Brown 1989

Lang. Soc. i8, 159-212.
Printed in the United States of America
Politeness theory and Shakespeare's

four major tragedies*
ROGER BROWN
Department of Psychology
Harvard University
ALBERT GILMAN
Department of English
Boston University
ABSTRACT
Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1987) have proposed that

power (P), distance (D), and the ranked extremity (R) of a face-
threatening act are the universal determinants of politeness levels in
dyadic discourse. This claim is tested here for Shakespeare's use of Early
Modern English in Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello. The
tragedies are used because: (1) dramatic texts provide the best informa-
tion on colloquial speech of the period; (2) the psychological soliloquies
in the tragedies provide the access to inner life that is necessary for a
proper test of politeness theory; and (3) the tragedies represent the full
range of society in a period of high relevance to politeness theory. The
four plays are systematically searched for pairs of minimally contrast-
ing dyads where the dimensions of contrast are power (P), distance (D),
and intrinsic extremity (R). Whenever such a pair is found, there are
two speeches to be scored for politeness and a prediction from theory
as to which should be more polite. The results for P and for R are those
predicted by theory, but the results for D are not. The two components
of D, interactive closeness and affect, are not closely associated in the
plays. Affect strongly influences politeness (increased liking increases
politeness and decreased liking decreases politeness); interactive close-
ness has little or no effect on politeness. The uses of politeness for the
delineation of character in the tragedies are illustrated. (Politeness the-
ory, speech act theory, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, theory of literature,
Shakespeare studies)
INTRODUCTION
Act II, scene /, lines 31-32,1

Macbeth (to servant):2 Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,
She strike upon the bell.
© 1989 Cambridge University Press 0047-4045/89 $5.00 + .00
159
ROGER BROWN AND ALBERT GILMAN
The same play, IV, ii, 63-67,

Messenger (to Lady Macduff): Bless you, fair dame! I am not to you
known,
Though in your state of honor I am perfect. [I am fully informed of
your honorable rank.]3
I doubt [fear] some danger does approach you nearly:
If you will take a homely [plain] man's advice,
Be not found here.
As speech acts (Austin 1962; Levinson 1983; Searle 1969), both speeches are
"directives" (Searle 1976) or attempts to induce the hearer to do something.
The most notable contrast in the two speeches lies in the efficiency of the
first and the politeness of the second.
Macbeth says just as much as, but not one word more than is necessary
to make his intention unambiguous. The order to the servant perfectly satis-
fies Grice's (1975) maxims of conversation. It is, however, brusque, as the
messenger's advice to Lady Macduff is not. The latter speech says more than
is strictly necessary and so sacrifices efficiency in order to accomplish some-
thing not mentioned in Grice's maxims. The messenger is concerned to be
polite, and politeness means putting things in a way that takes account of the
other person's feelings.
Where in the messenger's speech is politeness found? The salutation "Bless
you, fair dame!" is more than routinely warm, and "dame" is a form of
address for a woman of rank. Deference is expressed in the line "Though in
your state of honor I am perfect" and also in the self-deprecating "a homely
man's advice." There is delicate sympathy in the verb doubt of "I doubt
some danger does approach you nearly" whether doubt is understood as a
hedge on know or as fear. Finally, the request itself is not an action imper-
ative but an agentless passive (Blake 1983) which has no presumption in it.
Why should Macbeth's order to his servant be briskly Gricean and the
messenger's advice to Lady Macduff most thoughtfully courteous? An
answer could be given in terms of the unique particulars of each situation,
but we are interested in an abstract answer that renders the two cases com-
parable with one another and with infinitely many additional discourse
dyads. We must first consider social station (or status or power); the rank-
ing of speaker and hearer. Macbeth, the speaker, stands higher than his ser-
vant and so, as far as power considerations go, need feel no compulsion to
be polite. The messenger stands lower than Lady Macduff and so has rea-
son to be somewhat polite, even if station were the only consideration. Sec-
ond, we must think of the horizontal social distance between speaker and
hearer. Are they familiars or strangers? Familiars can be, and usually are,
more casual. There is less horizontal social distance between Macbeth and
his servant than between Lady Macduff and the previously unknown mes-
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POLITENESS THEORY AND SHAKESPEARE S TRAGEDIES
senger. Finally, we must ask how great a thing is requested in the two cases.
Both speakers intend actions to be taken, but the actions are differentially
disruptive for the two addressees. Of Macbeth's servant, only a routine ser-
vice is required. Lady Macduff is urged to take her children and flee the cas-
tle as soon as possible. The greater intrusion, even though it is in the hearer's
own interest, seems to require greater attention to the hearer's feelings.
The three variables postulated as determinants of the strong contrast in
politeness between the two speeches from Macbeth we shall call power (P),
distance (D), and ranked extremity (R). Brown and Levinson (1987) have
proposed that P, D, and R are the universal determinants of politeness levels
in speech acts though the ways in which P, D, and R are calculated are cul-
turally specific. In this article, we determine whether the Brown/Levinson
claim holds for Shakespeare's use of Early Modern English (1500-1700) in
Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello and, in addition, illustrate the
uses of politeness in drama.
There is, finally, something unsatisfactory in our analysis of the mes-
senger's speech. It is not only polite, not only politer than Macbeth's order
to his servant, it is one of the politest speeches in the play. Why should so
much consideration for Lady Macduff be necessary in advising her to flee
for her life? Speech act theory suggests the answer. The messenger's five lines
constitute not one but two speech acts: a directive and an assertion. The
sense of the directive baldly expressed in the messenger's next line is: "Hence
with your little ones." The sense of the assertion would seem to be: "Some
danger does approach you nearly," but it is more extreme than that because
it is already too late for the lady and her little ones to escape. The murderers
are almost immediately upon them. The assertion in the messenger's mind
is: "You are lost." And the politeness is there not just to make the directive
tolerable but from pity for Lady Macduff's terrifying plight.
POLITENESS THEORY
Politeness means putting things in such a way as to take account of the feel-
ings of the hearer. These feelings, in the Brown/Levinson theory, are of just
two kinds: those concerned with positive face and those with negative face.4
Positive face is every person's want (the authors' carefully chosen word) that
his or her wants be desirable to at least some others, not all others for all
aspects of face, but the significant ones for each aspect. Very exactly
expressed, what each person wants is that others want for him what he wants
for himself; for example: life, health, honor, a positive self-image. Negative
face is also a matter of wants: every person's want to be free from imposi-
tion and distraction and to have her personal prerogatives and territory
respected. The two speeches from Macbeth both threaten the hearer's neg-
ative face since the speaker intrudes upon the free self-determination of the
161
hearer. The messenger's speech also threatens the hearer's positive face since
the bad news delivered is that there are some who threaten the hearer's life.
The problem of politeness only arises, in the Brown/Levinson theory,
when there is a speech act to be performed, for some reason other than
politeness, which is however intrinsically face threatening (a face-threatening
act or FTA). Any directive or request, for example, is a negative FTA and
any criticism or insult is a positive FTA. The central goal of the theory is to
specify the circumstances in which each of five politeness strategies will be
selected.5 These strategies, ordered on a principle that is explained later,
are:
1. Do the FTA on record without redressive action, baldly.
2. Do the FTA on record with redressive action of the kind called posi-
tive politeness.
3. Do the FTA on record with redressive action of the kind called nega-
tive politeness.
4. Do the FTA off record.
5. Don't do the FTA.
Positive politeness is simply defined as any effort to meet positive face
needs. The phrase "Have a good day," renewed daily, is a quintessential act
of positive politeness: The speaker wishes for the hearer what the hearer
wishes for himself. Negative politeness is defined as any attempt to meet neg-
ative face wants, but negative politeness, unlike positive, is designed to
redress just the specific FTA that creates the occasion for politeness. On rec-
ord FTAs are speech acts for which the "speaker's meaning" or intention is
unambiguous. An FTA is off record when the speaker's intention is ambig-
uous and can only be worked out by inference. Because off record FTAs are
ambiguous, the speaker cannot be held accountable and any inferred mean-
ing is deniable.
Politeness theory holds that the selection of strategies is universally deter-
mined by just three variables. Two concern the relationship between speaker
and hearer: vertical social distance or power and horizontal social distance
or solidarity. These are the same dimensions that Roger Brown and Albert
Gilman used in i960 to describe the semantics of European pronouns of
address as typified by the French tu/vous (T/V) distinction and which have
been reported since i960 to be the dimensions underlying pronominal (and
other) address in at least 28 different languages, many of them unrelated
(Alrabaa 1985; Fang & Heng 1983; Friedrich 1966; Kempff 1985; Kroger,
Wood, & Kim 1984; Lambert & Tucker 1976; Levinson 1977, 1982;
Mehrotra 1981; Ogino 1986; Paulston 1976; Yassin 1975; and others).
Pronouns of address have relational rather than referential meanings and
in this way they are like kin terms. Just as it is not a property of a person
to be always addressed as dad or son, so it is not a property of a person to
be always addressed as T or as V; in both cases the form used varies with a
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POLITENESS THEORY AND SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES
relation, the relation between speaker and addressee. The very important dif-
ference between kin terms and pronouns is that the former (unless "ex-
tended" or "fictive") serve to relate only some members of a social group
with some others, whereas the latter serve to relate each one to each other
one and so constitute a fully connected language of relationship. If the
dimensions governing such relational forms are universal across languages,
then such dimensions would seem to have a privileged fundamental status for
the analysis of social life. On present evidence they are universal and, in
politeness theory, they are called power and distance, symbolized as, respec-
tively, P and D.
There is a third variable that affects the choice of a politeness strategy and
this is the intrinsic extremity of the face-threatening act. In the culture and
situation in question, how much does the FTA interfere with self-determin-
ation (negative face) and approval (positive face)? The assumption made is
that there will be a fairly constant ranking of impositions in terms of expen-
ditures in time, expertise, and goods and also a ranking of threats to posi-
tive face in terms of desired attributes like honor, beauty, and generosity.
The necessary operations are not all at hand, but the idea is clear: Telling
someone that a certain lieutenant, newly met, drinks to excess (e.g., Iago to
Montano of Cassio) is less disruptive than telling a man his wife is guilty of
adultery (e.g., Iago to Othello of Desdemona).
Brown and Levinson combine additively the three variables affecting the
selection of a strategy into the formula Wx = D(S, H) + P(H, S) + Rx,6
which in words says that the weightiness or riskiness of FTAX is a function
of the social distance between speaker (S) and addressee (H) plus the power
of the addressee (H) over the speaker (S) plus the culturally ranked intrin-
sic threat (Rx) posed by the FTA. In crude operational terms, W should be
greater if H is a superordinate (e.g., Macbeth) than if H is a subordinate
(e.g., servant); W should be greater if S and H are long-separated country-
men (e.g., Ross and Malcolm in Macbeth) than if S and H are old friends
(e.g., Hamlet and Horatio); and W should be greater if R is an accusation
of murder and incest (Hamlet to the king) than if R is an accusation of
meddling (Hamlet to Polonius).
The overall claim is that the inclination to select a higher-numbered strat-
egy will increase with the intrinsic weightiness or perceived risk of the FTA.
For the lowest levels of risk, strategy (i): Do the FTA on record without
redressive action, baldly, will seem ideal since it is maximally efficient and
there is no risk. Such is the case with Macbeth's order to his servant. At the
highest levels of weightiness or risk, the right strategy will seem to be (5):
Don't do the FTA. Such is the case for Hamlet when he dare not accuse the
king of having murdered his father. Intermediate levels of perceived risk are
claimed to be associated with intermediate numbered strategies.
Brown and Levinson first published their politeness theory as a 300-page
163
article that was awkwardly packaged with a short essay on questions to make
a book entitled Questions and politeness (Goody 1978). In 1987, Cambridge
University Press reissued the article as a book, Politeness: Some universals
of language usage, which includes a new 50-page review (by Brown and
Levinson) of research inspired by the original article. The authors do not in
their 1987 book revise their theory but, rather, reprint exactly the 1978 arti-
cle. In their up-to-date critical review of research, they grant that recent work
has made them question several points in the 1978 theory even though it has
not convinced them of error on any point. New research has not, of course,
stopped with the 1987 review and we do not know how Brown and Levin-
son will respond to the more recent empirical findings and theoretical criti-
cisms (e.g., Holtgraves 1986; Holtgraves, Srull, & Socall, in press; Slugoski
& Turnbull, in press).
In this situation investigators who want to work with the Brown/Levinson
theory of politeness must pick a version. We have done this - after reading
most of what has been done and making our own critical evaluations. It
seems best not to defend our decisions in a detailed way but simply to set
them down, pointing out the differences from the original theory and tak-
ing responsibility for our judgments.
Our version of the Brown/Levinson theory is graphically represented in
Figure 1, using all the conventions of the original so as to make evident the
many points of identity and also two differences. The point of view is that
of the speaker. The mental processes modeled are hers and they are assumed
to be swift and unconscious though it is generally necessary in discussing
them to use words that suggest deliberation. The problem the speaker is con-
sidering is whether or not to perform some single face-threatening act, and
if the decision is to perform it, then how to perform it, in what way. The
FTA is addressed to the hearer (H) and taking account of the feelings of the
hearer is the problem of politeness. The relevant feelings concern positive
face and negative face.
There are four numbered strategies in Figure 1. These four strategies are
actually superstrategies since Brown and Levinson list 15 subvarieties of pos-
itive politeness and 10 subvarieties of negative politeness and say that even
these lists are not exhaustive. The principal empirical claim of this version
of the theory, as of the original, is that the superstrategies are ordered (as
in Figure 1) against a scale of lesser to greater estimated risk to face.
In the original (unmodified) Brown/Levinson theory there are five num-
bered super-strategies. Strategy (2) in Figure 1 is, in the original, divided into
(2): Do the FTA on record with redressive action of the positive politeness
kind; and (3): Do the FTA on record with redressive action of the negative
politeness kind. The original then claims that positive politeness and nega-
tive politeness are mutually exclusive strategies and are ordered relative to
one another and against the Wx as, respectively, (2) and (3). Our modified
164
Circumstances determining
choice of strategy:
Lesser
(1) without Few

redressive action,
baldly
on record
(2) with redressive action
(positive politeness
Do the FTA
and/or negative
(3) off record politeness)
Many
(4) Don't do the FTA
Greater
Wx = D(S, H) + P(H, S) + Rx
Politeness increases as Distance goes up.
Politeness increases as Power of H over S increases.
Politeness increases as Risk of imposition goes up.
FIGURE i: Super-strategies of politeness ordered against estimated risk of
face loss (after Brown & Levinson (1978, 1987), but modified as
described in the text).
version (Figure i) does not make these claims but substitutes a single super-
strategy of redress in which acts of positive and negative politeness may be
mixed but need not be. Brown and Levinson, in their 1987 review of re-
search, discuss evidence and arguments (e.g., Baxter 1984; Blum-Kulka 1985;
Harris 1984) favoring the modification we have made and concede, with
qualifications: "we may have been in error to set up the three super-strategies,
positive politeness, negative politeness, and off record as ranked unidimen-
sionally to achieve mutual exclusivity" (17). We ourselves in deciding to col-
lapse positive and negative politeness into one super-strategy have been less
165
influenced by the published empirical data, which we think unconvincing,

