rhetorical, Fuller, Jonson, Shakespeare, parrhesia, licentia, freedom of speech

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rhetorical virtuosity. Rhetorical control is exactly what Skelton exhibits, and he changes the course of his insult with such a deftness as Fuller admired in his appraisal of Shakespeare’s performance in wit combats with Jonson in which he “could turn all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his Wit and Invention”. ²¹²

Skelton may not have intended this conclusion to be drawn, or even necessarily have been aware of it, but these contradictory ingredients of his flyting are reconciled in the figure of parrhesia (Latin, licentia). David Colclough describes the Renaissance perception of the figure as purportedly “frank speech […] mitigated” by the context in which it is spoken”. ²¹³ In this instance, Skelton has license to vent his spleen in the safe context of a courtly flyting sanctioned by the King, and without this context it might be surmised that his response would be considerably different in tone. Consequently, Skelton underplays the fact that he is writing as appropriate to circumstance, and that he would be unable to get away with the same variety of linguistic and vituperative excess in a different speech environment. Notably, the passages about Cicero and the classical satirists are kept sufficiently far apart to avoid attracting scrutiny of the discrepancy they suggest between the exquisitely hewn, context bound argument of one and the unbounded, rough-hewn vituperation of the other. In the next two flytings I consider, neither of which enjoy royal sanction, they signpost the circumscribed boundaries between permitted and proscribed speech in order to manipulate them. While Skelton affects a freedom of speech that he does not actually have, these flyters wrest the opportunity to speak their minds by manipulating permitted language in order to say what they claim not to be saying.

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²¹² See n.59.
²¹³ David Colclough, ‘Parrhesia: The Rhetoric of Free Speech in Early Modern England’, Rh,

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