What are two examples of contradictory feelings or actions in Act V of Julius Caesar?In Act I, Brutus tells Cassius that though he would not have...

With the motif of duality and contradiction, Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar is a play that is interesting, if not rather
difficult to understand.  For everything, there are two sides--all the characters and
all the arguments, even the title (Is this play really about Caesar or about
Brutus?)

Here are some examples from Act V that support
this motif of contradiction within
characters:

Marc
Antony

The Antony of Act III, loving and
loyal to Caesar, whose ironic remarks in his eulogy point to the lack of honor in Brutus
and the conspirators, certainly acts in a most contradictory fashion in Act IV when he
sends Lepidus, one of the triumvirate, to fetch the will of Caesar so that they can
mitigate some of the legacies Antony promised the people when he read this will to the
Romans after Caesar's death.  He also plans to use Lepidus to advance his political
power, and then be rid of him because he is "a slight unmeritable man."  Then, in Act V,
Scene 1, when he and Octavius meet Brutus and Cassius in the battlefield, he contradicts
his own expedient ideas from Act IV as he insults his
foes,

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Villains! You did not so when your vile daggers

Hack'd one another in the sides of Caesar.
You show'd your teeth
like apes, and fawn'd like hounds,
And bow'd like bondmen, kissing Caesar's
feet;
Whilst damned Casca, like a cur, behind
Struck Caesar on the
neck. O you flatterers!
(5.1.42-47)

Cassius

Cassius in
Act V goes against his original positions regarding fate.  In Act I, Scene 2, for
instance, when he solicits Brutus as a conspirator in the assassination plot, he
contradicts Brutus's feelings about inevitability,

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Men at some time are masters of their fates:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves,
that we are underlings.
Brutus, and Caesar: what should be in that Caesar?
(21.2.145-148)

However, in
Act V it is Cassius who feels the hands of fate upon him.  Supersitious in his feelings
about the forthcoming battle, he tells Messala that he has observed portents that
convince him it is unlucky for him to fight the battle on his
birthday:

Two
mighty eagles fell, and there they perch'd,
Gorging and feeding from our
soldiers' hands,
Who to Philippi here consorted us.
This morning
are they fled away and gone,
And in their steads do ravens, crows, and kites

Fly o'er our heads and downward look on us,
As we were sickly
prey. Their shadows seem
A canopy most fatal, under which
Our army
lies, ready to give up the
ghost.(5.1.87-95)

In a play
of many contradictions with fickleness of character and superstition, the characters of
Julius Caesar would have done well to have been aware of the Ides
of March as the old soothsayer proclaimed, for these currents of change lay well within
themselves.