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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR seruice chiefly deuised, in which case to make any other person her highnes partener in the honour of his guifts it could not städ with my dutie, nor be without some preiudice to her Maiesties interest and his merrite.”?% Quite naturally, the question arises as to what makes this particular book so different from other Renaissance works on rhetoric, such as Thomas Wilson’s Arte of Rhetorique (1553), Henry Peacham’s Garden of Eloquence (1577), or Sir Philip Sidney’s Defense of Poesy (1595). Moreover, since these books were ultimately modeled on the works of one Roman author, Quintillian, and one Renaissance author, Erasmus, one might even suspect that their discussion and handling of the subject matter cannot be substantively different. Nevertheless, Puttenham’s book is outstanding among the works of its kind for his familiarity and commitment to the vernacular literature of his own age, a feature that explains the author’s choice of title*® and manifests itself in the numerous examples that he cites from English poets instead of quoting classical authors. As far as the immediate source of his rhetorical terminology is concerned, Puttenham relies mostly on Joannes Susenbrotus’ handbook the Epitome troporum ac schematum (An Epitome of Tropes and Schemes), which achieved enormous success throughout Europe in the first half of the sixteenth century.”°° Out of one hundred and twenty-one figures that Puttenham names, one hundred and fifteen correspond exactly to Susenbrotus’ terms.”” Yet Puttenham’s originality lies in the fact that he tried to establish an English vocabulary for these figures instead of merely listing the Greek or Latin counterparts. In addition to the historic significance of the creation of a vernacular body of the terminology, this unique feature also reflects Puttenham’s stand in the contemporaneous debate concerning whether art should be limited to the Classical languages or whether real poetry can also be written in vernacular tongues like English. To cite one of his answers articulated in the form of a rhetorical question: “If againe Art be but a certaine order of rules prescribed by reason, and gathered by experience, why should not Poesie be a vulgar Art with vs aswell as with the Greeks and Latines, our language admitting no fewer rules and nice diuersities then theirs?”” As for the structure of Puttenham’s work, it consists of three books. The first, entitled “Of Poets and Poesie,” discusses theoretical and generic issues and emphasizes that the social and political functions of poets and their art 204 Puttenham: The Arte, npn. Willcock — Walker: Introduction, |xiii. Wayne A. Rebhorn: “His tail at commandment:” George Puttenham and the Carnivalization of Rhetoric, in Walter Jost-Wendy Olmsted (eds.): A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism, Oxford, Blackwell, 2004, 99. 207 Tbid., 100. 208 Puttenham: The Arte, 3. 205 206