than by the naturalistic evidence of our ears, attentive for many months to
politeness in everyday conversation. Our version (Figure i) does not, inciden-
tally, alter the Brown/Levinson treatment of (3): Do the FTA off record.
The original theory does not include the "few-many" scale for (2): Do the
FTA on record with redressive actions (positive politeness and/or negative
politeness). Our addition here makes the claim that when an FTA is re-
dressed, the amount of redress, the number of codable substrategies, will
increase (from few to many) as the estimated risk of face loss or weightiness
(Wx) increases. This is to say that redressed FT As are not all at the same
level of politeness but show a range correlated with Wx values. We have
listed in Table 1 the 15 substrategies of positive politeness and in Table 2 the
10 substrategies of negative politeness with one or more illustrations from
the tragedies of each substrategy. Tables 1 and 2 are based on Brown and
Levinson (1978, 1987), but we have omitted several levels of superordinate
headings and our definitions are always selective from the original rich dis-
cussion and sometimes slightly modify the original statements.
Although Brown and Levinson do not build into their model a quantity
of redress ("few-many") scale, many of their examples and several incidental
remarks suggest that it belongs there. "In general, the more effort S expends
in face-maintaining linguistic behavior, the more S communicates his sincere
desire that H's face wants be satisfied. . . . He may achieve this effort simply
by compounding the branching means to achieve wants, or by elaborate real-
ization of particular means, or both" (1987:93). They offer an example that
includes apology, reluctance to impose, deference to H, and self-abasement:
"I'm terribly sorry to bother you with a thing like this and in normal circum-
stances I wouldn't dream of it since I know you're very busy but I'm simply
unable to do it myself" (1987:93).
Our modified politeness theory retains the original formula for weighti-
ness (Wx), but there is good reason to be doubtful about horizontal distance
(D). In a general way, one can hardly doubt that P, D, and R are basic deter-
minants of social interaction7 (see, e.g., Brown 1965; Grimshaw 1980a,
1980b, 1980c), and there is experimental support for the role of P in polite-
ness (Baxter 1984; Falbo & Peplau 1980; Holtgraves 1986), as well as for R
(Baxter 1984; Cody, McLaughlin, & Schneider 1981; Lustig & King 1980).
Studies of D (Baxter 1984; Slugoski 1985; Slugoski & Turnbull, in press) all
suggest that it has been too simply conceptualized in politeness theory. The
assumption that interactive distance can be counted on always to covary with
affect (liking associated with intimacy) seems to be wrong.
Slugoski and Turnbull composed vignettes about Jill and Sue, members
of a college faculty, who were (1) either near-strangers or collaborators in
teaching a course for the past 10 years and who (2) either liked one another
a great deal or disliked one another a great deal. Subjects read vignettes that
166
TABLE i. Substrategies of positive politeness
1. Notice admirable qualities, possessions, etc.

First Senator: Adieu, brave Moor. (Othello, I, Hi, 286)
Desdemona: Alas, thrice-gentle Cassio. (Othello, III, iv, 122)
2. Exaggerate sympathy, approval, etc.
Goneril (to King Lear): A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable:
Beyond all manner of so much I love you. (I, /', 62-63)
Regan (to King Lear): And find I am alone felicitate
In your dear Highness' love. (I, i, 77-78)
3. Intensify the interest of the hearer in the speaker's contribution.
Othello (to the Duke and others): And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Grew beneath their shoulders. (I, Hi, 142-144)
4. Use in-group identity markers in speech.
Hamlet (to Horatio): Sir, my good friend, I'll change that name with you. (I, //, 163)
5. Seek agreement in safe topics.
Edgar (to Edmund): How now, brother Edmund; what serious contemplation are you in?
(King Lear, 1, ii, 149-150)
6. Avoid possible disagreement by hedging your statements.
Knight (to King Lear): My lord, I know not what the matter is; but to my judgment "
(I, «V, 57-58)
7. Assert common ground.
King (to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of themselves and Hamlet): I entreat you both
That, being of so young days brought up with him,
And sith so neighbored to his youth and havior. (II, ii, 10-12)
8. Joke to put the hearer at ease.
Macduff (to porter): Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed,
That you do lie so late? (Macbeth, II, Hi, 23-24)
9. Assert knowledge of the hearer's wants and indicate you are taking account
of them.
Regan (to Oswald of himself and Goneril): I know you are of her bosom. (King Lear,
IV, v, 26)
10. Offer, promise.
Regan (to Oswald): I'll love thee much,
Let me unseal the letter. (King Lear, IV, v, 21-22)
11. Be optimistic that the hearer wants what the speaker wants, that the FTA is slight.
Desdemona (to Othello of Cassio): How now, my lord?
I have been talking with a suitor here,
A man that languishes in your displeasure. (Ill, Hi, 41-43)
Desdemona (to Othello of Cassio): I prithee call him back. (Ill, Hi, 51)
Desdemona (to Othello of Cassio): Why, this is not a boon;
Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves. (Ill, Hi, 76-77)
12. Use an inclusive form to include both speaker and hearer in the activity.
Goneril (to Regan): Pray you, let's hit [agree] together; if our father carry authority
with such disposition as he bears [continues in this frame of mind], this last surrender
[recent abdication] of his will but offend [vex] us. (King Lear, I, i, 306-309)
13. Give reasons why speaker wants what he or she does so that it will seem reasonable to
the hearer.
Regan (to Edmund): Our troops set forth tomorrow: stay with us;
The ways are dangerous. (King Lear, IV, v, 16-17)
14. Assert reciprocal exchange or tit for tat.
Macbeth (to Banquo): If you shall cleave to my consent, when
'tis [join my cause when the time comes],
It shall make honor for you. (II, /, 25-26)
15. Give something desired: gifts, position, sympathy, understanding.
Goneril (to Edmund): Decline your head. This kiss, if it durst speak,
Would stretch thy spirits up into the air. (King Lear, IV, ii, 22-23)
TABLE 2. Substrategies of negative politeness
1. Be conventionally indirect.
Iago (to Othello): You were best go in. (I, ii, 29)
Banquo: Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure [convenience]. (I, Hi, 148)
2. Do not assume willingness to comply. Question, hedge.
Queen (to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern): If it will please you
To show us so much gentry [courtesy] and good will. (Hamlet, II, ii, 21-22)
3. Be pessimistic about ability or willingness to comply. Use the subjunctive.
Osric (to Hamlet): Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart a thing
to you from his Majesty. (V, ii, 91-92)
4. Minimize the imposition.
Edgar (to Albany): Hear me one word. (King Lear, V, /', 39)
5. Give deference.
Othello (to the Duke and Venetian Senators): Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,
My very noble and approved good masters. (I, Hi, 76-77)
6. Apologize. Admit the impingement, express reluctance, ask forgiveness.
Ross (to Macduff): Let not your ears despise my tongue for ever,
Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound
That ever yet they heard. (Macbeth, IV, Hi, 201-203)
7. Impersonate the speaker and hearer. Use the passive without agent.
Knight (to King Lear): your Highness is not entertained with that ceremonious affection
as you were wont. (I, iv, 58-60)
8. State the FTA as an instance of a general rule to soften the offense.
Gloucester (to King Lear): My dear lord,
You know the fiery quality of the Duke,
How unremovable and fixed he is
In his own course. (II, iv, 90-93)
9. Nominalize to distance the actor and add formality.
King (to Hamlet): But to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness. (I, ii, 92-94)
10. Go on record as incurring a debt.
Queen (to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern): Your visitation shall receive such thanks
As fits a king's remembrance. (Hamlet, II, ii, 25-26)
Source: After Brown & Levinson (1978, 1987), but much modified.
combined interaction and feeling in various ways and judged how given
remarks by one young woman (e.g., a literal insult or a literal compliment)
would be interpreted by the other. The important general finding is that dis-
tance and affect had to be treated separately and, for the problems pre-
sented, affect was the more important variable by far. We leave the Brown/
Levinson formula as they presented it but expect to find that our results call
for a revision of D.
From Macbeth we have had an example of super-strategy (i), and that is
Macbeth's on record, unredressed command to his servant. From the same
play we have had an example of super-strategy (2), which included both pos-
itive politeness and several kinds of negative politeness, and that was the
messenger's advice to Lady Macduff. Strategy (3): Do the FTA off record,
168
may be looked for in circumstances where the estimation of risk is very high
- almost high enough to forbid doing the FTA at all. Iago, in II, HI, of
Othello, is in just such circumstances. The intrinsically face-threatening com-
munication he has in mind is telling Othello (falsely) that Desdemona and
the honorable Cassio are secret lovers. This act would threaten Othello's pos-
itive face since it would besmirch the two people closest to his heart and by
implication himself - a cuckolded Moor. The threat (Rx) is extreme and the
power of the hearer (Othello) over the speaker (Iago) is great. No amount
of redressive politeness would make it possible to speak on record.
The point in going off record (strategy (3)) is to communicate an intention
with enough ambiguity so that you cannot be held strictly accountable. The
Brown/Levinson treatment (unmodified by us) is elegant. Since the hearer
must interpret what he hears, must go from what is said to something hinted
at, there must be a trigger to alert him to do more than the usual amount of
interpretive work. What should the trigger be? Some violation, the theory
proposes, of the Gricean maxims of cooperative conversation. The speaker
must say too little - or too much - must say something not clearly relevant,
must be vague or self-contradictory. A trigger is a signal to look for what
speech act theory calls an implicature or inference, something implied by
what has been said, together with the situation and the personalities
involved.
Act III, Scene Hi, lines 35-40

Iago: Ha! I like not that. (Ellipsis violating the maxim of quantity)
Othello: What dost thou say? (Registering the violation)
Iago: Nothing, my lord; or if - I know not what. (Vague, contradictory,
and elliptical, violating the maxims of quality, quantity, and manner)
Othello: Was not that Cassio parted from my wife?
Iago: Cassio, my lord? No, sure, I cannot think it
That he would steal away so guilty-like,
Seeing your coming. (Hint, violating the maxim of relevance)
Finally, there is strategy (4): Don't do the FTA, which is the strategy to
adopt when the risk of speaking is prohibitively great. One might think it
impossible to provide an example since it is necessary to know not only that
something was not said but that it was thought and suppressed. This is where
the psychological soliloquies in Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello
are of inestimable help. Hamlet, in I, //, is asked by his uncle and now step-
father: "How is it that the clouds still hang on you?" and he answers: "Not
so, my lord, I am too much in the sun." For an attentive and well-prepared
audience, Hamlet's response is off record. We can infer the meaning: too
much in royal favor, with a pun on son. The king makes no response to the
speech and it is fair to suppose that it either seemed irrelevant or unwise to
169
acknowledge. When Hamlet's mother, the queen, urges "cast thy nighted
color off," Hamlet speaks only of the intensity of his grief. From what he
says to them, Claudius and Gertrude could not infer his thought:
O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! (I, //', 156-157)
which is expressed in the soliloquy that immediately follows upon their exit,
and which ends:
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue. (I, ii, 159)
That is strategy (4): Don't do the FTA.
THE FOUR PLAYS
Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) developed politeness theory with contin-
ual reference not only to British and American English, but also to Tamil
and Mayan Tzeltal and occasional reference to several other languages. It
cannot be said that they tested their theory on any language but, rather, that
they paid attention to a variety of languages in their constructivist task so
as to have a good idea what things might be universal and what things were
likely to be culture specific. In this article we extend the theory to Early
Modern English (1500-1700) and, to a limited extent, even test the theory
against this "new" language.
Why use Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello as the corpus for a
study of politeness in Early Modern English? Or - to put a prior question
- why use plays? Primarily because there is nothing else. There are letters,
but letters cannot inform us about the colloquial spoken language. The only
possible source is "the language written to be uttered as though spontane-
ously arising from a given situation which we find in dramatic texts." Salmon
(1987:265) said that in justifying her use of plays to work out the sentence
structures of colloquial Elizabethan English. If it is granted that plays are the
only possible source, the question is whether it is wise to use plays by Wil-
liam Shakespeare. Salmon did use them and her argument was: "the more
skilful the dramatist the more skilful he will be, if presenting the normal life
of his time, in authenticating the action by an acceptable version of contem-
porary speech" (1987:265). The word skilful points us toward Shakespeare,
and authorities (e.g., Blake 1983; Hulme 1962) are agreed that what made
his Early Modern English special was skill or genius rather than the use of
constructions not shared with his contemporaries. Still, one would hardly
claim that Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello constitute a represen-
tative sample. We claim, instead, that for a study of politeness theory, they
are just about ideal.
Politeness theory is a very psychological theory that cannot be tested with
170
a speaker's words alone; it is sometimes necessary to know unspoken

thoughts. If an FTA is too risky to be expressed at all (super-strategy (4)) or
so risky that it can only be expressed off record (super-strategy (3)), an out-
sider cannot know what is going on without access to the speaker's inner life.
And in the four major tragedies, Shakespeare provides such access.
In Elizabethan England, interest in psychology was high and Elizabethan
dramatists developed techniques for exploring psychology, especially the
soliloquy and aside. Shakespeare, in his earlier plays, used the soliloquy prin-
cipally for exposition. As a technique for revealing true feelings and inten-
tions, he brought it to a level of incomparable truth and subtlety in Hamlet
and Macbeth. In Othello, Iago has great soliloquies but Othello has, strictly
speaking - which means alone on stage - just one. Instead, Othello speaks
his inner thoughts in the presence of others and Shakespeare indicates by one
means and another, including an incoherent telegraphic syntax that might
pass for the language of thought itself, that the others are not addressed but
disregarded. In King Lear, Edmund keeps us advised of his Machiavellian
plans in soliloquy. Lear himself does not soliloquize, in the strict sense, but
sometimes speaks in half-mad unconcern for hearers, and his Fool "serves
to some extent as a screen on which Shakespeare flashes, as it were, read-
ings from the psychic life of the protagonist" (Mack 1963:206).
The period of Early Modern English, the period of Elizabethan and Jaco-
bean England, is a good period for the study of politeness. Ascribed status
was still the basis of social structure and there were elaborate politeness
rituals for each gradation of hereditary aristocracy. In addition, however, the
period from 1540 to 1640 was a period of increasing social mobility and has
been characterized by Stone as "a seismic upheaval of unprecedented mag-
nitude" (1966:48). There was a great scramble to achieve position in a noble
court and great uneasiness among the nobility at this pressure from below.
Ambition and insecurity created a heightened concern for the signs of true
gentility, verbal and nonverbal politeness. And a special genre of literature
came into being; courtesy books, which were guides to advancement for the
lowly and assurances of superiority for the lordly (Whigham 1984). Alto-
gether, then, it seems an interesting time for a theory of politeness with
claims on universality.
Shakespeare's four major tragedies were written in the middle of this
period, from 1540 to 1640, and in them we find the whole range of his soci-
ety and of human experience painted, as Bradley says, "with entire fidelity"
(1905:25). The plays represent a social span from great kings through all the
levels of court society to the gentry and the lowliest of the "ungentle" as well
as a familial span that includes parents, adult offspring, married and unmar-
ried, and even children. There are a good number of have-nots aspiring to
high station. Edmund in King Lear is the bastard son of the Earl of Glou-
cester; Iago is an experienced soldier who has been passed over for promo-
171
tion; Othello is a Moor who has won the daughter of a Venetian Senator;
and even Claudius in Hamlet is a younger brother. There are two plotting
Machiavels, Iago and Edmund, whose schemes and true feelings can only be
expressed in soliloquy. There is an inept courtier, Osric in Hamlet, who
might have become the caricature he is from too much reading of courtesy
books. The four tragedies, in sum, seem ideal for our purposes because they
are "skilful" versions of colloquial speech in conjunction with subtle and true
representations of inner life for characters over a wide span of society in a
historical period of exceptional interest for politeness theory.
The tragedies are written in a combination of verse and prose. The norm
in these plays is clearly blank verse, and the authoritative figures - kings,
nobility, leaders - use it mainly. But these same characters sometimes use
prose, and lower-class characters sometimes speak verse. Hamlet speaks
prose to everyone but Horatio, the Ghost, and his mother in her closet; his
soliloquies are verse. Ophelia in her madness speaks prose, except for dog-
gerel verse; Lear in his "madness" speaks both prose and verse. Salmon
(1987), because she was trying to reconstruct the rules of colloquial speech
from dramatic texts, confined her study to the prose speeches. Burton (1973),
because she was interested in the expression of character in syntax, a stylis-
tic topic, used only the blank verse. We, because we are concerned with the
whole range of politeness phenomena and character creation, have used both
prose and verse, the full text. There is one major risk in this procedure and
we have tried to allow for it: The metrical aspect of verse might influence
lexical choices (e.g., an optional do auxiliary, an elided word), and these
choices must not be mistaken for politeness phenomena.
METHOD
The Shakespearean on the team (Gilman) concentrated on readings of
speeches, scenes, and entire plays in the critical literature and in available
film and stage productions. Gilman also worked at determining the polite-
ness values of titles, salutations, and indirect requests found in Shakespeare's
English, but not in contemporary American English. With which noble
ranks, for instance, are the titles my lord, your Grace and my dread lord
associated? What are the uses of singular thou and yel What of dame and
madam, sir and sirrah? In the tragedies, there are indirect request forms not
heard today. Can they be ranked in politeness, that is, in the degree to which
they soften the imperative? The principal tools for answering these questions
are Shakespeare glossaries, e.g., Onions (1986) and the Harvard Concor-
dance to Shakespeare (Spevack 1973), and linguistic descriptions of Early
Modern English generally (e.g., Abbott 1925; Barber 1976; Poutsma 1914)
or of Shakespeare's English specifically (e.g., Blake 1983; Burton 1973;
Doran 1976; Hulme 1962; Joseph 1966; Quirk 1987; Salmon 1987).
The psycholinguist on the team (Brown), in an effort to improve upon the
172
usual method of selective quotation, searched the plays for politeness-

