personaje shakespeariene

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7/30/2019 personaje shakespeariene http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/personaje-shakespeariene 1/24 1 LIMBA PERSONAJELOR SHAKESPEARIENE Cod Curs obligatoriu Semestrial / Nr. credite: 4 Manual recomandat: George Volceanov, “Methinks You’re Better Spoken”: A Study in the  Language of Shakespeare’s Characters, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2004. Obiectivele cursului: Cursul î şi propune explorarea câtorva dintre particularităţile limbii personajelor shakespeariene, insistând asupra tendinţei lor naturale de a-şi imita reciproc stilul, manierele, limbajul. Se observă astfel că eroii shakespearieni au un talent înnăscut de imitatori, că ştiu să mânuiască cu abilitate resursele inepuizabile oferite de limbă ca instrument de comunicare, dar şi de disimulare. Cursul analizează din diferite perspective noţiunea de mimetism lingvistic formulată cu decenii în urmă şi aplicată la textele shakespeariene de către marele shakespeareolog roman Leon Leviţchi. Perspectivele oferite de stilistică, lingvistică, retorică, sociologie, filozofie, istorie, spectacologie, literatură comparată şi actul lecturii subiective contribuie deopotrivă la  înţelegerea artei dramatice shakespeariene. Un obiectiv major îl constituie demonstrarea faptului că şi la începutul mileniului trei, Shakespeare continuă să fie contemporanul nostru, că piesele lui sunt lizibile şi reprezintă surse de reală delectare estetică şi intelectuală. Studenţii vor constat că numeroase mecanisme de comunicare lingvistică din teatrul shakespearian seamănă  îndeaproape cu cele din limbajul nostru uzual, cotidian. Modul de stabilire a notei finale: test grilă. Adrese e-mail pentru contactul cu studenţii: Anamaria Schwab, [email protected] ; [email protected] Titularul cursului: Conf. univ. dr. George VOLCEANOV; Tel. 314 39 05 / 129; 314 39 06 / 130; 314 00 75 / 131 [email protected]. PROGRAMA ANALITICĂ 1. Introducere în studiul limbii personajelor shakespeariene: imitaţia şi imitatorii. 2. Retorica imitaţiei. Figuri de stil.

Transcript of personaje shakespeariene

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LIMBA PERSONAJELOR SHAKESPEARIENE

Cod

Curs obligatoriu

Semestrial / Nr. credite: 4

Manual recomandat: George Volceanov, “Methinks You’re Better Spoken”: A Study in the

 Language of Shakespeare’s Characters, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2004.

Obiectivele cursului:

Cursul î şi propune explorarea câtorva dintre particularităţile limbii personajelor shakespeariene,

insistând asupra tendinţei lor naturale de a-şi imita reciproc stilul, manierele, limbajul. Se

observă astfel că eroii shakespearieni au un talent înnăscut de imitatori, că ştiu să mânuiască cu

abilitate resursele inepuizabile oferite de limbă ca instrument de comunicare, dar şi de

disimulare. Cursul analizează din diferite perspective noţiunea de mimetism lingvistic formulată 

cu decenii în urmă şi aplicată la textele shakespeariene de către marele shakespeareolog roman

Leon Leviţchi. Perspectivele oferite de stilistică, lingvistică, retorică, sociologie, filozofie,

istorie, spectacologie, literatură comparată  şi actul lecturii subiective contribuie deopotrivă la

 înţelegerea artei dramatice shakespeariene. Un obiectiv major îl constituie demonstrarea faptului

că şi la începutul mileniului trei, Shakespeare continuă să fie contemporanul nostru, că piesele

lui sunt lizibile şi reprezintă surse de reală delectare estetică şi intelectuală. Studenţii vor constat

că numeroase mecanisme de comunicare lingvistică din teatrul shakespearian seamănă 

 îndeaproape cu cele din limbajul nostru uzual, cotidian.

Modul de stabilire a notei finale: test grilă.

Adrese e-mail pentru contactul cu studenţii: Anamaria Schwab,

[email protected]; [email protected]

Titularul cursului: Conf. univ. dr. George VOLCEANOV; Tel. 314 39 05 / 129;

314 39 06 / 130; 314 00 75 / 131

[email protected].

PROGRAMA ANALITICĂ 

1.  Introducere în studiul limbii personajelor shakespeariene: imitaţia şi imitatorii.

2.  Retorica imitaţiei. Figuri de stil.

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3.  Jargoanele profesionale.

4.  Stilul înalt şi cel umil: diferenţierea lingvistică a claselor sociale.

5.  Limbi străine şi limbi inventate.

6.  Imitarea în absenţa / prezenţa celui imitat.

7.  Ironia şi persuasiunea.

8.  Contaminarea lingvistică.

9.  Autoimitaţia.

10. Economia, redundanţa, funcţia fatică în cadrul imitaţiei.

11. Ontologia imitaţiei.

12. Studiu de caz: Henric al V-lea.

Bibliografie minimă obligatorie:

•  Volceanov, George – “Methinks You’re Better Spoken”: A Study in the

 Language of Shakespeare’s Characters, Editura Institutul European, Iaşi,

2004. 

•  Shakespeare, William – Henry V . 

Bibliografie facultativă:

-  Volceanov, George – “Disguise, Mimicry, Dissimulation: Jesuitical Strategies

of Survival in Shakespeare’s Plays”, în  “The Eye Sees Not Itsels but by

 Reflection”: A Study in Shakespeare’s Catoptrics and Other Essays, Editura

Universitară, Bucureşti, 2006, pp. 148-169. 

LECTURE ONE

 Does Shakespeare differentiate his characters in terms of speech or do his characters all

speak alike? Alexander Pope, Margaret Cavendish, Muriel Bradbrook, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Leo

Tolstoy, and Leon Leviţchi tackled this issue in different ages. The conclusion we can draw from

their views is that Shakespeare’s characters are distinct from each other, and yet, they often seem

to mimic the language or the manner of speaking of other characters. Many characters act as if 

they were innate actors or as if they were born under the sign of  homo ludens. Benedick and

Beatrice in  Much Ado about Nothing, the Countess of Salisbury in  Edward III , Achilles,

Patroclus, and Thersites, as well as Ulysses and Agamemnon in Troilus and Cressida turn out to

be great imitators (mimickers). They are ready to impersonate other characters, to play

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‘pageants’, and to devise plays of their own within the larger frame of the plots they are involved

in. By studying Act Three, Scene One (ll. 146-84) and Act Three, Scene Three (ll. 235-90) of 

Troilus and Cressida, the undergraduates may realise that Shakespeare makes his characters play

the games of linguistic mimicry in a surprisingly self-conscious manner. Harold Bloom claims

that Shakespeare ‘surpasses all others in evincing a psychology of mutability’ because he

‘originates the depiction of self-change on the basis of self-hearing’. The undergraduates are

invited to notice that Shakespeare’s characters are first of all great overhearers and only secondly

self-overhearers. Reading the aforementioned passages, we might conclude that Shakespeare’s

plays foreshadow the linguistic theories developed by Otto Jespersen in the first half of the

twentieth century: So action – custom – imitation, on the one side: the individual – a smaller 

circle – a larger circle, on the other side. The alpha and omega of the life of language is all

there. The influence of imitation in human society can hardly be overestimated. We speak of 

‘human apes’ and put into the words all the scorn we have for our nearest animal cousins. But 

what if the animal-psychologists are right who deny to apes the faculty of real imitation, in any

case the faculty of learning anything by imitation and maintain that imitation is a prerogative of 

 Man! It is assuredly not always a bad thing that men imitate one another. Imitation is not merely

 picking up silly fashions and echoing idiotic phrases: a good example may be as infectious as a

bad one. Without imitation, there can be no civilised life, at any rate no linguistic life. If a child 

did not try to the best of its ability to talk like grown-up people or like children rather older than

it, it would be permanently shut out from the common life of the spirit and really remain outside

the human society. But even the grown man or woman imitates his neighbours’ speech,

consciously or unconsciously (Mankind, Nation, and Individual).

