‘A Play Extempore’: Interpolation, Improvisation, and Unofficial Speech

Abstract

Thus former US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld somewhat disingenuously (mis)quoted Hamlet in order to lend his equivocation the weight of Shakespeare’s moral and cultural authority. Indeed, it is common practice for writers and speechmakers to resort to Shakespearean quotation as a means of bolstering their arguments; ‘as Shakespeare said’ is second only to biblical quotation as a rhetorical touchstone for affirmations of continuity with traditional moral values. The Complete Works of Shakespeare and the Bible: the two sources guaranteed to top the list of contributors to any good dictionary of quotations;1 the two books which ‘castaways’ on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs are assumed to want with them on their desert island as a matter of course. Shakespeare is cited as scripture just as one might quote the gospel: such adages as ‘The better part of valour is discretion’ (1 Henry IV, 5.4.118–19), ‘Poor and content is rich, and rich enough’ (Othello, 3.3.176), ‘Neither a borrower or a lender be’ (Hamlet, 1.3.75) and ‘to thine own self be true’ (Hamlet, 1.3.78) are examples which might readily spring to mind. Books compiling and sometimes analysing such nuggets of Shakespeare’s ‘wisdom’ are widely available (Peter Dawkins’ Wisdom of Shakespeare series, published in association with Shakespeare’s Globe and with forewords by Mark Rylance, is one which appears to have had a significant effect on practice at the Globe).2