relevant content under the discipline of an explicit procedure. The difference
in politeness in the two speeches from Macbeth quoted at the start of this
article cannot be attributed to any single weightiness variable because, in the
dyads involved, P, D, and R vary together in defining the messenger-to-Lady
Macduff as the riskier FTA. To test politeness theory, the effect of each vari-
able in isolation needed to be known.
The plan was to find pairs of speeches involving the same two characters
such that the relationship between the characters would be the same on the
occasions of the two speeches with respect to two out of three weightiness
variables (P, D, and R) but clearly different on the third. Politeness theory
makes explicit predictions as to the effect of each weightiness variable on the
relative politeness levels of such paired speeches. If, therefore, the speeches
are scored for politeness, it would seem to be possible to make an empirical
test of the theory. Psychologists would call the method quasi-experimental;
for linguists and some ethnographers, it is a search for contrasts. The logic
is unimpeachable, but in practice it proved impossible to make all the scor-
ings objective and independent. Still, a good-faith effort was made and so
the method will be described in detail and the results reported, but we shall
not take any numbers so seriously as to report tests of statistical significance.
In order to find speeches that may be regarded as minimal contrasts and
score them for politeness, a performance of the text must be created - in the
mind of the person scoring. It follows that the intonation or expressive qual-
ity of a line, as the scorer imagines it, might be otherwise executed in some
actual performance and with a difference relevant to politeness. There is
no escaping the epistemological position since only a performance can be
scored. However, the prime determinant of any performance is the text itself
and so imagined performances, within a given time and tradition, should be
much alike.
Since the occasion for politeness (in the Brown/Levinson theory) is always
and only a face-threatening act, attention is limited to these. There are many
kinds of FTA, both positive and negative, but some are rare and some are
difficult to identify. Of the FTAs that threaten negative face, the most com-
mon and the easiest to identify are directives - including commands,
requests, and advice. Directives are defined as speeches intended to induce
the hearer to take some action. Of FTAs that threaten positive face, the most
frequent and most easily identified are criticisms, insults, disagreements, and
corrections. Positive FTAs always threaten to damage, directly or indirectly,
the hearer's self-esteem. With attention limited to just the obvious and fre-
quent FTAs, one proceeds a step at a time.
i. In each play for each pair of characters, record the first FTA - either
positive or negative. In King Lear for the Duke of Albany and Edgar,
the son of the Earl of Gloucester, in disguise, that would be
173
Edgar: If e'er your Grace had speech with man so

poor,
Hear me one word. (V, /, 38-39)
The length of the FTA, the amount of text recorded, is defined as all
the text necessary to specify the FTA plus all continuous antecedent
and subsequent text that does not belong to a new speech act.
2. Code the FTA for the three variables defining its intrinsic weightiness:
P, D, and R. Power was coded as equal or as hearer higher than
speaker, or as speaker higher than hearer. The Duke of Albany has
a much higher station than the disguised Edgar and so the value of P
in the example is hearer higher. Distance was simply coded as high or
low and since Albany and Edgar were little acquainted, the value of
D was low. The intrinsic extremity (Rx) of the FTA was coded as low
(routine), moderate, or high. A request to be heard would be but a
slight imposition, and so Rx was coded low.
3. Score the total speech for politeness. This is done by first identifying
the super-strategy employed, and in the present case that would be (2):
On record with redressive action. When the super-strategy involves
redressive action, the speech is scored further by assigning one point
for each instance of any of the 15 substrategies of positive politeness
and one point for each instance of the 10 substrategies of negative
politeness and totaling the points. For two negative politeness strate-
gies involving deference, (1) and (5), a wider scoring range was used:
from —1 to +2. This decision is explained later. In Edgar's speech,
there are four instances of negative politeness redressing the request.
The request itself is indirect (1); "Your Grace" gives deference (5);
"man so poor" is self-abasing (5); and "one word" minimizes the
imposition (4). So we have super-strategy (2) with a politeness redress
score of +4.
4. Search for a second FTA involving the same two characters as the
first (e.g., Edgar and Albany) such that the two FTAs are matched
with respect to two out of three of the variables: P, D, R. This kind
of near-match often appears very near the first speech but it need not;
the near-match may be widely separated in the play as, often, when
two characters who are friendly at the start (low D) fall out later on
(e.g., Hamlet with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern). In the present
example, the second FTA is immediately responsive to the first:
Albany: Speak. (V, /, 39)
Distance (D) and extremity (R) are unchanged but since it is now
Albany who speaks, the P value for the hearer (Edgar) is now lower
than the value for the speaker. The politeness super-strategy is (1): On
174
record without redressive action. The command "Speak" says all and
only what is necessary to communicate the speaker's intention. Polite-
ness theory predicts that, for two FTAs matched with respect to D
and R but not P, the speech from the lower to the higher will be the
more polite. Edgar is much more polite than Albany and so this
example counts as one confirming case for politeness theory.
Passages matched with respect to everything but P are more frequent in
the plays than critical pairs that isolate D or R for the reason that a contrast
in P often involves only a switch in the persons speaking and hearing. How-
ever, clear cases of the other sorts are numerous enough to test politeness
theory predictions for distance (D) and extremity (R). Examples of D and R
contrasts are presented in the section called Results.
DEFERENCE IN SHAKESPEAREAN ENGLISH

Two strategies of negative politeness, (i) and (5), involve giving deference to
the hearer. Explicit acknowledgment of the higher power of the hearer
serves, Brown and Levinson reason, to soften the imposition of a request by
expressing the speaker's reluctance to make it and by assuring the hearer that
coercion is out of the question. For the Elizabethans, expression of proper
deference in conversation was a vital concern, subtle, complex, and never-
ending, and so it is also in the four tragedies. It was accomplished then, as
now, in two ways: forms of address, including titles (5), and the formula-
tion of requests in conventionally indirect ways (1). The forms of address
available to Elizabethans as well as the types of indirect request were not the
same as those employed in English today and so it is necessary to discuss
them briefly. In addition, the scoring of just these two substrategies departs
from the usual zero or +1. Because expressions of deference are especially
important and diverse, we scored them from - 1 to +2.
Names and titles
In the four tragedies, more than 100 different forms of address are used,
aside from Christian names and pronouns. There are names with honorific
adjectives: valiant Othello, worthy Macbeth, good Hamlet, good Iago, and
so on. There are unadorned titles: general, captain, sir, madam, my lord,
your Grace, your Majesty. There are adorned titles, that is, titles with
honorific adjectives: good my lord, gentle lady, my dread lord, sweet lord,
good my liege. In scoring speeches for politeness substrategy (5): Give defer-
ence, we treat the name alone (e.g., Desdemona, Iago, Macbeth, Laertes) as
the neutral level, scoring no points for deference. We treat unadorned titles
(e.g., sir, madam, my lord, signior, your Grace) and names with one
honorific adjective (e.g., worthy Montano, good Hamlet) the same way: Any
such scores one point for deference. Titles adorned with honorific adjectives
(e.g., my dread lord, good your Grace, good madam, etc.) score two points.
175
In assigning one point for any single deferential term and two points for two
terms, we are following Brown and Levinson's reasonable suggestion that
"the greater the number of compatible outputs the speaker uses the greater
the politeness he may be presumed to intend" (1987:143). In determining
what should count as honorific, we are guided by studies of Shakespeare's
language (e.g., Brook 1976; Quirk 1987; Replogle 1987; Salmon 1987), as
well as a Shakespeare glossary (Onions 1986) and the Oxford English Dic-
tionary.
We could make the scoring of address forms more differentiated if we
chose. We know, for instance that your Grace is addressed only to a duke
and that your Majesty, my liege, and the adjective dread were for the king
only (Replogle 1987). The scoring is, however, more sensitive than our sum-
mary statement indicates. For one thing, titles such as captain, general, and
lieutenant only count as deferential when used by a person of lower rank.
Another fine point: To address Prince Hamlet as Hamlet is certainly not
deferential, but neither is it neutral. Only the king, the queen, the ghost of
Hamlet's father and Laertes at the point of death use the Christian name,
and so this use was scored one point for positive politeness as an instance of
strategy (4): Use in-group identity markers. Finally, there is one form that
is neither neutral nor deferential but usually depreciative and that is sirrah,
said to an adult by a person of higher status; to a child, sirrah was affection-
ate. Use of sirrah to an adult caused us to subtract one point (-1) for (5):
Give deference.
Anyone reading Shakespeare, especially the speeches in blank verse, might
reasonably doubt that the many titles and especially the many reiterations of
the same title to the same person in a single conversation could possibly rep-
resent colloquial Elizabethan English. Certainly, most of the population
would have had no occasion in all their lifetimes to use the noble titles, but
we count it an advantage for our purposes that the tragedies represent speech
across the full social range from king to clown (rustic). With respect to the
nobility, Replogle (1987) says that, in everyday speech, it was the custom to
use first the form corresponding to the highest honor (of many) that a per-
son might claim and that it was good manners occasionally to repeat or ele-
gantly vary a title in a single conversation. In letters of the period there might
be as many as 11 forms, varying in length from a simple your lordship to my
honorable good lord. And that is just the way it is in the courts represented
in Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, and Othello.
Pronouns of address
In Elizabethan English and in Shakespeare's plays there were two possible
pronouns of address to a single person: thou and you. Thou was the nomina-
tive case form and thee, thy/thine were accusative (or oblique) and genitive.
Ye appears to have been a less common, free variant of you in either the
176
nominative or the accusative (Mulholland 1987). The important thing is the

