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RHETORICAL AND POETICAL CONVENTIONS
[...] when we speake or write doubtfully and that the sence may be taken two wayes,
such ambiguous termes they call Amphibologia, we call it the ambiguous, or figure
of sence incertaine [...] these doubtfull speaches were vsed much in the old times
by their false Prophets as appeareth by the Oracles of Delphos and of the Sybilles
prophecies deuised by the religious persons of those dayes to abuse the superstitious
people, and to encomber their busie braynes with vaine hope or vaine feare.[...] In
effect all our old, Brittish and Saxon prophesies be of the same sort, that turne them
on which side ye will, the matter of them may be verified, neuerthelesse carryeth
generally such force in the heades of fonde people, that by the comfort of those
blind prophecies many insurrections and rebellions haue bene stirred vp in this
Realme [...] our maker shall therefore auoyde all such ambiguous speaches vnlesse
it be when he doth it for the nonce and for some purpose.”
The interpretation of Cordelia’s utterance is further complicated by a similar
semantic complexity that can be found in the second half of her statement
of love in the case of the word “bond.” One feasible solution to overcome
the difficulty of finding the meaning of a figurative expression like the one
she uses is to explore other contemporaneous texts with which the assumed
audience could have been familiar. Luckily, in this case, some precedent can
be found in The True Chronicle Historie, in which the trope appears first as a
metaphor for the marital plight (“joyne with thee in Hymens sacred bonds”)?*
and then as a trope for the bribe money Gonorill offers the Messenger to
kill her father (“Gon. In token of further imployment, take that. Flings him
a purse. Mes. A strong Bond, a firme Obligation”).”** Obviously, however,
none of these meanings would fit the context of Shakespeare’s play. Muir, the
aforementioned editor of the 1977 Arden Shakespeare critical edition, cites two
other passages from King Lear (“the bond crack’d ‘twixt son and father” and
“bond of childhood”) and explains the meaning of “bond” as filial obligation
or bounden duty.’® A special combination of the previous two ideas can be
found in Donald C. Freeman’s 1993 article, which offers a lengthy discussion
of the interpretation of this trope as it is embedded in various semantic fields
of the scene. Applying the cognitive theory of metaphors, Freeman proposes
that “the scene’s figurative language depends upon metaphoric projection
from the schemata—skeletalised structures of knowledge—of BALANCE
and LINKS into the abstractions of filial love and family relationships. The
metaphors arising from the BALANCE schema, in particular, are organised
266 Puttenham: The Arte, 217-218.
67 Anonymous: The True Chronicle, sig. C2v.
268 Ibid., sig D3r.
2? Shakespeare: King Lear, 9.
.67 +