Oldal 65 [65]
OCR
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. +63 +
