‘More Pregnantly Than Words’: Some Uses and Limitations of Visual Symbolism

Summary

When the Painter in Timon of Athens puts the Poet in his place by pointing out that not only is his message ‘common’ but it also needs another medium –

A thousand moral paintings I can show

That shall demonstrate these quick blows of Fortune's

More pregnantly than words –

(I, i, 93–5)

then, obviously, neither interlocutor is concerned with the idea of a 'theatre poet'. Despite his fine lines on the nature of poetic inspiration, the Poet thinks of poetry mainly as something which gives outward form to an inner moral. And his narrow definition of style as a garment is so tied up with his sycophantic use of poetry that both can be punctured by the disillusioned Timon, in an even more relentless reminder of the limits of language:

Poet. I am rapt, and cannot cover

The monstrous bulk of this ingratitude

With any size of words.

Timon. Let it go naked: men may see't the better.

(v, i, 62-5)