Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Verbatim Quotation

I can't quite remember direct, verbatim quotations appearing in the plays we've read until The Changeling and 'Tis Pity. In both of these cases, when a verbatim quotation is recalled by one of the characters it is usually to the dismay of, or disadvantage to, the person quoted. For example, in 3.3 of The Changeling, Lollio quotes Antonio to Isabella. Especially in a play such as The Changeling, where code switching and double-talking seems par for the course, does the danger of being directly quoted point to an underlying concept of veracity, truth-telling, or consistency within the world of the play or perhaps the 17th c. world at large?

In 'Tis Pity, the idolatry, or the golden calf, metaphor is consistently applied to both the love of Giovanni to Annabella and also to love in general. Is idolatry a more contemporarily digestible metaphor for an amorous relationship than, perhaps, the others used in the plays we've read: prostitution, commodification, etc? Does this metaphor maybe point to a more purely conceived, Petrarchian notion of love available to the well-off that has been lost either in the market or in the present (17th c.) age?

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