Self-evaluation:

In Otto Jespersen’s opinion imitation is a kind of behaviour specific of monkeys alone.

True / False

Imitation is picking up idiotic phrases.

True / False

Imitation in Shakespeare’s plays results in the fact that…

a. characters cannot be differentiated according to the way they speak b. characters still can be

differentiated linguistically c. all characters are comic d. the plays are more poetic

LECTURE TWO

What is the ‘rhetoric’ of linguistic mimicry made up of? What linguistic bricks does

Shakespeare use in constructing mimicking speeches and mimicking characters? Here is a brief 

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survey of the main figures of speech used by the dramatist, with examples from several plays.

The undergraduates could easily work out lists with other examples from the same plays or from

plays not quoted below. I shall begin with the several types of  linguistic repetitions. Here is an

example of word for word repetition – the resumption of both form and content :

BIRON: Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?ROSALINE: Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?

BIRON: I know you did.

ROSALINE: How needless was it, then, to ask the question.

(Love’s Labour’s Lost , II. 1. 114-7)

The irony and the punch line of the woman engaged in a battle of wits (and sexes) are

self-evident even when taken out of context. The repetition of form with the change of content  is

apparent in the following exchange from Twelfth Night (I. 3. 46-53):

SIR TOBY: Accost, Sir Andrew, accost (…).

SIR ANDREW: Good Mistress Accost…

MARIA: My name is Mary, sir.SIR ANDREW: Good Mistress Mary Accost.

To better understand the mechanism of this type of repetition, here is a twenty-first

century joke that uses the same ‘misreading’ of a previous statement due to phonetic homonyms

and altered punctuation:

An English professor wrote the words ‘A woman without her man is nothing’ on the

chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly. All of the males in the class wrote:

‘A woman, without her man, is nothing.’ All the females in the class wrote: ‘A woman: without

her, man is nothing.’ Punctuation is everything.

The third type of repetition is based on the resumption of content and change of form; it

is based on synonymy and analogy, as in the following example:

COSTARD: Which is the greatest lady, the highest?

PRINCESS: The thickest and the tallest.

COSTARD: The thickest and the tallest! It is so; truth is truth.

(Love’s Labour’s Lost , IV. 1. 47-51)

The fourth type of repetition consists of the resumption of the same syntactic pattern, as

in the following quotes from both comedies and history plays:

FORD: Want no money, Sir John, you shall want none.

FALSTAFF: Want no Mistress Ford, Master Brook, you shall want none.(The Merry Wives of Windsor , II. 2. 268-71) 

PLANTAGENET: Hath not thy thorn a canker, Somerset?

SOMERSET: Hath not thy horn a thorn, Plantagenet?(1 Henry VI , II. 4. 68-9)

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A fifth type of repetition I advance in my course is that of resumed prosodic patterns. In

this case it is the rhythm, the length of the lines and the rhyming pattern that become the object

of imitation. See, for instance, Rosalind’s reading of Orlando’s love poems (‘From the east to

western Ind / No jewel is like Rosalind. / Her worth being mounted on the wind / Through all the

world bears Rosalind’, in  As You Like It , III. 2. 92-6), which is ironically parodied by

Touchstone as ‘If a hart do lack a hind, / Let him seek out Rosalind, / If a cat will after kind, / So

be sure will Rosalind etc (III. 101-5). Stichomythia, the exchange of brief, one-line cues may be

considered a subtype of the fifth type of repetition. The characters are turned into machine guns

firing rapid rounds of verbal bullets, as in The Comedy of Errors (IV. 4. 73-8):

ANTIPHOLUS: Were not my doors lock’d up and I shut out?

DROMIO: Perdie, your doors were lock’d and you shut out.

ANTIPHOLUS: And did not she herself revile me there?

DROMIO: Sans fable, she herself revil’d you there.

ANTIPHOLUS: Did not her kitchen maid rail, taunt and scorn me?DROMIO: Certes, she did; the kitchen-vestal scorn’d you.

We can use various criteria to produce taxonomies of linguistic repetitions. For example,

we may consider the proximity to, or the distance at, which one character or another resumes

certain words/phrases. The repetition in immediate vicinity is the figure termed anadiplosis.in

this case, the last word/phrase of a cue becomes the first word/phrase of the next cue, uttered by

a different character. The anaphora illustrates the case of a character’s first word resumed by

another character in his/her next cue in exactly the same initial position. The epiphora, or

epistrophe, resumes the last word of a cue in the final position of the next cue. Shakespeare’s

plays abound in examples of anadiplosis, anaphora, and epistrophe, so I shall not illustrate them

with quotations, asking my students instead to look up their own examples in the English or in

the bilingual editions of Shakespeare’s plays. The ‘echo’ words, which are more difficult to

detect and often pass unnoticed, are sometimes ostentatiously used, as in King John (III.1. 129-

290), where Bastard repeatedly and irreverently tells the Duke of Austria ‘to hang a calf’s skin

on [his] recreant limbs’. Mimicry used as scornful mock is termed mycterismus.

Another taxonomical criterion I have applied to linguistic repetitions is that of quantity. 

We can distinguish three types of repetitions: synthetic (a long cue is resumed as brief comment,

often an ironic and humorous punch line), equivalent (a cue regardless of its length or brevity is

mimicked in a cue of a similar length/brevity), and analytical repetitions (in the latter case the

mimicking agent enlarges and elaborates on a shorter cue).

Shakespeare’s characters do not simply parrot one another. They stick to their own views

and convictions. That is why they often engage in verbal clashes, and this explains the high

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frequency of  antonyms used in combination with linguistic repetition. King John provides us

with an excellent illustration of the function of antonyms in the mimicking speeches of 

Constance (III. 1. 75-114), the mother whose son is the victim of political machinations instead

of succeeding to the throne of England.

The combination of repetitions and antonyms often result in unexpected puns or word-

plays. In Shakespeare’s plays there are no social barriers or impositions as regards the use of 

puns. They are freely used by characters belonging to all sorts of social groups or classes. The

fools, the servants that outwit their masters, and the couples of lovers, with their never-ending

battles of wits, are, probably, the most creative users of puns. Molly Mahood counted more than

200 puns in  Love’s Labour’s Lost  and about 100 puns in  All’s Well That Ends Well. She

calculated that the average use of puns with Shakespeare is of 78 puns per play. Beatrice in

 Much Ado about Nothing almost always retorts with a pun whenever she feels that someone is

intent on dominating or manipulating her. She always has the last word in an argument, as in the

following brief excerpt:

BEATRICE: I am stuffed, cousin, I cannot smell.