principle or principles governing the choice between thou and you as forms
of address to one person. Casual grammars say that you was the "polite"
form and thou the familiar form, and that characterization suggests that the
two singular pronouns of address are relevant to the present study.
Ordinary unemotional use of thou (or its variants) and you (or ye) in the
singular was governed by social station (Barber 1987; Brown & Gilman i960;
Byrne 1936). Upper-class speakers said you to one another; lower-class
speakers said thou to one another; the between-class rule was you to the
upper and thou to the lower. Who counted as upper class? Members of the
king's court, nobility generally, country gentlemen, professionals, some
trades people. In the tragedies, dyads of you exchange included spouses (e.g.,
Othello and Desdemona), adult brothers (Edmund and Edgar in King Lear),
adult sisters (Cordelia, Regan, and Goneril in King Lear), parents and adult
offspring (e.g., Polonius and Laertes), and such gentle-born friends as Ham-
let and Horatio. The lower, or ungentle, classes included servants, shepherds,
farmers, seamen, and lesser clergy. In the tragedies, the lower classes are
mainly represented by anonymous retainers, messengers, murderers, and, of
course, the two gravediggers in Hamlet. Reciprocal thou was usual between
members of the ungentle classes and nonreciprocal you upward (murderers
to Macbeth) and thou downward (Macbeth to murderers).
The status (or power) rule will not account for all uses of thou and you
singular. It is necessary to add an expressive corollary such as: "In cases
where you is expected, the occurrence of thou indicates that the speaker is
emotionally aroused." This amounts to making you the unmarked or default
form and thou a form marked for affect (Mulholland 1987). Malcolm (in
Macbeth) addresses Macduff with you, the proper form for a Scottish thane,
until an emotional moment in Act IV when Malcolm says: "But God above
deal between thee and me" (IV, Hi, 120-121). The emotions in this case are
positive: gratitude and affection. Emilia, Desdemona's confidante, has
always addressed Othello as you and does so still in the confrontation of the
last scene until he says that he has killed Desdemona and that she was a
whore. Then: "Thou dost belie her, and thou art a devil" (V, //, 132). In this
case, the emotions are negative: fury and contempt. Love or affection and
anger or contempt are the emotions that account for most expressive shifts.
Jespersen (1972) believed that English thou and you in Shakespeare's time
were more often shifted to express mood and tone than were the cognate
pronouns in continental languages, and that was certainly true for French
and German and possibly for all. In French and German, then as today, the
power and status rule was supplemented by a rule of solidarity (Brown &
Gilman i960) or affectionate intimacy. Two individuals who are close to one
another in the sense of intimacy or camaraderie or just kinship will recipro-
cally exchange a T-type pronoun (of which thou is one), whereas two rela-
177
tively unfamiliar individuals will exchange a V-type pronoun (of which you
is one). A relationship between adult strangers that begins as a reciprocal
exchange of V may with time, and the discovery of mutual interests and lik-
ing or affection, progress to a reciprocal exchange of T. This is true for very
many languages, and the progression from V to T on the basis of positive
feelings resembles the expressive use of thou (for positive feelings) where you
would be expected in Elizabethan and Shakespearean English. There is, how-
ever, an important difference. When two speakers of French or German or
whatever language advance to mutual-T, they will never again say V to one
another or will do so only to sunder the relationship. The expressive thou
works differently. Malcolm (in Macbeth), when the emotional moment has
passed, resumes saying you to Macduff and there had been no falling out
between the two of them.
The identifying feature of an expressively affectionate pronominal shift,
as opposed to a relational shift to intimacy, is easy retractibility. There are
some good examples in the four tragedies. Hamlet, on first meeting and for
a short time afterward, addresses Horatio as you. Later on:
Hamlet: Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay in my heart of heart,
As I do thee. (Ill, //, 73-76)
In a less confidential mood, Hamlet returns to you and still later it is thou
again. Hamlet also moves back and forth between you and thou in his ad-
dress to Ophelia, as does Macbeth to his lady and Othello to Desdemona.
This kind of easy expressive shift, apparently responsive to fleeting moods,
is, so far as we can tell, very unusual among world languages.8
The status rule and the expressive rule in combination and very sympathet-
ically applied still cannot explain all instances of thou and you in Shake-
speare or even in just the four tragedies (Barber 1987; Byrne 1936). For
example, the two gravediggers in Hamlet, V, /, mostly say thou to one
another but each also says you once and, indeed, there is a shift within a sin-
gle speech. Someone really devoted to the principle that "motive-less any-
thing is un-Shakespearean" (Kittredge 1916:49) could perhaps think of subtle
gravediggerly moods that would explain these shifts, but that does not seem
to be the right way to go. We think it wiser to assume that a simple pair
involves a simple contrast (in this case, distance) and assign complications
to context.9 One form (thou) always expresses less distance, the other (you)
more, in relation to each other, but, in context, there are many uses we can-
not explicitly account for.
The fine tuning of thou and you in Shakespeare is analogous to something
we fine tune in English today: the definite and indefinite articles the and a.
We can explain the basic semantic contrast and illustrate it with clear cases,
178
but there is also a large residue of cases on which native speakers agree but
which no one can explain to a non-native - to, for instance, a speaker of
Japanese. Shakespeare surely used thou and you with a confident intuition
that mirrored general Elizabethan usage, but it is not always possible to say
what the distance contrast is doing in a given case.
Thou and you are not very important in scoring speech for politeness. This
is partly because there are quite a few shifts that we cannot confidently
account for and it is partly because, in many of the clear cases that follow
the status rule, the pronoun of address, an obligatory aspect of speech, is
automatic and ever-present and so does not function to redress an FTA.
What we are left with is a small number of unusual uses and shifts that can
be confidently interpreted. An isolated thou of contempt scores — i; an iso-
lated deferential you scores +1 for negative politeness; and an isolated thou
of affection scores +1 for positive politeness (strategy (4): Use in-group iden-
tity markers). From this scoring it is necessary to exclude all speeches to and
from nonnatural beings (e.g., ghosts, apparitions, witches) as the practice
was invariably to employ thou.
Indirect requests
There are good studies of the forms and uses of the imperative in Elizabe-
than English (Poutsma 1914; Salmon 1987) and in Shakespeare (Abbott
1925; Burton 1973; Doran 1976; Hulme 1962; Hussey 1982; Joseph 1966;
Quirk 1987), but we have found no discussion that separates the grammat-
ical imperative from directive speech acts and so no discussion of politely
indirect requests. These turn out to be, at least in the tragedies, of high
interest for speech act theory.
Brown and Levinson (following Gordon & Lakoff 1971; Labov & Fanshel
1977; Sadock 1974) show that polite indirect requests can be derived in a sys-
tematic way from the simple imperative and claim: "Most of these ways of
making indirect speech acts appear to be universal or at least independently
developed in many languages" (1987:136). The indirect requests of the four
tragedies constitute an excellent test of the claim because the common forms
are not the same as those in English today and yet they are near enough to
us so that we can have good intuitions about their meanings.
Consider the simple imperative: Shut the door. It threatens to impose on
the hearer's negative face and, when expressed thus baldly and on record, the
threat is evident. English today is rich in circumlocutious alternatives: Could
you shut the door? Will you shut the door? Is the door open again? I wish
you would shut the door. Grammatically, these alternatives are not imper-
atives; they are syntactic interrogatives or declaratives.
The paradigmatic direct function of imperative syntax is to command or
request and the direct function of interrogative syntax is to question and the
direct function of declarative syntax is to assert. Each syntactic type has,
179
however, other possible uses, indirect uses, and so functions or speech acts
must be distinguished from syntactic types. When this distinction is made,
it turns out that the request or directive speech act can be unambiguously
made in many syntactically diverse ways. There is no doubt that the speaker's
directive intention is clear when she says: Could you shut the door? since Yes
or No, which are answers responsive to the grammar, would be either rude
or a joke. There is similarly no doubt of the intention behind the declara-
tive / wish the door were shut since Do you? or That's interesting are under-
stood to be playful. Even very young children do not make mistakes of this
kind.
Indirect requests in English today, in Tamil, Tzeltal, Malagasy, and other
languages are constructed in a principled way. The simple imperative Shut
the door will not accomplish its purpose unless certain contextual requisites
are satisfied: (i) the hearer should be able to shut the door; (2) the hearer
should be willing to shut the door; (3) the door should not be already shut;
(4) the speaker should sincerely want the hearer to shut the door; and so on.
If such circumstances are satisfied, then the world is ready for Shut the door
to have its intended effect. The circumstances that comprise a happy setting
for Shut the door are called felicity conditions (Searle 1969; after Austin
1962). Indirect requests more polite than the imperative are constructed by
questioning a felicity condition or calling attention to a felicity condition by
asserting it.
Could you shut the door? questions the hearer's ability to comply and
Would you shut the door? questions the hearer's willingness. Is the door
open again? asks about a necessary precondition in the world and / wish you
would shut the door asserts what the speaker wants. All polite forms by
questioning or calling attention to a felicity condition seem to leave the
hearer an out. Perhaps, after all, he or she simply cannot shut the door or
has a fixed objection to doing so or finds the door already shut or doubts
that the speaker really wants to have the door shut.
There seems to be a contradiction in the argument. Many indirect (not
imperative) requests are, in situational context, unambiguously interpreta-
ble as requests and never responded to as anything but requests. What can
it mean, therefore, to say that by calling attention to felicity conditions they
leave the hearer an out? It is the literal meanings, the grammatical meanings,
that do that, but the literal meanings cannot do that unless the hearer on
some level takes them in. There is now good evidence (Clark & Lucy 1975;
Clark & Schunk 1980) that hearers process both the literal meaning and the
directive or speech act meaning. It is clear why the directive meaning is
needed; it identifies the response to be made. Why is the literal meaning pro-
cessed? It adds the politeness.
In English today, indirect requests vary greatly in how much politeness
they convey. Brown and Levinson make the general suggestion that the more
180
elaborated the request is, the more polite it is, but this principle does not
make fine distinctions. Stanford psychologists Clark and Schunk (1980) had
subjects rate the politeness of 54 requests of 18 types. The speech act mean-
ing was the same in all: "Tell me where Jordan Hall is," but there were 54
varieties of literal meaning or politeness. The form rated most polite was
"Might I ask you where Jordan Hall is?" - a request fox permission. Least
polite was "Shouldn't you tell me where Jordan Hall is?" - a statement of
unexplained obligation. Fraser and Nolen (1981) asked native speakers to
rate for deference, rather than politeness, some 25 requests with the generic
speech act meaning "Do that." Most deferential was: "I'd appreciate it if
you'd do that" and least deferential: "You have to do that." It is worth not-
ing that "Might I ask?" and "Shouldn't you?" and "You have to" all ques-
tion or assert felicity conditions in the hearer: permission or obligation. "I'd
appreciate it," by contrast, asserts the sincerity of the speaker's wish. All
forms used are derivable from felicity conditions.
The world of Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, and King Lear is far from Jor-
dan Hall. In the tragedies, indirect requests use such phrases as: I do beseech
you, I entreat you, I pray you, Pray you, Prithee, I do require that, So
please your Majesty, If you will give me leave, and "Get thee to a nunnery."
Completely absent from the tragedies are the polite forms most often heard
today, the subjunctive interrogatives such as Could you and Would you.
They were not invented until the 19th century (Millward, personal commu-
nication). If / do beseech you tell me where Jordan Hall is sounds odd, so
do Could you wake the king? and Would you a little disquantity your train?
In spite of the surface differences, however, Shakespeare's indirect requests
are created on the same principles as the indirect requests of English today,
and these principles may be universal.
One large set of indirect requests asserts the speaker's sincere wish that the
hearer do X and that is a major felicity condition for the direct imperative:
Do X. I beseech you, I pray you, Prithee, I would that, I require that, and
so on, though they vary in the amount of deference shown the hearer, all
essentially say: "Speaker sincerely wants hearer to do X." Also included in
this first class is a collection of what Burton (1973) calls optative imperatives,
' such as, from the tragedies: "Let not light see my black and deep desires"
(Macbeth, I, v, 51); "O that this too too sullied flesh would melt" (Hamlet,
I, ii, 129); "May his pernicious soul/Rot half a grain a day!" (Othello, V,
//', 152-153). Optative in grammar means expressive of wish or desire, and
an optative imperative asserts a speaker's wish. Whether the operative word
is may or let or that, the sense is always the same and, except for the levels
of deference expressed, equivalent to "I would that X be done."
There is a second large class of indirect requests in the tragedies and these
concern a felicity condition in the hearer. They ask not whether the hearer
could or would do something, but rather if the hearer is willing, sees fit, or
181
is pleased to do something. It comes to the same thing. Unless the hearer is

willing or sees fit or is pleased to or could or would do X, then a request to
do X will not work; willingness on the part of the hearer is a felicity condi-
tion for the direct imperative and asking about such willingness is a way of
saying Do X indirectly. It is, incidentally, interesting that the modern par-
ent's magic word please did not exist in the 17th century, but such forms as
If it please you and May it please you did, and it is from these phrases,
which had the same magical function, that the word in isolation derives
(Millward, personal communication).
Even a very incomplete analysis of the forms of indirect request in
Shakespeare adds a little something to our understanding of the plays. Con-
sider the scene in Act I of King Lear when the king requires his three daugh-
ters to make competitive protestations of love. To Goneril, his eldest born,
he uses the simple imperative "Speak," and he says the same to Regan. How-
ever, to Cordelia, "our joy, although our last and least," he first asks: "What
can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters?" And, only then:
"Speak." The question "What can you say?" is only grammatically interroga-
tive. As a speech act it is a directive or command having the exact sense of
the subsequent imperative "Speak." The question asks about a felicity con-
dition on speaking-so-as-to-win-a-more-opulent-third. Is there something
that can be said and if so, what? In inquiring about a felicity condition, it
becomes an indirect or polite request. To respond not to the request but to
the literal meaning of the question with "Nothing, my lord" is shockingly
rude - a bit like asking someone: "Is there any salt down there?" and receiv-
ing as your only response: "Yes." The king reflects the shock with "Noth-
ing?" And "Nothing will come of nothing." Everyone reading or seeing the
play feels the shock. The cause of the shock is Cordelia's choosing to speak
as if she did not understand what every child understands about indirect
requests. It demonstrates beyond an inability to "heave up my heart into my
mouth" an unwillingness to do so and anger at the foolish game the king
would have them play.
In addition to the two kinds of polite request based on felicity conditions,
the tragedies include many simple imperatives (Go, Come, etc.) and many
simple imperatives followed by the 2nd person subject (Go you, Retire thee,
Take thou). Barber (1976), Poutsma (1914), and Salmon (1987) agree that
the second form is the more polite, but it is not quite clear which should be
considered the neutral baseline, and we have treated both as neutral in that
neither scores a point for deference. The case of the pronoun in the archaic
form is sometimes nominative (thou or ye) and sometimes oblique (thee or
you). Millward (1987) finds that the choice between the cases is not governed
by age, sex, status, or any other social variable. There is a lot of free vari-
ation and some verb-class selection. For instance, a closed class of nine
action verbs (aroint, haste, get, hie, etc.) always take thee, and so we can be
182
sure now, if we were not before, that Hamlet's: "Get thee to a nunnery" is
not a softened command. Finally, there is what Burton (1973) calls the verb-
less imperative as in "Peace, Kent!" (King Lear), "Thy story quickly" (Mac-
beth), and "Peace, sirrah" (King Lear). We unhesitatingly agree with Burton
that these are not polite and not neutral but rudely brusque and we have
scored them, like sirrah, among forms of address, as - 1 .
We cannot, as Clark and Schunk (1980) did and as Fraser and Nolen
(1981) did, ask native speakers to rate Early Modern English indirect requests
in terms of politeness or deference. However, the Harvard Concordance to
Shakespeare (Spevack 1973) offered another possibility. Entering the book
with, for instance, the word beseech and starting at an arbitrary point in the
citations (which are ordered as the plays are ordered in the First Folio), we
selected the first one hundred entries having the sense of "I beseech some-
one to do X" and recorded the form of address, if any, that co-occurred with
the request in the entry. In the case of beseech, 40 percent of the entries
included some honorific title: your Majesty, your Grace, your Highness,
your lordship, my lord - down to sir and madam but not below. The remain-
ing 60 percent of the entries included no form of address. The pronoun in
96 percent of the cases was you rather than thee. Entering the book at
another random point with pray and examining the first one hundred entries
with the sense "I pray you," only 10 percent have co-occurring honorific
titles and these do not go higher than sir; the familiar pronoun thee now
accounts for 17 percent of all cases. Conclusion: "I beseech you" is more
deferential than "I pray you" and it seems to be reasonable to assign two
deference points for beseech you and just one for pray you. A comparison
of "I pray you" and abbreviated "Pray you" reveals no difference, and so
they are scored the same.
"By your leave" accessed with leave and "if you please" or "so please you"
accessed with please almost exactly match one another and beseech with
about 40 percent honorific address forms from sir to your Majesty, and so
these also were scored +2. Entreat in the sense of "I entreat you" was less
deferential than beseech but nearer beseech than pray, and so scored +2. "I
do beseech you" is automatically emphatic in English today and so one might
think it would be more deferential than the phrase without do, but it is not
clearly so, using the Concordance analysis. Authorities on Elizabethan English
agree that the auxiliary do did not reliably take on an emphatic sense until
later than the 17th century. We would not like to have had to score do forms
distinctively for the reason that metrical considerations could affect their
occurrence in blank verse and so we are glad that there is no reason to do so.
Before making a Concordance analysis of prithee, we thought the form
would be on a continuum with pray you but less deferential. It did not prove
to be so. The address forms with which prithee co-occurs are: boy, my son,
daughter, good friend, fellow student, shepherd, and various Christian
183
names - not honorific forms at all but terms of friendship, affection, and
intimacy. We scored prithee for positive politeness strategy (4): Use in-group
identity terms.
The full procedure can now be summarized. The four plays were system-
atically searched for pairs of minimally contrasting discourse dyads where
the dimensions of contrast were power (P), distance (D), and the intrinsic
extremity of the FTA (R). Whenever such a pair was found, a pair contrast-
ing only in P or only in D or only in R, there would be two speeches to be
scored for politeness and a prediction from theory as to which of the two
ought to be more polite. The stretch of speech scored was to be long enough
to specify the full FTA but not so long as to include more than one speech
act. In scoring the politeness of a speech, belonging to super-strategy (2), one
point (+1) was usually given for each instance of any substrategy, positive
or negative. With negative politeness strategy (1) (Be conventionally indirect)
and strategy (5) (Give deference) the scores ranged from — 1 to +2. The total
politeness score for a speech was the sum of its points. If the speech in a pair
predicted to be higher turned out, in fact, to be higher, that counted as a
strongly confirming instance for the relevant aspect of politeness theory. If
the outcome was reversed, that counted as a strong contradiction, and if
there was no difference or a difference difficult to score but possibly con-
tradictory, that counted as a weak contradiction.
RESULTS
Two qualitative principles

