The seven famous words are Shakespeare’s, filling a silence the historians left.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Folger Shakespeare Library — Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 2folger.edu

The full modern text of the scene, with Antony’s oration line-numbered.
Internet Shakespeare Editions — Julius Caesar, Folio 1 (1623)internetshakespeare.uvic.ca

The 1623 First Folio text in original spelling — the play’s earliest and only authoritative source.
Wikisource — Julius Caesar (1919 Yale edition), Act IIIen.wikisource.org

An independent public-domain edition, edited by Lawrence Mason, for checking the wording.
Project Gutenberg — Julius Caesargutenberg.org

Free full text of the play, set from the First Folio of 1623.
Wikiquote — William Shakespeareen.wikiquote.org

Lists this line among genuine Shakespeare, kept separate from the page’s “Misattributed” section.
Livius — Appian on Caesar’s funerallivius.org

The fullest ancient account of the real funeral oration, in John Carter’s translation — and nothing like Shakespeare’s.

About the author

Who was William Shakespeare?

William Shakespeare

1564–1616 · English playwright, poet & actor

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor, and the most quoted writer in the language. For his Roman plays — Julius Caesar among them — his main source was Thomas North’s English translation of Plutarch’s Lives, published in 1580; North gave him the events, but the great speeches are his own. Julius Caesar was never printed in his lifetime: it reaches us only through the collected First Folio that his colleagues published in 1623.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, act 3, scene 2, first published in the First Folio (London, 1623); text as printed in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, ed. Lawrence Mason, Yale edition, 1919.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears’?” Last verified 29 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/friends-romans-countrymen-lend-me-your-ears/

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