Shakespeare’s Tongue: Speech Craft on the Early Modern Stage

Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, ‘Ragion di Stato’

Queen Elizabeth IThe Rainbow Portrait Isaac Oliver, ca. 1600

Virgil’s Aeneid, ‘The House of Fame’

Enter Rumour painted full of TonguesStage 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 heartOr else my heart concealing it will break.And rather than it shall I will be freeEven 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 himSECOND 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 bewrayedHis 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 fillAnd 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 fearWith 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 cameAnd with a pair of pinions fast did catch her by the tongueAnd with his sword did cut it off. The stump whereon it hungDid 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)

TongueLinguaLingualLanguage

LingoLinguaggio

LinguisticLoquacious Eloquence

‘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)

Scold’s bridles or ‘branks’

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 motherThat he might not beteem the winds of heavenVisit her face too roughly! Heaven and earth,Must I remember? Why, she would hang on himAs 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 deservesThe 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 seeDanger and disobedience in thine eye.O sir, your presence is too bold and peremptoryAnd majesty might never yet endureThe moody frontier of a servant brow.You have good leave to leave us. When we needYour 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 demandedWhich Harry Percy here at Holmedon took, Were, as he says, not with such strength deniedAs was delivered to your majesty,Who either through envy or misprisionWas guilty of this fault, and not my son.

Hotspur: My liege, I did deny no prisoners;But I remember, when the fight was doneWhen 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-reapedShowed like a stubble-land a harvest-home.He was perfumed like a milliner,And ‘twixt his finger and his thumb he heldA pouncet-box, which ever and anonHe gave his nose and took’t away again –Who therewith angry, when it next came thereTook 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 corpseBetwixt the wind and his nobility.With many holiday and lady termsHe questioned me; amongst the rest demandedMy 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 impatienceAnswered neglectingly, I know no whatHe should, or should not – for me made me madTo see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweetAnd talk so like a waiting gentlewomanOf guns, and drums, and wounds, God save the mark!And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earthWas parmacity for an inward bruise,And that it was a great pity, so it was,This villainous saltpetre should be diggedOut of the bowels of the harmless earth,Which many a good tall fellow had destroyedSo cowardly, and but for these vile gunsHe 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 reportCome current for an accusationBetwixt my love and your high majesty.BLUNT: The circumstance considered, good my lord,Whate’er Lord Harry Percy then had saidTo such a person, and in such a place,At such a time, with all the rest retoldMay reasonably die, and never riseTo do him wrong or any way impeachWhat then he said, so he unsay it now.KING HENRY: Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners ….