The speechless heroine

Abstract

In 1606 an edition of Libanius’ Sixth Declamation was published in Paris with Latin and Greek translations in parallel columns of text. Libanius was a fourth-century Greek scholar who conducted a school of rhetoric in Constantinople, and his work declaims the downfall of a man fooled into believing his bride to be soft-spoken and self-effacing. After the wedding, his illusion of a gentle feminine silence is shattered; not only is his new wife loud but insatiably talkative, and he pleads desperately for legal permission to commit suicide.

Why should women only above all other creatures

that were created for the benefit of man, have the use of speech?

(Francis Beaumont, The Woman-Hater, 1606)

The wives tongue towards her husband must bee neither keene, nor loose, nor countenance neither swelling nor deriding: her behaviour not flinging, not puffing, not discontented; but savouring of all lowlinesse and quietnesse of affection. Looke what kinde of words or behaviour thou wouldst dislike from thy servant or childe, those must thou not give to thine husband: for thou art equally commanded to be subject. (William Whately, A Bride-Bush: or a direction for married persons, 1619)