I. THE RELATION OF TUDOR RHETORIC TO ELIZABETHAN ACTING
Rhetoric played a vital role in the education and life of the Elizabethan man. From its study he could learn all that was known of the art and techniques of oral and written communication. Scholars of the school of formal acting have insisted that seventeenth century works on rhetorical delivery reflect an image of Elizabethan acting. Usually the actor is considered the transmitter, the rhetorician the receiver of influence. This contention has been disputed, as I have pointed out. For the moment, however, let us suppose that there was some connection between oratory and acting. What then does rhetoric teach us of Elizabethan acting? To answer this question Bertram Joseph relies principally upon Bulwer’s double study Chirologia and Chironomia (1644), a late work. But, since we have been considering acting as a dynamic art, it would be well to examine the evidence of sixteenth and early seventeenth century manuals of rhetoric.
Compassed under the heading of rhetoric in the sixteenth century were three of the five parts of classical rhetoric. Inventio and dispositio had been transferred to logic, particularly in the Ramist scheme. Elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio remained. However, memoria or the art of memory was generally, though not entirely, ignored. Of the two remaining parts that made up sixteenth century rhetoric, elocutio, or the art of eloquence, and pronuntiatio, or the art of speech and gesture, the former received the almost undivided attention of Elizabethan writers.
Before 1610 only Thomas Wilson in The Art of Rhetorique (1553) and Abraham Fraunce in The Arcadian Rhetorike (1588) treat the art of pronunciation separately. The other writers,[8] except for occasionally defining the term or citing an example, or describing the qualities of a good voice, omit the subject entirely. Even Wilson and Fraunce treat it in summary fashion.
Wilson defines the two parts of the subject, voice and gesture. A praiseworthy voice is “audible, strong, and easie, & apte to order as we liste.” Before an audience orators should start speaking softly, “use meete pausying, and being somewhat heated, rise with their voice, as the tyme & cause shal best require” (Sig. Gg1r). For those with poor voices, attention to diet, practice in singing, and imitation of good speakers are the means of improvement. Gesture, which is a “comely moderacion of the countenaunce, and al other partes of mans body,” should agree with the voice. Altogether, the orator should be cheerful, poised, and moderate in deportment (Sig. Gg2r).
The entire section sets up standards for good pronunciation, but it does not specifically show how they are met. The standards place emphasis on comeliness and grace, on a harmony of speech, gesture, and matter. The actual manner of delivery shall be “as the tyme & cause shal best require.”
Fraunce is both fuller and more specific in his treatment of pronunciation, although, like Wilson, he devotes the smaller portion of his book, The Arcadian Rhetorike, to it. Generally he reiterates the points made by Wilson: the voice must be pleasing, the speaker should begin softly and rise “as occasion serveth,” the delivery should follow the meaning. Fraunce goes further than Wilson, however, in equating a kind of voice with appropriate rhetorical form.
In figures of words which altogether consist in sweete repetitions and dimensions, is chiefly conversant that pleasant and delicate tuning of the voyce, which resembleth the consent and harmonie of some well ordred song: In other figures of affections, the voyce is more manly, yet diversly, according to the varietie of passions that are to bee expressed.[9]
His specific suggestions depend upon the equation of voice and affection, for example, “in pitie and lamentation, the voyce must be full, sobbing, flexible, interrupted.” Largely there is an association of tone of voice with a particular passion. For “feare and anger” there are additional injunctions concerning rhythm. Otherwise, these “rules” seem suggestive and general rather than imperative and specific.
In writing of gesture, Fraunce once again supplements the standards of Wilson with illustrations of his own. The truism of the age that “gesture must followe the change and varietie of the voyce,” is conditioned by the warning that it should not be done “parasiticallie as stage plaiers use, but gravelie and decentlie as becommeth men of greater calling.” This implies that the attitude may have been similar but the resulting manner different. Actual suggestions are made for the portrayal of affections; for example, “the holding downe of the head, and casting downe of the eyes betokeneth modestie.” Forbidding gesture with the head alone, Fraunce notes that its chiefest force is the countenance, and of the countenance the eyes “which expres livelilie even anie conceit or passion of the mind.” How to use the eyes is not explained. The particular ordering of the lips, nose, chin, and shoulders is “left to everie mans discretion.”