It would not be a fair test of politeness theory to go blindly into the plays
scoring every speech that met the criteria of minimal contrast in terms of P,
D, or R. There is an overriding principle stated by Brown and Levinson:
"The prime reason for bald-on-record usage may be stated simply: in gen-
eral whenever S wants to do the FTA with maximum efficiency more than
he wants to satisfy H's face, even to any degree, he will choose the bald-on-
record strategy" (1987:95). When will a speaker care nothing about protect-
ing a hearer's face? This can happen when a message is very urgent or when
communication channels are noisy, but in the tragedies it happens most often
when a speaker is in a rage and not simply indifferent to the hearer's face
but intent on cutting it up.
Rage. The enraged character in the tragedies always ignores P, D, and

R and proceeds with maximal efficiency.
Darkness and devils!
Saddle my horses; call my train together.
Degenerate bastard, I'll not trouble thee.
184
That is King Lear to daughter Goneril (I, iv, 258-260). "Come, swear it,
damn thyself" (Othello, IV, ii, 34). That is Othello to Desdemona, and this
is Roderigo to Iago: "O damned Iago! O inhuman dog!" (Othello, V, /, 62).
And Hamlet to his mother in her closet:
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty—(III, iv, 92-95).
And Macduff, his lady and little ones slain, when at last he comes upon
Macbeth: "Turn, hell-hound, turn!" (V, viii, 3). We have not scored these
speeches for politeness.
Speeches produced in a rage, though dense with FTAs, are always baldly
on record. Politeness is wiped out. Everything goes, every last substrategy
- in-group identity terms, common ground, empathy, approval, reciprocity,
indirection, hedging, deference, apology - they vanish together. It is impor-
tant that the pieces move together since that is what should happen if they
are parts of one system, the politeness system. In the tragedies, politeness is
like a veil which lifts as a whole from the contorted face beneath. That is as
it should be if the details are all generated by a single deep concern: the feel-
ings of others; a concern felt no longer when enraged.
Furious speech is not shaped by P, D, and R values. It is not off record
and not redressed. If it were scored in the usual ways for politeness, it would
contradict the usual predictions. We exempt all such speech from scoring and
from tests of the theory. Does this decision make the theory impossible to
disconfirm? It would if the grounds for exemption were noncompliance with
the theory, but they are not. Furious speech is identified independently of
its relation to politeness in terms of content (e.g., "degenerate bastard") and
accompanying actions (e.g., Iago has just treacherously stabbed Roderigo).
This is a very easy thing to do with these great dramas because when some-
one is in a rage the reader knows it.
It is specifically anger and rage that disengage the machinery of politeness
and not emotion generally. Desdemona dying says: "Commend me to my
kind lord" (Othello, V, ii, 124). Cordelia, with pity and love, says to her
father: "How does my royal lord? How fares your Majesty?" (King Lear,
IV, v/7, 44). It is just those emotions that entail unconcern for the feelings
of others that erase politeness.
Madness. There is one other major circumstance in which a speaker is
unconcerned with the face needs of hearers and that is madness. In mad
speech, however, there is not the concern for efficient communication found
in urgent and angry speech. There is reason to expect the feelings of others
to be disregarded but no reason why mad speech should be consistently bald
and on record. The disturbance goes deeper, overthrowing the maxims of
185
cooperative conversation (Grice 1975) which make it possible to follow strat-

egy (1) and be maximally efficient and clear. Mad speech may be spurious
(violating the maxim of quality), may be elliptical or repetitive (the maxim
of quantity), may be irrelevant (the maxim of relevance), and it may be
ambiguous or obscure (the maxim of manner).
The madness represented in Shakespeare's tragedies is as various as the
persons who are mad, and that is exactly what truth requires. Psychiatry for
its purpose creates diagnostic categories but the mad are as unlike one
another as the sane. The categorical difference is that the sane pay more
attention more of the time to both the maxims of conversation and the
requirements of politeness.
Ophelia's "distraction" is manifest in a change from blank verse to prose
and in doggerel songs and poems which violate all Grice's maxims and are
unmaidenly to boot. Her politeness also vanishes. For three acts, Ophelia has
used deferential forms in almost every speech, but Ophelia, mad, uses none
at all even to the king and queen. We do not count the mad scenes as sud-
den failures of politeness theory but rather exclude them from scoring. Mad
speech, like enraged speech, is easily identified by content and the reactions
of others.
Othello's "epilepsy" or "seizure" (Iago's terms) in Act IV is very unlike
Ophelia's distraction:
Lie with her? Lie on her? - We say lie on her
when they belie her. - Lie with her! Zounds, that's
fulsome [foul]. - Handkerchief - confessions - handkerchief!
(IV, /, 36-39)
Ophelia in Act IV of Hamlet can be said to violate the maxims of conver-
sation because she seems to be in conversation. We infer conversation from
the fact that she takes turns speaking with the king and queen and speaks in
complete sentences which are related to one another. However, each "turn"
Ophelia takes is irrelevant to the "turns" taken by the king and queen and
obscure as a total speech act because we cannot tell what she intends.
Othello's seizure does not violate the maxims of conversation because there
is no conversation. It is speech for himself. Iago is physically present; so the
seizure is not a soliloquy. But Iago is not addressed, so his hearing of the
speech does not make him a hearer whose feelings must be considered. There-
fore, politeness does not come into it. The seizure is a representation of inner
speech and it has the telegraphic quality that characterizes inner speech
(Vygotsky 1962). It is also completely sincere, serious, relevant, and clear to
its only addressees - Othello and ourselves.
"Reason in madness!" Edgar says of King Lear (IV, vi, 177). The Elizabe-
thans thought any passion in extremity was akin to madness and Lear runs
the gamut from rage through obsession, hysteria, and delusion to, finally,
186
lunacy. But always there is some reason in his madness. Some of his speeches
were excluded from scoring because they were spoken in fury or were ad-
dressed to the elements or to no one at all. In what is called the "joint stool"
scene (III, vi), Lear brings to phantasy trial his daughters Goneril and Regan
to find out what stuff their hearts can be made of, and his justices are the
Fool and Poor Tom. He addresses them reverently as "sapient sir" and
"robed man of justice." This is not a disconfirmation of politeness theory
but a world turned upside down.
Hamlet's madness is feigned. Polonius says: "Though this be madness, yet
there is method in't" (II, //, 207-208). Method not reason, as was said of
Lear's madness. It is a selective madness put on for the king and all who
serve him but never for Horatio or the Players, and a madness put on with
a purpose. The "mad" speeches are off record expressions of the accusations
he cannot make plainly. The fact that Hamlet speaks off record when the
face risk is great is what politeness theory predicts.
Contrasts of power (P) alone
Two speaker-hearer FT As are compared for politeness scores. The persons
are of clearly different power and they switch roles (speaker and hearer) in
the comparison cases, with D and R constant. For instance, Cordelia and the
doctor exchange directives in Act IV of King Lear.
Doctor: So please your Majesty
That we may wake the King; he hath slept long.
Cordelia: Be governed by your knowledge, and proceed
I' th' sway of your own will. (IV, vii, 17-20)
Both speeches are polite, but Cordelia, now queen of France, has the greater
power, and so politeness theory predicts that the doctor will be more polite
than she; and he is. The "So please . . . " indirect request scores +2 and
"your Majesty" scores +1 for deference; in addition, there is an inclusive
pronoun (we), which scores +1, and a reason why (positive politeness strat-
egy (13)), which scores another point, for a total of +5. Cordelia's response
scores +1 because it expresses respect for the doctor's knowledge and +1 for
the passive voice, making a total score of +2. Stripped of redress, the
speeches would reduce to: "May I waken the king?" and "Use your own
judgment." As spoken, with politeness added in unequal amounts, the
matched speeches yield a result that is congruent with politeness theory.
Table 3 reports the numbers of congruent outcomes, outcomes strongly
contradictory to theory, and outcomes weakly contradictory to theory. An
outcome is congruent when the person with less power speaks more politely.
An outcome is strongly contradictory when the person having greater power
speaks more politely. An outcome is weakly contradictory to theory when
the two persons, unequal in power, speak with what seems to be equal polite-
ness but might conceivably be read as unequal politeness. In short, there is
187
TABLE 3. Contrasts of power alone

Strongly Weakly
Congruent contradictory contradictory
Play with theorya to theory*5 to theory'
Hamlet 10 2
King Lear 18 3
Macbeth 6 1
Othello 16 1
Total 50 4 3
a
The person with less power is more polite.
b
The person with more power is more polite.
c
The two persons of unequal power are equally polite.
Locations in text
(ordered by first citation in each matched pair)
Congruent with theory
Hamlet [1,(7,50-51/1,(7,62] [ I , ( 7 , 6 7 / I , I ; , 9 2 - 9 4 ] [I,/I,68/I,I7,76]
[I,IV,79/I,IV,80] [II,i,l-2/II,i,35] [11,(7,95/11,(7,96]
[II,li,174/II,ii,175] [11,17,242-243/11,(7,252]
[V,i,121/V,i,124] [V,i7,91-92/V,ii,94]
King Lear [1,1,28-29/1, i(,30] [ I , I , 1 2 2 / I , / , 1 2 3 ] [1,17,27/1,17,28-29]
[I,/v,41/III,(7,61-63] [I,iv,57-60/I,iv,76-77] [I,iv,99/I,/v,131]
[I,iv,H0-lll/I,/v,113] [I,iv,195/I,iv,225-229] [11,(7,66-67,11,(7,70]
[11,(7,142/11,iv,307] [II,iv,90-93/II,iv,97] [III,VH,73-77/III,VH,79]
[IV,v,16-17/IV,/v,17-18] [IV,v(,190-191/IV,/v,193] [IV,vi,234-235/IV,vi,238]
[IV,VI7,6-7/IV,VI7,8-1 1] [IV,vii,17-18/IV,vi,19-20] [V,/,38-39/V,i,39]
Macbeth [I,v,63-64/I,vi7,28] [III,iv,21/III,iv,32] [IV,i,137/IV,/,135]
[V,«,15-16/V,i,17-18] [V,iii,33/V,v,16] [V,v,29/V,v,30-32]
Othello [I,/,5-6/I,i,35] [I,i,75/I,/,94-95] [1,(7,29/1,(77,121]
[I,I7,35-37/II,III,1] [1,(7,59-60/1,(7,84-86] [1,(77,52/1,(77,106]
[I.iii, 176/1,111,178-179] [II,i,116/II,/,117] [II,(,160/111,(77,3]
[III,(77,31/111,ii7,32-33) [IV,i,242-243/IV,i,250] [IV,/,105/IV,(,106-107]
[IV, (7,3/IV, (7,6] [V, (7,295/V, i7,296]

Strongly contradictory to theory
King Lear [I,/,84-88/I,;,89] [I,/v,79-80/I,iv,81] [II,i7,158/III,v(,87]
Othello [II)i(7,148-149/II,((7,150-151]
Weakly contradictory to theory
Hamlet [I,(77,3-4/1,1(7,46-51] [III,/,93/III,(,95]
Macbeth [IV,i7,3O-31/IV,(7,37]
an element of scoring ambiguity with "contradictory" being more likely than

"congruent." There are fewer outcomes for Macbeth than for the other plays
because Macbeth is only about two-thirds the length of the others. Table 3
shows that the outcomes are mostly congruent with politeness theory. The
preponderance is so great as to make any tests of statistical significance
supererogatory. The predictions of politeness theory for the P variable are
confirmed.
188
The number of outcomes in Table 3 is very much smaller than the num-
ber of speeches in the play that have some relevance to power and politeness.
An "outcome" is a minimal contrast in P, with D and R constant. In addi-
tion, both speeches must be FTAs. Furthermore, only the first such minimal
contrast for any pair of characters is scored. All of these constraints oper-
ate so as to select the most critically important instances to test, but such
instances are not, in the nature of things, very numerous. With respect to
power (P), and also D and R, all the relevant evidence supports the outcomes
we document.
The effect of the P variables is so consistently in agreement with theory
as to make one curious about the few strongly contradictory outcomes. One
of these is a speech King Lear addresses to Oswald, steward to Goneril, who
is entertaining the king with scant ceremony or affection.
Lear (to Oswald): O, you, sir, you! Come you hither, sir. Who am I,
sir? (I, iv, 79-80)
Our scoring system allocates +1 for each deferential sir and we (obtuse but
honest) assign it a total score of +3, whereas Oswald's reply scores no points
at all for politeness.
Oswald: My lady's father.
Oswald's reply is an FTA, a threat to positive face, because identifying a
king ("Who am I?") in terms of his relation to someone else is to make him
an appendage; an effect not lost on Lear.
Lear: "My lady's father?" My lord's knave, you
whoreson dog, you slave, you cur! (I, iv, 82-83)
It is, of course, a mistake to score Lear's sirs to Oswald as deferential.
Taking into account the mood established by what has preceded as well as
the extreme incongruity of a king's saying sir to a steward, we know for sure
that these sirs are not deferential but imperious and challenging and that is
the way an actor would pronounce them.
One other seemingly contradictory-to-theory outcome is actually a result
of insensitive scoring. Montano, governor of Cyprus, to Cassio, Othello's
lieutenant:
Montano: Nay, good lieutenant! I pray you, sir, hold
your hand.
And Cassio in reply:
Cassio: Let me go, sir, or I'll knock you o'er the
mazzard [head]. (II, Hi, 148-151)
The governor's speech is too polite and Cassio's is not polite enough. But
Cassio is drunk and that accounts for his incivility. However, drunkenness
189
was overlooked in the scoring. And Montano is attempting to pacify Cas-

sio, which accounts for the excessive politeness, but pacification also was not
considered in the scoring. So, the outcome was scored as contradictory to the
power relation, but it ought not to have been. The scorer ought to have
imagined the lines spoken, respectively, in a pacifying and drunken manner,
and the scoring system should have allowed for these possibilities.
For every speech in the plays, and not just the two discussed here, the
scorer supplies an intonation implied by the full text. However, on a first
pass through the pairs contrasted for power, the reader actually made the
mistakes discussed because of a too-exclusive attention to codable forms in
the speeches as print on the page. The two instances entered in Table 3 as
"strongly contradictory" would have been rescored on subsequent readings,
but it was instructive for us to see them briefly as contradictions and we
thought it might be so also for the reader.
For most of the critical contrasts in power, the politeness difference is
within super-strategy (2) and is a matter of the number of points (few-many)
of redress. However, for one pair of characters the contrast, in a sequence
of speeches, is between two super-strategies: (1): Do the FTA on record with-
out redress, baldly, and (3): Do the FTA off record. The characters are the
Earl of Gloucester and his younger and illegitimate son, Edmund. In I, //',
of King Lear, Gloucester, the more powerful, consistently speaks on record
baldly and Edmund consistently speaks off record. This outcome is consis-
tent with theory, but why should the difference in politeness be greater than
in most other cases? It must be greater because, in the first place, the dif-
ference in power is extreme; Edmund as a younger son and bastard has no
prospects unless Gloucester loves him. In addition, the FTA Edmund has in
mind is to turn Gloucester against his legitimate elder son, Edgar. This is an
FTA almost as risky as telling Othello, untruly, that Desdemona is Cassio's
lover. The two Machiavels, Iago and Edmund, not only have very similar
FT As in mind; they also go about their intrigue in similar off record ways.
Edmund's true intention is to disgrace his brother and inherit everything
in his place, but he dare not let this be found out. Therefore, he cannot
assert on record that Edgar plans to murder Gloucester. The assertion would
suggest the motive and Edmund would be undone. No amount of redressive
deference and indirection would disarm suspicion. Therefore, Edmund has
created false evidence even as Iago did with Desdemona's handkerchief.
Edmund's evidence is a forged letter purportedly written by Edgar inviting
Edmund to join in a conspiracy against Gloucester's life. Much depends,
however, on the manner in which this letter shall come to Gloucester. It can-
not be delivered by Edmund because that would suggest deliberate intent. It
must seem to be forced from him by Gloucester.
The scene opens with Edmund quickly putting away a paper he has been
reading.
190
Gloucester. What paper were you reading?