MARGARET: A maid, and stuffed.

………………………………………………………

MARGARET: Doth not my wit become me rarely?

BEATRICE: It is not seen enough; you should wear it in your cap.

(III. 4. 57-64)

Next, here are some figures of speech selected from Sister Miriam Joseph’s famous study

Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language. They are sophisticated types of repetitions and do

contribute a lot to the mimicking habits of Shakespeare’s characters.  Amphibology is, according

to Miriam Joseph, ‘ambiguity of grammatical structure, often occasioned by mispunctuation’. (It

is what I actually have termed repetition of form with change of content. Here is yet another

example of such a repetition).

CASSIO: Dost thou hear, my friend?

CLOWN: No, I hear not your honest friend. I hear you.

(Othello, III. 1. 22-3)

Cacozelia, or affected diction, is often the target of mock-mimicry in Shakespeare’splays. Hamlet parodies Osric’s affected diction ( Hamlet , V. 2).  Malapropism is the misuse of 

words. It may emerge from bad imitation of someone’s use of rare or precious words, as in

 Love’s Labour’s Lost .

HOLOFERNES: Th’ allusion holds in exchange.

DULL: ’Tis true indeed; the collusion holds in exchange…

(IV. 2. 42-3)

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Chiasmus is a figure that combines repetition and inversion. It is one of Sir John

Falstaff’s favourite devices of refuting other people’s statements:

CHIEF JUSTICE: You have misled the young prince.

FALSTAFF: The young prince has misled me.

(2 Henry IV , I. 2. 163-4)

CHIEF JUSTICE: Well, God send the Prince a better companion!FALSTAFF: God send the companion a better prince!

(idem, 223-5)

Other figures of repetition are  paronomasia (the words repeated are nearly but not

precisely alike in sound) and asteismus (a figure of reply in which the answerer catches a certain

word and throws it back to the first speaker with an unexpected twist). Both Katharina and

Petruchio resort to it, in their battles of wits, throughout The Taming of the Shrew.

Self-evaluation:

Imitation can exist without figures of repetition.True / False

Puns are…

a. epithets b. antonyms c. repetitions d. nothing of the aforementioned three definitions

LECTURES THREE AND FOUR

The phrase linguistic mimicry does not refer to the imitation of an individual’s speech

acts alone. The object of imitation may also be an idiom, i.e. a language, dialect, or style of 

speaking peculiar to a people. It may be the language spoken by a group, a social class, a coterie,

all the members of an ethnic group. It may what we conventionally call the high style (sermo

sublimis) of the aristocracy and the educated versus the low style (sermo humilis) of the vulgar

commoners. Many of Shakespeare’s characters sometimes do not speak their own everyday

idioms but borrow the idiom of a different group. For example, in All’s Well That Ends Well, the

French noblemen participating in the war between Florence and Sienna ‘mimic’ a non-existing

language, consisting of phrases such as ‘Throca movousus, cargo, cargo, cargo’ and ‘Boskos

thromuldo, boskos’ (IV. 1. 71-2), ‘Oschorbidulchos volivorco’ (IV. 1. 88). Shakespeare’s

contemporary Thomas Dekker similarly had a comic character, Lacy, speak an invented ‘Dutch’

of his own. Later, Moliere’s Cleonte would speak ‘Turkish’ in the comedy  Le Bourgeois

gentilhomme. In  Edward III , the Countess of Salisbury imitates the Scottish accent of her

enemies, King David and Douglas (I.2.). Ben Jonson, George Chapman and John Marston co-

wrote Eastward Ho in 1605, in which they satirised the upstart Scottish knights that had literally

invaded London after King James Stuart’s accession in 1603.

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Upper class characters can mimic lower class people in what I have termed downward 

mimicry and vice versa (the other way round is upward mimicry). In  As You Like It , Rosalind

tricks Orlando into believing she is a poor boy by speaking to him ‘like a saucy lackey’ (III. 2.

314). And yet, Orlando is clever enough to notice the finesse concealed behind the feigned

simplicity of Rosalind’s speech: ‘… your accent is something finer than you could purchase in

such a remote dwelling’ (III. 2. 329-30). Hamlet wittily impersonates a madman, and Edgar in

King Lear reinvents himself as Poor Tom, a beggar. Moreover, in Act Four, Scene Six, Edgar

impersonates, in turn, a poor beggar, a passer-by that speaks like a gentleman, a ‘bold peasant’,

and then his  propria persona. In The Taming of the Shrew, Tranio, a servant, act and speaks

disguised as his master, Lucentio. Tranio is so good at mimicking sermo sublimis, that in a

wooing contest he makes one of his rivals exclaim, ‘What, this gentleman will out-talk us all!’ (I.

2. 224). The servants in Shakespeare’s plays can easily appropriate the language of their masters

in a carnivalesque world of suspended rules, of suspended social hierarchies. The Countess of 

Rousillon takes over her clown’s role, while the latter (Lavache) boldly impersonates a stupid

courtier, exposing the unfounded pretensions of the aristocracy ( All’s Well That Ends Well, II. 2.

42-51). Upward and downward mimicry get mixed in the famous scenes in which Prince Hal and

Falstaff impersonate, in turn, King Henry IV in 1 Henry IV . Touchstone’s wooing of Audrey in

 As You Like It  is, probably, the most famous instance in which a character simultaneously

practises both upward and downward mimicry. Bruce R. Smith has justly labelled Touchstone as

‘a nimble mover up and down the social ladder’. Talking to a country wench, the clown adopts

the style of the rustics, but sometimes he mingles the low style of his interlocutor with the high

style fashionable in court. He says, ‘I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious

poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths’ (III. 3. 7-9). The use of high terms, cultural allusions,

and words of Romance origin triggers Audrey’s baffled response: ‘I do not know what “poetical”

is. Is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?’ (18-9). Touchstone can easily overcome the

slight problem he is confronted with by explaining the meaning of ‘poetical’ in plain words. In

the same scene, he can adjust his speech to the sermo humilis of a shepherd (Corin) and speak 

naturally about trivial things like ‘the very uncleanly flux of cat’, ‘tar’, ‘the copulation of cattle’,

‘grease’, ‘the sweat of a man’ etc. Self-consciousness underlies Touchstone’s extraordinary

linguistic flexibility. He translates his own incomprehensible high style into explicit terms, so

that he may intimidate William, his rival:

Therefore, you clown, abandon – which is in the vulgar, leave – the society – which in

the boorish is company – of this female – which in the common is a woman; which

together is abandon the society of this female, or clown, thou perishest; or, to thy better

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understanding diest; or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into death,

thy liberty into bondage. (V. 1. 52-60)

Common-code mimicry defines the mimicking acts that occur among people who belong to

the same group, whether a social class, or a vocational guild. It often takes the form of the

deliberate use of clichés, commonplaces, and linguistic conventions. Courtly affectation,

artificial manners, and exaggerated politeness become boring during Hector’s parting with the

Greek commanders after his visit to the Greek camp (Troilus and Cressida, V. 1. 69-84). The

more than idiomatic ‘good night’ occurs eight times, each time accompanied by epithets

expressing civility (’sweet’, ‘great’, ‘fair’). That Shakespeare deliberately created this dull

dialogue is proved by Achilles’ exasperated retort, cutting a long story short: ‘Good night and

welcome, both at once to those / That go or tarry’ (76-7). The affectation and mannerism of the

characters are obvious in the following exchange from The Two Gentlemen of Verona:

SILVIA: Too low a mistress for so high a servant.PROTEUS: Not so, sweet lady, but too mean a servant

To have a look at such a worthy mistress.

