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RHETORICAL AND POETICAL CONVENTIONS
are strongly intertwined. This idea culminates in his views on Queen Elizabeth
who, according to Puttenham, is “the most excellent Poet” for the following
reasons:
Forsooth by your Princely purse fauours and countenance, making in maner what
ye list, the poore man rich, the lewd well learned, the coward couragious, and vile
both noble and valiant. Then for imitation no lesse, your person as a most cunning
counterfaitor liuely representing Venus in countenance, in life Diana, Pallas for
gouernement, and Juno in all honour and regall magnificence.*”
The second book, “Of Proportion Poetical,” focuses on more practical matters,
such as prosody and the visual effect of a poem’s typographical arrangement.
The third book, on which I focus in the major part of this chapter, is entitled “Of
Ornament.” It essentially discusses various issues of style. For my argument
on the assumed philological connection between Puttenham’s handbook and
Shakespeare’s King Lear, this third book is of utmost importance, especially
for its account of the figures of speech and its lengthy description of proper
behavior, the details of which I discuss later.
SHAKESPEARE AND THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE
The idea of relating The Arte of English Poesie to Shakespeare’s poetic practice
entered the sphere of scholarship on Shakespeare in the twentieth century
with William Rushton’s 1909 book Shakespeare and The Arte of English Poesie.?"°
In order to prove this assumed connection, Rushton quotes various parallel
passages from both the handbook on courtly rhetoric and different Shakespeare
plays, but interestingly enough, he never mentions King Lear. Relying on
Rushton’s findings, in 2002 Catherine Lisak published an article-length
comparative study in which she analyzed how Shakespearean dramaturgy
treats certain poetic matters also addressed in Puttenham’s work. Focusing
only on three examples proposed by Rushton, namely the use of surplusage,
metaphora, and the word “rascal,’ Lisak concludes that not only is it obvious
that Shakespeare knew these rhetorical figures and examples discussed in The
Arte of English Poesie but he also confidently applied them in his poetic praxis."
209 Tbid., 2.
210 William L. Rushton: Shakespeare and the Arte of English Poesie, Liverpool, 1909.
21. “It transpires, without doubt, that Shakespeare had read Puttenham closely, and was sensitive
to the variations in meanings Puttenham studied in his choice of quotations or particular
words. Puttenham’s examples were as much exploited by the dramatist, when applying
the specific figure of speech it illustrated to a dramatic piece of his own, as the definitions
themselves. Turning the intolerable into a recreational piece, a solace to man’s wit, was one of
Shakespeare’s ways of reading Puttenham and making use of his teaching.” Catherine Lisak:
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