Page 32 [32]
SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
counsell ‘gainst the father. But us the world doth this experience give, / That he
that cannot flatter, cannot live” Ioppolo finds the doubling of similar action
an essential element in the dramaturgy of the True Chronicle Historie. As she
explains, “words, images, and actions are mirrored in every set of two scenes [...]
creating dramatically effective binary opposition,” and it seems reasonable to
add that this contrast also applies to the character of the king’s two counselors.
Unlike Skalliger, Perillus manifests his loyalty to the king not by seeking his
liking but by giving him impartial and rational advice. At the very beginning of
the play, he warns Leir against the dangers of the cunning love contest, and later,
as the only character present when Leir asks how much his daughters love him,
he comments on this conversation: “Oh, how I grieve, to see my Lord thus fond,
/ To dote so much upon vayne flattering words. / Ah, if he but with good advice
had weyghed, / The hidden tenure of her humble speech, / Reason to rage should
not have given place, / Nor poore Cordella suffer such disgrace’** Moreover, he
tries to comfort Leir, who has already realized that Gonorill deceived him, with
the following words: “What’s got by flattery, doth not long indure; / And men
in favour live not most secure.” This comment is remarkably similar to the one
with which Redress addressed the audience in Skelton’s play.
As for the presentation of flatterers, King Lear diverges from the other
two plays in many respects. First, unlike in The True Chronicle Historie, the
daughters’ avowal of their love for their father does not take place within the
context of a private conversation between the members of the royal family.
but rather is part of a public ceremony during which the king announces his
decision concerning the future of his kingdom and his daughters. Second,
Gonorill and Regan do not reveal their deceitful intentions directly to the
audience, like the allegorical figures of the interlude or Gonorill and Ragan in
the anonymous play do, and only as the plot unfolds does it become evident
that they were in fact merely speaking empty words of flattery. However,
Shakespeare anticipates this unexpected turn of events with the delicate use of
figures of speech, a poetic technique which is comprehensible even today with
the help of contemporaneous books on rhetoric. The second chapter of this
book will study Shakespeare’s rhetorical knowledge in detail, but it is worth
citing one particular example at this point. As a reply to Lear’s question which
of his daughters loves him the most, Gonorill and Regan in their courtly speech
draw on a storehouse of rhetorical figures, for instance repeated parallelism
and asyndeton, but first and foremost hyperbole.*® The marked presence of
4 Ibid., sig. C4v.
95 Toppolo: A Jointure, 172.
Anonymous: The True Chronicle, sig. B2v—B2r.
97 Ibid. sig. Div.
°8 Craig Kallendorf: King Lear and the Figures of Speech, in Craig Kallendorf (ed.): Landmark
Essays on Rhetoric and Literature, Mahwah, NJ, Hermagoras Press, 1999, 102-103.
96
+ 30°