(II. 4. 102-4)

The burghers, the rising bourgeoisie, use a different kind of code, in which the language

is simpler, with short greetings. In The Merry Wives of Windsor , Falstaff adjusts himself to the

occasion and uses the etiquette of townsmen.

FORD: Bless you, sir!

FALSTAFF: And you, sir!

(II. 2. 151-2)

In the historical plays, common-code mimicry is an important feature of feudal

ceremonies, with rules and rituals that everybody is expected to observe. In a famous trial-by-

combat scene in  Richard II  (I.3), Bolingbroke and Mowbrey must recite in long cues their

identity and the purpose of their duel, in a ceremony conducted by the Lord Marshal. Needless to

say, the king and the rest of the audience know too well who the contenders are and what the

cause of their dispute is. So, everything is just a spectacle staged by the monarch, a good

opportunity to display the splendour and the strength of authority.

Another type of mimicked idiom to be discussed is the professional jargon. In The

Taming of the Shrew, Lucentio disguises himself as a master of philosophy to win Bianca’s love.

Hortensio, the equally imaginative rival-suitor impersonates a master of music. Both contenders

speak in the professional jargon of their fake occupations. In a famous scene of  Twelfth Night 

(IV.2) Feste, the Fool, impersonates a priest called to exorcise the ‘possessed’ Malvolio, who is

kept locked in a cellar. And the very Duke of Vienna in  Measure for Measure impersonates a

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monk throughout the plot. Mimicking professional jargons may result in malapropisms. Bottom,

Quince, Snout, and the other mechanicals make us laugh when they try hard to imitate the

professional actors. Dogberry, the feeble-minded constable in Much Ado about Nothing, likewise

shows his lack of skills as a speaker of his mother tongue whenever he tries to use impressive

legal terms.

Various other functional styles fall prey to the mimicking appetite of Shakespeare’s

characters. In As You Like It , Touchstone imitates the style of the doggerel of the popular ballads,

while Parson Evans, Mistress Quickly, and Pistol imitate the style of the English popular ballads

of superstition in The Merry Wives of Windsor (V. 2). And Falstaff, in 2 Henry IV can even boast

that he does self-consciously imitate the rhetoric of the ancient Romans. He says, ‘I will imitate

the Romans in their brevity’ (II. 2. 134-5). And that is what he actually does in the opening

sentence: ‘I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I leave thee’ (136-7). Falstaff concludes

his letter with a parody of Cicero’s three styles of oratory, tenue, medium and grande: ‘Jack 

Falstaff with my familiars, John with my brothers and sisters, and Sir John with all Europe’

(142-6).

Self-evaluation:

Downward mimicry is a term used for cases when …

a. people from the same class imitate one another b. people of the upper classes imitate people

of the lower classes c. people of the lower classes imitate people of the upper classes d. fools

imitate their masters

Common-code mimicry may appear in historical plays.

True / False

LECTURE SIX

If we consider the mimicking acts of Shakespeare’s characters from the viewpoint of 

performance criticism, we can distinguish three more types of linguistic mimicry: in absentia, in

 pseudo-praesentia, and in presentia. Mimicry in absentia (mimicking someone who is not on the

stage) relies on the dramatic convention of the monologue or soliloquy. It betrays a special

psychic condition of the mimicking agent. Julia, the betrayed mistress in The Two Gentlemen of 

Verona, mutters to herself (IV. 4. 95-7) the words of her traitorous lover, Proteus (IV. 4. 68-75),

after his exit (the latter employs her as a page without knowing who she really is). After falling

in love at first sight with Cesario, the page impersonated by Viola in Twelfth Night , Olivia

literally resumes their earlier exchange of cues (I. 5. 296-8) in I. 5. 308-10. And we have already

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seen that Patroclus mimics Nestor and Agamemnon, Thersites plays Ajax, and Falstaff and

Prince Hal impersonate Henry IV in the absence of the targeted character(s).

Mimicry in pseudo-praesentia occurs when both the mimicker and the mimicked are on

stage, but the latter is not aware of being mimicked by someone else. This situation is made

possible by another theatrical convention, namely, the aside. This convention enables a character

to be on stage without participating in the unfolding dialogue, to utter cues that are heard by the

audience alone, not by the other characters on stage. The asides were assigned by the Spanish

dramatist Lope de Vega mostly to el gracioso (the comic servant). With Shakespeare, all

characters, regardless of class, sex, and age are allowed to make comments in asides. The asides

may show the mimicker’s contempt for the mimicked person (Julia mimicking Thurio in The

Two Gentlemen of Verona, V.2 15-8 and 22-4), or, conversely, the mimicker’s admiration (Sir

Andrew collects les mots justes from Viola disguised as Cesario in Twelfth Night , III. 1. 97-102).

The use of the aside may also betray psychological stress and anxiety, a disturbed state of mind

(see again Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, V. 4).

As for mimicry in praesentia, the term designates the situation in which both the

mimicker and the mimicked are on stage, and the mimicking is performed in a loud voice, in a

face-to-face conversation. I shall refer to only two scenes to illustrate this type of mimicry. In

 Love’s Labour’s Lost , the King of Navarre and his three courtiers, Biron, Longaville, and

Dumain fall in love with the Princess of France and her three attending ladies, respectively.

Earlier in the play, they have forsworn any worldly pleasures for a period of three years, in the

name of academic study. The four men have written love-letters to their sweethearts but none of 

them wants the others to know that he has been the first to break the vow of austerity. Biron

comes to the stage with a love poem he has written in his hand; he hears the King coming, so he

hides away. The king enters with a paper and reads out the love poem he has written for the

princess. Then, he hears Longaville coming, so he hides himself. Longaville closely resumes the

King’s behaviour, and goes into hiding when Dumain appears. Then, Longaville comes forth to

chide Dumain and to mock-mimic the style of his poem. The King does the same to Longaville,

and then Biron steps forth to ‘whip’ the King’s hypocrisy. At last, when no one expects anything

else to happen, Jaquenetta the countrywench and Costard the clown come up with Biron’s lost

love-letter and expose Biron as a hypocrite. The comic scene that abounds in mimicking

speeches is crucial in the plot. The four male characters give up individualism and acknowledge

their love.

