Introduction

Tongue, “whether goest thou?” Lingua, “Quò tendis?”¹ “O my Tongue, where are you going? Are you preparing to do good or harm?”² Here are several versions of a question that haunts the Elizabethan culture and that the three treatises that I have chosen to excavate strive to answer. How can one control an organ that is compared to the “stearne of a ship by which the whole vessel is ruled and governed”³ and that is described as both foul and fair, unstable,⁴ double, good, and evil? This essential ambivalence⁵ is conveyed by two tongue stories that circulated in early modern Europe. One is told by Erasmus, inherited from Plutarch’s De Garrulitate⁶ and then recurrently recycled, notably by Marconville⁷:

Amasis, king of Egypt, once sent a sacrificial beast to his friend Pittacus, renowned among the seven wise men of Greece, and asked him to return the parts of the carcass which he thought worst and best of all. He was sure his friend would send him two different parts. But he cut out the tongue, and sent it to the king to show that no part of man was finer than a good tongue or more harmful than a wicked one. I add “of man” because the tongue is neither the best nor the worst part of other living creatures.⁸

The second significant story that illustrates the essential ambivalence of the tongue is Aesop’s fable, “The Satyr and his Guest,” notably told by Whitney in an emblem entitled “Bilingues Cavendi”:

A Satyre, and his hoste, in mid of winters rage,
At night, did hye them to the fire, the could for to asswage.
The man with could that quak’d, upon his handes did blowe:
Which thinge the Satyre marked well; and crav’d the cause to knowe.
Who answere made, herewith my fingers I doe heate:
At lengthe when supper time was come, and bothe sat downe to eate;
He likewise blewe his brothe, he tooke out of the potte:
Being likewise asked why: (quoth hee) bicause it is to whotte.
To which the Satyre spake, and blow’st thou whotte, and coulde?
Hereafter, with such double mouthes, I will no frendship houlde.
Which warneth all, to shonne a double tonged mate:
And let them neither suppe, nor dine, nor come within thy gate.⁹

These two stories represent the tongue as a paradoxical organ where good and evil, hot and cold meet. Without mentioning either Amasis or the Satyr, Carla Mazzio states that in the early modern world, the tongue is described as an “ambivalent organ,” a zone of crisis, “always seeming to pull in two directions at once.”¹⁰ She quotes Erasmus’s Lingua, in which the tongue appears as a place of conflict and turbulence:

The tongue is Ate,¹¹ strife personified, if it lacks a pilot. It is a horn of plenty, if you use it well. It is Eris, rouser of quarrels, but the same tongue is Grace, who wins good will. It is Erinys, the bringer of all evils, but it likewise calms all things. It is the venom of the aspic if it acts with ill will, but a universal antidote if good intentions control it. It is the source of wars and civil strife, but it is also parent to peace and concord. It overthrows city-states and kingdoms, but it also founds and establishes them. Finally it is the deviser of death, but equally the bestower of life.¹²

Marconville emphasizes this duality at the beginning of his treatise when stating that the tongue contains “fire & water, sovereign salve & deadly poison, destruction & salvation.”¹³ For Perkins, the tongue contains both “the tongue of Christ” and “the devil’s language.”¹⁴ Webbe stresses the same ambivalence in the opening lines of his text by quoting a biblical chapter (James 3) which stands as a leitmotif in the tongue treatises:

It is a Fountaine whence waters flow both sweet and bitter, It is a Forge both of Blessing and Cursing, It is a Shop both of precious Balme and deadly poyson [Jam. 3.16,11,10,8,6], It is the Trouchman both of Truth and Error : Fire and Water are enclosed in it, Life and Death are in the power of it [Prov. 18.21]; it is a necessarie good, but an unruly evill, very profitable, but exceeding hurtfull: wee cannot well want it, nor want woe because of it.¹⁵

The three texts that are gathered here isolate and dissect this eminently unruly member. They focus on the essential ambivalence that is at the heart of the early modern tongue, an ambivalence which is clearly expressed by Erasmus, but which also appears in the Bible and in the two poles that are omnipresent in these texts: the Pentecostal Tongues of fire that make communication possible¹⁶ and the myth of Babel that seems to make the tongue forever babbling and inadequate.

A Treatise of the Good and Evell Tounge (ca. 1592 [STC 17313])¹⁷ is an incomplete translation of the Traicté de la bonne et mavaise langue, written twenty years earlier, in 1573, by a French Catholic, Jean de Marconville,¹⁸ a text that was never reedited,¹⁹ either in his time or ours. Marconville’s treatise is itself mostly an abridged version of Erasmus’s treatise on the tongue, Lingua (1525), so that the text reproduced here offers a double level of translation. Unlike Marconville’s treatise,²⁰ William Perkins’s A Direction for the Government of the Tongue according to Gods worde [STC 19760.5],²¹ was edited and translated numerous times from 1593 to 1634.²² Yet there is no modern edition of Perkins’s treatise. Ian Breward’s 1970 selection of Perkins’s works did not include it, probably because it seemed too anecdotal and peripheral within the monumental work of a theologian whom Christopher Hill has called “the high priest of the Puritans.”²³ George Webbe’s 1619 The Araignement of an unruly Tongue [STC 25156], which is described by its author as “unpolished,”²⁴ was never reedited either in his time or ours. These three texts have so far been almost entirely left in the dark.²⁵ Yet Marconville’s treatise was judged interesting enough to be translated by an unknown author who used what is called a “pamflet” in the foreword to show his English contemporaries how they should rule their tongues. Perkins’s text was edited too many times to be neglected and Webbe’s treatise, by referring to previous texts on the subject and by paving the way for future treatises, places the issue of the government of the tongue in an enduring tradition that would find its most obvious political expression in the 1623 Parliament Act against Swearing and Cursing (21 Jac. I. c.20).²⁶

Considered together, these three texts offer an interesting panorama of the culture of the tongue in the Elizabethan and Jacobean era. Contrary to other texts that concentrate on one particular aspect of the tongue, notably silence,²⁷ swearing,²⁸ and slander,²⁹ the three treatises that we have collected here examine all the major abuses of the tongue that were denounced in early modern England. They also demonstrate the double source of much material on the tongue: the authors refer to the Greek and Latin classics on the one hand, and to the Scriptures and patristic literature on the other hand.

1. THREE TONGUE TREATISES

If Marconville’s treatise is rarely mentioned by critics,³⁰ George Webbe’s and William Perkins’s treatises are more often quoted by scholars who focus on the sins of the tongue in early modern England. In 1944, John Webster Spargo, in his work on the use of the cucking-stool, showed that “the menace of the scolding tongue was much in the minds of the men of the waning Middle Ages and rising Renaissance.”³¹ After mentioning medieval texts³² on the sins of the tongue, which suggests that the interest in the theme was based on a long tradition, he notes that it became even more popular in the seventeenth century:

With learning sacred and profane, classical and humanistic, squarely behind them, the divines of the seventeenth century turned again and again to this theme, devoting essays and sermons, sometimes entire treatises, to it.³³

No longer limited to sermons, the taming of the tongue seems to have become the subject of entire treatises. Spargo mentions Webbe’s 1619 treatise, noting that “George Webbe, Bishop of Limerick, writes for two hundred pages on The Araignement of an unruly Tongue ( . . . ),” which means for Spargo that “No matter could be more serious.”³⁴ He also alludes to William Perkins’s “less stirring” treatise, “a book of over a hundred pages,”³⁵ before referring to Thomas Adams’s better-known sermon, The Taming of the Tongue, in which he finds “deeply moving prose.”³⁶ What is interesting in Spargo’s study is that it delineates a corpus, integrating Perkins’s and Webbe’s treatises into a body of texts on the tongue, among which are John Abernethy’s sermon on the Poysonous Tongue (1622), Jeremy Taylor’s four sermons on the dangers of the tongue (1653), Edward Reyner’s Rules for the Government of the Tongue (1656), William Gearing’s A Bridle for the Tongue (1663), and Richard Ward’s The Nature, Use and Abuse of the Tongue (1673).

Following Spargo’s work, Lynda E. Boose in a now famous article, “Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds: Taming the Woman’s Unruly Member” (1991),³⁷ referred to what she called these “tongue treatises”³⁸ to study Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. In her study, Perkins’s and Webbe’s treatises are only mentioned in a note, which, given the gendered nature of her approach, is hardly surprising, since neither pay much attention to women’s relation to the looseness of the tongue. Boose obviously did not find enough food for thought on scolding women in them.³⁹ In Staging Gender and Slander in Early Modern England (2003), Ina Habermann quotes both Perkins⁴⁰ and Webbe. She discusses various treatises on the tongue, aiming to demonstrate the “gendered nature of this discourse”⁴¹ and to show that the discourse on the tongue “entails a female gendering of evil speech.”⁴² She notes that “writings on the tongue formed a part of the moral advice compiled by religious men” and starts by quoting Perkins’s treatise and the way in which he presented the tongue as a fiery member.⁴³ Referring to Webbe’s text, she quotes the passage in which the tongue is compared to a “harlot,”⁴⁴ claiming that the tongue is represented as an “effeminate male”⁴⁵ throughout the treatise. Indeed, tongue treatises have been mostly analysed from this gender perspective.

But in her seminal 1989 article, “On the Tongue: Cross Gendering Effeminacy and the Art of Words,” Patricia Parker goes beyond a mere analysis of the misogynistic aspects of the texts on the tongue by focusing on one of the most influential tongue treatises in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Erasmus’s Lingua, sive de linguae usu atque abusu (On the Use and Abuses of the Tongue).⁴⁶ Her work aims to “link the recent feminist investigations of the question of female speech⁴⁷ in the Renaissance—and the governing of the unruly female tongue—with discussions of male discourse, oratory, and rhetorical style developing out of humanism.”⁴⁸ Parker notes that in Erasmus’s Lingua,

the diseases of this “wanton” bodily member are illustrated primarily by the excesses of the tongues of men. And yet throughout, the quality itself—excess of speech or overabundance of the lingual—is repeatedly coded as womanish or feminine.⁴⁹

She examines the “infection of male writing and discourse with the proverbial excesses of a ‘female’ tongue”⁵⁰ and points to the “crossing of gender-boundaries even as they are programmatically proclaimed.”⁵¹ In other words, she shows that if in theory the evil tongue is female, in practice, it is both male and female. Beyond this study of the gendering of the tongue, Parker’s study substantially contributed to giving Erasmus’s Lingua the place it deserves in the early modern vision of the tongue and of its abuses. In 1997, Carla Mazzio built on Parker’s pioneering study and focused on “the sins of the tongue” in early modern England, isolating the organ of speech in all its materiality to examine its complex function. Mazzio notes the ambiguity of the early modern representation of what Erasmus called an “ambivalent organ.”⁵² Both Parker and Mazzio analyze the 1607 play by Thomas Tomkis, Lingua, in which the tongue, an autonomous organ, becomes a character, in a dramatization of the organ of speech that may have had an influence on Webbe’s treatise.

