Gossip In The Works Of William Shakespeare

Ferdinando Pulton’s 1609 treatise, ‘De pace regis et regni’ presents a summary of “the great and generall ofences of the realme. ” One of these offences is the threatening, potentially damaging power of words, in particular slander. He writes: There is another foule puddle that ouzeth from the same corrupt gogmire, and distilleth out of a heart likewise infected with malice and enuie, but is deuised and practised by another meane that the former, which is by libelling, secret slandring, or defaming of another.

The distasteful, pejorative tone aligns gossiping and slander with dirtiness and corruption. Pulton’s writing is evidence for the increase in slander in sixteenth century England, which threatened to destabilise communities and social bonds. Kalpan’s work has traced this rise, locating it as a concern not only national but also within individual communities – anxiety over reputation was rife at a time in which the economic status of individual and family could fluctuate rapidly. Shakespeare explores this anxiety through the dramatic disruption of communication networks and the persecution of characters. He presents a tension between two different orders of knowledge inherent within slander’s fraught nexus, that of first-hand experience, and knowledge received at removes. Shakespeare focuses on the gendered perceptions of this epistemological phenomenon through creating oppositions between textual and oral authority, domestic and civic space and the liminal figure of the midwife, who both exists within the private feminine realm of the birth room, yet also holds great power in shaping patrilineal futures. This essay will argue that Shakespeare examines gossip transmission within feminine communication networks in order to question the epistemological social order of Early Modern England. Whilst learned knowledge – presented as masculine – is often foregrounded, it is simultaneously questioned and undermined by a feminine model which depends upon oral interactions. Shakespeare is drawing upon cultural concern in this juxtaposition of male and female voice, questioning which is the most important in shaping his characters’ futures.

The association between women and gossiping can be traced etymologically. Originally used to refer to baptismal sponsors, these gender-neutral origins were soon influenced by their link with birth, leading to associations with unruly female speech. From the concept of baptismal sponsors the nexus of mothers, births and gossiping was borne, unmistakably gendered female. Caroline Bicks explores this gendering, noting “the connection between midwives, gossip, and tale telling was developing whilst Shakespeare was imagining his dramas. ” Open Source Shakespeare cites the word ‘gossip’ as appearing eight times across Shakespeare’s corpus, most often in speech about feminine, illegitimate forms of information transmission. In The Merchant of Venice it appears twice in reports of Antonio’s ships. In recounting what he has heard, Salarino adds “if my gossip Report be an honest woman of her word”, slyly undermining the woman’s reputability. To this Salanio responds, I would she were as lying a gossip in that as ever knapped ginger, or made her neighbours believe she wept for the death of a third husband.

In his textual notes, John Drakakis writes that ‘knapped ginger’ can be glossed as “fabricated spicy stories. ” In wishing the rumours false, both men highlight the unreliable associations surrounding women’s speech, yet also its vital role in channelling information throughout communities. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck inscribes himself into a scene of female discourse, lurking in the “gossip’s bowl”, as male eavesdropper and interlocutor. In his attempts to disrupt their conversation Puck incarnates male anxiety about gossiping women. Rewriting their talk as a farcical scene, “each trick is an attempt to stop up the channels of female speech by negotiating inside and around female bodies. ” The concern with the female body is central to the role of midwife as gossip. Private, female-exclusive sites were the ideal sites for women to talk without male supervision.

Shakespeare explores anxiety surrounding the female leaky body through the figure of the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. She is a wet-nurse, a position which, similar to that of the midwife, requires feminine space. Lord Capulet explicitly scolds the Nurse as a gossip when she tries to defend Juliet. He first commands, “Hold your tongue, / Good Prudence, smatter with your gossips, go”, before sharply seeking to silence her again: “Peace, you mumbling fool! / Utter your gravity o’er a gossip’s bowl, / For here we need it not. ” Her speech is relegated, exiled from the realm of masculine authority. The plural ‘gossips’ in the first assault recognises the existence of a designated space for female speech, yet highlights Capulet’s disquiet about this. The reference to the ‘gossip’s bowl’ aligns gossiping with drunken inconsistencies. Overtones of religious desecration are introduced, as the image of the Christening cup is tainted with notions of loose talk. Alongside these negative associations, however, the image of the cup also becomes a symbol of strong communal bonds between women. The counterpart exclusion to this is emphasised through the irony of Lord Capulet’s mistaken understanding of Juliet’s grief. His denunciation of the Nurse as a “mumbling fool” highlight’s his own lack of understanding, mistaking Juliet’s tears for grief over Tybalt’s death. The pertinence of femininity within this exchange is revealed by the invitation extended by Juliet to Lady Capulet to enter the network she shares with the Nurse. Juliet addresses her mother directly, as she could not her father, entreating her to delay the upcoming marriage. Lady Capulet’s response – “talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word” – denotes a speech-dependent act of self-exclusion. Removed completely from this feminine communication network, Lord Capulet’s attempts to control his daughter are continually undermined. Shakespeare creates a sharp juxtaposition of male and female epistemological forms throughout this scene through contrasting private and public space.