In  Much Ado about Nothing bushes and hedges are again essential props in using

linguistic mimicry as a comic device. Beatrice and Benedick love each other but they always

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quarrel and neither of them would openly admit his/her love. Hence, their friends will do their

best to bring them together through a ‘play-within-a play’ designed to flatter their ego. Claudio

and Don Pedro will speak about Beatrice’s love for Benedick when they know that the latter is in

the garden, overhearing their dialogue constructed of mutually mimicking cues. Ursula and Hero

similarly contrive a dialogue about Benedick’s qualities and his love for Beatrice when they, too,

know that Beatrice is eavesdropping on them. The two couples of ‘actors’ (Don Pedro-Claudio

and Ursula-Hero) constantly mimic each other’s cues in order to persuade the hidden

eavesdropper of the truth of their statements. The two tricks are essential for the evolution of the

plot, bringing forth changes in the relationships between the targeted characters: the man-hater

and the woman-hater finally acknowledge their mutual love.

Self-evaluation:

When Olivia and Viola first meet in Twelfth Night …

a. Olivia is impressed by Viola’s speech b. Viola is impressed by Olivia’s speech c. neither is

impressed with each other’s speech d. the Fool is impressed by Viola’s speech

A comic example of mimicry in praesentia is provided by Love’s Labour’s Lost .

True / False

LECTURE SEVEN

 Linguistic mimicry in Shakespeare’s plays can also be discussed from the viewpoint of modality,

‘the speaker’s / writer’s attitude towards the propositional information of his utterance’ (Stubbs).

According to Kapstein (1956), we can distinguish the following types of modality:

-  intellective modality, defined as reasoning, expressing certainty, hesitation, doubt,

confidence, necessity, possibility, probability, etc.;

-  emotional modality, defined as emotions, expressing love, hatred, disgust, abhorrence,

sympathy, antipathy, appreciation, etc.;

-  volitional modality, defined as expressions of will such as order, request, invitation, advice,

desire, etc.

Persuasive mimicry implies the presence of volitional modality. Linguistic contamination, or

unconscious mimicry, corresponds to emotional modality. Quoting other people’s utterances is a

self-conscious, mnemonic act, based on intellective modality. The three types of mimicking acts

do not necessarily exclude one another: sometimes they may rather occur simultaneously,

complementing one another.

Here are two examples of  persuasive mimicry. The first presents a servant who is good at

persuading his master to be more generous than he usually is:

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PROTEUS: Beshrew me, but you have a quick wit.

SPEED: And yet it cannot overtake your slow purse.

PROTEUS: Come, come, open the matter in brief: what said she?

SPEED: Open your purse, that the money and the matter may be both at once delivered.

(The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I. 1. 119-23)

Speed’s emphasis on money demanded in exchange for information anticipates the

twentieth century informants asking for an extra sawbuck in Raymond Chandler’s detective

stories, a cliché taken over by thousands of Hollywood movies. The second example features

Feste, the Fool with great persuasive resources:

OLIVIA: Take the fool away.

FESTE: Do not you hear, fellows? Take away the lady.

………………………………………………………………

FESTE: I know his soul is in hell, madonna.

OLIVIA: I know his soul is in heaven, fool.

FESTE: The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul being in heaven. Take

away the fool, gentlemen. (Twelfth Night , I. 5. 42-4 and 74-8)

LECTURE EIGHT

 Linguistic contamination has both a psychological and a social dimension. It may

represent a safety valve for female heroines in search of an emotional rescue. See Cressida’s

long cue in Troilus and Cressida (III. 2. 191-203), which closely resumes the intricate syntactic

pattern of Troilus’ love vow (III. 2. 178-191). A similar case (a woman closely mimicking a

man’s words in a scene of seduction) occurs in  All’s Well That Ends Well when Bertram and

Diana bargain for the Rousillons’ precious family jewel in exchange for the maid’s chastity:

BERTRAM: It is an honour ’longing to our house,

Bequeathed down from many ancestors

Which were the greatest obloquy in the world

In me to lose.

DIANA: Mine honour’s such a ring,

My chastity’s the jewel of our house

Bequeathed down from many ancestors

Which were the greatest obloquy in th’ world

In me to lose. (IV. 2. 42-9)

Diana’s resumption of Bertram’s bombastic speech on family traditions raises a couple of 

questions regarding literary interpretation and stage performance. Diana’s tour de force turns the

persuader into the persuaded. But we shall never know whether playing a role according to the

script devised by Helena (Bertram’s wife), the bargaining Diana gets contaminated as result of 

her momentary fear; or, whether she is a subtle and exquisite actress who can easily parrot the

arrogant seducer.

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It would be unfair to state that female characters alone get contaminated by the speeches

they are addressed. Men also under go this psycholinguistic process. When Duke Senior meets

Orlando in the woods, he gets contaminated by the young man’s rhetoric:

ORLANDO: If ever you have looked on better days,

If ever you have sat at good men’s feasts,

If ever been where bells have knolled to church,

If ever form your eyelids wiped a tear

Or know what ’tis to pity and be pitied,

Let gentleness my strong enforcement be:

In the which hope I blush and hide my sword.

DUKE SENIOR: True is it that we have seen better days,

And have with holy bell been knolled to church

And sat at good men’s feasts and wiped our eyes

Of drops that sacred pity hath engendered:

And therefore sit you down in gentleness.

( As You Like It , II. 7. 113-24)

Orlando, homeless and hungry, meets the Duke, who has undergone the tragic experience

of being usurped by his own brother. Under the circumstances, the Duke knows all too well the

meaning of Orlando’s plea. In the wilderness, men regain their fragile humanity – this is the

ultimate message Shakespeare conveys through this instance of men’s verbal contamination.

Another famous case of male linguistic contamination is Othello’s. The Moor’s moral

decline coincides with a process of latent linguistic contamination in which he gradually comes

to echo dirty words and thoughts. The turning point of the plot in Othello is, according to

Mikhail Morozov, the moment when Othello’s lofty speech is supplanted by Iago’s dirty

vocabulary: the Moor’s contamination is irreversible. Morozov notices that Othello’s downward

mimicry has a counterpart in Iago’s upward mimicry. When Iago calls a good name ‘the

immediate jewel’ of the soul (III. 3. 156), he is obviously imitating the Moor’s style. And Fintan

O’Toole argues that the two characters melt into each other in terms of diction. Iago’s ‘I would

change humanity with a baboon’ (I. 3. 315) is closely echoed by the Moor later as ‘Exchange me

for a goat’ (III. 3. 184). S.L. Bethell’s classic study into the diabolic images in Othello shows

that, of the sixty-four diabolic images in the play, Iago has only eighteen to Othello’s twenty-six.

Bethell shows how the theme of hell originates with Iago and ‘is passed to Othello later as Iagosucceeds in dominating his mind’. Here are Bethell’s statistics supporting his view. In Act One

Iago has eight diabolic images and Othello none; in Act Two he has six and Othello one. The

change comes in Act Three, when Iago drops to three and Othello rises to nine. In Act Four Iago

has only one, while Othello has ten, and in Act Five Iago has none and Othello six. Bethell’s

diagnosis overlaps Morozov’s: Othello’s fate has been sealed by the end of Act Three. In the last

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two acts, Othello continuously thinks of Desdemona as a devil or damned soul. As Bethell notes,

‘this is the measure of his spiritual blindness, his enslavement by Iago’.