It is the reading of these studies by Spargo, Boose, Parker, Habermann, and Mazzio, together with the awareness of the prominence of the topic on the Elizabethan, notably but not only the Shakespearean, stage⁵³ that first encouraged me to focus on these three explicit and complete tongue treatises. Texts on the tongue have mainly been read from feminist or gender perspectives and what has emerged from them in the criticism is mainly based on passages that can support reflections on gender issues. It seems important to me to offer three examples of texts in their entirety, which allow the reader to reassess the role that gender issues play in the representation of the tongue. Indeed, I hope that this collection of texts will show that the topic of the evil tongue cannot be reduced to gender issues. Even if Marconville mentions once the curiosity of women when referring to the example of Papyrius and his mother (B3^v), his treatise is not a treatise on the tongue as an exclusively feminine unruly organ, but rather throws into relief the disorders linked with the abuses of the tongue in general.⁵⁴ Perkins, in A Direction, never refers to women, and Webbe’s tongue is recurrently referred to as a “He,” and not a “she.” As Christina Luckyj notes in her book on gender and silence in early modern England, Perkins’s and Webbe’s treatises do not identify the abuses of the tongue as “specifically feminine.” Perkins’s treatise is “almost entirely ungendered” and Webbe “distributes sins of speech among men and women equally.”⁵⁵ The passage quoted by Ina Habermann on the tongue as a harlot⁵⁶ is not emblematic of Webbe’s treatise, but just one small aspect of it.

Reproducing these texts in their entirety will, I hope, encourage readers to approach them from other viewpoints than merely a gendered one. It should also contribute to showing that the tongue as it is represented, particularly in Shakespeare’s plays, is embedded in a long tradition that is both holy and profane. The purpose of this volume is to focus on the early modern culture of the tongue and to trace some of its sources. Editing these texts amounts to uncovering and exploring a network of figures, ideas and stories that are mainly inherited from both biblical,⁵⁷ patristic, “holy” authorities and classical or “prophane” sources.⁵⁸ The matter which constitutes these treatises is endlessly recycled by the Elizabethan and Jacobean world, a world that was obsessed by the abuses of the tongue and that tried to control what Erasmus called “that little flabby organ,”⁵⁹ through legal, religious and political means. This volume not only draws an early modern “tonguescape”⁶⁰ that will help the reader understand how the tongue was represented in Shakespeare’s world but it also uncovers the deep roots of this representation. With this volume we hope to build on and revisit the seminal studies such as the ones carried out by Lynda E. Boose, Patricia Parker, and Carla Mazzio which contributed to isolating the tongue, in all its materiality, as an object of exploration.

1.1. Marconville’s A Treatise of the Good and Evell toungue (ca. 1592): A database of tongue stories.

Not much is known about Jean de Marconville, “gentilhomme Percheron.”⁶¹ His dates are not even certain, as he may have been born in 1520, 1530, or 1540; and since his last work was published in 1574, critics have inferred that he did not die before that date. He was a Catholic but denounced the violence of the wars of religion,⁶² a position that appears in his Traicté (C8^v). As Carr notes in his introduction to Marconville’s De la Bonté et Mauvaistié des Femmes, Marconville had a number of interests which are reflected in the diversity of his works. He first wrote a treatise on magistrates, La Manière de bien policer la république chrestienne (selon Dieu, raison et vertu), contenant l’estat et office des magistrats, ensemble la source et origine des procès et détestation d’iceluy, auquel est indissolublement conjoinct le mal et misère qui procède des mauvais voisins (Paris, 1562), a text in which his interest in the disorders created by evil tongues (or evil neighbors) already appeared. Then he denounced religious violence in his Traicté contenant l’origine des temples des juifs, chrestiens et gentils et la fin calamiteuse de ceulx qui les ont pillez, démoliz et ruinéz, ensemble la fin tragique de ceulx qui ont destruict anciennement les temples spirituelz et simulachres de Dieu (Paris, 1563). This was followed by another tract in which he tried to explain the causes of civil disorders, his Traicté enseignant d’où procède la diversité des opinions des hommes, ensemble l’excellence de la loy chrestienne par sus toutes les autres (Paris, 1563). After his political and religious period, he broached moral issues in his Excellent opuscule de Plutarque, de la tardive vengeance de Dieu, traduict de grec en latin par Bilibaut Pirlikeimer [sic], . . . et faict français par Jean de Marconville (Paris, 1563). As Carr records, in 1564 Marconville wrote his three most popular books: his Recueil mémorable d’aucuns cas merveilleux advenuz de nos ans, et d’aucunes choses estranges et monstrueuses advenues ès siècles passez (Paris, 1564), in which he shows his taste for story telling and for strange and prodigious tales; his translation of Plutarch, De l’Heur et malheur de mariage, ensemble les loix connubiales de Plutarque, traduictes en françois (Paris, 1564); and his De la Bonté et Mauvaistié des Femmes (Paris, 1564).⁶³ A few years later, he returned to religious matters with his Chrestien advertissement aux refroidiz et escartez de l’ancienne église catholique, romaine & apostolique, contenant une exhortation salutaire pour reprendre le chemin qu’ils ont délaissé. Ensemble deux petits traictez aux amateurs de la paix (Paris, 1571). In 1573 he wrote his Traicté de la Bonne et Mavaise Langue, which has never been reedited. And his last work was entitled De la Dignité et utilité du sel et de la grande charté et presque famine d’iceluy en l’an présent (Paris, 1574).

As Carr points out, a survey of these texts shows Marconville’s fascination for “prodigious” matters,⁶⁴ that is to say matters fantastical, a fascination that will be conveyed in his marvelous “tongue stories.” These texts also show that Marconville was often more of a rewriter than a writer, with a taste for translation. The titles of three of his treatises and their oppositional nature (Bonté / Mauvaisetié, Heur / Malheur, Bonne / Mauvaise) suggest that Marconville had a binary vision of things. These three aspects of thought and style appear in his Traicté de la Bonne et Mavaise Langue.

To study Marconville’s text in context, one should also note that it is one of numerous works that focus on the tongue in sixteenth century France. In a book published in 2006, Poisoned Words, Slander and Satire in Early Modern France, Emily Butterworth analyzes a series of French treatises against calumny and evil talk. Marconville’s text is part of a wave of texts on the subject of slander, such as René Benoist’s Traicté de Detraction murmure calomnie susurration et impropere (Paris, 1580); Jean Benedicti’s La Somme des pechez et le remede d’Iceux (Paris, 1587), where one finds a chapter on the sins of the tongue (“pechez de la langue,” book IV, chap. 10); Thomas Artus’s Discours contre la mesdisance (Paris, 1600); or Pierre Bernard’s Le Fléau de la calomnie, ou, traicté contre les mesdisants et detracteurs de la renommée du prochain (Lyons, 1615). Yet, even if it shares with these texts an interest in calumny, Marconville’s Traicté is not mentioned by Emily Butterworth. It seems to stand apart, probably because its title invites to go beyond the mere question of slander and points to the subject of the tongue in general. Its being a summary of another text also gives it a particular, atypical form and status. As a matter of fact, what seems to be a translation from a French treatise and a series of anecdotes is a rewriting and abridgement of Erasmus’s Lingua, much indebted to Plutarch’s “De Garrulitate.”⁶⁵

This text is a disorderly collage of stories and ideas, which is typical of Marconville’s way of writing and notably of what Michel Simonin defined as the art of “compilation,” an art whose main rule consists in hiding important sources so that the readers have to find them themselves.⁶⁶ At least three of Marconville’s texts are rewritings of other texts: Carr has shown how Marconville’s De la bonté et mauvaistié des Femmes silently pillaged sources such as Pierre Boaistuau’s works or Pedro Mexìa’s Les Diverses Leçons de Pierre Messie published in Paris in 1554; and two of his treatises (De L’heur et Malheur du Mariage and his Excellent Opuscule de Plutarque ) are translations of Plutarch’s work. With his Traicté de la bonne & mavaise Langue, Marconville silently makes Erasmus’s Lingua accessible to a new readership. He includes some references in the margin,⁶⁷ but he never quotes or mentions Erasmus, although it is absolutely undeniable that Lingua is at the heart of this treatise. Marconville hides his main source and the translator erases all the other references that were in the French text, which contributes to making his treatise an even more perplexing object . A Treatise of the Good and Evell Toungue is the translation of a translation, the rewriting of a rewriting, which accumulates exempla without digesting them, incorporating as well stories from John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs into a treatise that was originally written by a Catholic. The English version, although it can seem, to a contemporary reader, to be deformed, unfinished, sent before its time, is a particularly interesting resurgence of Erasmus’s Lingua and provides access to many of the stories and sources that were used in Erasmus’s treatise. It is all the more interesting since its structure—although Marconville’s text is much shorter—mirrors the accumulative, enumerative, ill-sewn nature of Erasmus’s text. Both Elaine Fantham and Jean-Paul Gillet stress the imperfections of Erasmus’s Lingua. Elaine Fantham notes that “Erasmus would have done well to abridge or at least tighten the argument of the Lingua and make the direction of his thought apparent by headings.”⁶⁸ Jean-Paul Gillet, in the introduction to his French translation of Erasmus’s treatise, mentions a number of incoherences and digressions in the design of Lingua.⁶⁹ Even if the two editors manage to reconstitute a structure in Erasmus’s treatise,⁷⁰ the text seems to suffer from or satirically relish in precisely one of the sins of the tongue that it denounces: garrulousness, copiousness, prolixity.⁷¹ Although Marconville and his translator give the reader an abridged version of Erasmus’s treatise, they do not make the general direction of the text any clearer.

If it is difficult to find a structure in the Erasmian source, it is even more difficult to find one in this Treatise of the Good and Evell Tongue. It is hard to find a design in Marconville’s accumulation of tongue stories, as these anecdotes, like large chunks of undigested text, constitute most of the treatise and are not really integrated into a coherent whole. Marconville’s text in French offered some conceptual landmarks in the margin. The marginal annotations show that the beginning of the text (Fols. 1–8) is a collection of examples of babbling tongues: “Exemple de trop parler,” “Autre exemple de trop parler,” “Autre exemple de l’incontinence de la langue,” “Autre exemple.” Then Marconville offers no other conceptual catchword until Fol. 16^v: “Que c’est que la langue,” “Utilité de la langue,” “Dignité de la langue,” (Fol. 17) and then “Maux procedans de la mauvaise langue” (Fol. 22), “la table des roys doit estre exempte de mauvais propos,” (Fol. 26) “Vices ordinaires de la mauvaise langue” (Fol. 29^v). These marginal annotations have disappeared in the translation, but they can help us find the backbone of the text.

