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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
To summarize, the significance of the rhetorical figures that dominate
Cordelia’s diction comes from the fact that they reinterpret the definitions
oflove set by Gonorill and Regan and shift the meaning of this notion from a
private, interpersonal relation into a public and communal context.” Thus,
her figurative speech, which is intended both to please the ears and to move
the mind, fulfills the requirements Puttenham had for figures that in his view
are “[...] the instruments of ornament in euery language, so be they also in
a sort abuses or rather trespasses in speach, because they passe the ordinary
limits of common vtterance, and be occupied of purpose to deceiue the eare
and also the minde, drawing it from plainnesse and simplicitie to a certain
doublenesse.”?*°
Still, Cordelia is not the only one whose diction in Shakespeare’s King Lear
becomes more rhetoricized as compared to the anonymous Chronicle Historie.
Although Perillus, the king’s councilor, is also present during the love contest
scene, similarly to Kent, he keeps silent while listening to Leir’s conversation
with his daughters, and he speaks his mind to the audience only when the royal
family has left the stage and expresses his regret that Leir has fallen for his
elder daughters’ adulation: “Oh, how I grieve, to see my Lord thus fond, / To
dote so much upon vayne flattering words. / Ah, if he but with good advice had
weyghed, / The hidden tenure of her humble speech, / Reason to rage should
not have given place, / Nor poore Cordella suffer such disgrace.”?*!
When he learns that Lear has turned his royal authority over to his elder
daughters and has disinherited Cordelia, Shakespeare’s Kent commits an
act much bolder than Perillus and rather indecently confronts Lear with his
mistake, addressing him as a man and not as a king: “Be Kent vnmannerly
when Lear is man, / When wilt thou doe ould man, think’st thou that dutie
/ Shall haue dread to speake, when power to flatterie bowes, / To plainness
honour bound when Maiesty stoops to folly.””* As Kent’s rude behavior,
expressed by his non-figurative and disrespectful utterance, is anything but
acceptable from a royal subject,”** Lear yells at him to get out of his sight, yet
Kent, reluctant to leave, warns the King again, but at the same time, he also
279 Cordelia’s reference to love as Christian charity is foreshadowed in the short scene that
stages the conversation between Gloster, Kent, and Edmund before the royal ceremony of
love contest takes place. Being introduced to Edmund, Kent greets him saying, “I must loue
you, and sue to know you better.” Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. Blv.
280 Puttenham: The Arte, 128.
Anonymous: The True Chronicle, sig. B2r—B2v.
Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. B3r.
As James Shapiro explains, “calling Lear ‘old man’ is insulting enough to modern ears,
but Kent addressing his king as ‘thou’ would have struck contemporaries as even more
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extraordinary and foolhardy. In Jacobean England ‘thou’ and ‘you’ were used with precision
and purpose. At the risk of oversimplifying usage that could be even more nuanced or
ironic: superiors (or members ofthe upper class speaking to each other) were addressed as
‘you’ inferiors as ‘thou’ [...] As these examples suggest, Shakespeare was alert to how the
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