Oldal 65 [65]
RHETORICAL AND POETICAL CONVENTIONS
by one of Shakespeares fellow playwrights, Anthony Munday, in 1605: "Ihe
flatterer should haue some reason, to refrain his glib and oylie tongue, because
silence is much better, then false and coyned lying speeches: for that is a
sinne against nature, because, the tongue being the discouerer of the heart,
in speaking otherwise then, then as the hart thinketh, it appears to haue some
want in his naturall office."?""
1he similarity between this passage and Cordelias diction in this scene
is guite striking, and certain expressions, like the reference to her sisters"
“glib and oylie art,” echo the words quoted above. Moreover, the corporeal
tropes referring to the idea of insincerity seem to reverberate in Cordelia’s
second utterance, when she is extending her response to Lear’s question:
“Vnhappie that I am, I cannot heaue my heart into my / mouth, I loue your
Maiestie according to my bond, nor more nor lesse.”**! This statement is
markedly different not only from her sisters’ lengthy and crafty confessions
but also from its textual antecedent, Cordella’s rather plain and nonfigurative
language, since Shakespeare’s Cordelia applies figurative language to answer
her father’s question in a manner which would be fitting of the ceremonial
occasion. As the words in bold signal, Cordelia’s utterance is dominated by
“metaphore or the figure of transport,” which Puttenham discusses among
sensible figures, defining it as “a kind of wresting of a single word from his
owne right signification, to another not so naturall, but yet of some affinitie
or conueniencie with it."?? He also explains that there are three causes for its
use: “one for necessitie or want of a better word [...] for pleasure and ornament
of our speech [...] Then also do we it sometimes to enforce a sence and make
the word more significatiue.”*? From a philological point of view, the main
question in Cordelia’s case is what meaning could the expression “not heaving
or lifting the heart to the mouth” carry at the beginning of the seventeenth
century, especially in connection with the idea of love.
One possible explanation is that it is a reference to hypocrisy, which was
often visually depicted in contemporaneous emblem books, the storehouses
of common knowledge, with images of the heart and the mouth. As Figure
2 shows, an insincere person was often portrayed as holding their tongue in
the hand in front of the body while their heart remained hidden behind the
back. This image also appears in reference to flattering courtiers (Figure 3) and
even traitors (Figure 4), the latter taken from Thomas Combe’s The Theatre
250 Giacomo Affinati: The dumbe diuine speaker, or: Dumbe speaker of Diuinity A learned and
excellent treatise, in praise of silence: shewing both the dignitie, and defectes of the tongue. Written
in Italian, by Fra. Giacomo Affinati d’Acuto Romano. And truelie translated by A.M., At London,
Printed [by R. Bradock] for William Leake, dwelling in Paules churchyard, at the signe of the
Holy-ghost, 1605, sig. G3r.
51 Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. B2r.
252 Puttenham: The Arte, 149.
253 [bid., 149.
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