The English translation is preceded by an address to the Christian reader by an anonymous T. S.⁷² whose proclaimed aim is to offer to the readers an edifying treatise, giving them the means of the “bettering and amending of themselves” (A2). T. S. invites readers to glorify “God’s holy name” and not to blaspheme it with their “hellhoundish tongues” (A3^v). The beginning of the treatise itself focuses on the biblical admonition to rule one’s tongue, notably taken from James’s Epistle. Dana E. Aspinall is right to suggest that James’s Epistle on this unruly member (James 3, “Of the Tongue”) is at the heart of the early modern vision of the tongue.⁷³ The Treatise then, borrowing from Erasmus, states the essential ambivalence of the tongue: both a deadly poison and a source of salvation (A6).⁷⁴ Marconville uses the common story of Bias and Pittacus⁷⁵ (A6^v) to suggest that the tongue is the best and worst organ. Then he tells the story of Pambus to convey the difficulty of moderating this unruly organ (A6^v). Next, for a few pages, the treatise focuses on prating, babbling, “chatting unadvisedly” (B), the author giving “many goodly examples of too muche talke” (A8) taken from Erasmus and Plutarch’s “De Garrulitate.” Marconville has an obvious taste for storytelling, a taste that shows notably in his Bonté et Mauvaistié des femmes and in his Recueil mémorable. After having given examples of “unbridled speech” (B3), and the “undiscreet tongue” (B3), the author narrates stories of good tongues, discreet tongues, such as that of the child Papyrius who managed to keep a secret (B3-B4). In early modern texts, Papyrius was the epitome of discreet speech and silence. The treatise becomes an apology of holy silence, suggesting that the good tongue is the silent tongue. The classical figures of silence such as Harpocrates, Angerona and Pythagoras are mobilized as examples of the good government of the tongue. Then Marconville turns to the description of the tongue that nature has given us (B6^v ) and insists on its power, comparing it to the little fish called the remora, whose power was legendary.⁷⁶ This power is again presented as both good and evil. Figures of eloquence such as Orpheus, Amphion, Hercules Celticus, or Pericles (B8) are mentioned to show the “benefit of the toung” (B8). After classical figures, he quotes biblical figures like Abigail, Melchisedeth, Deborah, or Paul (B8^v), showing that “the tongue is given us to praise and magnifie God” (B8^v). The contrast between the good and evil tongues perhaps finds its clearest expression in the juxtaposition of the two biblical episodes of the Tongues of Fire and of the Tower of Babel (C2^v), two opposed biblical tongue stories that were essential in the imaginary picture of the tongue.⁷⁷ Then, in an edifying purpose, Marconville turns to “the mischief that happens of a wicked tongue” (C4). After stating that “The tongue was given us, that by it we might know god, and to helpe one an other by the communication of speeches,” Marconville notes how difficult it is for Christians to “restrain” (C5) their tongues by using the well-known story of Anacharsis’s⁷⁸ strategic placing of his hands on the two unruly organs of his anatomy (C5) and by narrating Aesop’s story of the “Satyr and His Guest,” a commonplace at the time (C5).⁷⁹ A wicked tongue is a “double tongue” (C5^v): here is the message conveyed both by profane authors and Holy Scripture. It is the tongue that causes wars; it is “the trumps and drums that strikes alarum to all sedition” says the text, Marconville alluding to the cruel wars of religion, to the “butchery” (D) that France knew at the time (C8^v). It is typical though paradoxical that at the very moment when Marconville denounces the seditious tongue he should violently curse those who brought sedition (D). After a long digression signaled by the phrase “But to return to our purpose of the mischiefe that comes of evil tongues” (D^v), Marconville warns the readers against “an evill disposed tongue” from which “proceedeth not only lying but swearing, blasphemyng, reproaches, scoffings and slanders” (D2). He then mentions the laws against the sins of the tongue (D3). It is at that stage that the translator parts company from Marconville’s text, as the end of the French treatise, that is mainly a long series of biblical stories and ideas,⁸⁰ is not translated. It is as if the translator were fed up with the endless series of examples and decided to choose some other source. The end of what is no longer Marconville’s text is based on the pure quotation of examples drawn from John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, the text thus taking on a Protestant turn. The translator, who apart from a few mistakes and omissions had been relatively faithful to the French original and had even kept the many references to France, now chooses another source that was perhaps more spectacular and familiar to an Elizabethan reader.

This short survey of the Treatise shows, we hope, that it has no apparent structure but is based on a somewhat random collection of examples. Yet it also points to some of the most recurrent tongue stories that delineated the early modern picture of the tongue.

1.2 William Perkins’s A Direction for the Government of the Tongue according to Gods worde (1595 [1593]): a do-it-yourself guide to taming the tongue.

One striking thing about William Perkins—whom Ian Breward describes as “the most widely known theologian of the Elizabethan church”⁸¹—is that his prolific works have been relatively neglected.⁸² Apart from Ian Breward’s limited “selections from the Writings of William Perkins,”⁸³ I only know of an edition of his works on casuistry, A Discourse of Conscience and The Whole Treatise of Cases of Conscience by Thomas F. Merrill (1966), an edition of The Art of Prophecying, with The Calling of the Ministry by Sinclair B. Ferguson (1982 / 1996), a facsimile edition by James Sharpe of A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft (2003),⁸⁴ and a facsimile edition of The whole treatise of the cases of conscience, distinguished into three Bookes (1972). A modern edition of Perkins’s complete works would be very useful. A Direction was edited numerous times between 1593 and 1634 and translated into various languages,⁸⁵ but there is no modern edition of this tongue treatise.

A Direction was written by William Perkins (1558–1602),⁸⁶ theologian and Church of England clergyman, a Cambridge scholar generally considered as a Puritan.⁸⁷ The biographical note that describes Perkins in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography summarizes a debate about his being a Puritan or a “moderate Puritan.”⁸⁸ Whether Perkins is a moderate Puritan or not, it is to be noted that in A Direction, he denounces theatrical spectacles, stating that “the visible representation of the vices of men in the worlde, which is the substance and matter wherof plaies and enterludes are made, is ( . . . ) to be avoided” (7). This rejection of theatre as one of the places where evil tongues prevail is one of the features of the archetypal figure of the Puritan. Moreover, this aspect of Perkins’s Puritanism is confirmed in his chapter on writing where he states that

All this which is set downe concerning speech, must as well be practised in writing as in speaking. Wherby are condemned ballads, bookes of love, all idle discourses and histories, being nothing else but enticements and baits unto manifold sinnes, fitter for Sodome and Gomorrah, then for Gods Church. (29–30)

Moreover, the fact that Perkins quotes Philip Stubbes’s Anatomy of Abuses may be significant. It is not the purpose of this introduction to thoroughly explore the complexities of the word “Puritan” that has come to appear ever more inadequate.⁸⁹ Rather, I will briefly situate A Direction in Perkins’s thought and theology and provide readers with some elements that will allow them to understand this tongue treatise better.

It is amusing to note that according to an apocryphal story, Perkins’s religious life started because of a tongue story. Some historians note that after some years of debauchery, he converted to a religious life when he heard a mother say to her child: “Hold your tongue or I will give you to drunken Perkins yonder.”⁹⁰ This story ironically summarizes the admonition that is delivered in Perkins’s treatise: “rule thy tongue or you will be punished.”

It is important to recognize that Perkins’s treatise is embedded in a context of theological debate. If Marconville depicted the tongue as the source of wars and seditions, referring to the disasters of the wars of religion, Perkins’s directions for governing the tongue are also inscribed in a precise religious context and precise theological disagreements. This notably appears when he alludes to the Jesuits as follows:

And it is a bold part of the pestilent generation of Papists, who take to themselves the name of Jesuits, wheras the like name of Christian was given to the disciples at Antioch not by the devise of man, but by divine oracle. (15)

This passage again reveals one of the ironic features of tongue treatises that we already noticed in Marconville’s text: to denounce the evil tongue, one cannot but have recourse to the evil tongue. It also shows that the evil tongue is always the tongue of the other, here that of the Jesuits who unlawfully name themselves “Jesuits” while the name of “Christian” was given by divine oracle. In chapter V, the reader may perceive an indirect denunciation of Jesuistic double tongue and equivocation.⁹¹ Perkins’s reflection on swearing and the use of oaths (28) is part of a debate notably with the Anabaptists who, contrary to Perkins, considered that all oaths should be forbidden. But if traces of theological debates crop up here and there, this text is primarily a general, very practical admonition to all Christians to rule their tongues.⁹²

Contrary to Marconville’s treatise, Perkins’s text is very tightly organized,⁹³ confirming the influence of Ramism on the Protestant theologian.⁹⁴ A Direction is a do-it-yourself guide to taming the tongue. The title of chapter I is eloquent enough: “Of the general meanes of ruling the tongue.” And Perkins opens the final chapter with the following hope: “I heartily desire, that all Christians would put these rules in practice.” (33) Perkins is well known for his practical and pedagogical spirit⁹⁵ and his “art of prophesying” and this shows throughout this tongue treatise. At every stage he strives to explain what he means: “The way to get a pure heart is this” (1), “The purified heart appears by these signs” (2). It is as if he were providing checklists so that each Christian reader can examine the government of his or her own tongue and come to some diagnosis. Having mentioned the “Language of Canaan” (1), he explains what the expression means two pages later (3). The title of the treatise really corresponds to its content. Throughout, the author explains, defines, directs. In chapter V, on lying, he uses a question–answer pattern to make clear what the Bible means by unlawful lying. Perkins’s purpose is to make clear what is a good tongue and what is an evil tongue by studying the cases in which boundaries between the good and the bad government of the tongue are not clear. All the notions that he uses, such as grace, urbanity, fidelity, are carefully explained. The treatise is made up of directions that are explained and defined and then illustrated by biblical passages, following a basic pattern of definition-illustration. The statement of principle is followed by illustrations. As McKim notes, this series of very precise directions is “intersperced and buttressed throughout by numerous Scripture verses.”⁹⁶ If Marconville’s sources are both scriptural and classical, Perkins’s material is essentially biblical and patristic, more “holy” than “profane,” even if he also refers to Pliny and Aristotle. This treatise confirms what Ian Breward noticed about Perkins’s use of quotations: “Augustine headed the list in order of frequency of quotation, followed by Jerome and Chrysostom.”⁹⁷ Yet Perkins’s mode of quotation is different from that of Marconville, as each time he uses it to serve a very precise idea. What the readers remember of Marconville’s treatise is a series of tongue stories forming a sort of database. With Marconville, story telling prevails over ideas. In A Direction, ideas and principles prevail over stories that are only used as illustrations. If Marconville’s treatise is descriptive and narrative, Perkins’s text is essentially prescriptive.