After the Capulets depart, Juliet and the Nurse are alone and the bedchamber it is restored to the sanctity of the female gossips’ space. Uninhibited speech is once again enabled. The Nurse sets out a plan, encouraging Juliet to marry Paris, in speech tinged with the indecorous tone of gossiping innuendo. She declares, “O, he’s a lovely gentleman! /Romeo’s a dishclout compared to him”. This comparison of men is a stereotypical depiction of ‘girl’s talk’. The focus is not on making her parents happy, but Juliet’s own pleasure. Despite agreeing with Lord Capulet, the Nurse could not say so in front of the patriarch – her “gravity” depends upon the means of gossip. We see what Bernard Capp notes, that “a woman’s best prospects generally lay in triggering the active support of her gossips by working with the grain of community opinion, appealing simultaneously to their compassion, solidarity and self-interest. ” Gossiping offers women agency – in a world dictated by patriarchal hegemony, female connections granted greater force in communities. A similar contradiction between male and female speech is seen in the conflict between Paulina and Leontes in The Winter’s Tale about Perdita’s birth. Unlike the Nurse, Paulina offers a legitimate, validated speech. Her version of the story, attesting to Hermione’s fidelity, is still disregarded by Leontes because it stems from women’s talk. The transition to present Perdita in court moves Paulina between symbolically gendered space, yet she has to bring epistemologically feminine discourse. In discussion with Emilia, she notes, He must be told on’t, and he shall. The office Becomes a woman best; I’ll tak’t upon me.

Paulina recognises that she is the only figure who can attempt to transfer knowledge between the two spheres, having unique access, as Bicks notes, to “a maternal utterance and a paternal audience. ” Believing the child to be a bastard Leontes will not accept her story, and enraged, refers to Paulina as “midwife”. The word encapsulates all latent male hostility towards feminine epistemology. Because Paulina denies Leontes’ narrative authority, he sees her tale as a narrative construction spun from idle birth room talk. Having negotiated a chain of informants, Paulina’s knowledge is presented at a series of removes. Leontes believes the baby to be Polixenes’ because he thinks he witnessed the affair. Unfailing belief in male authority triumphs over Paulina’s feminine truth, simply because this truth stems from a space from which man is denied. The conflict between the written masculine and verbal feminine is extended through the trial scene. The establishment of “sessions” over which Leontes presides denies idle chatter and upholds official currents of discourse. It is significant that the indictment is read from transcript, as written legislature is more reliable than the feminine oral. The formal language which accuses Hermione, “thou art here accused and arraigned / of high treason” is cold, using, as Pitcher notes, “hostile, insulting pronouns”. It is formal, standing in stark contrast to the appeals made by Paulina, choosing aggressive masculine reason over women’s plaintive discussions.

Two different, gendered registers of epistemology are again demonstrated in Much Ado About Nothing. As the characters contrive to engineer love between Beatrice and Benedick, they come up with a plan which depends upon gossip, and which Shakespeare uses to demonstrate how this operates in male and female spheres. In a mirrored pair of scenes in the orchard, first Don Pedro, Claudio and Leonato talk in deliberate earshot of Benedick of Beatrice’s love for him; in the next scene Hero and Ursula do the same about Benedick for Beatrice. The fundamental difference in the two ploys regards the origins of the information framed. In the male exchange, it is continually stressed that the information has come from Hero: “you heard my daughter tell you how”, “’Tis true indeed, so your daughter says”. In fewer than eighty lines there are eight references of this kind. In contrast, Hero and Ursula only mention their male sources once, when Hero says “so says the prince and my newly-trothed lord”. The emphasis upon Hero as source reflects the anxiety of female conversation. More detail is required because of the connection between female gossiping with unreliable narratives. It also presents Hero as violating the sanctity of female space – in relaying the information back to these men, she is disrupting gender and spatial boundaries. As Claire Gueron notes, “Hero, like the biblical Eve, is the victim of a male discourse positioning her as the transmitter of forbidden knowledge. ” The men are also complicit, but it is the woman who is denigrated. Even as the men participate in the gossip that both the Nurse and Paulina were silenced over, it remains female – troublesome because it is unregulated. Despite the apparent reciprocity of male and female attempts to foster the relationship of Beatrice and Benedick, the masculine account is supposed to be more authoritative.

The masculine anxiety inherent within female talk is reflected in the interactions within Shakespeare’s drama. Women gossiping becomes a site of cultural agency, and for Shakespeare, the discursive female character offers a site of disruption. The legitimacy of these voices is often questioned, reflecting an Early Modern concern with epistemological authority. Despite male attempts to silence them, however, their traces always remain, stretching back into an oral tradition of collective cultural agency – as Hermione comes back to life at the close of The Winter’s Tale, Paulina’s tale is validated, but only after the breach of sixteen year’s harm.

References

1. Ferdinando Pulton, De pace regis et regni (London, 1609), cited in M. Lindsay Kalpan, The Culture of Slander in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
2. ‘Gossip, n. ’, Sense 1: ‘One who has contracted spiritual affinity with another by acting as a sponsor at a baptism’, OED Online, (entry first published 1900, accessed 21. 10. 17).
3. Caroline Bicks, Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p. 17.
4. ‘Gossip, Open Source Shakespeare Concordance, [accessed on 24. 10. 17],
5. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, ed. John Drakakis, III. i. 6-7 (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2015). Further quotations from this text are given in brackets.
6. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ed. Sukanta Chaudhuri (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2017). Further quotations from this text are given in brackets.
7. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, III. v. 170-1, III. v. 172-4, ed. Rene Weis, (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2012). Further quotations from this text are given in brackets.
8. Bernard Capp, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 126.
9. William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, ed. John Pitcher, II. ii. 29-31, (London, Arden Shakespeare, 2010). Further quotations from this text are given in brackets.
10. Claire Gueron, ‘Rumour and Second-Hand Knowledge in Much Ado About Nothing’, pp. 93-103 in The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern English Literature, ed. Sophie Chiari, (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015), p. 102.