CRITICISM

Bock, Philip K. “‘I Think But Dare Not Speak’: Silence in Elizabethan Culture.” Journal of Anthropological Research 32 (1976): 285-94.

Categorizes different types of silence in Shakespeare's plays. Bock distinguishes between those which imply ambiguity, enhance characterization, express transient emotions, or underscore the nature of the relationships between dramatic characters.

Busia, Abena P. A. “Silencing Sycorax: On African Colonial Discourse and the Unvoiced Female.” Cultural Critique 14 (winter 1989-90): 81-104.

Briefly considers the implications of the physical absence of Sycorax from The Tempest—even though Prospero and Caliban repeatedly allude to her—within the context of a broader discussion of the control of Black women's voices and images in colonialist literature.

Deats, Sara Munson. “The Conspiracy of Silence in Shakespeare's Verona: Romeo and Juliet.” In Youth Suicide Prevention: Lessons from Literature, edited by Sara Munson Deats and Lagretta Tallent Lenker, pp. 71-91. New York: Plenum Press, 1989.

Describes the deaths of Romeo and Juliet in terms of modern adolescent psychology, emphasizing the lack of candid communication between the young couple and their biological parents as well as their surrogate ones: the Nurse and Friar Laurence.

Fawcett, Mary Laughlin. “‘Such Noise as I Can Make’: Chastity and Speech in Othello and Comus.” Renaissance Drama 16 (1985): 159-80.

Argues that both Desdemona and the Lady in Milton's masque move from passive listening, to echoic language, then verbal power, and ultimately silence, as men circumscribe their autonomy and deny them effective means of expressing and defending their innocence.

Fly, Richard D. “Revelations of Darkness: The Language of Silence in King Lear.” Bucknell Review 20, no. 3 (winter 1972): 73-92.

Explicates the way that characters' increasingly disjunctive and fragmented speech mirrors King Lear's general movement toward universal chaos, and how the play explores instances of human anguish that are beyond expression.

Grennan, Eamon. “The Women's Voices in Othello: Speech, Song, Silence.” Shakespeare Quarterly 38, no. 3 (autumn 1987): 275-92.

Examines the implications of women's speech and silence in Othello. Grennan calls attention to the honest, intimate utterances shared by Desdemona and Emilia in Act IV, scene iii (the interlude in Desdemona's bedchamber), and to Othello's and Iago's repeated refusals to hear those voices.

Heberle, Mark A. “‘Innocent Prate’: King John and Shakespeare's Children.” In Infant Tongues: The Voice of the Child in Literature, edited by Elizabeth Goodenough, Mark A. Heberle, and Naomi Sokoloff, pp. 28-43. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994.

Analyzes the suppression of children's voices in Shakespeare's plays, with particular reference to young Arthur's silence while the politically corrupt adults in King John manipulate his interests to serve their own. Yet, Heberle notes, in his dialogue with Hubert (Act IV, scene i), Arthur “speaks for himself and saves his life.”

MacDonald, Joyce Green. “Speech, Silence, and History in The Rape of Lucrece.” Shakespeare Studies 22 (1994): 77-103.

Maintains that Shakespeare's telling of the Lucrece story differs from its antecedents in its emphasis on the rape as a political catastrophe as well as a personal one. MacDonald asserts that Lucrece's dead body becomes an articulate emblem of republican integrity, mutely suggesting the nexus between speech and power.

McGuire, Philip C. Introduction to Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare's Open Silences, pp. xiii-xxv. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

A synopsis of what McGuire means by the term “open silence.” By itself, the Shakespearean text does not determine the significance or effect of an open silence, he contends; it only emerges in performance, when actors and directors collaborate with the playwright to interpret it.

———. “Egeus and the Implications of Silence.” In Shakespeare and the Sense of Performance, edited by Marvin Thompson and Ruth Thompson, pp. 103-15. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989.

Considers the meaning of Egeus's silence in Act IV, scene i of A Midsummer Night's Dream, after Theseus overrules him and declares that Hermia may marry Lysander. Whether this signifies acquiescence or dissent is open to interpretation, McGuire asserts, and he points out that the issue of reconciliation between father and daughter is further complicated by differences in the Folio and Quarto texts of the play.