1.3. George Webbe’s The Araignement of an unruly Tongue (1619): “Thou naughty tongue.”

George Webbe (1581–1642)⁹⁸ was not yet Bishop of Limerick when he wrote The Araignement, but “preacher at Stepleashton (Steeple Aston) in Wiltshire.” His most successful writings are A Posie of Spiritual Flowers (1610), The Practice of Quietness, his most popular series of sermons published in 1615, and The Garden of Spiritual Flowers (1609), “One of the most successful early Stuart handbooks of devotion.”⁹⁹ His “close association” with Protestant figures such as Richard Rogers, Richard Greenham, and William Perkins has been noted¹⁰⁰ and finds a good illustration in The Araignement. As a matter of fact, Webbe quotes Greenham’s “Sermon of a Good name” (188) and Chapter 10 of his treatise, entitled “The binding of the tongue to the good behaviour. Rules and Directions for the same,” seems to prolong and echo Perkins’s work on the unruly tongue:

Many and excellent are the Treatises which have beene written, both by Philosophers and Divines concerning the well ordering and governement of the tongue, out of whose savory writings I will onely gather this little handful of Directions. (143)

It seems clear that Webbe had Perkins’s treatise in mind when he wrote his Araignement.

Judging by what Webbe writes in his address to Douse, one may infer that he was himself the target of evil tongues when he wrote The Araignement. “And what man liveth but is wronged by the tongue? Happy is that man that can avoid the strife of tongues.” (A3^v) Webbe’s introduction to his treatise suggests that no one, not even himself, can avoid the wrongs and dangers of the evil tongue. He even anticipates probable criticism and slander by calling his treatise a “petty pamphlet” (A2). Many tongue treatises seem to be works of authors who have personally suffered from slander, Elaine Fantham notes, as was the case of Erasmus when he wrote Lingua, and Charles Gibbon, for example, when he wrote his Praise of a Good Name (1594) after having been the victim of slanderous tongues. This feeling of being wronged by the tongue explains why the treatise should be an “araignement,” the trial of an evil tongue that has committed wrongs and crimes. With Webbe, having an evil tongue is no longer a sin; it is a crime. His treatise mirrors a secularization of the perspective on evil tongues. As Ina Habermann notes, “In Webbe’s treatise, the crimes of the tongue have clearly reached the province of the common law; over and above its transgression of religious and moral rules, the tongue is indicted of high treason, petty treason, felony, murder, and breach of the peace.”¹⁰¹

Webbe’s treatise has much in common with Perkins’s A Direction. As in A Direction, the discourse is organized into chapters and branches within these chapters, which we have charted in one of the appendices. Like Perkins’s tract, Webbe’s pamphlet is a web of biblical quotations but it also refers to many other texts and authors,¹⁰² a method that is typical of Webbe’s style, overcrowded with quotations. But Webbe’s work is also part of a tradition that gives a voice to the allegorical figure of the Tongue. In fact, as is the case in William Averell’s A Mervailous Combat of Contrarieties (1588) or in Thomas Tomkis’s play Lingua: Or the Combat of the Tongue and the Five senses for Superiority¹⁰³ (1607), the tongue appears as a character that is given a voice and can defend himself.¹⁰⁴ This gives Webbe’s text a hybrid dimension, the treatise taking a theatrical turn, which is part of its interest and generates some irony in a context of opposition to theatre. Here the “unruly tongue” is methodically “araigned and indicted of 1. Treason, 2. Fellonie, 3. Murder, 4. Riots and routs” (14), and all the arguments that he can use to plead in his own defense are “confuted,” as the treatise takes the form of a judicial proceeding:

Against this unruly Tongue, because so many and so grievous complaints have beene made in all ages, both by Christians and by the Heathens, by Divines, Philosophers, Poets, and all sort of people; This present Treatise doth intend a judiciall proceeding, that so the misdemeanors therof be-//[13 ]ing discovered, it may at the least bee bound to the good behaviour, for the better quiet of the good, and terror of the bad, when they shall see what hurt commeth by, and what danger happeneth unto a wicked tongue. (12–13)

It should be pointed out that Webbe had already used the structure of the trial in Gods controversie with England (1609), his first sermon at Paul’s Cross,¹⁰⁵ in which it is God that accuses England of numerous crimes. It is this aspect that makes Webbe’s Araignement lively and theatrical, because it introduces an accusing voice into the text: “Let us call the Malefactor to the barre” (69), “Thou naughty tongue” (75), “Sirrah tongue” (76), “thou lying tongue” (133). Thus does the tongue partly become a character in the text.

But beyond this dramatization of the tongue, the message is the same as in Perkins’s and Marconville’s texts. Webbe’s treatise suggests that individuals must rule their tongues and ears, even if is “a matter of great difficultie.”¹⁰⁶

2. ONE PARADOXICAL ENTERPRISE: TAMING THE UNTAMABLE

It is, Webbe writes, “a laborious labour, an Art of Arts, to rule the tongue.”¹⁰⁷ As varied as they might be in their forms, these three texts share a difficult, if not paradoxical, purpose. Their authors endeavor to tame what seems to be ungovernable. “For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: but the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.” (James 3:7–8). “The tongue can no man tame,” says the Bible.¹⁰⁸ This quotation from James is at the centre of most of the tongue treatises that we have come across.¹⁰⁹ And yet the three texts that are edited here try to tame this rebellious organ, to find ways of controlling it. In the three texts the tongue is singled out as an independent, unruly member, a material object that needs to be governed, to be bridled. According to Perkins,

To the framing of our speech Ambrose requireth three things: a yoke, a ballance, and a metwand:¹¹⁰ a yoke, to keepe it in stayed gravitie: a ballance, to give it weight of reason: a metwand, to keepe it in measure and moderation [Offic.lib.1 ].¹¹¹

Mentioning these three instruments of control emphasizes the materiality of the tongue. What we see in these treatises is the written image of what Claude Paradin in his Devises Héroïques¹¹² and then George Wither in his Collection of Emblems¹¹³ represented as a winged, that is an autonomous, wild, ungovernable organ. The object of these texts is what Jean-Jacques Lecercle calls “the incarnated word, the word made flesh.”¹¹⁴

In the addresses to their readers and patrons, the treatises denounce a world in which the tongue is the site of all abuses. In the translation of Marconville’s text, T.S. starts by stating that the treatise he is presenting is “never more neede full ( . . . ) then now in this our so corrupt age”, an age that sees the triumph of “blasphemies, perjuries, flatteries, filthie & abhominable speeches, cursings, raylings & backbitinges.” Perkins inveighs against the scandalous uses of the tongue that prevail everywhere:

It would make a mans heart to bleede, to heare and consider howe Swearing, Blaspheming, Cursed speaking, Railing, Backebiting, Slaundering, Chiding, Quarrelling, Contending, Jesting, Mocking, Flattering, Lying, Dissembling, Vaine and Idle talking overflow in all places, so as men which feare God had better be any where, then in the companie of most men. (E1)

George Webbe’s address to his patrons reveals a world where a text that denounces the abuses of the tongue cannot but lead to “the critical censure of many a Tongue”:

The Malicious tongue wil defame it [this petty pamphlet], the Scorners Tongue deride it, the Slanderous Tongue back-bite it, the Censorious Tongue will whip it, the Curious toung will hang, draw, & quarter it . . . (A2^v)

It is as if a text on the excesses of the tongue could not but ironically feed even more excesses. The three texts present a world in which the evils of the tongue are everywhere and propose to offer a guide to the good use of the tongue. They all have an edifying, pedagogical purpose. T.S. describes Marconville’s treatise as follows:

The matter conteined herein setteth forth unto thee, how and in what maner thou shouldest use and rule thy tongue, the good which commeth by the modest and holy usage therof, & the evill and great danger which ariseth therby in the abuse of the same both to body and soule. (A2)

Perkins warns the readers against the abuses of the tongue and asks them to “repent” and “amend” lest they should cry with Dives, the rich man, in hell. And, he writes,

for thy better helpe herein, I have penned these fewe lines following, concerning the Government of the Tongue. Use them for thy benefite, and finding profite thereby, give glorie to God. (E1^v)

The same idea emerges from Webbe’s address to his patrons where he claims that in this “petty pamphlet”:

you shall finde (although unpolished) both an Antidote against a bad Tongue, and an Amulet for a good Tongue; how we may bridle our owne, how wee may tame others Toungs. (A3^v)

Thus the three texts have one same political purpose: their authors want to call their Christian co-citizens back to reason and to define what makes the difference between the good and the bad tongue. Perkins, well known as a casuist, notably examines the tight limits between lawful and unlawful swearing and between acceptable and reproved jesting.¹¹⁵

In Marconville’s treatise, the tongue is described as “unruly,” “blasphemous,” “filthy,” “hellhoundish,” “babbling,” “undiscreet,” “evil,” “wicked,” “double,” “evill disposed,” “vyperous,” “incontinent,” “talkative,” “immoderate,” “pernicious,” “venimous,” “yll,” “disloiall and devilish,” and “seditious.” Webbe uses the adjectives “evill,” “bad,” “unruly,” “malicious,” “scorners,” “censorious,” “curious,” “perverse,” “slanderous,” “skolding,” “rayling,” “false,” “wilde,” “shrewd,” “naughty,” “wicked,” “perjured,” “offensive,” “backbiting,” “blasphemous,” “lying,” “wrathfull,” “mocking,” “swearing,” “wretched,” “filthy,” “ribald,” “bloudy,” “lewd.” Perkins uses the word “speech” more often than the word “tongue,” which may suggest that, for him, it is the speakers who must rule a tongue that can be “ungodly,” “rotten,” “wretched” or “ribauld” but that can also be “holy,” “gratious,” “true,” “courteous,” “fair,” “wise,” “godly.” What emerges from these texts is that the tongue is good by nature but that men have corrupted it.

The starting point of the three texts is a simple statement: God has been kind enough to give us a tongue and to make man a “sociable living creature”¹¹⁶ but men “abuse their tongues.”¹¹⁷ They should “use [them] as that God may be honored and served by them”¹¹⁸ rather than to blaspheme, swear, rail, jest, lie, or mock.

2.1. The anatomy of the tongue

Nature, or God, has been good enough to give man a tongue and to instill in it the means of its own control. What Webbe calls “the fabrick of our bodies”¹¹⁹ should show us how to use our tongues. The tongue is small, which should in itself tell us that our speech should be measured. We have two eyes and two ears but only one tongue, which suggests that we should not have a “double” tongue and that we should not, like the guest in Aesop’s fable of the “Satyr and His Guest,” blow both hot and cold out of our mouths.¹²⁰ Nature has also given us the double barrier of the teeth and the lips that should help us to contain our tongue.¹²¹ The very anatomy of the tongue invites man to moderation and containment.¹²² Most of the early modern English texts on the tongue rest on a metaphorical reading of this intemperate organ. In The Anathomie of Sinne (1603), the physical features that are characteristic of the tongue and that should show us the way to its proper use are summarized as follows:

First, he (God) hath made it tender and soft, to signify our wordes shoulde be of like temper.