I shall move on to another type of mimicry, which combines intellective and emotional

modality: ironic mimicry. It may take the form of a long dialogue with a punch line, as in the

following duet of two lovers from The Merchant of Venice (V. 1. 1-24) 

LORENZO: The moon shines bright: in such a night as this,

When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees

And they did make no noise, in such a night

Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls

And sigh’d his soul towards the Grecian tents,

Where Cressid lay that night.

JESSICA: In such a night

Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew

And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself 

And ran dismay’d away.

LORENZO: In such a nightStood Dido with a willow in her hand

Upon the wild sea banks and waft her love

To come again to Carthage.

JESSICA: In such a night

Medea gather’d the enchanted herbs

That did renew old Aeson.

LORENZO: In such a night

Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew

And with an unthrift love did run from Venice

As far as Belmont.

JESSICA: In such a night

Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well,Stealing her soul with many vows of faith

And ne’er a true one.

LORENZO: In such a night

Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew,

Slander her love, and he forgave it her.

JESSICA: I would out-night you, did nobody come,

But, hark, I hear the footing of a man.

The lovers’ happiness is somewhat overshadowed by the mythological references they

exchange. Troilus, Thisbe, Dido, and Medea stand for tragic figures symbolising betrayed love,

violent death, unhappy accidents and suicide. They may be read as unwitting premonitions or

ominous reminders of love’s frailty. In Shakespeare’s time (and this keeps happening even

today), society could hardly sanction the love of two people belonging to different ethnic and

religious groups. What does Fortune have in store for Jessica and Lorenzo in the long run? The

question still lingers after the end of the play. But for the time being the well-provided couple

indulges in acting under the sign of  carpe diem. Jessica’s bathos, or anticlimax, brings to an

abrupt end the mock-poetic atmosphere of the scene. The dream-like interlude is over; the two of 

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them are ready to cope with the immediate urgencies of life. The punch line, as usual with

Shakespeare, belongs to a woman who outwits her lover.

In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Speed, the servant is allowed to ironically mock-mimic

his master Valentine. But in his late play Cymbeline Shakespeare has the two attending lords

mimic Cloten, the jackass of the royal family, only in muffled, camouflaged asides, as in the

following excerpt:

FIRST LORD: Did you hear of a stranger that’s come to court to-night?

CLOTEN: A stranger and I know not on’t?

SECOND LORD (aside): He’s a strange fellow himself, and knows it not.

(II. 1. 35-9)

 Echo-mimicry is the most pungent form of dramatic irony. In  Much Ado about Nothing Don

Pedro and Claudio quote Benedick’s early anti-marriage vow, ‘if ever the sensible Benedick bear

it, pluck off the bull’s horns and set them on my forehead’ (V. 1. 183-6):

DON PEDRO: But when shall we set the savage bull’s horns on the sensible Benedick’s

head?

CLAUDIO: Yea, and the text underneath, ‘Here dwells Benedick, the married man’?

(V.1. 183-6)

Claudio translates Don Pedro’s echo-mimicry into an explicit statement. The two of them

know too well that Benedick’s marriage has become imminent in the wake of the two farces they

have staged earlier.

Like parodistic mimicry, quoting someone else’s words, phrases, utterances is an intellectual

process. We should be surprised to learn how many Shakespearean characters quote, resume or

recount (either in direct or indirect speech) someone else’s words and thoughts. In Troilus and 

Cressida, Patroclus quotes Nestor, Ulysses quotes Patroclus and Achilles, and Priam quotes

Nestor, too. In Richard II the point of departure for King Richard’s assassination is the ominous

quotation of Bolingbroke’s words by Exton:

EXTON: Didst thou not mark the king, what words he spake?

‘Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?’

Was it not so?

SERVANT: These were his very words.

EXTON: ‘Have I no friend?’ quoth he – he spake it twiceAnd urged it twice together, didst he not?

(V. 1. 1-5)

Intellective modality does not occur only in quotes between inverted commas. The following

excerpt from King John (I. 1. 39-40) is a clear illustration of intellective modality at work:

KING JOHN: Our strong possession and our right for us.

QUEEN ELINOR: Your strong possession much more than your right.

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When Queen Elinor assesses the legitimacy of her son’s claims to the throne of England,

she is neither emotional nor persuasive, but assertive and conclusive. It takes Shakespeare a

single line to portray the strong personality of one of the most fascinating heroines of the Middle

Ages. Daughter of the powerful Duke of Aquitaine, wife to King Louis VII of France and later to

Henry II Plantagenet of England, Elinor mothered two more kings, Richard the Lionheart and

Landless John, in a world in which the power of arms was decisive in settling political disputes

about succession and possession.

Self-evaluation:

Quoting someone else’s words is a(n)… process.

a. emotional b. volitional c .intellective d. theatrical

The lovers in The Merchant of Venice exchange… cues.

a. tragic b. ironical c. self-mimicking d. phatic

LECTURE NINE

I shall now introduce a new notion applied to linguistic mimicry discussed in terms of 

modality: self-mimicry. Linguistic mimicry is a phenomenon that occurs as part of a larger

process of linguistic communication. To speak about self-mimicry, we must first get accustomed

with the notion of  self-communication theorised by Yuri Lotman: ‘Besides the well-known

pattern of addresser and addressee, there is a kind of self-communication, a process wherein the

afore-mentioned two participants are brought together, becoming a single agent.’ Language is

not only a means of communication. It also underlies ‘the self-communication of mnemonic type

including messages to oneself, which refer to things already known’. So, the addresser and the

addressee are one and the same person. In self-mimicry, the addresser, addressee and reference

overlap. In plain words, self-mimicry means that ‘I speak to myself about myself’. Self-mimicry

is the main source of dramatic irony in scenes in which characters in disguise in such a way that

their message is at the same time addressed to themselves, or it is about themselves, describing

their situation (plight) known by themselves alone. Self-mimicry underlies the transient identity

crisis undergone by disguised characters. The message of a self-mimicker requires a double

reading/decoding: on the one hand it is denotative, referential, transitive, cognitive, and true; on

the other hand, it is connotative, emotive, reflexive, counterfeit, and false.

A couple of examples will clarify this seemingly difficult notion. Rosalind alone knows

that she is not Ganymede, a boy, when she rejects Phebe’s love, begging her: ‘I pray you, do not

fall in love with me, / For I am falser than vows made in wine’ ( As You Like It , III. 5. 72-3).

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Rosalind knows that she is she, not a he, and that she is playing a role, tricking the other

characters on stage. Julia, disguised as a page in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (IV. 4. 153-63) 

likewise speaks not only to Silvia but also to herself during the dialogue in which she has to face

the woman who has stolen her faithless lover’s heart:

SILVIA: Is she not passing fair?JULIA: She has been fairer, madam, than she is:

When she did think my master loved her well,

She, in my judgment, was as fair as you;

But since she did neglect her looking-glass

And threw her sun-expelling mask away,

The air hath starved the roses in her cheeks

And pinched the lily-tincture of her face,

That now she is become as black as I.

SILVIA: How tall was she?

