Oldal 45 [45]
THE DRAMATURGICAL AND THEATRICAL HERITAGE
is homophonous with “glossator,” the learned commentator of glosses,’
or in other words, written texts, and thus, his blinding on stage perfectly
symbolizes his failure of proper interpretation and also physically manifests
his inability to produce reliable readings. This idea is perfectly in line with the
data provided by the OED, making clear that in the seventeenth century, the
verb “gloss” already had the meaning “to veil with glosses; to explain away; to
read a different sense into.”!®
Verbal and Visual Disguises
Another dramaturgical element that appears in all three plays is the use of
elaborate disguises which characters don in order to hide their true intentions
or to manipulate others. In Magnyfycence the conspirators cunningly conceal
their dishonest intentions and replace Felicity, Liberty, and Measure, the
prince’s counselors. Technically speaking, this replacement most likely
involved changing the actors’ costumes, but the disguises are also verbally
marked, since the characters appear with a new name on stage; Fansy as
Largesse, Folly as Conceit, Crafty Conveyance as Sure Surveyance, Cloaked
Collusion as Sober Sadness, and Courtly Abusion as Pleasure. As Scattergood
explains, the disguises and dresses in Skelton’s play fulfill a dramaturgical
function, as they draw attention to Magnyfycence’s failure as a wise prince
in two particular respects. First of all, regardless of the costumes and the
name change, Magnyfycence should have known that he could not trust Fansy:
“Among the commonplaces of that tradition of ‘mirrors for princes’ literature
which depends on the secreta secretorum is that the wise prince ought to be
skilled in judging the character of men with whom he comes into contact,
especially if they are prospective servants, and sometimes this involved an
assessment of their appearance — particularly their physiognomies.”’”
Since Fansy is supposed to be a short man," he could not credibly act as
Largesse, a feature to which even the text of the play alludes:
168 “‘Glossator’ is a trisyllable, but its second syllable, a schwa, would be inevitably elided in
speech so that the word would become virtually indistinguishable in sound from the name
of Edgar and Edmund’s father, the Earl of Glossator(s), whose titular preeminence might be
supposed, therefore to make him better at what he does.” Mark Taylor: Letters and Readers
in Macbeth, King Lear, and Twelfth Night, Philological Quarterly 69:1 (1990), 41.
Simpson-Weiner: The Oxford English Dictionary, n.p.n.
John Scattergood: Dressing the Part in Magnyfycence: Allegory and Costume, in Peter Happé
(ed.): Tudor Theatre. Allegory in the Theatre. Lallegorie au theater, Collection Theta, Volume
5., Bern, Peter Lang, 2000, 69.
As Counterfet Countenaunce remarks: “A rebellyon agaynst Nature / So large a man, and so
lytell of stature!” Skelton: Magnyfycence, lines 522-23.
169
170
171
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