Secondly he hath tied it with many threades and stringes, to restrain and bridle it.

Thirdly, it is every way blunt, whereby we are admonished that our words ought not to be pricking or hurtfull.

And fourthlye, it is enclosed with a quicke-set and strong rampier of teeth and gummes, and with lippes which are as gates to shut it uppe, for feare it should take too much liberty.¹²³

This text confirms Carla Mazzio’s analysis when she notes that “Nature, according to Erasmus, Brathwait, and many other early modern anatomists of the word, has encoded mechanisms for censorship into the anatomical structure of man.”¹²⁴ Yet “this one tongue is more troublesome than all the rest,”¹²⁵ Webbe writes. The very barriers that should help us control the tongue are not only insufficient; they also invite to transgression and excess, since nature has also made the tongue mobile, humid and slippery,¹²⁶ thus giving it the means to stray from the right path. One of the texts that best express this idea is Affinati’s The Dumbe Divine Speaker (1605) where the reversibility of the tongue and its tendency to tumble into evil is clearly stated in two contrasting passages:

The tongue is soft and delicate; sweete and Rose coloured; sharpe in forme of a Launce; flexible and voluble, close kept, walking but in a little roome. In like manner, our talk ought to be soft, by benignity, Rose coloured, as sweetned by honesty, sharpned by severity, pleasing by sagacity, close kept by diligent custody. He that hath his talke softned by compassion, sweetned by love, sharpned by correction, made tractable by discretion, and close shut up by heedfull caution, can very hardly faile in his speaking.¹²⁷

There be many that have all these properties of the tongue, but in quite contrary manner to our description. They are sweete of tongue, but how? in flatterie: they are Rose coloured, but in rage, anger and rayling: they are sharpe, but in detracting: they are agill and flexible, but in various, deceiptfull and unconstant speaking: they are close couched and shut up too, but in envying, as loath to imparte to others any goodnesse (if they have any at all) that themselves are possessed of: So, they will be sure to brag, that they have these five conditions, although it bee in a cleane contrary nature.¹²⁸

Juxtaposing the two passages, the reader realizes not only that both good and evil are inscribed in the tongue but also that the good tongue is to the evil tongue what an ideal world is to reality. The tongue is a fighting ground encompassed but never totally controlled by the double ramparts of the lips and teeth, as Carla Mazzio notes, referring to Thomas Tomkis’s play, Lingua (1607):

Tomkis is by no means alone in imagining the mouth as a literal prison-house of language. In early modern anatomical texts, philosophical treatises and conduct books alike, the mouth is positioned as a war zone, with tongue and teeth locked in perennial combat.¹²⁹

We have one only tongue for two uses, eating and talking,¹³⁰ suggesting that we should use it with circumspection in both instances, but this double function also makes the mouth a complicated and dangerous crossroads.¹³¹ The natural barriers that nature has given us are not enough and we should endeavor to reinforce them because nature also made our tongue slippery, as William Baldwin argued in his best-selling anthology, A Treatise of Moral philosophie (1547):

The tongue is a slippery and nimble instrument, wherby commonly the treasures of the heart are in such wise unlocked, layed forth and spread abroad, that not onely thereby friendship is greatly ingendred, earthly Treasures increased, the life quietly stablished, perpetuall praise and everlasting felicitie obtayned, but contrariwise frienship is decayed, worldly riches are diminished, the life most miserably wasted, infamy and immortall payne is thereby purchased.¹³²

The tongue is slippery, double, unreliable, ambivalent.¹³³ The mouth is a battle zone “doubly portcullis’ed”¹³⁴ with teeth and lips, but whose barriers do not manage to hold a rebellious and excessive organ. The early modern treatises and sermons constitute barriers that should help men to tame their tongue. This extract from Baldwin’s anthology points to the tight relationship that exists between the tongue and the “treasures of the heart.”

2.2. The tongue and the heart

Nature or God has placed the tongue under the brain and not far from the heart, which suggests, as is constantly noted by early modern authors, that there should not be any discrepancy between the heart and the tongue. Marconville, borrowing from Erasmus,¹³⁵ praises the providence of nature:

such is the providence of nature in the situation of our members, that she hath assigned to ech one his right roome, aswell for the dignitie and decoration of the bodie, as for the commoditie and use of the members. The braine which is the very seate of reason, the most worthie part of man, is placed all aloft in the head, as in an imperiall throne, there to prescribe and beare rule over the inferior partes: the tongue which is the interpreter of the inwarde thoughtes of the hart, is setled in the middest of both, to the ende it should be under the braine, and not far from the hart, whom also the same nature hath enclosed and hedged in with teeth and lips, as it were within a defensible bulwarke, that it might not be ranging unadvisedly.¹³⁶

He presents the tongue as the “messenger”¹³⁷ or “interpreter” of the heart,¹³⁸ while Webbe defines it as a “faire secretarie of a most faire Heart.”¹³⁹ One finds the same idea in A Direction, where Perkins starts by stating that a good tongue derives from a pure heart: “The pure heart is most necessarie, because it is the fountaine of speech,¹⁴⁰ and if the fountaine be defiled, the streams that issue thence can not be cleane [Mat. 15.19].”¹⁴¹ “Speech,” writes Perkins, “is the very image of the heart.”¹⁴² He, too, inscribes the tongue in man’s general anatomy:

The minde is the guide of the tongue: therefore men must consider before they speake. The tongue is the messenger of the heart, and therefore as oft as we speake without meditation going before, so oft the messenger runneth without his arrand.¹⁴³ The tongue is placed in the middle of the mouth, and it is compassed in with lippes [^{. . .} ] and teeth as with a double trench, to shew us, how we are to use heed and preconsideration before wee speake: and therefore it is good advise, to keepe the keye of the mouth not in the mouth but in the cupborde of the mouth.¹⁴⁴

The mind is the “cupboard” of the mouth that should help us to speak with reason and moderation. Webbe develops the same idea:

A good Heart is necessary to a good tongue, because the [Pro. 4.23]¹⁴⁵ Heart is the fountaine of speech ; For , [Luke 6.45] out of the aboundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh : And if the Fountaine [Mat. 15.19] bee defiled, the streames that issue therehence cannot bee cleane: for [Job 14.4], who can bring a cleane thing out of that which is uncleane ?¹⁴⁶

This natural connection between the tongue and the heart means that the two should never be dissociated. That is why paying mere “lip service”¹⁴⁷ to God is particularly unholy. As Claudius says in Hamlet, “Words without thoughts never to heaven go” (3.4.98).¹⁴⁸ The hypocrisy that shows through sins of the tongue such as lying or flattery is based on the unnatural dissevering of the bond between the tongue and the heart. Guillaume de la Perrière represents the breach of this natural bond in a well-known emblem where a flatterer is shown offering his tongue with one hand while holding his heart in his other hand, hidden behind his back.¹⁴⁹ The text reads

Flateurs de Court tiennent la paste aux mains,
A tous venants feront des serviables:
Jusques à tant que par tours inhumains,
Auront saoulez leurs Coeurs insatiables.
Pour se monstrer envers tous amyables,
Ont grand babil, avecques peu d’effect:
Merveille n’est si leur Coeur contrefaict,
Ha maintes gents reculez en arriere:
Car tousjours ont, par leur vouloir infait
Langue devant, & le Coeur en derriere.¹⁵⁰

The link between the heart and the tongue is recurrently stressed in the three texts, where, as Perkins notes, “Truth of speech is a vertue whereby a man speaketh as he thinketh.”¹⁵¹

Yet what is also, paradoxically, underlined is that one should not utter everything that comes from the heart or mind. “He that gards his mouth and tongue, gards his own soule,” Marconville writes (A7). There is a time to speak and a time to be silent.¹⁵² And if slander, lying, and swearing should be banished, babbling is also one of the great sins of the tongue. Moderation is the key to the right government of the tongue. According to Perkins,

Hee that speaketh many wordes, speaketh either false things or superfluous, or both: as when a river overflowes, the water gathereth much slime: so many wordes many faultes. When a vessell being smitten makes a great noise, it is a token that it is emptie:¹⁵³ and so the sound of many wordes shewes a vaine heart. The Gentiles have said, that God gave a man one tongue and two eares, that he might heare more and speake lesse.¹⁵⁴

This passage is to be related with the emblems by Paradin and Whitney which represent babbling with the image of a leaky vessel¹⁵⁵ but it also points to the proverb saying that “Empty vessels sound most” (Tilley, V36), a proverb that Marconville, borrowing from Plutarch, no doubt had in mind when he compared “prating parrets” to “emptie vessels, which being sounded, yeeldes a lowder noise then those which are wel fraught with good liquor.”¹⁵⁶ Wise speech goes together with moderate speech, as Marconville notes: “those which can wisely speake, can also warely holde their peace, when they see the times and tides are not apt for talke.”¹⁵⁷ The art of ruling one’s tongue is part of a culture of silence that is conveyed by these texts. Behind Paradin and Whitney’s emblem of a winged, serpent-tailed tongue representing its dangerous intemperance, one finds the motif of the winged word notably illustrated by Guillaume de la Perrière in the Théâtre des Bons engins (Emblem XC) as well as by one of Whitney’s emblems entitled “Verbum emissum non est revocabile” that refers to Horace to show that “A word once spoke, it can retourne no more.”¹⁵⁸ It is difficult to tame an organ that is compared to another unruly, incontinent organ, notably in Morosophie, where Guillaume de la Perrière shows Anacharsis holding both his tongue and his privy parts (“la main senestre à la partir honteuse, / Et la main dextre à la bouche tenoit”).¹⁵⁹ The texts suggest that one of the best ways to control the tongue is to cultivate silence. That is why one finds in Marconville’s treatise the figures of Harpocrate, god of secrecy; Angerona, goddess of silence; and Pythagoras.¹⁶⁰

2.3. The tongue and the ear

What the three texts also suggest is that a good tongue goes together with a good ear.¹⁶¹ One of the remedies against the evil tongue lies in the management of the ear. In The Araignement, Webbe mentions the ear in two ways. He first states that a babbling and injurious tongue has no ears:

There is no charme can charme it, for what is commonly said of the Belly , Venter non habet aures ; The belly hath none eares, may bee as truely verified of the Tongue, Lingua non habet aures, the tongue hath no eares. And although they who have this evill tongue, have eares as well as tongue; yet, as they imitate the poyson of the Adder in their Tongue; so they have the deafenesse of the Adder in the Eare: [Psal. 58.4,5] They are like the deafe Adder which stoppeth her eare, and will not hearken to the voyce of the Charmer, charming never so expertly.¹⁶²