Edmund: Nothing, my lord. (King Lear, I, ii, 31-32)
The answer contradicts the evident facts and so violates the Gricean maxim
of quality ("Be truthful") and functions as a trigger serving notice to the
hearer that the speaker's meaning must be worked out by inference as it will
not be unambiguously expressed (Brown & Levinson 1987:211). Iago acti-
vates inference with just the same trigger.
Iago: Ha! I like not that.
Othello: What dost thou say?
Iago: Nothing, my lord. (Ill, ///, 35-36)
With the trigger there came a nonverbal hint: Edmund had hastily put the
letter away as Gloucester approached. A hint violates the relevance maxim
and so, of course:
Gloucester: No? What needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your
pocket? The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself. (King
Lear, I, ii, 33-35)
Gloucester commands Edmund to give up the letter and believes what he
reads. Once Gloucester has been worked into a passion of indignation,
Edmund adroitly pivots and pleads with him to be temperate. Edmund then
becomes his brother's seeming advocate and advises Gloucester to suspend
judgment until he has better evidence: "I will place you where you shall hear
us confer of this, and by an auricular assurance [proof heard by your own
ears] have your satisfaction" (I, //, 97-99). The "assurance" when it comes
in II, i, has been rigged.
Iago's deception of Othello is a longer sustained, much elaborated, and
subtler process than Edmund's deception of Gloucester, but the major moves
are so similar as to suggest a rhetoric manual for Machiavels. After the clear
violation of truthfulness that initiates the inferential process comes a succes-
sion of hints to help inference along and then, when the deceived man has
been worked into a passion, the beautiful pivot:
Iago: O, beware my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. (HI, Hi, 165-167)
And eventually the test:
Iago: Do but encave [hide] yourself
And mark the fleers [mocking looks or speeches], the gibes, and notable
scorns
That dwell in every region of his face. (IV, i, 83-85)
Iago's test, like Edmund's, is rigged.
191
TABLE 4. Contrasts of distance alone with distance interpreted as affect
Strongly Weakly
Play with theorya to theoryb to theory0
Hamlet
King Lear
Macbeth
Othello
Total 0 0
a
ln the case marked by greater positive affect, speech is less polite.
b
In the case marked by greater positive affect, speech is more polite.
c
In cases differing in level of positive affect, there is no difference in politeness.
Locations in text
Strongly contradictory to theory
Hamlet [I,V,166-167/III,H,80-82] [III, j,115/III,/,122] [V,//,301/V,i7,314]
King Lear [I,i,306-309/V,i7i,67-69] [V,HI", 127/V,i"«, 168-169]
Macbeth [IV,ii7,26-28/IV,iii,114-117]
Othello [I,1,5-6/IV,H.198-199] [I,(,35-37/II,W,38O-381] [I,(.94-95/1,/, 177]
Contrasts of distance (D) alone

To make a test of the effect of D we need two FTAs involving the same two
persons with each person staying in speaker or hearer role. Power relations
must remain the same; the two FTAs must be matched in extremity, but
there must be a clear change in D, which could be a change of affection or
interactive closeness or both. As it turns out, the clear cases are all changes
of affect, with changes of interaction either absent or only implied. There
are just nine minimal contrasts.
In Table 4 "distance" is affect and all nine contrasts contradict the predic-
tions made for D in politeness theory because in all pairs the more polite
speech is associated with lower D (positive affect) and the less polite with
higher D (decreased positive affect).
For D there are few minimal contrasts but, nevertheless, Shakespeare's
texts make a clear contribution to knowledge of this variable. This is pos-
sible because all the relevant contrasts, including some that are far from min-
imal, point to a single conclusion, and that conclusion is the one for which
the Slugoski and Turnbull (in press) experiments prepared us. Politeness in
the plays, insofar as it is governed by D, is governed by feeling; interactive
intimacy is of little importance. With the extension of positive feeling (lik-
ing or better), the speaker becomes more polite; and if positive feeling is
withdrawn (dislike, hostility), the speaker becomes less polite. But this is not
192
POLITENESS THEORY AND SHAKESPEARE S TRAGEDIES
the way that weightiness (Wx) is supposed to be affected by the D of the

formula W = D (S, H) + P (H, S) + R.
The Brown/Levinson formula says that Wx, and so politeness, will in-
crease with D and an increase in D means less intimate interaction and less
(not more) liking. The formula was, no doubt, written for the kind of famil-
iar case in which acquaintanceship ripens into friendship, interaction grows
more intimate and liking increases, but that kind of undramatic progression
is not enacted in Shakespeare's tragedies. What is enacted is change of feel-
ing, both positive and negative, often extreme and sudden. Changes of
future intimacy may be implied but have not occurred. The quality of future
interaction seems to be entirely dependent on what future feelings may be.
In these circumstances, the more the speaker likes the hearer, the greater the
concern with the hearer's face and so the more polite the speech; the less the
liking, the less the concern and also the politeness.
Minimal contrasts in D are few in the texts we have used, partly because
of a natural confounding in them between D and R. Othello telling Cassio
to look to the guard tonight poses less of a threat to "Good Michael" than
Othello stripping Cassio of his lieutenancy. Brabantio, when he bids his
daughter Desdemona approach and say whether she loves the Moor, poses
a less extreme threat than when he relinquishes her to the Moor. We have
not counted these contrasts (plus one other) as "minimal" and they are not
represented in Table 4, but we do give them weight as evidence because, in
all three cases, relative politeness is predicted by the extension or withdrawal
of affection and this result is not the result predicted by R. In effect, the con-
founding in the three cases described does not really matter.
In Shakespeare's tragedies, there are more passions than feelings, and
many potential pairs are not minimal because the higher R speech expresses
rage. We cannot make a pair out of King Lear saying in I, /, 55-56:
Lear: Goneril,
Our eldest born, speak first.
and in I, iv, 269:
Lear: Detested kite, thou liest.
Nor can we make a pair of:
Othello: I prithee good Iago. (II, /, 205)
and
Othello: Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore! (Ill, Hi, 356)
Nor of many more which are ruled out, not only because R values are not
matched, but because we prefer to treat rage as a state in which the entire
apparatus of politeness is eliminated. Notice, however, that if rage is sim-
ply regarded as an extreme in the withdrawal of affection, even into hatred,
193
ROGER BROWN AND ALBERT OILMAN
then speeches which can be matched except for fury, and such speeches are
numerous, count as evidence for the affect theory because high values of R
in politeness theory call for high levels of politeness, not its elimination.
Bad feeling so strongly implies the absence of politeness that when the two
are combined, the reader computes interesting speaker meanings. Regan (in
King Lear), unwilling to leave Goneril with Edmund, whom both love, says:
Regan: Sister, you'll go with us? (V, /, 34)
and
Regan: Tis most convenient [fitting]; pray you, go with us.(V, 1, 36)
This is clenched-teeth courtesy. Regan, seething with anger, couches a direc-
tive as a rare polite interrogative with in-group blandishments. The polite-
ness here is not primarily a matter of deference, but rather of demeanor, not
primarily a matter of what is owed to another but of what is owed to one-
self (Goffman 1956; Hymes 1983). Regan owes it to herself, with both Al-
bany and Edmund present, to maintain composure.
We have just nine good minimal contrasts, but they all come out the same
way, that is, not in accordance with D in the Brown and Levinson formula
but in clear accordance with the affect formulation of Slugoski and Turn-
bull. There is a good example in Macbeth. Malcolm, Duncan's son, first
reproaches Macduff.
Malcolm: Why in that rawness [unprotected condition] left you wife and
child. (IV, Hi, 26)
Then comes a lengthy test of Macduff's loyalty, which, being passed, we
have:
Malcolm: Macduff, this noble passion,
Child of integrity, hath from my soul
Wiped the black scruples [suspicions], reconciled my thoughts
To thy good truth and honor. (IV, ///, 114-117)
The FTA in this speech is the confession of unwarranted suspicions, and the
politeness level is very high as the extension of affection predicts.
In King Lear, we have a pair of speeches matched for R but not for R at
a low-to-middle level, as is usually the case, but at a rather high level. Edgar,
confronting at last the brother who has so greatly abused him, speaks to
Edmund.
Edgar: Draw thy sword. (V, Hi, 127)
Edgar here is intense but not furious. Then, having wounded Edmund unto
death, he speaks softly.
194
Edgar: Let's exchange charity.

I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund. (V, Hi, 168-169)
With the advent of good feelings comes, as always, a heightened politeness.

A final example illustrates the withdrawal of good feeling. In King Lear
I, /', 306-307, Goneril, wishing to make common cause with her sister Regan,
begins politely: "Pray you, let's hit [agree] together." In V, Hi, however,
the sisters have become competitors for Edmund's love, and when Regan
proclaims that she honors Edmund as her equal, Goneril breaks in with:
"Not so hot" (line 67), which may be translated as "Not so fast" - a verb-
less imperative scoring — 1 for politeness.
Searching for contrasts relevant to distance or D, we have found only con-
trasts of feeling, with contrasts of interactive intimacy only implied and
seemingly fully dependent on future feelings. Why, in our texts, have we not
found changes of interactive closeness with changes of feeling, linked in the
way that the Brown and Levinson D presupposes, intimacy with liking and
distance with dislike or indifference?
Our sources are dramas - Shakespearean tragedies - and the changes of
feeling enacted in them are sudden and so dramatic. Suppose that Braban-
tio and Desdemona, instead of breaking when she said she loved the Moor,
had "drifted apart" after her marriage over several years with visits and let-
ters less and less frequent. It would not make a play. It could be put in a
play; most easily as narration, but it would be poor material for enactment.
The love that developed between Othello and Desdemona was, in fact, a
gradual process developing over many occasions as he unfolded to her the
tale of his life, but this is not a change we witness. It is told by Othello (I,
Hi, 127-165).
There are some changes enacted in the tragedies that require more than a
few moments of performance time, but these changes are not enacted as
smoothly graded. Othello does not in an instant pass from his great love for
Desdemona to murderous hatred of her. Neither does he drift into hatred.
The change is enacted as a sequence of discontinuous moments; each one
intensely dramatic within itself: not understanding Iago's meaning, forcing
Iago to be more clear, wanting proof, not wanting to know, resisting Desde-
mona's pleas for Cassio, yielding, frightening her, striking her, murdering
her. There is movement back and forth and there is escalation from one
moment to another, but the curve described over the course of five acts is
not a smooth one and politeness comes with the return of affection and goes
with its withdrawal.
There is, in principle, another kind of contrast that might be used to test
the predictions of politeness theory for D; instead of changes over time
within one relationship it should be possible to compare two varieties of sta-
ble relationship: low distance relations, such as those between husband and
195
wife, close kin, good friends; and high distance relations, such as equal-
status contacts between near-strangers. Politeness theory predicts, probably
correctly, more politeness with high distance. There are in the tragedies sta-
ble low-D relations between man and wife, close kin, and friends, but where
are the high-D relations to contrast with them? For the most part, they
would be between the nameless supernumeraries - the lords and ladies, atten-
dants, gentlemen, soldiers, and officers, who are given no lines to speak and
so no opportunity to be either casual or formal. When one is given lines -
the porter in Macbeth, the first senator in Othello, the clown in Hamlet -
they speak with a principal character of higher or lower status than them-
selves. Tragedies have no use for the formal exchanges of near strangers, and
so Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello are not good sources for the
study of high-D politeness.
To summarize, in the tragedies we find nothing relevant to D except
changes of feeling that occur suddenly rather than gradually and are not
accompanied by changes of interactive closeness. The outcomes for the
changes of feeling exactly reverse the outcomes predicted by the D of polite-
ness theory, following instead the rule that increase of affection is associated
with increase of politeness and decrease with decrease. We conclude, in
agreement with Slugoski and Turnbull, that the Brown/Levinson model
requires an additional parameter - "relationship affect." No one as yet has
shown how such a new parameter ought to be fitted into the present model.
Contrasts of extremity (R) alone

In order to test for the effects of the extremity of the FTA, a given speaker
must make two face-threatening speeches, of clearly unequal extremity, to
a given hearer. There are 20 such contrasts in the plays and 19 of them are
congruent with theory; one is weakly contradictory. This is a clear confir-
mation, for R, of politeness theory (see Table 5).
There are many nicely minimal contrasts in R. Horatio, who usually ad-
dresses Hamlet as "my lord," says "Good my lord" when attempting to pre-
vent his Prince from grappling with Laertes - a serious physical intervention.
Ophelia, having addressed Hamlet as "my lord" in reminding him that she
has "remembrances" of his, when he denies having given her "aught," comes
back:
Ophelia: My honored lord, you know right well you did. (Ill, /, 97)
Venturing a contradiction calls for an increased redress.
Iago, speaking to Othello, criticizes at one time and another Brabantio
(Desdemona's father), Cassio (Othello's well-loved lieutenant), and Desde-
mona herself. Since these people are varyingly close to Othello's heart, the
attacks pose varyingly extreme dangers to Othello's positive face and Iago's
politeness is nicely graded. Of Brabantio he says:
196
TABLE 5. Contrasts of extremity alone
Strongly Weakly
Play with theory" to theory6 to theory0
Hamlet 5 1
King Lear 8
Macbeth 3
Othello 2
Total 18
a
The more extreme face threat is more politely expressed.
b
The more extreme face threat is less politely expressed.
c
Two face threats, differing in extremity, are expressed with equal politeness.
Locations in text
Congruent with theory
Hamlet [I,/i,61/III,/,183-186] [I,/7,67/III,/7,240-241] [I,i7,192/V,i,267]
[II,/7,10-14/III,/,26-27] [III,/,93-94/IH,/,96]
King Lear [I,/7,27/I,/7,31] [I,/,70/II,iv,154-155] [I,//, 171-172/11,/,22]
[II,/v,137/II,/V,145-149] [III,v, 1S/III.v/i.7-8] [IV,v,16-17/IV,v,21-22]
[V,i,6-9/V>//7,75-79] [V,/7/,42-44/V,/7/,60-62]
Macbeth [I,///, 153-155/11,/,22-24] [I, v/,24-25/I, v/,28-29]
[IV>//7,193-195/IV,//7,201-203]
Othello [I,/7.6-9/II,//7.220-221 ] [I, /7,6-9/IH, 1/7,94-95]
Weakly contradictory to theory
Hamlet [I,/7,192-193/I,/v,81]
Iago: Nay but he prated,

And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms
Against your honor, that with the little godliness I have
I did full hard forbear him. (I, ii, 6-9)
This is richly redressed, but when the target of criticism is Cassio, Iago
changes super-strategies and speaks off record.
Iago: For Michael Cassio,
I dare be sworn, I think that he is honest. (Ill, Hi, 124-125)
No criticism in that. But where's the relevance? No one ever thought Cas-
sio not honest. What can Iago have in mind? When he speaks of Desde-
mona, we have already seen that he begins several leagues from his target.
Excessive redress in extremity. Two examples do more than confirm the-

ory; they demonstrate that a politeness too great for the speaker's surface
197
meaning communicates a deeper meaning that carries a more extreme risk.

