Introduction

In De Oratore, Cicero describes riposte, or raillery, as an innate faculty of wit rather than as an art: “tum vero in hoc altero dicacitatis quid habet ars loci, cum ante iilud facete dictum emissum haerere debeat, quam cogitari potuisse videatur?” (“What room, pray, is there for Art in raillery, that other sort, wherein the shaft of wit has to be sped and hit its mark, with no palpable pause for thought?”, II. liv. 219-20). Such artless, impromptu wit was a cherished faculty in the sixteenth century, and although considered the product of a native aptitude, as a highly prized accomplishment, it was also nurtured through rehearsal, practise and education. The ability to retort, reply or rejoin effectively to defamation was, in effect, the art of simulating artlessness and, while skills in raillery and acrimonious retorts did not form part of a formal education, they might be acquired and enhanced by reference to their opposite number, namely the civilising art of debate taught at the grammar schools, Inns and Universities, and propagated by the conduct book.

In Shakespeare’s As You Like It Touchstone has the following to say about the art of polemical response at court:

Jaques: Can you nominate in order now the degrees of the lie?
Touchstone: O, sir, we quarrel in print by the book, as you have books for good manners. I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. (V.iv.84-91) ²¹

Touchstone, who appears to have considered the art of literary quarreling in detail, explains to Jaques an imaginative formal taxonomy of it based roughly upon the etiquette of duelling,

²¹ All quotations of Shakespeare’s plays are from the Alexander text unless otherwise stated.