Page 67 [67]
RHETORICAL AND POETICAL CONVENTIONS
Both the emblems and these descriptions of the character book seem to
suggest that, although Cordelias utterance and behavior differ significantly
from Cordella’s reactions in the anonymous play, they still conform to certain
conventions of the Early Modern period that could be traced in the sources
mentioned above.
Further enhancing the semantic complexity of the trope, Dodd recalls that
during Elizabeth’s reign, the “heart-mouth/love-tongue motif [...] was often
bandied about during real political love games’”*’ It was even used by the
Queen in the so-called Golden Speech, delivered in the Parliament in 1601,
which echoes many elements of Shakespeare’s wording in the love contest
scene:
I do assure you, that there is no Prince that loveth his Subjects better, or whose Love
can countervail our Love; There is no Jewel, be it of never so rich a prize, which I
prefer before this Jewel, I mean your Love; for I do more esteem it than any Treasure
or Riches: for that we know how to prize, but Love and Thanks I count inestimable. [...]
Of my self I must say this, I never was any greedy, scraping Grasper, nor a strait fast¬
holding Prince, nor yet a Waster; My heart was never set on Worldly Goods, but only
for my Subjects good. What you do bestow on me, I will not hoard it up, but receive
it to bestow on you again. Yea mine own properties I count yours to be expended
for your good. Therefore render unto them from me I beseech you, M’ Speaker, such
thanks as you imagine my Heart yieldeth, but my Tongue cannot express.”°8
Annabel Patterson, however, contends that Cordelia’s trope can be regarded
as a reproach to the closing words of James Is speech delivered to the 1604
Parliament,” in which he describes the royal public discourse he intends
to establish as “that as farre as a King is in Honor erected aboue any of his
Subiects, so far should he striue in sinceritie to be aboue them all, and that
his tongue should be euer the true Messenger of his heart: and this sort of
Eloquence may you euer assuredly looke for at my hands.”?‘°
Returning to Cordelia’s statement, the word “cannot” also becomes a sort
of an interpretive puzzle due to the various meanings of the verb. First, it may
refer to her incapability to speak as her sisters do, a reading that is supported
by her later reference to her sisters’ “glib and oyly Art,” whose “tongue” she is
257 Dodd: Impossible Worlds, 483.
258 The journals of all the Parliaments during the reign of Queen Elizabeth both of the House of Lords
and House of Commons, collected by Sir Simonds d’Ewes, knight and baronet of Stow Hall in
Suffolk, revised and published in 1682 by his nephew, the lawyer and antiquary Paul Bowes,
London, printed for John Starkey, 1682, 659.
259 Patterson: “Betweene,” 72.
60 Quoted in ibid., 74. The speech, which was published in the same year and widely circulated
in the country and in contemporaneous documents, describes the common people’s interest
in the matter. Ibid., 66-72.