Oldal 42 [42]
SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
highest number of letters. According to the Shakespeare concordance, the
word letter occurs thirty-three times in the play,'” and alongside the numerous
messages and exchanges of news, eight stage letters appear, two of which are
read aloud.’** From a historical approach, this feature could obviously draw
attention to the importance and role of correspondence in Jacobean England,
though most of these messages in the play have hardly anything to do with
the Erasmian idea of letter writing.’*’ Alan Stewart remarks that the only
letter that perfectly meets the Erasmian idea of the familiar epistle is the
one that Kent sends to Cordelia.!** According to the Renaissance notion of
epistolary writing, letters are intended to evoke the reader’s empathy with the
help of the text, which stands for the person in absentia, a criterium that Kent’s
letter seems to fulfill, since the carrier of the letter called Gentleman lengthily
describes Cordelia’s highly intensified reactions in the following manner:
Gent. I say she tooke them, read them in my presence, / And now and then an ample
teare trild downe / Her delicate cheeke, it seemed she was a queene ouer her
passion, / Who most rebell-like, sought to be King ore her.
Kent. O then it moued her.
Gent. Not to a rage, patience and sorow streme, / Who should expresse her goodliest
you haue seene, / Sun shine and raine at once, her smiles and teares, / Were
like a better way those happie smilets, / That playd on her ripe lip seeme not to
know, / What guests were in her eyes which parted thence, / As pearles from
diamonds dropt in briefe, / Sorow would be a raritie most beloued, / If all could
so become it.
Kent. Made she no verball question.
Gent. Faith once or twice she heau’d the name of father, / Pantingly forth as if it
prest her heart, / Cried sisters, sisters, shame of Ladies sisters: / Kent, father,
sisters, what ith storme ith night, / Let pitie not be beleeft there she shooke, /
The holy water from her heauenly eyes, / And clamour moystened her, then away
she started, / To deale with griefe alone.’
Nevertheless, Stewart rather plausibly claims that, apart from this exceptional
passage, Shakespeare’s use of letters does not reflect the Erasmian notion
of epistolography, so letters in his drama should be regarded primarily as
"material objects," which make a visual impact. Stewart uses this term to
indicate that letters in Shakespearean drama are items of stage property,
155
Bergeron: Deadly Letters, 160.
See the detailed description of all the letters in Stewart: Shakespeare’s Letters, 194.
157 Cf. especially ibid., 12-16.
158 Ibid., 15-16.
159 Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. H4v—I1r.
Stewart: Shakespeare’s Letters, 16.
156
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