Shakespeare’s Tongue: Speech
Craft on the Early Modern Stage
Cesare Ripa, Iconologia,
‘Ragion di Stato’
Queen Elizabeth I
The Rainbow Portrait
Isaac Oliver, ca. 1600
Virgil’s Aeneid, ‘The House of Fame’
Enter Rumour painted full of Tongues
Stage Direction, Henry IV Part 2
Katherine: Why, sir, I trust I may have leave to speak,
And speak I will. I am no child, no babe.
Your betters have endured me say my mind,
And if you cannot best stop your ears.
My tongue will tell the anger of my heart
Or else my heart concealing it will break.
And rather than it shall I will be free
Even to the uttermost as I please in words.
Petruchio: Why, thou sayst true. It is a paltry cap.
The Taming of the Shrew, 4.3.73-81
FIRST CITIZEN: Once, if he do require our voices, we
ought not to deny him
SECOND CITIZEN: We may, sir, if we will.
THIRD CITIZEN: We have power in ourselves to do it,
but it is a power that we have no power to do. For,
if he show us his wounds and tell us his deeds, we
are to put our tongues into those wounds and
speak for them. So if he tell us his noble deeds, we
must also tell him our noble acceptance of them.
Coriolanus 2.3.1-9
What said he?
Polonius in Hamlet, 2.1.87
There’s matter in these sighs, these profound
heaves;
Your must translate.’Tis fit we understand them.
• Claudius in Hamlet, 4.1.1-2
…Tereus took the lady by the hand…
…he shut her up, and therewithdal bewrayed
His wicked lust…And alone he vanquished her…
[Philomela said]: … O perjured wretch…I myself thy doings will bewray.
…them blaze I will
In open face of all the world … my voice the very woods shall fill
And make the stones to understand. Let heaven to this give ear,
And all the gods and powers therein, if any god be there.
The cruel tyrant, being chafed and also put to fear
With these and other such her words, both causes so him stung
That, drawing out his naked sword that at his girdle hung,
He took her rudely by the hair… But as she yearned …
And strived to have spoken still, the cruel tyrant came
And with a pair of pinions fast did catch her by the tongue
And with his sword did cut it off. The stump whereon it hung
Did patter still. The tip fell down and, quivering on the ground,
As though that it had murmured it made a certain sound.
Ovid, Metamorphoses Book VI (tr. Arthur Golding, 1567)
Tongue
Lingua
Lingual
Language
Lingo
Linguaggio
Linguistic
Loquacious
Eloquence
Scold’s bridles or ‘branks’
‘You will never take [a woman] without her answer unless you take her without her tongue’,
Rosalind (as Ganymede), As You Like It ( 4.1.161)
‘Do you not know I am a woman? When I think I must speak’,
Rosalind (as Rosalind), As You Like It (3.2.241-2)
HAMLET:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self slaughter! O God, O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't, ah fie, fie! Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed: things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this.
But two months dead -- nay, not so much, not two -So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly! Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet within a month -Let me not think on't; frailty, thy name is woman –
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she -O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer! -- married with mine uncle
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules; within a month
Ere yet the salt of those most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing of her galled eyes.
She married. O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue. [Enter Horatio ... ]
Worcester: Our house, my sovereign liege, little deserves
The scourge of greatness to be used on it,
And that same greatness too which our own hands
Have holp to make so portly.
Northumberland: My lord –
King Henry: Worcester, get thee gone, for I do see
Danger and disobedience in thine eye.
O sir, your presence is too bold and peremptory
And majesty might never yet endure
The moody frontier of a servant brow.
You have good leave to leave us. When we need
Your use and counsel we shall send for you. [Exit Worcester]
You were about to speak.
Northumberland: Yea, my good lord.
Those prisoners in your highness’ name demanded
Which Harry Percy here at Holmedon took,
Were, as he says, not with such strength denied
As was delivered to your majesty,
Who either through envy or misprision
Was guilty of this fault, and not my son.
Hotspur: My liege, I did deny no prisoners;
But I remember, when the fight was done
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
There came a certain lord, neat and trimly dressed,
Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin, new-reaped
Showed like a stubble-land a harvest-home.
He was perfumed like a milliner,
And ‘twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon
He gave his nose and took’t away again –
Who therewith angry, when it next came there
Took it in snuff– and still he smiled and talked;
And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corpse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
With many holiday and lady terms
He questioned me; amongst the rest demanded
My prisoners in your majesty’s behalf.
I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold –
To be so pestered with a popinjay –
Out of my grief and my impatience
Answered neglectingly, I know no what
He should, or should not – for me made me mad
To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet
And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman
Of guns, and drums, and wounds, God save the mark!
And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earth
Was parmacity for an inward bruise,
And that it was a great pity, so it was,
This villainous saltpetre should be digged
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed
So cowardly, and but for these vile guns
He would himself have been a soldier.
This bald, unjointed chat of his, my lord,
Made me to answer indirectly, as I said,
And I beseech you, let not his report
Come current for an accusation
Betwixt my love and your high majesty.
BLUNT: The circumstance considered, good my lord,
Whate’er Lord Harry Percy then had said
To such a person, and in such a place,
At such a time, with all the rest retold
May reasonably die, and never rise
To do him wrong or any way impeach
What then he said, so he unsay it now.
KING HENRY: Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners ….