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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
In rhetorical terms, Cordelia’s “nothing” can be described as an extreme
example of the figure of moderator or Liptote, which is roughly equal to the
twenty-first century term “understatement.” Puttenham describes how this
trope operates as follows:
As by the former figure we vse to enforce our sence, so by another we temper our
sence with wordes of such moderation, as in appearaunce it abateth, it but not in
deede, and is by the figure Liptote, which therefore I call the Moderator, and becomes
vs many times better to speake in that sort quallified, than if we spake it by more
forcible termes, and neuertheles is equipolent in sence, thus. / know you hate me
not, nor wish me any ill. Meaning in deede that he loued him very well and dearely,
and yet the words doe not expresse so much, though they purport so much. Or if
you would say, I am not ignorant, for I know well inough. Such a man is no foole,
meaning in deede that he is a very wise man."
Consequently, Cordelia’s “nothing” could imply that her not saying anything
is more telling than if she were to speak verbosely and windily. Plett explains
her behavior as an objection to her sisters’ “epideictic rhetoric of excess” in
the form of “eloquent silence.”””” Her “nothing” is not an expression of female
modesty, which would have conformed to the expectations of the era, nor does
it indicate “submissiveness but, rather, a protest against a rhetoric of false
semblance.”*“* Nevertheless, she also reacts with the help of rhetoric since, to
use Plett’s wording again,
Cordelia is by her upbringing not a bad orator. She deliberately changes into one
for two reasons. On the one hand she protests against the misuse of rhetoric by
her sisters; on the other she wants to preserve a decorum of a different kind, that
of her personal integrity. This, not surprisingly, finds its expression in the plain
style that is the traditional medium for the statement of facts. Like Brutus she uses
parallelism and graduations for her defense: “You have begot me, bred me, lov’d me:
I / Return those duties back as are right fit, / Obey you, love you, and most honour
you. (I.i.96-98) Here speaks the orator-logician who has a greater confidence in the
force of rational argumentation than in the elaborate devices of courtly rhetoric.?”
Refining Plett’s observations, I would even claim that Cordelia’s behavior is a
counterreaction not only to the abuse of figurative speech but, more narrowly,
to flattery itself. This claim is partly based upon a description given in Giacomo
Affinati’s book The Dumbe Diuine Speaker, which was translated into English
246 Puttenham: The Arte, 153-154.
247 Plett: Shakespeare, 431.
248 Ibid., 431.
249 Thid., 432.
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