A moment for metaphor on the Elizabethan stage (William Shakespeare)

Motivated by claims that Richard of Shakespeare's 3 Henry VI and Richard III represents a Vice figure only, this dissertation examines the configuration of early-English play personae en route to showing how Richard's metaphorical language encourages an interpretation of the persona that exceeds the meanings of the Vice alone. The first two chapters address the problems in the categorization and definition of plays and play personae, focusing on the material, experiential activities of medieval like all play personae, function as flexible tools of the playmaking craft, not as forms defined within classical categories, which is a post-Enlightenment conceptualization ill suited to the study of medieval, Tudor, or late-Elizabethan plays. The next three chapters begin with a review of some of the research-supporting cognitive linguistics, the major claims of which include the notions that basic-level concepts are grounded in our bodily experiences, that language and thought are fundamentally integrated, and that cognitive activities such as metaphor, metonymy, and blending create mental spaces structured in a manner that is motivated selectively but not determined by the structure of basic-level concepts. Other research supports the claim that Elizabethan grammar-school students engaged in certain cognitive-experiential activities that profoundly enhanced their ability to deploy metaphors. The late-Elizabethan playwrights' skills in metaphor use developed as well in response to their experiential activities within the urban subculture of commercial playmakers that formed in London by the 1580s. Analysis of metaphor use in English-language plays between 1300 and 1595 indicates a significant increase in use in the 1580s, at which time personae came to be configured through metaphorically elaborate dialogue and monologue. Rather than relating to a free play of meanings in a self-referential system of arbitrary signs and signifiers, the speech of a persona such as Shakespeare's Richard creates complex cognitive-linguistic domains that can be interpreted as a space of self that is meaningful to the reader or auditor.