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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
99, u
purposes”; “we haue diuided”; “our kingdome”; “our first intent”; “our state”;
“our youngest daughters loue”; “our Court”; “we say”; “loue vs”; “we our largest
bountie may extend”; “our eldest borne.” The reason why the “public” feature
of the Shakespearean context is significant is that, according to Puttenham’s
description at the beginning of the book on ornament, such dictions were
necessarily figurative:
How our writing and speaches publike ought to be figuratiue, and if they be not doe
greatly disgrace the cause and purpose of the speaker and writer. Bvt as it hath bene
alwayes reputed a great fault to vse figuratiue speaches foolishly and indiscretely, so
is it esteemed no lesse an imperfection in mans vtterance, to haue none vse of figure
at all, specially in our writing and speaches publike, making them but as our ordinary
talke, then which nothing can be more vnsauourie and farre from all ciuilitie.??°
In this context, the presence of figurative speech is absolutely justified not
simply because these words appear on the pages of a literary work meant to
entertain people in public but also because, as the Quarto allegedly documents,
both the stage setting of the love contest scene and the actual site for the
1608 performance of the play was the royal court. The stage in Whitehall
undoubtedly demanded a more elaborate use of language and rhetoric than
any other theaters in London. Thus, it is no wonder that, conforming to the
expectations of the age and the ceremonial occasion, Gonorill and Regan use a
storehouse of rhetorical figures when answering Lear’s call for the love contest.
Since Shakespeare, unlike the anonymous playwright, does not provide any
preceding event to this public scene, the motivation of the two elder daughters
is hidden from the audience, yet a careful study of the rhetorical figures they
use, understood against the backdrop of Puttenham’s description of the use
and functions of figurative speech, can reveal their intentions.
Gonorill’s first public utterance shows a carefully balanced and well-crafted
rhetorical structure, a feature indicated with variously colored fonts that signal
various tropes:
Sir I do loue you more then words can wield the matter,
Dearer then eye-sight, space or libertie,
Beyond what can be valued rich or rare,
No lesse then life; with grace, health, beautie, honour,
As much a child ere loued, or father friend,
A loue that makes breath poore, and speech vnable,
Beyond all manner of so much I loue you.?*°
229 Puttenham: The Arte, 115.
230 Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. B1v.