As Plutarch notes it, “looseness of the tongue becomes impotence of the ears”¹⁶³ and a tattling tongue means a deaf ear. But the ear is as ambivalent as the tongue. Webbe denounces the ears that are too eager to welcome evil speeches, stating that to “keepe our tongue in order, two things are principally requisite”: first, a “good heart,” second “a good ear.”¹⁶⁴ The Lord detests not only “the tongue offending” but also “the ear abetting.”¹⁶⁵ Webbe presents the shields one should use when one is the witness of a calumny: “a deaf eare,” “a frowning look,” “a sharpe reproof.”¹⁶⁶ If the slanderous tongue can harm, it is because there is an ear that is eager to absorb the evil report. When you are the victim of a slanderous tongue, the remedies are, according to Webbe, “a deafe eare,” “a silent Tongue,” “a quiet heart,” and “a good conscience.” The body must stop the calumnious tongue by sending physical signals of disapproval, such as a frowning look, and by barricading the ear. The ear is as guilty and criminal as the ill-uttering throat. Not only are there evil tongues but also evil ears. The evil tongue needs an evil ear to be efficient. The arraignement of an unruly tongue is also the trial of a greedy ear. It is as reprehensible to speak evil as to hear evil (“mal ouïr”) of one’s neighbor.¹⁶⁷ This view allows for a better understanding of a play like Othello in which one can see the battle of the tongue and the ear, Iago’s tongue assaulting Othello’s ear that may finally seem eager to swallow the slanderer’s words. Without Othello’s ear, Iago’s tongue could not work. Perkins’s description of what he calls “coloured tale-bearing” particularly enlightens the story of Othello :

The fourth is the coloured tale-bearing, when one speaketh evill of another, with fine prefaces and preambles, faining that he is verie sorie that his neighbour hath done such or such a thing: that hee speaketh it not of malice but of a good minde: that hee is constrained to speake: that hee speaketh not all he could speake: that the partie to whome the tale is told must keepe it secret.¹⁶⁸

Perkins concludes his analysis of tale-bearing by telling the reader to stop his ear: “Wherefore when men shall enter any evill communication of others, we are to interrupt it by other talke, as not regarding it.”¹⁶⁹ A deaf ear is the best shield against a murderous, poisonous tongue.

3. HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS

The three texts edited here could be subtitled “How to do things with words,” anticipating, as it were, Austin’s theory of language.¹⁷⁰ As a matter of fact, these explorations of the tongue delineate what can be identified as a pragmatic approach of language, focusing on the addresser, the addressee, the witness, and the target. “The stroke of the tongue,” writes Marconville, “is more dangerous than the dent of a spear.”¹⁷¹ He gives the reader “examples of mischiefs that an evil tongue hath wrought.”¹⁷² The tongue hurts and even kills: “The hurt which the wicked tongue leaveth behinde him is alwaies incurable.”¹⁷³ Marconville develops this idea:

The lash of the whip woundeth the flesh, but the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bone: the whip only persecuteth our carrion corpes, but the glike¹⁷⁴ of a pernicious tongue doth eclipse our bright renowne, and leaves a spot of blacke defame to our posteritie, which is more dangerous then any hurt we can receive in our body. Many men have beene slaine by the edge of the sworde, but many more by the pearcing blowes of wicked tongues.¹⁷⁵

Webbe also wants to teach the reader “How to endure the stroke of an evill tongue.”¹⁷⁶ He speaks of the “arrows” of the tongue and regularly uses such words as “shoot,” “lash,” and “smite,” as in the following passage:

In which respect wee may further indict the tongue for murther (manslaughter is too light a terme to be given unto it). There is no murther like unto the murther of the tongue ; of such tongues the Prophet Ezechiel testifieth; They carry tales to shed bloud [Ezech. 22.9]. And the Psalmist saith; They cut like a Rasor, yea , They are very swords [Psal. 55.2]¹⁷⁷: Therefore Jeremies adversaries did this way wreake their malice upon the Prophet , Come and let us smite him with the tongue [Jer. 18.18]. An evill tongue doth murder three at once: 1. The partie whom he doth defame. 2. The partie unto whom hee doth defame him. 3. Himselfe that is the defamer. And therefore doth describe this bloudy tongue to bee alwayes armed with a threefold weapon, an Arrow, an Hammer, and a Sword [Pro. 25.18]; an Arrow to wound the partie whom hee would defame in his absence whiles he is farre off; an Hammer to knocke him on the head with a false report unto whome hee doth make the report: a Sword to stab his own Soule in committing that evill which God doth hate.¹⁷⁸

A pragmatic perspective is at the heart of these texts that focus on the effects of words.¹⁷⁹ These texts are inevitably inscribed in a reflection on the power of words. If the tongue is so ungovernable, it is because it is also a weapon. Whether it is a razor, an arrow, a double-edged sword, or some poison, it is the worst of weapons because it can harm in absentia.

But it appears that this power of the tongue is double-edged when one considers the warnings that are delivered by the three authors. To deter Christians from swearing, cursing and blaspheming, they narrate stories of punishments inflicted upon swearers and blasphemers, which suggests some belief in the power of words to trigger reactions from above. This is why the tongue is a “two-edged sword”: it harms both the evil tongue and its victim. The numerous exempla show that the tongue may hurt those who blaspheme. All the stories that are quoted to edify and warn the reader against blasphemy show that evil tongues have been punished, establishing a link between words and deeds and suggesting the power of words, two kinds of justice, human and divine, prosecuting the tongue. Yet the focus on babbling, or leaky vessels shows that words are vain and inefficient. Moreover Perkins’s evocation of magic formulas as evil because superstitious suggests that words, in fact, cannot act. There is constantly this double trend between Aristotle and neo-Platonism, which makes the tongue double indeed: “There’s a double tongue; there’s two tongues.”¹⁸⁰

NOTES

1. The question appears in Claude Paradin’s Devises Héroïques, 1557, 109 and in its English translation, Heroïcal Devises, 1591, 138. See Plates 1a and 1b. See also Erasmus, Adages II i 1 70 to II vi 100, CWE 33, Adage 39, II ii 39 / LB II 460 C-D, 93: “Lingua quò vadis ? Tongue, whither wouldst thou?” See Marconville, A8 and note.

2. Erasmus, Lingua, 366 (LB 723B / ASD IV-1 331), where Erasmus also quotes a “Greek proverb”: “O my tongue, where are you going? Are you about to destroy a city, and raise it up again?” identified by Elaine Fantham as coming from Zenobius 2.99 and Diogenianus 2.24 ( Lingua, 509).

3. Paradin, Heroïcal Devises, 138. See Plates 1a and 1b. The image of the ship derives from James 3.

4. The subtitle of Marconville’s treatise mentions this “unstableness.”

5. On this ambivalence of the tongue, see Carla Mazzio’s article, “Sins of the Tongue,” in The Body in Parts, eds. David Hillman and Carla Mazzio, New York and London, Routledge, 1997, 53–79. Also published in Modern Language Studies, vol. 28, n°3 / 4, Autumn 1998, 93–124. Mazzio mentions neither these two stories nor the three texts presented here.

6. Plutarch, On Talkativeness, 506C.

7. Marconville, A6^v. See the Appendix.

8. Erasmus, Lingua, 262 (LB IV 657F / ASD IV-1 238). See Appendix. On this ambivalence, see Plate 2, Claude Paradin, Devises Héroïques, 163, “Sic praedae patet esca sui” and its English translation, Plates 3a and 3b.

9. Geffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblems, 1586, 160. See Plate 4. See Aesop’s Fables, Fable 368, “The Satyr and his guest,” 173.

10. “‘O ambivalent organ,’ writes Erasmus in Lingua (1525), lamenting the fact that malevolent and benevolent discursive agencies emerge from one and the same bodily organ. Erasmus, like many others, takes his cue from Proverbs (18:21) in noting the way in which the tongue is ‘ambi-valent,’ good and bad, always seeming to pull in two directions at once” (Mazzio, “Sins of the tongue,” 53).

11. It is to be noticed that in Much Ado about Nothing, Beatrice is described both as “Ate” (2.1.254) and as “my Lady Tongue” (2.1.272).

12. Lingua, 365 (LB IV 722-D / ASD IV-1 330). Partly quoted by Mazzio, (note 1), 71.

13. Marconville, 54.

14. Perkins, 34. Perkins quotes Chrysostome here. Webbe stresses the well-known etymological link between the figure of the Devil (Diabolos) and the slanderer (139). See OED, “Devil.”

15. Webbe, 2–3.

16. On the tongues of fire, see Ina Habermann, Staging Slander and Gender in Early Modern England, ch. 7.

17. The STC catalogue gives “ca. 1592,” while the catalogues of the British Library and Trinity College give “ca. 1594.”

18. Sometimes spelled Marcouville or Marconvile.

19. Contrary to his De la Bonté et Mauvaistié des femmes, which was published nine times (four times in Paris and five times in Lyons) and edited by Richard A. Carr in 2000. See De la bonté et mauvaistié des femmes, ed. Richard A. Carr (Textes de la Renaissance. Série “Éducation des femmes,” Paris: Honoré Champion, 2000). The treatise was first published in 1564, but Carr reproduces the 1566 edition. There is another non-scholarly edition of Marconville’s treatise, De la Bonté et Mauvaiseté des Femmes [1564] (Préface de Françoise Koehler, Paris: côté-femmes, 1991). The “gender” concerns of Marconville’s works have been more popular than his work on the tongue.

20. As the author of the translation is not identified, we will use the name of Marconville, even when referring to the English text.

21. The copy text that we have chosen is the 1595 edition. See the note on Perkins’s text.

22. See Ian Breward’s “provisional list” of the editions of Perkins’s works, in The Work of William Perkins, introduced and edited by Ian Breward (The Sutton Courtenay Press, 1970), 617–18. The Renaissance Rhetoric Short-Title Catalogue 1460–1700, eds. Lawrence D. Green and James J. Murphy, second edition (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), numbering 17 editions between 1592 and 1634.

23. Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964), 136.

24. Webbe, A3^v.

25. Perkins’s A Direction is listed in Green and Murphy, Renaissance Rhetoric Short-Title Catalogue, but neither Marconville nor Webbe appear.

26. Quoted by Ashley Montagu, The Anatomy of Swearing (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967 / 2001), 162–63.

27. Affinati, The Dumbe Divine Speaker (1605).

28. Stephen Hawes, The Conversion of Swearers (1509). Thomas Becon , An invectyve agenst the moost wicked [and] detestable vyce of swearing (1543). Miles Coverdale, A Christen exhortacion unto customable swearers What a ryght [and] lawfull othe is: whan, and before whom, it owght to be. Item. The maner of sayinge grace, or gevynge thankes vnto God (1543). Edmund Bicknoll, A sword against swearing (1579). John Downame, Foure treatises tending to disswade all Christians from foure no less hainous then common sinnes; namely, the abuses of swearing, drunkenesse, whoredome, and briberie (1608). Abraham Gibson, The lands mourning, for vaine swearing, ( 1613). Many other treatises on cursing and swearing will be published after 1619.

