MEMORABLE WORDS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 933, 28 June 1957, Page 7

MEMORABLE WORDS

[N the past five hundred years there has been much talking in England. The voices are gone for ever; we cannot, with all the aids of science, hear citizens gossiping or arguing in the streets of a younger and smaller London; and if by some miracle the voices could return from Elizabethan times it is doubtful if we could understand them. But their ways of speaking have been preserved in old documents or have passed through ‘plays and_ novels into literature. A few years ago an attempt was made to reveal the spoken word as men and women have used it from the 15th century to the present day. The results were published by the Oxford University Press in The Oxford Book of English Talk, an anthology edited by James Sutherland. The book does not fulfil its true function until the words in it are spoken aloud. This is the idea behind a new NZBS series of programmes, As We Said, to be heard from 2YC on Tuesday, July 2, 8.0 p.m. Passages from the anthology have been selected to cover the period between the 16th century and 1846. They are sometimes intended for several voices, or are taken from speeches made under emotional strain, and lend themselves admirably to dramatisation. This method has been used throughout the series: the voices will be heard "in character." Some of the most dramatic passages have been taken from Court records. They reveal, not only an English capacity for plain speaking-as in Elizabeth Driver’s cool rebuttal of a charge of apostasy-but also an impasssioned eloquence in great causes. Here, for in--stance, is the Earl of Strafford answering a charge of high treason: Jesu! where hath this fire lay’n all this while, so many hundred years together, that no smoke should appear till it burst out now, to consume me and my children? Hard it is, and extreme hard in my opinion, that the punishment should precede the promulgation of a law. .. If I pass down the Thames in a boat, and run and split myself upon an anchor, if there be not a buoy to give me warning the party shall give me damages; but if it be marked out, then it is at my own peril. Now, my Lords, where is the mark set upon this crime? .. . If it be not marked, if it lie underwater, and not above, there is no human providence can prevent the destruction of a man presently and instantly ... Strafford must have felt that he was addressing posterity as well as his accusers; and every word had a place in his argument. — bs = But Judge Jeffreys (suffering from the stone) could allow himself an unbridled eloquence: Great God of Heaven and Earth! What reason have men to rebel! But as I told you, rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft. "Fear God and honour the King" is rejected by people for no other reason, as I can find, but that it is written in St. Peter. Gentlemen, I must tell you IT am. afraid that this city hath too many of these people in it. And it is your duty to search them out... I have brought a brush in my pocket and I shall be sure to rub the dirt » wherever it is, or on whomsoever it sticks. . . I tell you, I have brought a broom, and I will sweep every man’s door, whether great or small. The hanging judge is voluble, but not -easy company. Fortunately, there

are reminders that life in old England was not all rebellion and civil broil, followed by long processions to the gallows. Men and women of the common sort could find sufficient drama at their own firesides, and live at peace with one another if husbands knew when wives should have the last expensive word. It is pleasant, and not altogether a new experience, to meet the Clothier’s Wife, a dame who is resolved to have a gown from London, and who knows how to get it-first by argument, and then by stratagem: "Yea, yea, husband, your old churlish conditions will never be left; you keepe me here like a drudge and a droile, and so you may keep your money in your purse you care not for your credit; but before I go so like a shepherdess, I will first go naked. And I tell you plain .. ." And in saying this, she went in, and soone after she was so sicke that needes she must go to bed; and when she was laid, she drave out that night with many grievous groanes, sighing and sobbing, and no rest she could take, God wot. The sequel, or happy outcome, may easily be imagined. Women talk well when their needs are great, as the Clothier’s Wife shows plainly enough; but sometimes they speak as if for the love of their own voices, as was undoubtedly true of Mrs Caudle, celebrated for curtain lectures that have given words to the language. She appears in As We Said; and so, too, does Dr Johnson, another great talker whom it is almost improper to mention in the same sentence as Mrs Caudle. Yet in all these programmes, whether the occasion be grave with a feeling of history, or light with domestic chatter, the voices are English-clear and firm, harsh and defiant, alive with imagery from the world of common things, robust and laughing, and often memorable.