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RHETORICAL AND POETICAL CONVENTIONS defines his relationship to Lear with figurative speech: "See better Lear and let me still remaine, / The true blanke of thine eye."?"" The rhetorical figure that Kent applies is synecdoche, which Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie explains in the following terms: If we vse such a word (as many times we doe) by which we driue the hearer to conceiue more or lesse or beyond or otherwise then the letter expresseth [...] the Greeks then call it Synecdoche, the Latines sub intellectio or vnderstanding, for by part we are enforced to vnderstand the whole, by the whole part, by many things one thing, by one, many, by a thing precedent, a thing consequent, and generally one thing out of another by maner of contrariety to the word which is spoken, aliud ex alio, which because it seemeth to aske a good, quick, and pregnant capacitie, and is not for an ordinarie or dull wit so to do, I chose to call him the figure not onely of conceit after the Greeke originall, but also of quick conceite [...] and this conceit being drawen aside, and (as it were) from one thing to another, it encombers the minde with a certaine imagination what it may be that is meant, and not expressed.”*° The most plausible meaning of the eye-metaphor that Kent applies to describe his relationship to Lear is easier to find than it was in the case of Cordelia’s figurative diction. The dramatic source which offers clues to its interpretation is The Tragedy of Gorboduc, with which Shakespeare was most certainly familiar, 6 as one of its characters, Arostus, describes the King as the head of the country, whereas as an adviser, he takes the position of the eye in the social hierarchy of the body politic.”*” Thus, based on Puttenham’s definition, Kent’s figure of synecdoche fulfills a poetic function very similar to Cordelia’s “bond,” since by defining himself as Lear’s eye, Kent figuratively recalls the notion of the body politic, which Lear, as the monarch, is supposed to embody. This reference also carries some relevance to contemporaneous public discourses, since James I often referred to himself as the head of the body politic symbolizing the unity of England and Scotland. Ina 1996 article, Jonathan Baldo convincingly argues that, for James, the main motivation behind this propaganda was to conceal his partiality for his Scottish subjects: slightest and seemingly most insignificant of details defined a character or altered the mood of a scene.” Shapiro: The Year, 59. 284 Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. B3r. 285 Puttenham: The Arte, 154, 163. 86 Barbara Heliodora Carneiro De Mendonga: The Influence of Gorboduc on King Lear, Shakespeare Survey 13 (1966), 78-104. 287 “And to this Realm whole worthy head you are [...] for whom much harder is / With lessened strength and double weight to bear / your eye, your Council.” Thomas Norton — Thomas Sackville: The Tragedy ofGorboduc, imprinted at London in Fletestreet atthe sign ofthe Falcon by William Griffith, 1565, http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/gorboduc.html, (accessed 1 April 2020). +7] »