29. See, notably, Charles Gibbon, The praise of a good name The reproch of an ill name (1594), and William Vaughan, The Spirit of Detraction (1611, 1630).

30. Marconville’s treatise is not mentioned in Emily Butterworth’s study of calumny , Poisoned Words. Slander and Satire in Early Modern France (London: Legenda, 2006). Garthine Walker briefly alludes to it in Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 100 (note 125) and 103 (note 141).

31. Juridical Folkore in England. Illustrated by the Cucking-Stool (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1944), 110.

32. About the medieval sins of the tongue, see Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio, Les Péchés de la langue. Discipline et éthique de la parole dans la culture médiévale (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1991) and Edwin D . Craun, Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature. Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant speaker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

33. Spargo, 114.

34. Spargo, 114.

35. Spargo, 115. Spargo dates Perkins’s A Direction to 1621, when in fact the first edition of Perkins’s text dates back to 1593.

36. Spargo, 115.

37. Shakespeare Quarterly 42, n°2 (Summer 1991): 179–213.

38. Boose, “Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds,” 203 (note 69).

39. Boose, ibid.

40. Habermann is wrong both on the date and the title of Perkins’s treatise when she writes “William Perkins took it upon himself in 1597 to treat Of the Government of the Tongue ” (118).

41. Habermann, 115.

42. Habermann, 119.

43. Habermann, 118.

44. Webbe, 30.

45. Habermann, 119.

46. We will refer to this text as Lingua and use Elaine Fantham’s translation (Toronto, 1989).

47. Parker notably alludes to the work of Suzanne Hull (Chaste, Silent and Obedient, 1982), Lisa Jardine (Still Harping on Daughters, 1983), Ann Rosalind Jones (“Nets and Bridles,” 1987) and Linda Woodbridge (Women and the English Renaissance, 1984).

48. Parker, 445.

49. Parker, 447.

50. Parker, 451.

51. Parker, 452.

52. Erasmus, Lingua, 365 (LB IV 722D / ASD IV-1 330). Quoted by Mazzio, “Sins of the Tongue,” 53. Mazzio mentions many tongue treatises but she does not allude to any of the three treatises that we have chosen here. She uses sermons by Thomas Adams and John Abernethy, and some later treatises by Richard Ward, William Gearing and Richard Allestree. She also quotes The Anatomy of a Woman’s tongue, divided into five parts: A Medicine, a Poison, a Serpent, Fire and Thunder (1638?).

53. Carla Mazzio mentions the scenes that involve the severing of the organ of speech on the early modern stage, what she calls “examples of lingual dismemberment” (62), referring notably to Hieronimo in Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy (1586–87) and Piero in Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (1601).

54. Marconville examines misogynistic visions of the woman’s tongue in his De la Bonté et Mauvaistié des Femmes, notably in ch. 13 (“De l’Origine des Femmes selon l’Opinion des Gentils”) and ch. 16 (“De la légèreté volage des femmes”). See Carr’s edition, 134 and 149–53.

55. “A Moving Rhetoricke.” Gender and Silence in Early Modern England, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 50.

56. Habermann, 119 (Webbe, 30).

57. The three treatises refer to about 550 biblical passages, among which the Psalms, the Proverbs and James are the most recurrent. See Index.

58. In his address to the reader, T. S. refers to the “authority of the holy scripturs, as also of other prophane authors” (A2^v).

59. Lingua, 323 (LB IV 696B / ASD IV-1 293). Quoted by Carla Mazzio, 54.

60. We adapt Bruce R. Smith’s use of the expression “soundscape” in The Acoustic World of Early Modern England (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999).

61. “Le sieur du Defays-Marcouville” is described by René Courtin, in his Histoire du Perche (1593), as one of several scholars (“hommes doctes,” “gentilhomme bien nay et de grande lecture”) from the Perche: “Il a faict un beau traité de l’abus et mauvaisté des femmes, où il a monstré la gentillesse de son esprit; amy inthime et familier de ces hommes doctes contemporains et compatriotes. Il est de la paroisse de (blank), au ressort de Bellesme.” (427). Quoted by Carr, 12.

62. In “Extrait du Recueil Mémorable d’aucuns Cas Merveilleux,” par Jean de Marconville, in M. L. Cimber, Archives Curieuses de l’Histoire de France, (Paris, 1834 [British Library, 805 b.1]), there is the following note about Marconville (405): “Jean de Marconville, gentilhomme né dans le Perche vers 1520, a écrit plusieurs traités curieux sur la morale et l’histoire. ( . . . ) Marconville était sincèrement attaché à la religion catholique, ce qui ne l’empêche pas de désapprouver les mesures violentes prises pour obliger les protestants à rentrer dans le sein de l’Eglise. On ignore l’époque de sa mort mais il est certain qu’il vivait en 1574.”

63. This treatise was partly translated into English in 1579 under the title Praise and dispraise of women.

64. “Marconville est hanté par la notion du prodigieux” (De La Bonté et Mauvaistié des femmes, 14).

65. As Erasmus himself often borrows stories from Plutarch, it is sometimes impossible to be sure whether Marconville is using Plutarch or Erasmus.

66. Introduction to his critical edition of Pierre Boaistuau’s Le Théâtre du monde (Geneva: Droz, 1981), 13ff. Quoted by Carr , Bonté et mauvaistié, 9: “Michel Simonin nous a appris à lire et surtout à apprécier un genre littéraire qui connaissait une vogue extraordinaire à l’époque de la Renaissance: il s’agit de la compilation.”

67. In the English version, we have included them in the notes, in square brackets.

68. Lingua, introductory note, 256.

69. La Langue, 31–33.

70. Jean-Paul Gillet agrees with Fantham that there is a structure in Erasmus’s Lingua, “une structure malgré tout” (33).

71. See Patricia Parker’s article “On the tongue,” which stresses this paradox.

72. We could not find any real clue as to who this T. S. was in A Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous Publications in the English Language [by Samuel Halkett and John Laing]. 1475–1640, 3rd rev. and enl. ed. by John Horden (1980). See our note on Marconville’s text.

73. The Taming of the Shrew. Critical Essays, ed. Dana E. Aspinall (Routledge, 2002), 10.

74. In Governing the Tongue. The Politics of Speech in Early New England (1997), Jane Kamensky examines this ambivalence in ch. 1, “The Sweetest Meat, The Bitterest Poison,” 17–42. Her chapter opens with Joseph Swetnam’s version of the story of Pittacus (see the Appendix) without noting that the story was one of the most recurrent among the numerous early modern tongue stories. Carla Mazzio’s article on “The Sins of the Tongue” (1997) is based on this idea of the ambivalence of the tongue notably inherited from Erasmus and from the Proverbs (“Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” Prov. 18:21).

75. See the Appendix.

76. See Plate 5, Gilles Corrozet, Hecatomgraphie (Paris, Denis Janot, 1540), “Doulce parole rompt ire.”

77. Marconville borrows them from Erasmus’s Lingua.

78. See Plate 6 and Plate 9 (Junius Hadrianus, Les Emblesmes, Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1567, XLI, “Retiens la Langue”).

79. See the Appendix. See Whitney’s emblem, “Bilingues Cavendi,” Plate 4.

80. See the French version in the Appendix.

81. Breward, The Work of William Perkins, xi.

82. In his edition of Perkins’s works on Casuistry (1966), Thomas F. Merrill notes that “History has been unjust to William Perkins. Few men have been as famous and influential in their own day only to have their reputations dissolve into near oblivion” (ix). In Two Faces of Elizabethan Anglican Theology. Sacraments and Salvation in the Thought of William Perkins and Richard Hooker (Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 1999), Bryan D. Spinks still notes that “In spite of efforts by H. C. Porter (in Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, 1958) Thomas F. Merrill, and Ian Breward to demonstrate the stature of Perkins as a theologian, contemporary Anglicanism still not only gives pride of place to Hooker, but seems oblivious to the very existence of Perkins” (2).

83. The Work of William Perkins (1970) contains extracts from texts that Breward divides into four categories: his “theological writings,” (The Foundation of Christian Religion, A Golden Chain, and An Exposition of the Symbol ), writings on “Worship and Preaching” (Exposition upon Zephaniah 2. 1–2, Warning Against Idolatry of the Last Times, and The Art of Prophesying), “Practical writings” (A Treatise tending unto a Declaration, A Graine of Mustard Seed, Christian Oeconomy, A Treatise of the Vocations or Callings of Men and Epieikeia), and “Polemical writings” (A reformed Catholic and The Damned Art of Witchcraft). This selection of texts by Breward is based on the three-volume edition of Perkins’s Works published by John Legate and Cantrell Legge in London between 1616 and 1618.

84. In a six-volume series of facsimiles of books on witchcraft.

85. See the lists provided by Ian Breward and the Renaissance Rhetoric Short-Title Catalogue and my note on the text.

86. For a complete biographical note, see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

87. “A member of that party of English Protestants who regarded the reformation of the church under Elizabeth as incomplete, and called for its further ‘purification’ from what they considered to be unscriptural and corrupt forms and ceremonies retained from the unreformed church; subsequently, often applied to any who separated from the established church on points of ritual, polity, or doctrine, held by them to be at variance with ‘pure’ New Testament principles” (OED). According to Thomas F. Merrill, he was “the most famous and influential spokesman for calvinism of his day, and his works provide a rewarding thoroughfare into the heart of that attitude, so basic to anglo-American heritage, which we have come to call Puritan” (ix).

88. In Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (1982), P. Lake notes that “the core of the moderate puritan position lay neither in the puritan critique of the liturgy and polity of the church nor in a formal doctrinal consensus ( . . . )” but “in the capacity, which the godly claimed, of being able to recognize one another in the midst of a corrupt and unregenerate world” (282), quoted by Michael Jinkins in ODNB.

89. In her introduction to Philip Stubbes’s Anatomy of Abuses, Margaret J. Kidnie notes that the word cannot be applied to Stubbes and summarizes all the complexities inherent in the word “Puritan” (7–11). Ian Breward notes that Perkins “repudiated the label of ‘puritan’ except for those who believed that it was possible to live without sin in this life and felt that it was a vile term to be applied to the godly” (15).

90. Quoted in ODNB, from W. Haller, The rise of Puritanism: . . . the New Jerusalem as set forth in Pulpit and Press from Thomas Cartwright to John Lilburne and John Milton, 1570–1643 (1938), 64. The story appears in Benjamin Brook’s The Lives of the Puritans, 3 vols. (London, 1813), II, 129 and is quoted by Donald K. McKim in Ramism in William Perkins’ Theology (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), 5. This story is part of the semi-legendary myth of Perkins’s conversion.

