SHAKESPEARE'S USE OF PROVERBS FOR CHARACTERIZATION, DRAJyiATIC ACTION, AND TONE IN REPRESENTATIVE COMEDY by EMMETT WAYNE COOK, B.A., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN ENGLISH Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved Accepted August, 1974 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply indebted to Professor Joseph T. McCullen, Jr. for his direction of this dissertation and to the other members of my committee. Professors Warren S. Walker and Kenneth W. Davis, for their helpful criticism. 11 CONTENTS PREFACE 1 CHAPTER ONE: PROVERBS USED FOR CHARACTERIZATION. 12 I. The Falstaffian Figure 13 II. The Clown-Fool 32 III. The Malcontent 43 IV. The Comic Fop 47 V. Other Representative Comic Figures .... 57 CHAPTER TWO: PROVERBS USED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC ACTION 64 I. Proverbs Used to Reveal Past Action ... 66 II. Proverbs Used to Foreshadow Aspects of Character Development 73 III. Proverbs Used to Incite Action and Arouse Conflict 77 IV. Proverbs Used to Accentuate a Character's Method of Action 87 V. Proverbs Used to Expose the Immediate Dramatic Situation 98 VI. Proverbs Used to Convey a Sense of Anticipation of Action 110 VII. Proverbs Used as Devices for Sustain­ ing Comic Interlude 118 VIII. Proverbs Used as Devices for Greeting and Salutation 125 CHAPTER THREE: PROVERBS USED FOR SUSTAINING TONE . 130 CHAPTER FOXJR: CONCLUSION 164 BIBLIOGRAPHY 167 • • • 111 PREFACE One of the curiosities of historical and modern schol­ arship is the rather engaging matter of defining the obvious or familiar. Defining the common proverb truly illustrates such a statement. While some literary historians and an­ alysts provide elaborate taxonomies for the proverb, others are persuaded to elude definition altogether. For a case in point, George Puttenham vivifies wit's penchant for brevity by simply referring to proverbs as "old said saws." Other Renaissance rhetoricians, however, spoke more technically and descriptively of the proverb. In The Garden of Eloquence Henry Peacham sensibly describes these "old said saws" in the following manner: "Paroemia, called of as a Proverbe, is a sentence or form of speech much used, and commonly knowen, and also excellent for the hiimilitude and dignification: to which two things are required, the one that it be renowned, and much spoken of, as a sentence in everie mans mouth. The other that it be witty, and well proportioned, whereby it may be discerned by some speciall marke and not from common speech, and be commended by 2 antiquitie and learning." Although the mood of this ^George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, ed. Gladys Willcock and Alice Walker (London: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1936), p. 189. 2 Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence, ed. William G. Crane (1620; Facsimile rpt. Gainesville, Florida: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1954), p. 29. definition by Peacham is that a proverb should be used es­ sentially for its edifying merit, he concludes that the "barren" proverb is one which fails to teach and delight. In The Arte of Rhetorique, Thomas Wilson relegates no special rhetorical significance to the proverb, except that the proverb is used as a device for amplification of an idea, and usually a moral one. Despite his formal, didactic tone, Wilson's view of the proverb yields a glimpse of its practicality: "Among all the figures of Rhetorique, there is no one that so much helpeth forward an Oration, and beautifieth the same with such delightful ornaments, as doth 3 amplication." For Wilson,the key figure used for moral amplification is the proverb; and proverbs are formed, he writes, "when we gather such sentences as are commonly spoken, or els to speake of such things as are notable in 4 this life." After listing several commendable proverbs, Wilson interposes, "But what need I heape all these together, seeing Heywooddes Proverbes are in Print, where plenty are to be had: whose paines in that behalf, are worthie im- 5 mortall praise." 3 ... Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique, ed. G- H. Mair (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), p. 119. ^Wilson, p. 119. Wilson, p. 119. Generations since, attempts at describing or identify­ ing the exigencies of the proverb, even the more modern attempts, have reflected the extremes to which the various examiners go. The editor of the Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Classical Quotations, Hugh P. Jones, simply puts definition aside and refers ultimately to them as "winged- words." Richard Chenevix Trench's verbal timidity prompts him to list three essential ingredients constituting the 7 proverb: "shortness, sense, salt." Most importantly, however. Bishop Trench suggests that the quality of a proverb should be determined on the grounds of its "folk popularity." Not all of the approaches of critics toward defining the proverb are so tentative as some of the ones offered thus far. Rudolph E. Habenicht, editor of John Heywood's A Dialogue of Proverbs, provides as functional a description of the proverb as one will find: "The common proverb is a particular species of a large body of moral maxims and sententiae which express some counsel, ethical precept, or truth in a succinct and memorable way. It differs from the adage, or maxim, in its language and style, the proverb be­ ing usually concrete, metaphoric, and frequently rythmical; "Hugh P. Jones, ed.. Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Classical Quotations (Edinburgh, Scotland: John Grant, 1963), p. xii. Richard Chenevix Trench, Proverbs and Their Lessons (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1905), p. 7. The proverb, furthermore, is figurative in concealing 8 a 'hidden' meaning." Although Habenicht's definition seems satisfactorily to identify the proverb, he omits the one aspect of origin which others have emphasized, its oral derivation. Archer Taylor makes the proverb's oral, folk origin a starting point in terms of description. Taylor writes: "The definition of a proverb is too difficult to repay the undertaking; and should we fortunately combine in a single definition all the essential elements and give each the proper emphasis, we should not even then have a touchstone. An incommunicable quality tell us this sentence is proverbial and that one is not. Hence no definition will enable us to identify positively a sentence as proverbial. Those who do not speak a language can never recognize all its proverbs, and similarly much that is truly proverbial escapes us in Elizabethan and older English. Let us be content with recog- 9 nizing that a proverb is a saying current among the folk." In the introduction to The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, Janet E. Heseltine offers a helpful proposal as to the origin and destiny of the proverb, one which goes Q John Heywood, A Dialogue of Proverbs, ed. Rudolph E. Habenicht (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), p. 1. Archer Taylor, The Proverb and An Index to the Proverb (Copenhagen, Denmark: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1962), p. 3. unchallenged by most collectors today. Heseltine suggests two sources of proverbial wisdom: the common man and the wise man (or oracle). From the folk came the proverbs of distilled experience, such as "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." The wise man's utterances are the result of reflection; and, naturally, his comments were received by the folk as rules of life, for they had neither time nor sufficient acumen themselves to meditate upon fundamental truths. The wise man's observations, his very wording, be­ came familiar sayings, bywords, or proverbs. It was a mat­ ter of time before the proverb was quoted by a writer, either in its obvious sense or with a transferred meaning to give point to some quite other subject, thus taking to itself a new characteristic of a proverb. As education became more widespread, the sayings, or sententiae, of the wise man were incorporated in school texts, and gradually wisdom-based saws penetrated downwards until they were adopted as proverbs by people. Heseltine contends that, in both cases of origin, there is the process of gradual penetration of the spoken word from above to below and from below to above, with literature as "a kind of eternally moving wheel on which proverbs were caught up, 10 and from which they were thrown off again." -'•^Janet E. Heseltine, "Introduction," in The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, by William George Smith, 2nd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), pp. vii-viii. Ostensibly, the matter of defining the proverb completely and without error is of less interest than pointing out that folk sayings have been of utmost benefit to men since they have come forth both orally and in the written form. Such zealous consciousness of man for his verbal nature glorifies and en­ hances the potential for the virtuosity of his language. In Unusual Words, and How They Came About, Edwin Radford succinctly confers the following blandishment upon oral English: "English speaking people have been pulling to pieces the words of their language and refitting them into other words explanatory of some current event, displaying in so doing an impish wit, a clever cynicism, or a deldghtful turn of improvisation." The observation of Radford articu­ lates yet another dimension of the proverb: its rhetorical function. And, since the subject of this immediate inquiry focuses upon a particular English-speaking person, Shakespeare, it is profitable to establish his relationship to the heri­ tage of proverbs and to his special facility with them. In any investigation of the uses Shakespeare makes of the proverb, it is important to remember not only that Elizabethans loved proverbs, but also that they were con- 12 sciously steeped in potential usages of them. In fact. Edwin Radford, Unusual Words, And How They Came About (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946), n.p.