JULIA: About my stature…

Grief and humour collide in Julia’s confession. ‘She’ is in fact ‘I’, her previous self prior

to Proteus’ betrayal and the reinvention of her person as a page. Back to Rosalind, with her, like

with Viola in Twelfth Night , we are no longer in the realm of  commedia dell’ arte when the

heroine comes to deny her temporary identity in disturbing, ambiguous, and memorable cues:

OLIVER: You lack a man’s heart.

ROSALIND: I do so, I confess it.

( As You Like It , IV. 3. 163-4)

OLIVIA: Are you a comedian?

VIOLA: No, my profound heart; and yet (…) I swear I am not that I play.

VIOLA: Then think you right. I am not what I am.

(Twelfth Night , I. 5. 195-8 and III. 1. 153)

The most moving instance of  self-mimicry in all of Shakespeare’s plays is Viola’s

sentimental CV presented to Orsino in Twelfth Night (II. 4):

Say that some lady, as perhaps there is,

Hath for your love as great a pang of heart

As you have for Olivia. (92-4)

My father had a daughter loved a man –

As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,

I should your lordship. (110-12)

[…] She never told her loveBut let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat like patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief. (113-18)

Self-evaluation:

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Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona disguises herself as a…

a. page b. pilgrim c. shepherd d. eunuch 

Olivia, on first seeing Viola asks her if she is a…

a. servant b. messenger c. fool d. comedian

LECTURE TENUp to now I have repeatedly used terms like addresser, addressee, code, message,

encoding and decoding. The central topic of this course is linguistic mimicry. Speaking about the

language of Shakespeare’s characters, we inevitably have to deal with Saussurean speech or

 parole. As such, I shall approach our topic from the viewpoint of linguistics, and I shall describe

it in linguistic terms. To begin with, linguistic mimicry can be discussed in terms of  economy

versus redundancy. Depending on the figures of speech used by the mimicker, redundancy is nil

in the case of homonyms but it increases when the mimicker uses synonyms. With the use of 

antonyms and puns, the level of redundancy decreases again. As for economy, it depends on thesynthetic or analytic feature of repetitions/mimicry. If we consider the functions of language as

defined by Roman Jakobson in  Linguistics and Poetics, we shall note that both economy and

redundancy are irrelevant when the imitator employs the phatic function of language.

The use of the phatic function of language is obvious in Verges’ constant echoing of 

Dogberry’s firm, resolute assertions. Says Dogberry: ‘Marry, sir, this is it’ ( Much Ado about 

 Nothing, III. 5. 6). Verges automatically parrots him: ‘Yes, in truth it is, sir’ (7). A bit later

Dogberry tells Leonato, ‘I am glad to hear it’ (30). Verge instantly adds, ‘And so am I’ (31).

Parolles, the miles gloriosus and knave from All’s Well That Ends Well, is doubtless the

human embodiment of redundancy. As his very name suggests, Parolles’ identity is mainly a

construct made up of empty words. Whenever he appears on stage, the audience knows that a lot

of meaningless verbiage is to follow. And yet, there is a scene in the play (II. 3. 1-45) in which

the ingratiating Parolles manages to keep a tight reign on his verbosity and restricts himself to

parroting every single cue uttered by the old courtier Lafeu. Paradoxically, Parolles’ speech is

economically… redundant: they resume in very few words the ideas of his wise, learned

interlocutor. Here is a list of Parolles’ untypical replies, which differ so much from his earlier

appetite for debate and disputation: ‘So I say ’ (11), ‘So I say’ (13), ‘Right: so I say’ (15), ‘Why,

there ’tis: so I say too’ (17),’Right […]’ (19), ‘Just, you say well; so would I have said’ (21), ‘It

is, indeed…’ (24), ‘That’s I; I would have said the very same’ (29-30), ‘Ay, so I say’ (38), and ‘I

would have said it; you say well’ (45). Parolles’ cues cannot be discussed in terms of lexical,

syntactic, or stylistic mimicry, but in terms of economy and redundancy. The parroting Parolles

tries hard to interfere in the dialogue between Lafeu and Bertram. Parolles’ phatic interruptions

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should be interpreted as desperate attempts to have himself treated on equal terms by the two

aristocrats, who obviously ignore, unless openly reject, his participation in their discussion.

Another linguistic criterion that is relevant for the description of mimicking acts in the

process of linguistic communication is the number of agents participating in the dialogue and the

relationships established among them. The simplest relationship is the one way mimicry,

expressed through the formula A->B. This means that B consciously or unwittingly mimics A’s

speech. Ironic and parodistic mimicry, persuasive mimicry, and linguistic contamination best

illustrate this kind of relationship.

But linguistic mimicry can also be a reciprocal action, in which case we can apply the

formula A->B, B->A. This is the type of mimicry preferred by Shakespeare, especially in his

famous scenes opposing men and women in their battles of wits. The whole plot of The Taming

of the Shrew revolves around the verbal clashes between Petruchio and Katharina. Shakespeare

later revived the two of them in Much Ado about Nothing, in the guise of Benedick and Beatrice,

much to the delight of the Elizabethan audience. Here is a brief excerpt illustrating mutual

mimicry:

BENEDICK: Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.

BEATRICE: A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.

BENEDICK: I would my horse had the speed of your tongue […].

BEATRICE: You always end with a jade’s trick. (I. 1. 105-8)

Mimicry in Shakespeare’s plays is not confined to the two aforementioned models (one-

way and mutual ones). Sometimes more complicated communication patterns emerge from the

rules of ceremonial rituals, as in the trial-by-combat in  Richard II . Here, the Lord Marshall acts

as a go-between, as the King does not address himself to his vassals. What we have is an A->B-

>C sequence, as in the lines below:

KING RICHARD: Marshal, demand of yonder champion

The cause of his arrival here in arms:

Ask him his name and orderly proceed

To swear him in the justice of his cause.

LORD MARSHAL: In God’s name and the king’s, say who thou art

And why thou comest thus knightly clad in arms,

Against what man thou comest, and what thy quarrel:

Speak truly, on thy knighthood and thy oath;And so defend thee heaven and thy valour!

(I. 3. 7-13 et seq.)

Shakespeare’s chronicle plays abound in scenes in which messengers and ambassadors

are the bearers of an off-stage monarch’s words. They resume the words of the absent addresser

in what might be expressed as (A)->B->C, which reverts to C->B->(A) when the respective

herald, ambassador or messenger is sent back to his employer. King John, Edward III , and Henry

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V have memorable encounters between English and/or French kings and/or ambassadors. But the

ritualistic use of the A->B->C type of mimicry engendered by the presence of an intermediary

also occurs in comedies ( Love’s Labour’s Lost , V. 2), problem plays (Troilus and Cressida, III.

3) and romances (Pericles, II. 3). In all of these plays kings and princesses speak obliquely via

an intermediary, avoiding direct verbal collision with their interlocutors.

 As You Like It  has a unique scene in which mimicry becomes contagious and several

characters get instantly infected with it. ‘Chain reaction’ is the term that best describes the

response elicited by Silvius’ declaration of love for Phebe:

SILVIUS: [Love] is to be all made of sighs and tears; and so am I for Phebe.

PHEBE: And I for Ganymede.

ORLANDO: And I for Rosalind.