91. Thomas F. Merrill mentions Perkins’s opposition to the Jesuits in matters of casuistry: “The brand of casuistry practiced by their Jesuit contemporaries they considered legalistic and prone to encourage moral laxity” (xii).

92. According to Mckim, “This work was topical rather than being based on only one passage or verse of Scripture. It dealt with what Perkins perceived to be an important and abused aspect of living: how to ‘order thyselfe in speech and silence according to Gods word’” ( Ramism, 108).

93. See the outline of Perkins’s treatise in the Appendix.

94. One important feature of Ramism is its pedagogical dimension, its culture of logic organization, which contrasts with Erasmus’s copia. On Ramism, see Walter J. Ong’s book, Ramus, Method and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1958). More recently, see Howard Hotson, Commonplace Learning: Ramism and Its German Ramifications, 1543–1630 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007). On Perkins’s Ramism, see McKim, Ramism in William Perkins’ Theology (1987): “Perkins’ discourse was set up in Ramist fashion. He divided the subject of the ‘government of the tongue’ into three main aspects: requirements, parts, and exhortation. When diagrammed Ramistically, a certain symmetry appears. The initial divisions of ‘requirements’ and ‘parts’ were dichotomized. So were the next divisions. The following divisions ( . . . ) had three divisions with three members and two divisions with four members. The next divisions were dichotomized again” (109).

95. Merrill notes that Perkins’s “most valuable character was his practical common sense ( . . . )” and that “he could reduce the complexities of abstruse theological doctrine to simple counsel and simple language” (ix).

96. McKim, 109.

97. Breward, 53.

98. The ODNB has “in or before 1642.”

99. ODNB. A Garden of Spirituall Flowers was published with Richard Greenham, Richard Rogers, and William Perkins.

100. ODNB.

101. Habermann, 119.

102. He quotes Cassiodorus, Zanchius, Nazianzen, Basil, Ambrose, Greenham, Ovid, Bernard, Plutarch, Nicephorus, and many others.

103. For a study of this text, see Parker, “On the Tongue,” 454–58.

104. Webbe’s tongue is, significantly, male, as Webbe presents “his plea for himselfe” (ch. V).

105. ODNB.

106. Perkins, 34.

107. Webbe, 145.

108. In a contemporary sermon entitled “The taming of the tongue,” Thomas Adams refers to the tongue as an “insubjectible subject.” Quoted by Carla Mazzio, 54.

109. In De natura et Gratia, Augustine explains that this does not mean that the tongue cannot be tamed, but that no man can tame it without God’s help. The idea of the tongue’s being untamable seems to be an object of theological debate.

110. Met: measure.

111. Perkins, 29.

112. Claude Paradin, Devises Héroïques (1557), 109–10, mentioned by Mazzio, 54, and Claude Paradin, Heroical Devises (1591), 137–38. See Plates 1a and 1b.

113. George Wither, A Collection of Emblemes (1635), 42, mentioned by Mazzio, 54. See Plate 7.

114. Jean-Jacques Lecercle, The Force of Language (Houndmills, Palgrave, 2004), 1.

115. Perkins, 23.

116. Webbe, 3.

117. Marconville, A3^v.

118. Marconville A3^v–A4.

119. Webbe, 11.

120. The story is told by Marconville, who probably borrowed it from Erasmus, Lingua, 371 (LB IV 726C / ASD IV-1 335) and Adages, 1.viii. 30, in a paragraph entitled: “Ex eodem ore calicum et frigidum efflare (‘Out of one mouth to blow hot and cold’).” See Whitney’s emblem, Plate 4.

121. This idea appears in almost all tongue treatises of the time, but, as Foucault notes, “the metaphor of the mouth, teeth and lips as a door that is closed when one is silent occurs frequently in ancient Greek Literature” (Fearless Speech, ed. Joseph Pearson, Los Angeles, Semiotext(e), 2001, 62). On intemperate mouths in classical Athens, see Nancy Worman, Abusive Mouths in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

122. Casagrande and Vecchio’s study of the sins of the tongue in the medieval world shows that this vision is also present in the medieval world.

123. The Anathomie of Sinne, “Reproch what,” sign. G. 2. For a metaphorical reading of the organ see also Richard Ward, A Treatise of the Nature, Use and Abuse of the Tongue and Speech (London, 1573), 169–70, quoted by Carla Mazzio (73, note 16).

124. Mazzio, 67.

125. Webbe, 11.

126. On this aspect, see Les Péchés de la langue, 98–99. Quoted by Evelyne Larguèche in Injure et Sexualité, Foreword.

127. The Dumbe Divine Speaker, 66–67 .

128. The Dumbe Divine Speaker, 80.

129. Mazzio, “Sins of the tongue,” 67.

130. Marconville, C4. This idea of the tongue’s two functions is inherited from Aristotle, “On the Soul,” in Vol. VIII, ed. W. S. Hett, 2.8.20–23, LCL 117: “Just as the uses of the tongue both for taste and for articulation, of which taste is an essential to life (and consequently belongs to more species), and articulate speech is an aid to living well ( . . . ).”

131. For developments on this idea and on the deciphering of the physiology of the tongue, see Casagrande and Vecchio, ch. 5, “La Langue entre Gourmandise et loquacité,” 113–26.

132. Baldwin, 152^v–153.

133. See Erasmus, Lingua, “O ambivalent organ” (365, LB IV 722D / ASD IV-1 330). Quoted by Mazzio, 53. In Devises Héroïques, Paradin incarnates this double tongue in the figure of a serpent. See Plate 17, “Prohibete nefas” (148).

134. See Richard II, “Within my mouth you have engaol’d my tongue / Doubly portcullis’d with my teeth and lips” (1.3.166–167). In the Arden edition of Richard II, Charles Forker, quoting Kittredge, refers to Lyly’s Eupheus: “We may see the cunning and curious work of Nature, which hath barred and edged nothing in so stronglye as the tongue, with two rowes of teeth, therewith two lyppes” (1.279). On the tongue in Richard II, see Vienne-Guerrin, “The anatomy of the tongue in Richard II” (2005).

135. For this “natural” reading of the tongue, see Erasmus, Lingua, 265–66 (LB IV 659 D / ASD IV-1 241- LB IV 660B / ASD IV-1 242).

136. Marconville, B6^v.

137. Marconville A3^v.

138. Marconville, C4^v.

139. Webbe, 6.

140. Webbe uses the same expression in ch.10.

141. Perkins, 1. “But those things which procede out of the mouth, come from the heart, and they defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, sclanders.” (Matt. 15:18–19).

142. Perkins, 7.

143. Errand, message. See Webbe, 146.

144. Perkins, 6.

145. “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”

146. Webbe, 143.

147. Webbe, 40.

148. Many thanks to Sarah Hatchuel for drawing my attention to this passage.

149. Guillaume de la Perrière, Le Théâtre des Bons Engins, 1544 (1539), emblem LXXIII. Plate 9.

150. The English version of the emblem, translated by Thomas Combe, in The

Theater of Fine Devices, in 1614 reads: “The flatterers and traitors both be such, / That with their words their thoughts do not agree. / For till just triall bring them to the tuch, / They seeme in shew most faithfull friends to bee: / But little will they do, professing much; / And inwardly from friendship they do flee; / Who when their heart behind they do convay, / They beare in hand their tongue another way.” The Theater of Fine Devices (London: Printed by Richard Field), 1614, F2^v.

One finds the same motif in an emblem on hypocrisy by Georgette de Montenay, Livre d’Armoiries en signe de Fraternité, 1619 (Paris, Amateurs du Livres, 1989), Emblème XXV, 130.

151. Perkins, 9.

152. See Perkins, 3.

153. Plutarch, “De Garrulitate,” 502E, 399.

154. Plutarch, “On Listening to lectures,” 39B, LCL 213, “De Garrulitate,” 502C, 397. See also Erasmus, Lingua, 268 (LB IV 661D / ASD IV-1 244), who cites James 1:19: “Let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak.” See Von Arnim, Stoic. Vet. Frag. 1, 68, Zeno (= Zeno of Citium) Frag. 310. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 7.23, LCL, 135.

155. See Plate 10, Paradin, Devises Héroïques, 146. One finds the same image in Geffrey Whitney , A Choice of Emblemes, 12, “frustrà.”

156. Marconville, A7.

157. Marconville, A8.

158. Théâtre des Bons Engins, see http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/facsimile.php?id=sm686_m7v. A Choice of Emblems, 180. See http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/whitn180.htm.

159. Quoted by Marconville, C5. Morosophie, quatrain 16. See Plate 6. This image also appears in Junius Hadrianus, Les Emblesmes, Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1567, XLI, “Retiens la langue” (see Plate 8).

160. Marconville, B6. On Harpocrate, see Alciat, Les Emblèmes, “In silentium,” 17. On Angerona, see Pierre Cousteau, Le Pegme, Lyons, 1560, 144 (Plate 11). See Raymond B. Waddington, “The Iconography of Silence and Chapman’s Hercules,” Journal of Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 33 (1970): 250–63, and Karen Pinkus, Picturing Silence (1996). On these three major figures of silence, see the Appendix.

161. For a study of the representation of the ear in early modern England, see Keith M. Botelho, Renaissance Earwitnesses. Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

162. Webbe, 90.

163. Plutarch in “De Garrulitate,” 502C, LCL, 397.

164. Webbe, 144.

165. Webbe, 140.

166. Webbe, 161–67.

167. René Benoist, Traicté de Détraction, Hiiv. René Benoist summarizes this idea by quoting Saint Jerome (“in epistola ad nepotiam”) as follows: “Donne toy garde d’avoyr la langue ou les oreilles chatouilleuses ou demangeantes, afin que tu ne detractes d’autruy, & que aussi tu n’escoutes ceux qui en detractent.”(H). “Be careful not to have a ticklish or itching tongue or ear, so as not to detract others and not to listen to those who detract others.”

168. Perkins, 26.

169. Perkins, 27.

170. Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words, 2nd ed., eds. J. O. Urmson et Marina Sbisà. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001 (1962, 1975). David Cressy stresses this idea in his 2010 book, Dangerous Talk (6).

171. Marconville, A5.

172. Marconville, A2.

173. Marconville, A5.

174. Gleek, jest, jibe ( OED ).

175. Marconville, C7.

176. Webbe, ch. 12, 168.

177. The image of the razor appears in Ps. 52:2. The swords are mentioned in Ps. 55:21.

178. Webbe, 25–27.

179. The same pragmatic approach is to be found in the Traicté de detraction by René Benoist (Hiiv).

180. Much Ado About Nothing, ed. Sheldon P. Zitner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 5.1.166.