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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 °
