If your honour judge it meet, I will place you
Where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an
Auricular assurance have your satisfaction; and
That without further delay than this very evening.
-Edmund
King Lear Act I, Scene ii, Line 95
So
today we're looking at language; in particular, auricular assurance. Whoa, who says things like that? Seeing is
believing, but in this case, hearing is believing. Do you think you would ever use this? Have you ever said, 'I need to
hear it with my own ears.'? If you did, would you consider replacing that
phrase with 'I need auricular assurance.'? For sure, it's a mouthful.
But what about
context? Edmund is one of the Rat-Finks in this play, and he's in the process
of tricking his father, Gloucester,
into turning on his brother
Edgar. Now the interesting thing here, and probably the reason Will used such a phrase that would
draw attention to it, is that Gloucester
is going to have his eyes gouged out a few scenes down the road. At that point
he will only have the opportunity for auricular assurance, as opposed to
optical assurance (seeing is believing). So Will seems to be doing a bit of
foreshadowing here. Ahh, that clever Will.
This is my personal apparatus for auricular assurance.
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