On record speech that is very elaborately redressed, too elaborately
redressed, approaches the off record super-strategy (see Figure i). There is
a little ambiguity; more than one speaker's intention is possible and yet the
communication is not off record because the hearer, taking in all the redress,
is clear that the riskier meaning is the intended one. "Excessive redress" is
a super-strategy not found in the Brown/Levinson theory but discovered in
this study. In form, excessive redress falls between "on record with many
redressive acts" and "off record" and it also falls between these strategies in
riskiness and in ambiguity and deniability. This co-occurrence of systematic
properties, consistent with the postulates of politeness theory, is good evi-
dence for the theory as a whole.
In I, Hi, of Macbeth, following the Witches' prophecies and the fulfillment
of the first (Thane of Cawdor), Macbeth in an aside to Banquo says:
Think upon what hath chanced, and at more time,
The interim having weighed it, let us speak
Our free hearts each to other. (153-155)
The speech is unambiguous and only slightly polite (an indirect imperative);
it means just what it says. In II, /, after Macbeth and his Lady have plotted
the murder of Duncan the king, Banquo observes to Macbeth that the weird
sisters have spoken some truth, and Macbeth responds with a speech that
closely matches the one just cited in surface meaning but not in politeness.
Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,
We would spend it in some words upon that business,
If you would grant the time. (22-24)
This very indirect request with its deferential entreat and grant, its subjunc-
tives, nominalizations, and minimization is scored +8, which makes it one
of the politest speeches in the play. Why this tremendous addition of redress
to a request that is almost the same as the earlier one? It suggests that Mac-
beth has in mind a more extreme request than he has directly expressed.
The conversation continues:
Macbeth: If you shall cleave to my consent, when 'tis, [join my cause
when the time comes]
It shall make honor for you.
Banquo: So I lose none
In seeking to augment it. (25-27)
And now we know the more extreme request - that Banquo should join his
cause when the time comes, a cause linked to the prophecy that Macbeth
shall be king, a cause possibly risking dishonor. Banquo's answer shows that
he perfectly understands the deeper meaning, which is foreshadowed at the
start by an aura of excessive politeness.
198
In Hamlet, there is another example of excessive politeness communicat-

ing a riskier meaning than appears on the surface. Rosencrantz and Guilden-
stern have been sent for to Elsinore to keep Hamlet company:
King: I entreat you both
That, being of so [from such] young days brought up with him,
And sith so neighbored to his youth and havior,
That you vouchsafe your rest [consent to remain] here in our court
Some little time. (II, //, 10-14)
The request, baldly put, is to stay a while. However, the verbs entreat and
vouchsafe express deference; some little time minimizes the imposition; there
is much claiming of common ground and nominalization, making a polite-
ness score of +8, which is extravagantly polite for an invitation. Later,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern accede to the king's request and he soon
ceases to be extravagantly polite, addressing them with routine courtesy (e.g.,
Ill, 1, 26-27).
The queen is as extreme as the king in seconding his request.
Queen: If it will please you
To show us so much gentry [courtesy] and good will
As to expend your time with us awhile. (II, ii, 21-23)
Rosencrantz politely says that their dread Majesties might command rather
than entreat and Guildenstern adds that they will fully obey and both under-
stand exactly what they are to do. They are to find out what it is that so
afflicts Hamlet and report it to the king and queen. They are to play
informers to the court on their old schoolfriend. This request is more
extreme than the surface invitation to draw Hamlet on to pleasures because
it requires them to violate the confidences of friendship and become crea-
tures of the king. How do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern know that they are
asked to do something so extreme? They are asked too politely.
Politeness in Shakespeare's tragedies increases with the power of the
speaker over the hearer and it increases with the extremity of the face threat.
Politeness decreases with the withdrawal of affection and increases with an
increase of affection. The results for power and extremity are those predicted
by theory. If affection is thought of as the D (or distance) of politeness the-
ory, then the results contradict theory. It is more accurate to say that the
affect results call for a reformulation of the D parameter.
A student of the tragedies forms normative conceptions of how much
politeness is appropriate for various values of P, D, and R. Sometimes it is
a consistent attribute of a character to be more than normally polite or less
so or to show a deviant pattern of politeness. When this is so, politeness
becomes one of the many things defining character. In Hamlet, the charac-
ters called Clown and young Osric, a courtier, have one scene apiece talking
199
with Hamlet. These two minor figures are almost exhaustively characterized
by their odd politeness styles, but they appear only briefly and their scenes
are not central to the play. Kent in King Lear offers a contrast. He is a major
figure, characterized in part by a certain politeness style, and this style has
deep resonances in the play as a whole.
EXAMPLES OF CHARACTER DELINEATION
A didactic and insolent clown

Shakespeare's clowns are not circus clowns but clownish fellows of the lower
class: court attendants, artisans, beggars, officials, soldiers, rustics. Clowns
are very different from fools, not sophisticated and witty, but broadly
humorous. Sometimes the humor arises unintentionally out of their own
pricked pretensions and pomposities, out of malapropisms and fastidious but
absurd logic. Shakespeare's audiences laugh at clowns as well as with them,
whereas fools are almost never laughed at. Yet the clowns have always a kind
of sense, either garden variety common sense or street smarts. The gravedig-
gers in Act V of Hamlet are designated Clown and Other.
Clown appears to be the master-gravedigger and Other only a journey-
man. In a short scene between the two, Clown manifests the generic char-
acteristics of pretension, malapropism, and ironic common sense. Hamlet
and Horatio come on the scene and, though not recognized, are clearly iden-
tified as aristocrats. In the exchanges that follow, between Hamlet and
Clown, the former says sirrah and thou and the latter sir and you. These
forms are normative and do nothing to create Clown's character, but there
is something in his style that does. His first response to Hamlet involves a
contradiction and so violates Grice's maxim of quality, signaling off record
speech and the need to use inference to work out meaning.
Hamlet: Whose grave's this, sirrah?
Clown: Mine, sir.
Hamlet: I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in't. (V, /, 119-121, 124)
Hamlet's question could be intended to ask either about ownership or
future occupancy. "Who is the digger of this grave?" or "Who is to fill this
grave?" The linguistic ambiguity is there but, in context, it is clear that the
speaker is asking who will lie in the grave and that it is wantonly mischie-
vous of Clown to pretend otherwise. But there is no indication that Clown
has a face-threatening act in mind, no hint of any risky meaning. He is
pretending to find Hamlet's question ambiguous and so pretending that
Hamlet has been the first to violate the maxim of quality. It is a challenge
to a quick game of off record speech. It is as if he had tossed Hamlet a ball
to start a game of catch.
200
Hamlet instantly recognizes the playfully competitive intent. He does not

answer: "What! Thine! How can it be thine when thou'rt not dead?" but
instead delivers a swift return: "I think it be thine for thou liest in't." The
game is continued with the verb lie, which is ambiguous between "speak
falsely" and "occupy" and it is witty in telling the gravedigger that if mine
is his answer to the intended occupancy question, then it is a false answer
and if mine is the gravedigger's answer to the question "Who is the digger
of this grave," then it is a redundant answer because there he obviously is
- in the grave. And, of course, the quick, clever response reveals Hamlet's
esprit.
The two continue with sallies exploiting ambiguities in quick ('alive' or
'fast') and man ('humankind' or 'man not woman'), and Hamlet says to
Horatio: "How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card or equivo-
cation will undo us" (V, /, 139-140). It seems the age is grown so fastidious
that peasants are catching up with courtiers.
Clown is not an aspirant to high status; he simply enjoys trying to score
over his superiors. This is deliciously conveyed in his use of the indefinite
your, a form that retains today the suggestion of didactic expertise, of
pretension and condescension that it had in the 17th century (Gillett 1987).
Imagine a scholar discoursing: "Your clown in Shakespeare is not the same
as your fool." Your adds to the a rich sense of the insider conveying esoteric
knowledge. Clown explains to Hamlet, "Your water is a sore decayer of your
whoreson dead body" (V, /, 172-173). This pretension to professionalism
offers ironic counterpoint in a scene of death - the leveler.
An inept courtier
In Elizabethan England, there were many young men attempting to enter the
ruling elite, and there was a distinctive genre of books telling them how to
go about it. Concern for the feelings of others was evidently not enough to
generate the fastidious details of dress, of sitting, walking, and bowing, of
elegant locution, graceful posture, deference, and self-deprecation described
in Castiglione's The book of the courtier (1966) and in della Casa (1958),
Ascham (1970), and Elyot (1962). The code was so intricate that Whigham
(1984) has suggested that its first purpose, for the aristocracy, was to repress
mobility, and certainly it was a filter that excluded many. Among those in
the tragedies who were ambitious to rise are Oswald, Rosencrantz and Guil-
denstern, and "young Osric, a courtier," who approaches Hamlet and Hora-
tio (in V, ii) with the king's invitation to Hamlet that he try his skill with
rapier and dagger against Laertes.
Osric: Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart a thing
to you from his Majesty. (91-92)
The invitation with its deference, question, subjunctives, and nominaliza-
tions scores +6 for politeness, and Osric's speeches, generally, are far above
201
the politeness norm as are Hamlet's replies in which he mocks Osric's style.
Politeness theory picks up the special character of the affected courtier and
of Hamlet's parody but politeness is not identical with Elizabethan cour-
toisie. The primary goal of the courtier was to create a brilliant self that
would arrest the gaze and compel admiration. This is not politeness at all but
a face threat; it risks the self-esteem of the other. Politeness is required to
redress the brilliance, to make the self-presentation agreeable to the other or,
at least, tolerable. From the first, Osric is very polite but, from the first, his
politeness fails with Hamlet and with Horatio.
Osric's greeting is "Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark,"
which is surely an agreeable salutation, and yet Hamlet's aside to Horatio
is: "Dost know this waterfly?" From this we may conclude that the way Osric
looks - his apparel, movement, and gestures - establishes him as a certain
type, lightweight and distasteful to Hamlet. Osric would have doffed his hat,
using his right hand, as prescribed, and executing the full gesture as the
courtesy books recommended. He would have bowed, probably more than
once, and the placing of his foot, the exact manner of drawing it back, the
angle of the torso would all have been calculated to add to the handsome-
ness of his person. But the performance must have been excessive or too
obviously practiced because it did not please.
There follows the comedy of the doffed hat.
Hamlet: Put your bonnet to his right use. 'Tis for the head. (V, ii, 94)
This is a sharp directive though the neuter his probably added a playful tone.
Wildeblood writes: "Following a salutation it was the accepted practice for
a superior to request his inferior to replace his hat, and it was not out of
place for the latter, in complying, to show some slight hesitancy in deference
to his superior" (1965:167). But the hesitancy ought not to be overdone.
Delia Casa (1958) used, as an example of absurd superfluity, a man who
could not comfortably put his bonnet back on his head while facing his supe-
rior, and Osric was such a one.
Osric: I thank your lordship, it is very hot. (V, ii, 95)
Which means: "Pray do not let the doffed hat trouble you; it is for my own
comfort."
Hamlet, the master of all language games, now entangles Osric in con-
tradictions of courtliness.
Hamlet: No, believe me, 'tis very cold; the wind is northerly.
Osric: It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.
Hamlet: But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion"
[temperament].
Osric: Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry, as 'twere - I cannot tell how.
(V, ii, 96-102)
202
The problem is that the courtier must not disagree with his lord's reading of
the weather (a face-threatening act), but when contradictory readings are
issued in succession, it becomes obvious that the secondings are rule-governed
compliance, not sincere agreement. The effect is not brilliant.
The changes of the weather leave Osric no excuse for retaining his hat in
his hands and finally Hamlet gestures him to put it on.10
Osric: Nay, good my lord; for my ease, in good faith. (V, //, 106)
The poor gentleman is unable to put on his hat while talking with the Prince
of Denmark. That is, we shall see, a crucial defect in his performance. But
he goes on:
Osric: Sir, here is newly come to court Laertes - believe me, an absolute
gentleman, full of most excellent differences [distinguishing character-
istics] of very soft society and great showing. Indeed, to speak feelingly
[justly] of him, he is the card [chart] or calendar of gentry; for you shall
find in him the continent [summary] of what part a gentleman would
see. (V, ii, 107-112)
Nothing in Osric's long speech is to the point, the point being the chal-
lenge. Brown and Levinson write: "there is an element in formal politeness
that sometimes directs one to minimize the imposition by coming rapidly to
the point, avoiding the further imposition of prolixity and obscurity"
(1987:130). When speaking to a superior, we know that a few extra words
may be needed to express deference, but the preliminary "Sir" would here
suffice. To what end, then, the prolix praise of Laertes? It does not bene-
fit absent Laertes and it does not benefit Hamlet or Horatio. What is said
of Laertes is exactly what Osric fatuously believes to be true of himself. It
is self-praise, then, and Hamlet is subjected to all this prolixity so that Osric
may make a brilliant effect. The courtesy books enjoin the courtier to be
modest and warn that self-praise is only tolerable when very skillfully done.
Osric has sacrificed consideration of the hearer for self-presentation. He has
not been well or properly "demeaned" - in Goffman's (1956) sense.
The language Osric uses is a part of his self-presentation. He strives for
eloquence by using words in uncommon extended ways, inventing figures,
varying word order, but the effect achieved is only affectation. The word
continent is used in the sense of "sum and substance" not the familiar sense
"land mass." The Oxford English Dictionary gives 1590 as the date of the
first use in Osric's sense and the second citation (1604) is Osric's speech itself.
Probably then continent as "sum and substance" is to be taken in the play
as the courtier's invention. What would the point of it have been? Card
could mean "map" or "chart" and that suggests an intention to evoke the
"land mass" sense and make a kind of geography trope, but it is a trope
without purpose and calendar really will not fit in at all. The result is irritat-
203
ing redundancy - more words with no addition of meaning and a vague sense
of failed cleverness.
Hamlet's response is a glorious parody not only of Osric but of several
kinds of linguistic affectation common in the period. He begins: "Sir, his
definement suffers no perdition in you." Definement here means "definition"
and it is borrowed from French. Young people who had traveled abroad
liked to advertise their experience by introducing loan words - usually from
French or Italian. Perdition is simply a very long and rare word that can
mean "loss" but to use it instead of loss in this sentence is grotesque.
In saying: "Sir, his definition suffers no loss in you" Hamlet not only tells
Osric that he has described Laertes well but also says that Osric himself is
not a lesser gentleman, which was Osric's own vainglorious thought. The
parody is very broad, but Osric, too dull-witted to recognize a parody, con-
tinues in the same style: "Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him" (V,
ii, 122).
What was it that made Osric's performance as a courtier so poor and so
distasteful to a prince? It identified him as one of a breed "the drossy age
dotes on" who "only got the tune of the time." Osric may have studied
courtesy books and learned perfectly the rules in them but the rules alone
would never make an ideal courtier. His self-presentation was grossly bad.
However, it might have been much better and still lacked an essential qual-
ity: spontaneity or sprezzatura (Castiglione 1966). It was cruel of the
courtesy books to lay down all manner of rules and strategies to be learned
and then say (almost) that it was all in vain because the most perfectly pre-
pared performance had no value without effortlessness. And there was some
suggestion that effortlessness or sprezzatura might, just possibly, not be
teachable. In any case, it was a quality that came naturally to the aristocracy
and not easily to others. Presenting themselves as guides to achieved status,
the books laid on one requirement that might not be possible to achieve and
so there was some comfort in them for those having ascribed status - the
aristocracy. Sprezzatura seems to function as the essential quality of redres-
sive politeness if a brilliant self-presentation is to be made agreeable.
Rash but devoted; politeness and true feeling