Motte, Brunhild de la. “Shakespeare's ‘Happy Endings’ for Women.” Nature, Society, and Thought 1, no. 1 (fall 1987): 27-36.

Suggests that by silencing the eloquent, self-confident females of his comedies once they become betrothed or married, Shakespeare questioned the notion that marriages based on love allowed women individual expression and freedom from the exercise of patriarchal power.

Rocklin, Edward L. “Measured Endings: How Productions from 1720 to 1929 Close Shakespeare's Open Silences in Measure for Measure.” Shakespeare Survey 53 (2000): 213-32.

A detailed analysis of how five productions of Measure for Measure dealt with the open silences of Isabella and Claudio in the final scene. Though these were diverse stagings of the work, each sought to overcome, through revision and other creative choices, the seemingly disharmonious ending of the play.

Rovine, Harvey. “Silent Characters as Scenery.” In Silence in Shakespeare: Drama, Power, and Gender, pp. 19-35. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987.

An overview of Shakespeare's use of nonspeaking servants, guards, and attendants to help establish atmosphere and location, and to silently reinforce—or sometimes subvert—the words and actions of the principal characters.

Shibata, Toshihiko. “Voices and Silences in Shakespeare's Plays: A View from a Different Cultural Tradition.” In Shakespeare and Cultural Traditions, edited by Tetsuo Kishi, Roger Pringle, and Stanley Wells, pp. 216-22. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994.

Calls attention to dramatic reticence as a distinctive form of voice and notes the ways in which power relations in Shakespeare's plays condition speech and its absence. Shibata also remarks on the emotive power of silence in both Shakespearean and traditional Japanese drama.

Stempel, Daniel. “The Silence of Iago.” PMLA 84, no. 2 (March 1969): 252-63.

Contends that Iago's refusal in the final scene of Othello to explain his actions is consistent with his Jesuitical casuistry throughout the play: arrogantly maintaining his claim to utter freedom of will, he insists on the freedom not to act and remains silent despite the threat of torture.

Taylor, Mark. “Farther Privileges: Conflict and Change in Measure for Measure.” Philological Quarterly 73 (1994): 169-93.

Using Karen Horney's psychoanalytical paradigm of “conflict, neurosis, and defense” as a basis for his analysis, Taylor argues that in the course of the play, the Duke, Isabella, and Angelo each develop a healthy, mature view of sexual desire, and that Isabella's silence at the end signals her happy acceptance of the Duke's proposal.

———. “‘The Rest Is Silence,’ Or Is It? Hamlet's Last Words.” Upstart Crow 17 (1997): 78-87.

Considers the degree to which Hamlet's final line signifies his concern with fame and reputation, and speculates about whether death silences or subverts his attempt to say how he wants to be remembered.

White, R. S. “‘The Cry of Women’: Offstage Macbeth.” Shakespeare Jahrbuch (1992): 70-9.

Proposes that the silencing and marginalization of female consciousness in Macbeth underscores the moral deficiencies—especially with respect to loyalty and forgiveness—of the play's male characters.

Williams, Carolyn D. “‘Silence, Like a Lucrece Knife’: Shakespeare and the Meanings of Rape.” Yearbook of English Studies 23 (1993): 93-110.

Surveys the origins and nature of Renaissance ideas about rape—especially the notion that the dead body of a rape victim is more eloquent than her words could ever be—and how these are reflected in the aftermath of the sexual violations of Lucrece in The Rape of Lucrece and Lavinia in Titus Adronicus.

Wright, George T. “The Silent Speech of Shakespeare's Sonnets.” In Shakespeare and the Twentieth Century, edited by Jonathan Bate, Jill L. Levenson, and Dieter Mehl, pp. 314-35. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998.

Suggests that Shakespeare's sonnets, as well as lyric poetry in general, represent “unsounded, silent meditations.” Wright also links the inward speech of the sonnets to the innovative soliloquies—another form of interior discourse—in Shakespeare's mature dramas.

Zender, Karl F. “The Humiliation of Iago.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 34, no. 2 (spring 1994): 323-39.

Analyzes the motifs of speech and silence in Othello, arguing that the interlude with Desdemona while they await the Moor's arrival in Cyprus in Act II, scene i and the final lines of Act V, scene ii demonstrate Iago's failure to master language.