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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
him [loose language] and doth not a lite alter th’eare as thus. [...] It is a figure to
be vsed when we will seeme to make hast, or to be earnest, and these examples
with a number more be spoken by the figure of [/ose language].”?**
In fact, the listing the words “grace, health, beautie, honour” in the second
part of line four provides the audience with an example of a sententious figure
called “Brachiologa, or the Cutted comma,” which is so similar to asyndeton
that Puttenham eventually explains the difference between the two as follows:
We vse sometimes to proceede all by single words, without any close or coupling
sauing that a little pause or comma is geuen to euery word. This figure for pleasure
may be called in our vulgar the cutted comma, for that there cannot be a shorter
diuision then at euery words end. The Greekes in their language call it short
language, as thus. Enuy, malice, flattery, disdaine, Auarice, deceit, falshed, filthy gaine.
If this loose language be vsed, not in single words, but in long clauses, it is called
Asindeton, and in both cases we vtter in that fashion, when either we be earnest, or
would seeme to make hast.?*°
Third, the phrases in blue correspond to the figure that is known today as
alliteration, through Puttenham called it parimion, explaining, “Ye do by
another figure notably affect th’eare when ye make euery word of the verse to
begin with a like letter.”**°
As far as sensible figures are concerned, Gonorill’s passage, like Regan’s
answer to their father’s question, is dominated by hyperbole, highlighted above
in pink. The dramaturgical significance and poetical motivation of hyperbole
can be understood with the help of Puttenham’s book, which defines this figure
as, “When we speake in the superlatiue and beyond the limites of credit, that
is by the figure which the Greeks call Hiperbole, the Latines Dementiens or
the lying figure. I for his immoderate excesse cal him the ouer reacher right
with his originall or [lowd lyer] & me thinks not amisse: now when I speake
that which neither I my selfe thinke to be true, nor would haue any other body
beleeue.”?°”
Moreover, Puttenham recalls an incident at a meeting of parliament during
the reign of Henry VIII when one of the persons present started praising the
King in an oration which made such heavy use of hyperbole that “a graue
and wise Counsellour made the speaker to be accompted a grosse flattering
foole.”?°* Thus, in accordance with Puttenham’s explanation, the application of
hyperbole in Gonorill’s and Regan’s speech is momentous from a dramaturgical
234 Tbid., 145.
235 Ibid., 178.
236 Ibid., 145.
237 Ibid., 159-160.
238 Ibid., 160.
* 60 °