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.