QUOTES FROM THE BARD

PLAY: Richard II ACT/SCENE: 1.3 SPEAKER: Thomas Mowbray CONTEXT: The language I have learn’d these forty years,
My native English, now I must forego:
And now my tongue’s use is to me no more
Than an unstringed viol or a harp,
Or like a cunning instrument cased up,
Or, being open, put into his hands
That knows no touch to tune the harmony:
Within my mouth you have engaol’d my tongue,
Doubly portcullis’d with my teeth and lips;
And dull unfeeling barren ignorance
Is made my gaoler to attend on me.
I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,
Too far in years to be a pupil now:
What is thy sentence then but speechless death,
Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath? DUTCH: Wat is uw vonnis, dan een stomme dood,
Nu ‘t mij mijn levensademklank verbood? MORE:
A semi-literal allusion to a proverb of the time, ‘Good that the teeth guard the tongue’ (1578) and the virtue of silence. Ben Jonson recommended a ‘wise tongue’ that should not be ‘licentious and wandering’. (See also the Lucio in Measure for Measure: “’tis a secret must be locked within the
teeth and the lips”.)

Cunning=Skilful
Sentence=Verdict (punning on language)
Breathing native breath=Speaking native English (and breathing English air)

Compleat:
Cunning=Behendig Topics: language, understanding, identity, proverbs and idioms