CHAPTER XIV

CONNOTATION

In the study of the mark of exclamation your attention was called to two significant passages, which I repeat:

and

He must not suspect!

But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

What do they denote? Briefly, the first says that a certain woman did a certain thing that she might prevent a certain man from suspecting what she was planning to do to save his life. The second says that someone is in her grave and I exclaim that this fact makes quite a difference to me. Another example: "Twice two are four; twice three are six; twice four are eight." Imagine these are the words of a father to a son who has been extravagant as though there were no end to money, and the father says, "My son, you can't go on like this, spending money with no thought of the future: remember, 'twice two are four; twice three are six; twice four are eight'!" there any thought or suggestiveness in those words. now that was not there before?

Recall the passage from Enoch Arden ending with: A shipwreck'd sailor waiting for a sail!

And again: Shylock is asked whether, in case Antonio fails to pay him the three thousand ducats, he will insist on a pound of Antonio's flesh; and further, he is asked what is the good of a pound of flesh, whereupon he snaps back:

To bait fish withal; and if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.

Do Shylock's first words mean merely that Antonio's flesh will prove very good bait for fishing?

In the play, The Blue Bird, are two children so poor that they have cakes but twice a year. When they are asked whether they ever have cakes, one answers:

Oh, yes, on New Year's and the fourteenth of July. Nearly everyone who hears or reads that answer laughs at "the fourteenth of July," thinking it to be a slip on the little boy's part intended for "the fourth of July." But the laugh springs from our ignorance that this play is laid in France, and that to Frenchmen "the fourteenth of July" has exactly the same meaning as "the fourth of July" has for Americans, it is France's Independence Day. So you see the passage isn't funny, and the laugh is on us for laughing at it.

There is no single sentence in all the parables more exquisitely beautiful and touching than:

But while he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.

The

Could anything be simpler in its denotation? most hurried reading will give us the bald facts, but where in all literature is there a more noble and uplifting connotation than in the words: "But while he was yet a great way off, his father saw him"? A great way off,-a great way off, the father saw him. To paraphrase that is to destroy its beauty. Say it again, over and over, while its marvelous connotation possesses you entirely. "And ran"-that in two words. is all a father's heart: "and ran," "and fell on his neck, and kissed him."

And lastly there is not much to love in the character of Shylock; but Shakespeare's art in softening his character is wonderfully manifested in one brief passage, the full significance of which few people see. They not only fail to get Shakespeare's purpose; they get a meaning the very reverse of what he intended. They are moved through their ignorance to hearty laughter where the poet's evident intention is to arouse, for a moment at least, a touch of pity for old Shylock.

Jessica, Shylock's only child, has eloped, taking with her much money and many "precious, precious" jewels belonging to her father. Tubal, Shylock's friend, goes to Genoa in search of her, but cannot find her. All he learns is that she is spending Shylock's money recklessly: in one night she throws away "fourscore ducats," and Shylock bemoans his loss with:

Thou stick'st a dagger in me. I shall never see my gold again.

Tubal continues, after telling of his meeting with some of Antonio's creditors:

One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.

Shylock. Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my turquoise; I had it of Leah, when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.

Again the audience bursts into laughter, no doubt admiring the mighty poet for his cleverness. And yet here is a passage of tenderest feeling. Shylock, the money lender, the miser, he who screams and howls when he hears that Jessica spent in one night fourscore ducats, is still a lover carrying in his heart the enshrined image of his beloved wife. One glimpse of what was best in him is permitted to us, and we, through sheer ignorance, miss it entirely. "Monkey" in Shakespeare's day represented a good sized sum of money-many, many ducats. The turquoise was a much more precious stone in Shakespeare's time than it is now, but even so the ring could scarcely have been worth beyond the sum Jessica sold it for. Again, Shylock has just told Tubal that among the jewels stolen by Jessica was a diamond worth alone two thousand ducats. Now let us bring all these facts together. Here is a diamond gone that cost two thousand ducats; here is the news of Jessica's spending fourscore ducats at one sitting, and these losses are daggers stuck into Shylock's heart. But when he hears that his turquoise is gone all sense of money

value leaves him. This little turquoise ring brings back his early love, his beloved Leah, and perhaps the days when Christian persecution had not poisoned his soul. His heart softens at the tender memory and vents its agony in the piteous cry: "Oh, Tubal! Tubal! thou breakest my heart! My ring! my Leah's ring! For a monkey? a monkey? Oh, I would not have parted with it for a wilderness of monkeys!" A pun, to be sure, but a grim, ghastly joke, springing from an aching heart. All that was best and highest and noblest and most human in poor Shylock finds expression in those four words. Hate, despair, money lust, revenge, are gone; and, in their stead, only the memory of his early love, his Leah.

Long before this you doubtless have discovered why we have been spending so much time on passages many of which were studied in previous chapters. The purpose was to demonstrate that words have two aspects: to define and to suggest; and that of the two the latter is in literature by far the more significant.

I am under great obligation to Professor Barrett Wendell for his treatment of Denotation and Connotation. I can therefore do no better than let him speak directly to you. I quote from his English Composition. I am taking a few, a very few, liberties with the original text:

Every word [every group of words in the sense in which "group" is used throughout this book] names something in such a way as to identify it; [and further] it suggests along with it a very subtle and variable set of associated ideas and emotions.