ROSALIND: And I for no woman.

SILVIUS: It is to be all made of faith and service; and so am I for Phebe.

PHEBE: And I for Ganymede.

ORLANDO: And I for Rosalind.ROSALIND: And I for no woman. (V. 2. 90-9)

The first two rounds of ‘mass mimicry’ are soon followed by a third round:

SILVIUS: And so am I for Phebe.

PHEBE: And so am I for Ganymede.

ORLANDO: And so am I for Rosalind.

ROSALIND: And so am I for no woman.

PHEBE: If this be so, why blame you me to love you?

SILVIUS: If this be so, why blame you me to love you?

ORLANDO: If this be so, why blame you me to love you?

ROSALIND: Who do you speak to, ‘Why blame you me to love you?’(V. 2. 105-13)

In the three rounds of spontaneous mass mimicry it is Silvius who introduces the message

to be resumed by the other characters. The situation might be expressed as A->B->C->D->(E), in

which A is Silvius, B is Phebe, C is Orlando, D is Rosalind passing as Ganymede, and E is both

the audience and a split, self-communicating and self-mimicking Rosalind, who is talking to

herself. At the middle of round three there is a turning point when Phebe takes over the role of 

the contaminating agent. Each question is specifically addressed to just one of the characters on

stage. Phebe’s question targets Rosalind, Silvius’ targets Phebe, and Orlando, rather uncannily,

speaks to an absent Rosalind, or, maybe, to a surrogate of hers, a boy named Ganymede. This

slip of tongue may fuel the perverse imagination of gender critics, but I shall take it as yet

another case of linguistic contamination.

Self-evaluation:

The phatic function is one of the… functions Roman Jakobson assigns to language.

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a. two b. three c. five d. six

The phatic function is described in linguistics as the mimicking function of language.

True / False

Imitation appears as a chain reaction in  As You Like It  when several characters utter almost

identical sentences.

True / False

LECTURE ELEVEN

I shall conclude this course presentation with an ontological approach to mimicry. Within

their fictional world, Shakespeare’s characters imitate both ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ people. In the

‘reality’ of their world, the ‘real’ characters imitate ‘what is or is not’, as Ulysses puts it in

Troilus and Cressida. In the opening of 1 Henry IV , Prince Hal warns the audience that he ‘will

imitate the sun / Who doth permit the base contagious clouds / To smother up his beauty from

the world’ (I. 2. 220-2). That is, his apprenticeship in the London underground is just a strategic

move aimed at concealing his real value. Grown a wise king, the same character will instigate

the English troops to ‘imitate the action of a tiger’ during the siege of Harfleur ( Henry V , III. 1.

6). Viola in Twelfth Night self-consciously refashions herself taking her lost brother as a model:

‘… he went / Still in this fashion, colour, ornament, / For him I imitate (III. 4. 416-8)’. Imitation

is not always a virtue. It may be a sign of servile attitude. Mark Antony criticises Lepidus as a

barren-spirited fellow always ready to imitate other people’s fashions ( Julius Caesar , IV. 1. 36-

9). York in  Richard II  likewise complains about ‘our apish nation’ addicted to the ‘base

imitation’ of Italian fashions (II. 1. 21-3).

All these imitators and imitated non-objects or actions are ‘real’ in their fictional world,

but in All’s Well That Ends Well Parolles is threatened to death by would-be ‘enemies’ that speak 

a fictional, non-existent language. We come across a situation of ‘fiction within fiction’.

Shakespeare’s characters become themselves dramatists that, quoting Theseus’ famous lines,

‘give to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name’ ( A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V. 1. 16-7).

The ‘things unknown’ referred to by Theseus are the  potential things theorised by Aristotle,

those possible things opposed to actual ones, or those that do not exist in fact but are capable of 

being or becoming ( Metaphysics, IX. 3). Rosalind, Viola, and Julia mimic the language or

speech of potential beings that belong to existing social categories (pages, shepherds). Unlike

Plato, who upheld the idea that poets were irrational vessels, Aristotle considered them skilled

craftsmen. In Metaphysics (IX. 5), Aristotle referred to the ‘existent capabilities acquired through

learning’ and listed ‘artistic skills’ among these capabilities. Whenever self-consciously

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employed, linguistic mimicry is the result of learning, of the experience acquired in everyday

life. Man’s identity depends on language. Man is what he speaks and how he speaks. Man is

eager to learn, to evolve. Sir Andrew Aguecheek is ready to write down the words used by Viola

and to start practising their usage (Twelfth Night , III. 1). Justice Shallow is likewise ready to

enrich his vocabulary and learn through imitation whenever he has an opportunity:

BARDOLPH: Sir, pardon: a soldier is better accommodated than with a wife.

SHALLOW: It is well said, in faith, sir, and it is well said indeed. ‘Better accommodated!’

It is good, yea, indeed is it; good phrases are surely, and ever, very commendable.

‘Accommodated’ – it comes of ‘accommodo’; very good, a good phrase.

(2 Henry IV , III. 2. 72-9)

Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Justice Shallow probably reflect the very habit of Elizabethan

playwrights of learning from one another, of borrowing and storing the impressive phrases they

heard in the public theatres. Writing plays was not just a matter of natural born talent, but also a

matter of Aristotelian skills and craftsmanship, which relied very much on the ‘commonplace

book method’ of the age. And the characters of Shakespeare’s plays, with their unusual (which

has turned out to be, actually, a usual human feature) inclination for imitation, turn out to be a

mixed species of homo sapiens and homo ludens.

Self-evaluation:

Sir Andrew Aguecheek is taking down notes after he has heard the way… speaks.

a.  Countess Olivia b. Viola c. Sir Toby Belch d. Feste

Using an invented language in a fictional world creates a ‘fiction within a fiction’.

True / False

Mark Antony… Lepidus for imitating other people’s fashion.

a. praises b. criticizes c. chides d. worships

LECTURE TWELVE

The last lecture is dedicated to Shakespeare’s so-called ‘royal actor’, Henry V,

considered by many critics Shakespeare’s own alter-ego and, doubtless, one of his most protean

characters. Read the play, pencil in hand, and look up the telling moments when the King acts as

an actor, putting on a mask behind which he conceals his feelings, thoughts and desires. One of 

them is the scene staged in Act Two, in which the King sentences three dangerous traitors to

death after he has practically make them sign their own death penalty. Another scene students

are invited to consider carefully is the one in which the King disguises himself as Harry le Roy, a

simple soldier in the English army. Thirdly, the wooing scene in Act Five, shows the King

speaking to the Princess of France like a ‘plain soldier’. According to Bruce R. Smith, the King

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is a versatile actor playing all sorts of masculinity. Reading the play  Henry V will enable the

students to answer questions like those below, given for the purpose of self-evaluation.

Self-evaluation:

The traitors sentenced to death in Act Two are Grey, Cambridge and Nym.

True / False

Disguised as Harry le Roy, the King talks with…

a. Pistol, Bardolph, and Nym b. Pistol, Nym, and Fuellen c. Pistol, Bates, Court, and Williams

d. Williams and Fluellen

In the wooing scene, the Princess of France is assisted by…

a. her mother b. her father c. her maid d. her nurse