« She were a rose indeed, if she had but— » : Aposiopèse et chasteté dans les romances de William Shakespeare

Abstract

Sixteenth-century rhetorical treatises prescribe the chastity of discourse and recommend silence rather than scurrility, notably with the use of aposiopesis, or the figure of interruption. In The Arte of English Poesie (1589), George Puttenham defines this figure as a means of showing decency and modesty in speech. Partly inspired by the Greek romances from the first to the third centuries AD, Shakespeare’s romances are often seen as advocating chastity and stage characters who preach a demure use of language. Hence, these late plays lend themselves to a study of the relationship between silence and chastity in the use of aposiopesis. The trope is defined in rhetorical treatises as a figure of restraint. This paper aims to demonstrate that the plays turn this figure of the speaker’s decency into a figure of complicity with the spectator.