Concerning the arms and hands Fraunce writes little. The right arm in being extended reinforces the flow of the speech. This action is supplemented by the moderate use of the hands and fingers which rather “follow than goe before and expresse the words.” Since the left hand alone is not used in gesture, it is joined with the right in expressing doubt, objection, and prayer. The fingers in various combinations express distinct significance.
For the body as a whole Fraunce warns against unseemliness. He associates striking the breast with grief and lamentation, striking the thigh with indignation, striking the ground with the foot with vehemency. By and large the speaker should not move more than a step or two.
In substance this is the written material on pronunciation in English before 1610. Fraunce alone shows any indication that there was a conventional system of vocal delivery and physical gesture. As early as 1531 Elyot in The Governour (fol. 49) had included “the voyce and gesture of them that can pronounce comedies” in the attributes of a fine orator. This Ciceronian tradition is probably reflected in The Arcadian Rhetorike so that Fraunce may be following the custom of the players except where he specifically notes a difference. But do the “rules” of Fraunce demonstrate the presence of an accepted system of convention in voice and gesture, or are they personal observations organized into a system? Writing of the affections and speech, Fraunce indicates that the correspondence must be followed. In writing of the affections and gesture, he is less sure. Some matters are left to the discretion of the speaker, others must adhere to a certain convention. About the body he is suggestive. Striking the breast to express grief “is not unusuall,” but striking the thigh to express indignation “was usuall” as was stamping.’ Usual where? On the stage? In the law courts? In the pulpit? He does not specify. Keeping in mind that Fraunce alone has detailed such “conventions of voice and gesture,” it is apparent that he is regularizing the general habit current in sixteenth century England of finding external means of expression for internal conceits or passions of the mind.
A habit is not a convention, however. The gestures described by Fraunce reinforce the speech, lending harmony and vigor to the vocal expression. But there is little evidence that they were raised to the level of symbolism, that particular gestures came widely to represent particular meanings. That this was the case, is supported by a comparison of the supposed meanings of several gestures. As quoted above, Fraunce claimed that “the holding downe of the head, and casting downe of the eyes betokeneth modestie.” But the author of The Cyprian Conqueror (1633), cited by Professor Harbage, asserts that “in a sorrowfull parte, ye head must hang downe.” Lest we think that two affections were expressed by the same gesture, we must note how sorrow was expressed according to Fraunce. “The shaking of the head noteth griefe and indignation.” Obviously there was not complete agreement about the significance of a particular gesture. Nor could there be since forms of expression are usually left to the speaker’s judgment in the rhetorics.
Nevertheless, although an exact pattern of conventions cannot be discovered in Elizabethan rhetoric, general attitudes toward speech can be discerned. Wilson and Fraunce call for a pleasant voice, neither too high nor too low, but mean, capable of expressing nuances of thought. The ideal blending of speech and movement for the Elizabethan age is well presented in Baldassare Castiglione’s Courtier, translated by Thomas Hoby in 1561.
[What is requisite in speaking is] a good voice, not too subtill or soft, as in a woman: nor yet so boistrous and rough, as in one of the countrie, but shril, cleare, sweete, and well framed with a prompt pronunciation, and with fit maners, and gestures, which (in my minde) consist in certaine motions of all the bodie, not affected nor forced, but tempred with a manerly countenance and with a moving of the eyes that may give grace and accorde with the wordes, and (as much as he can) signifie also with gestures, the intent and affection of the speaker.[10]
Grace, dignity, and spontaneity, in short, beauty of expression, was the accepted aim of the age.
In addition to speaking pleasantly, the educated man was expected to speak meaningfully. His vocal delivery should express figures of eloquence effectively.
The consideration of voyce is to be had either in severed words, or in the whole sentence. In the particular applying of the voyce to severall words, wee make tropes that bee most excellent plainly appeare. For without this change of voyce, neither anie Ironia, nor lively Metaphore can well bee discerned.[11]
Nor must this attention to the figures of speech be lavished only upon the formal speech. In his informal Direction for Speech and Style (c. 1590), John Hoskins applies the same consideration to social occasion. Included in his discussion of Agnomination, or repetition of sounds in sentence, such as “Our paradise is a pair of dice, our almes-deeds are turned into all misdeeds,” is a suggestion that “that kind of breaking words into another meaning is pretty to play with among gentlewomen, as, you will have but a bare gain of this bargain.” Sensitivity to the figures of eloquence was widespread; we may expect the actors to have been particularly attentive to their rendition.