Kent, in King Lear, like Osric and Clown in Hamlet, is a character with a
striking politeness style, but Kent is a major figure throughout the play and
the important thing about Kent's style is the way it patterns across charac-
ters and changes with their fortunes. The great-change of fortune in the play
is the downfall of the king. This changes Kent's behavior and the behavior
of everyone - King Lear's most of all.
When King Lear in I, i, intemperately banishes his best-loved and most
loving daughter, Cordelia, there is one who protests his folly - the Earl of
Kent.
204
Kent: Good my liege -

Lear. Peace, Kent!
Come not between the Dragon and his wrath. (I, /, 122-124)
Kent begins with the deference everyone shows Lear but, having been sharply
cut off and warned not to intercede, he blunders on.
Kent: Be Kent unmannerly
When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man? (I, 1, 147-148)
In our technical sense of politeness, this speech is certainly impolite - an
unredressed imposition and insult - which establishes Kent's rash nature.
However, the word impolite, in its usual sense, is too feeble for the power
of the scene. Kent continues his rash attempt to check the king, though
threatened: "Kent on thy life no more." In the end he is banished "turn thy
hated back on our kingdom." The impetuous intervention, like Cordelia's
too blunt "Nothing my lord," feeds Lear's anger and helps to bring on the
terrible events that follow.
Kent, disguised as Caius, is taken as a servant by the king and, in Act II,
bears the king's letter to Regan and the Duke of Cornwall. At their court,
he draws his sword on the detestable Oswald and when Oswald calls for help
a goodly company of monsters comes on the scene: Regan, Cornwall, and
Edmund. Asked why he has attacked Oswald, Kent replies, in effect, that he
does not like the man's looks, whereupon Cornwall says that Kent may per-
chance also not like the looks of Cornwall, Edmund, even Regan. Kent's
reply:
Kent: Sir, 'tis my occupation to be plain:
I have seen better faces in my time
Than stands on any shoulder that I see
Before me at this instant. (II, ii, 94-97)
He is still not putting things so as to take account of the feelings of others.
Cornwall and Regan command: "Fetch forth the stocks!" Only the basest
wretches were put in the stocks. To put the king's messenger there was a vio-
lent outrage against the king himself; a nonverbal FTA. When Lear sees his
messenger, in stocks by command of his daughter and her husband, he says:
"They could not, would not do't." Kent's rash acts and "plain" speech have
provided Regan and Cornwall with a pretext for the inhospitality they
intend.
Kent's style is not always less polite than the norm. With Lear, in the vio-
lent storm on the heath, he is gentle and deferential.
Kent: Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;
Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest. (Ill, //, 61-62)
205
And, later on:

Kent: Good my lord, enter here.
Lear: Wilt break my heart?
Kent: I had rather break mine own. Good my lord, enter. (Ill, iv, 4-5)
From the time Lear loses his kingdom and is cast out of doors by "wolf-
ish" Goneril and Regan, Kent never once fails to address him with forms of
respect: sir, good my lord, your Grace, my good master. This is extraor-
dinary politeness - not even matched by Ophelia speaking dutifully to her
father. Bradley says: "His love for Lear is the passion of his life: it is his
life." And "The King is not to him, old wayward, unreasonable, piteous: he
is still terrible, grand, the king of men" (1905:307).
Kent's character is not expressed in a consistent single style, as are the
characters of Osric and Clown, but by a pattern across characters and in
time: Plain-spoken but rash before the king's downfall, he is immensely
respectful afterward. Kent's style is a melodic voice that runs the length of
the play and rises and falls in meaningful relation to other voices.
When King Lear falls from the heights to the depths, the behavior of every
principal changes. Changes of politeness are important, not in themselves,
but because they express changes of power, imposition, and feeling. Goneril
and Regan in I, i, bid up the price of the kingdom in professions of love for
Lear, but in the last scene of II they compete in cutting the size of his reti-
nue. "What need you five and twenty?" "Ten, or five?" "What need one?"
Cordelia, who in I, /, could not say more than: "I love your Majesty/Ac-
cording to my bond, no more nor less," does in IV, v/7, most tenderly say:
"How does my royal lord? How fares your Majesty?"
The greatest change is in Lear himself. His exalted station in the first two
acts appears in the differential scores for politeness of speech to Lear and
speech from Lear. Gloucester, Kent, Burgundy, and France all speak to the
king with elaborate politeness. Even Goneril and Regan retain the forms sir
and my lord when their actions have made the forms ironic. And to all, Lear
is bluntly imperious or unrestrainedly abusive. The average power differen-
tial is almost three times greater for Lear than for any other figure in the
four tragedies and the reader feels the grandeur.
In the first acts, Lear is more rash, more choleric than Kent. Wounded by
Cordelia's restraint, he is instantly furious and disclaims her forever. When
Kent intervenes, Lear becomes a dragon. When his Fool speaks too plainly,
Lear warns: "Take heed, sirrah - the whip." How great, then, is the change
on the heath after Lear has learned "to feel what wretches feel."
Kent: Good my lord, enter here.

Lear: Prithee go in thyself; seek thine own ease.
This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
206
On things would hurt me more, but I'll go in.

[To the Fool] In, boy; go first. (Ill, iv, 22-26)
Kent's change from rash action and plain speech yielding, on the down-
fall of the king, to a kind of gentle dignity is in tune with the transforma-
tion of Lear himself and with Cordelia's outspoken tenderness. The changes
in Goneril, Regan, and Edmund are parallel with one another and are dis-
cordant with Kent, Lear, and Cordelia. All these reverberations make Kent's
manners integral to the play in a way that the styles of Osric and Clown are
not integral to Hamlet.
It is not too strong to say that King Lear makes a powerful comment on
verbal politeness in general. In Act I, those who feel the greatest consider-
ation for others, if we go by their words, are Goneril, Regan, and Edmund,
and those who seem to feel the least are Lear, Cordelia, and Kent. The true
case is otherwise: The polite speakers are bent on advancing selfish causes,
and those who are blunt, rash, and imperious are also those who love. The
play seems to say that politeness does not finally matter. It is deliberate
behavior that can be put on in the interests of greed, advancement, and
desire. It is also civilized behavior, a late tenuous human achievement that
can be overthrown in the instant by animal fury. Passions, the play seems
to say, rule men's lives.
But what in the end does anyone care about? Cordelia cares for her father,
Lear for his child, Edgar for Gloucester, and Kent for his master. Politeness
as a set of practices, as a way of putting things when making a criticism or
a request, has been shown to be trivial, but the generative core of politeness
- concern for the feelings of others - is itself a passion, and it is always able
to generate new, truer practices.
Sampling the scene of reconciliation (IV, v/7), we hear immense concern.
Cordelia: O, thou good Kent, how shall I live and work,
To match thy goodness? (1-2)
Kent: Pardon, dear madam. (8)
Cordelia: O you kind gods! (14)
Cordelia: O my dear father, restoration hang
Thy medicine on my lips.(26-27)
Kent: Kind and dear princess. (29)
Lear: I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia. (70)
Doctor: Be comforted, good madam. (78)
The words dear, kind, and good are all terms of positive politeness but,
among such terms, they comprise a special set. All of them either directly
express concern for another ("dear father," "dear princess") or else attribute
concern to another ("good Kent," "kind princess," "kind gods"). In this
207
scene, we have no worthy, valiant, honest, noble, or any of the other terms
that separate one person from another but only terms of concern. It is as if
an abused politeness system had returned to its wellspring. In this scene, and
again in Act V, we hear true politeness, which is as serious as formulas and
flattery are trivial. True politeness, because it is directly responsive to feel-
ing, needs no courtesy books to teach it nor any striving after sprezzatura.
CONCLUSION
Dramatic texts offer good possibilities for the study of politeness theory.
They offer wide social and characterological scope, and because the speech
is not elicited from informants but was invented by authors for purposes of
their own, dramatic texts can surprise analysts, as Shakespeare has surprised
us, into discoveries they had not envisioned. Studying a dramatic text with
politeness theory in mind has much in common with studying protocols of
spontaneous child speech with a grammar and a theory of acquisition in
mind. You do not control the flow of data. It pours over you and you must
cope as best you can. There are many deficiencies in such a naturalistic
approach. Data sets are often critically incomplete; analyses cannot be fully
objective; tests of statistical significance are seldom appropriate. We think
the methodologically looser naturalistic study is a valuable supplement to
controlled experimental methods. Both offer the analyst rich opportunities
to be deceived, but the naturalist is not likely, at least, to underestimate the
complexity of the topic.
NOTES
* We are grateful to Celia Millward for guiding us to several sources on Shakespeare's

English.
1. The four major tragedies are Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello. All citations, by
act, scene, and lines, will be to the 1963 New American Library, Signet Classic editions: Hamlet
(E. Hubler, ed.); King Lear (R. Fraser, ed.); Macbeth (S. Barnet, ed.); Othello (A. Kernan, ed.).
2. Parentheses always identify material not in the original text but added by the authors.
3. Wherever the text of the play includes unfamiliar names, allusions, or constructions, the
editor is likely to have added footnotes and we reprint the notes from the cited edition, in
brackets, following the text. Of course, the more difficult problem is the word familiar to us
in form and meaning which, however, needs to be understood in terms of a specifically Elizabe-
than context. We discuss these only when they are directly relevant to the politeness level of a
speech (Hussey 1982).
4. Brown and Levinson dedicate their 1987 book to Erving Goffman and so mark what is
clearly a great intellectual debt, but they do not map their theory into Goffman's (1956) terms.
Hymes (1983) has pointed out the fact that the formulations do intersect but that the intersec-
tion seems to leave Goffman's "demeanor" (self-respect or what one owes to oneself) with no
equivalent in politeness theory. The present authors believe that the Brown/Levinson theory is
almost certainly undercomplicated and underspecified for the whole domain of politeness; it
is, however, an explicit and sensitive attempt at synthetic theory.
5. The original, most formal statement of the predicted relationship between face risk or
weightiness and strategy selection is: "Given the following set of strategies, the more an act
208
threatens S's or H's face, the more S will want to choose a higher-numbered strategy" (Brown
& Levinson 1987:60). It is clear that the authors do not think of risk values as algorithms that
generate politeness levels, independently of all other considerations, or as stimuli automatically
eliciting responses. Empirical research attempting quantitative tests of politeness theory has some-
times used "overt behavior - how speakers actually use these strategies in interaction, in rela-
tion to P, D and R assessments - [and sometimes used] subjective ranking of perceived
politeness" (ibid., 17). Brown and Levinson, in their 1987 review of research, stress the neces-
sity of supplementing quantitative evaluations of polite redress with qualitative analysis, and
we have found this to be absolutely essential, because in Shakespeare's tragedies risk levels are
not the only important determinants of politeness. It is necessary to know, for instance, when
Hamlet is feigning madness and when Ophelia is actually mad, because both states throw off
the calibration of risk and politeness that operates in more usual circumstances. When sensi-
tive qualitative analysis precedes the quantitative, we believe, with Brown and Levinson, that:
"Controlled experimental tests of the model should, however, be possible, given the specific pre-
dictions it makes about the ranking of super-strategies, the ranking of politeness levels within
strategies, and the summative nature of P, D and R assessments" (ibid., 22).
6. In the formula for weightiness (W x ), the subscript for power (P) is written "h, s" and the
order of the terms is intended to signify that it is the power of the hearer (H) over the speaker
that increases the weightiness of the FTA. When the speaker is the more powerful person (Mac-
beth addressing his servant), the power variable would have a negative value and would lower
weightiness (W). The subscript for distance (D) is written "s, h" and this order is intended to
signify symmetry with S's distance from H equal to H's distance from S.
7. We are indebted to Dell Hymes for pointing out that a case can sometimes be made for
assigning degrees to both the vertical (power) and horizontal (solidarity/distance) dimensions
and summing them. In effect, this procedure creates a single underlying factor: degree of dis-
tance.
8. Friedrich (1966) has described subtle expressive shifts in 19th-century Russian novels.
9. We are indebted to Dell Hymes for reminding us of this principle, which is an improve-
ment over the endless proliferation of doubtful meanings to fit difficult cases.
10. The inclusion in the text of the stage direction. "Hamlet motions him to put on his hat"
is an editorial decision and in performance the director decides whether or not Osric does put
his hat back on. We think the text favors not putting it back on.
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Lang. Soc. i8, 159-212.

Printed in the United States of America

Politeness theory and Shakespeare's

Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1987) have proposed that

Act II, scene /, lines 31-32,1

© 1989 Cambridge University Press 0047-4045/89 $5.00 + .00

The same play, IV, ii, 63-67,

(1) without Few

influenced by the published empirical data, which we think unconvincing,

1. Notice admirable qualities, possessions, etc.

TABLE 2. Substrategies of negative politeness

Act III, Scene Hi, lines 35-40

THE FOUR PLAYS

a speaker's words alone; it is sometimes necessary to know unspoken

usual method of selective quotation, searched the plays for politeness-

Edgar: If e'er your Grace had speech with man so

DEFERENCE IN SHAKESPEAREAN ENGLISH

nominative or the accusative (Mulholland 1987). The important thing is the

is pleased to do something. It comes to the same thing. Unless the hearer is

Two qualitative principles

Rage. The enraged character in the tragedies always ignores P, D, and

cooperative conversation (Grice 1975) which make it possible to follow strat-

TABLE 3. Contrasts of power alone

[IV, (7,3/IV, (7,6] [V, (7,295/V, i7,296]

an element of scoring ambiguity with "contradictory" being more likely than

was overlooked in the scoring. And Montano is attempting to pacify Cas-

Gloucester. What paper were you reading?

TABLE 4. Contrasts of distance alone with distance interpreted as affect

Contrasts of distance (D) alone

the way that weightiness (Wx) is supposed to be affected by the D of the

Edgar: Let's exchange charity.

With the advent of good feelings comes, as always, a heightened politeness.

Contrasts of extremity (R) alone

TABLE 5. Contrasts of extremity alone

Iago: Nay but he prated,

Excessive redress in extremity. Two examples do more than confirm the-

meaning communicates a deeper meaning that carries a more extreme risk.

In Hamlet, there is another example of excessive politeness communicat-

EXAMPLES OF CHARACTER DELINEATION

A didactic and insolent clown

Hamlet instantly recognizes the playfully competitive intent. He does not

Rash but devoted; politeness and true feeling

Kent: Good my liege -

And, later on:

Kent: Good my lord, enter here.

On things would hurt me more, but I'll go in.

* We are grateful to Celia Millward for guiding us to several sources on Shakespeare's

Abbott, E. A. (1925). A Shakespearean grammar. London: Macmillan.

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