Though scanty, indications exist that the speaker was not thought to deliver his speech by rote. As Hamlet compares his behavior with the player’s, he describes the man’s tears, distraction and broken voice,
and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit.
[II, ii, 582-583]
“The conceits of the mind are pictures of things and the tongue is interpreter of those pictures,” wrote John Hoskins to his student.[12] Just as eloquence contained figures of sentence encompassing an extended thought as well as figures of words expressing a turn of a phrase, so did delivery require an understanding of the conceit and passion as a whole as well as the appreciation of the particular literary form.
Among the figures listed by Henry Peacham in The Garden of Eloquence (1593) is Mimesis:
Mimesis is an imitation of speech whereby the orator counter-faitheth not onely what one said, but also his utterance, pronunciation and gesture, imitating everything as it was, which is alwaies well performed, and naturally represented in an apt and skilfull actor.[13]
Since imitation is confined to a single figure, it probably was not expected in delivery except in special situations. But this applies to the rendering of character types, for the projection of passion in oratory was generally accepted and encouraged. Fraunce, as we have seen, describes the kinds of tones to be employed in terms of the affections to be conveyed. Sir Thomas Elyot in 1531 writes that whereas “the sterring of affections of the minde in this realme was never used, therefore ther lacketh Eloqution and pronunciation, two of the princypall parts of Rethorike.”[14] Wilson explicitly states not only the desirability of stirring affections but the necessity for the speaker to feel those affections himself.
He that will stirre affeccions to other, muste first be moved himself.
Neither can any good be doen at all, when we have saied all that ever we can, except we brying the same affeccions in owr owne harte whiche wee would the Judges should beare towardes our awne matter ... a wepying iye causeth muche moysture, and provoketh teares. Neither is it any mervaile: for such men bothe in their countenaunce, tongue, iyes, gesture, and in all their body els, declare an outwarde grief, and with wordes so vehemently and unfeinedly, settes it forward, that thei will force a man to be sory with them, and take part with their teares, even against his will. [Sig. T1v]
Not only Elyot’s comment but also Peacham’s changes in The Garden of Eloquence for the second edition in 1593 show that increased attention to stirring the emotions occurred in the last half of the sixteenth century in England.
Peacham’s omission in 1593 of the grammatical schemes he had included in the first edition of The Garden of Eloquence and his addition of many figures based on appeal to the emotions may be taken as indications of a shift which had taken place in rhetoric in England between 1577 and 1593.... During these years, too, the rhetorical theories of Petrus Ramus and Audomarus Talaeus, with their emphasis on those rhetorical devices which directed their appeal to the emotions, flourished in England.[15]
In such a context, if rhetoric influenced or reflected acting, it emphasized the already present stimulation of emotion and encouraged the actor who wished to move his audience to “bryng the same affeccions” in his own heart to the stage.
That it is misleading to apply the circumstances of later rhetorical study to this earlier period is evident on two scores. First, during the first half of the seventeenth century a shift from medieval rhetoric, of which sixteenth century English rhetoric is an extension, to classical rhetoric took place, principally through the influence of Francis Bacon and Ben Jonson. This meant the reentry of inventio and dispositio into the framework of rhetoric, bringing about the second change. In the scheme that Francis Bacon proposed for learning, rhetoric no longer should be directed at moving the affections:
It is the business of rhetoric to make pictures of virtue and goodness, so that they may be seen. For since they cannot be showed to the sense in corporeal shape, the next degree is to show them to the imagination in as lively representation as possible, by ornament of words.
Actually, rhetoric should be brought into the attack against affections:
Reason would become captive and servile, if eloquence of persuasions did not win the imagination from the affections’ part, and contract a confederacy between the reason and imagination against them.[16]
To infer conclusions about the details of Elizabethan acting from Elizabethan rhetoric is, as we have seen, highly conjectural. Yet, in the intellectual atmosphere of which rhetoric was a part, we can discern several attitudes that probably shaped acting. Detailed study was expended on the figures of eloquence and loving care was devoted to models of fine tropes. The oral rendition of these forms was left to the judgment of the individual, for the most part. The few expositions of delivery stress grace of expression and stirring of affections. But no thoroughly accepted conventions of voice and gesture seem to have existed. Thus, although rhetorical theory was conducive to the growth of formal and traditional acting, rhetorical delivery had not solidified sufficiently by 1610 to provide a systematic method. In seeking external forms for their conceits, the orator, and probably actor, still responded more to invention than tradition.