Rubbing salt into wounds (2.1.137-143) #StormTossed

GONZALO                               My lord Sebastian,

The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness,

And time to speak it in. You rub the sore

When you should bring the plaster.

SEBASTIAN    Very well.

ANTONIO                   And most chirurgeonly!

GONZALO       It is foul weather in us all, good sir,

When you are cloudy.

SEBASTIAN                                        Foul weather?

ANTONIO                                                                   Very foul. (2.1.137-143)

Gonzalo’s response to Sebastian – naming him for the first time and thus, perhaps, establishing for the first time that he’s not Antonio, that is, not the usurping Duke of Milan, Prospero’s brother – is temperate, but also nicely sharp. He’s very polite – my lord Sebastian – but also quite cuttingly precise. You do speak truth, he acknowledges, in your blaming of this catastrophe on the king and his marriage of his daughter, but it is unkind and inappropriate to be speaking it in these terms and at this time. It lacks gentleness, here not only kindness but gentility – he is accusing Sebastian of not acting as a gentleman should, albeit indirectly – and of speaking out of turn, at the wrong time. And Gonzalo is also, indirectly, acknowledging the pain of Alonso’s loss in his metaphor of the sore, a wound. Sebastian, as courtier, and perhaps friend to the king, should be offering comfort, care, and healing, a plaster; instead he’s making the pain worse, rubbing the sore, rubbing salt into the wound it might be said. (Early modern plasters were medicated, poultices, substances applied to wounds, not simply a means of covering them.) Sebastian pretends to take this on board – very well– but Antonio has to butt in again, mocking Gonzalo’s medical metaphor, saying that Sebastian will act most chirurgeonly, in a most surgeon-like fashion (the wild spelling is common in the period). Actually both Antonio and Sebastian are acting rather like surgeons, or flattering themselves that they are: they are being cutting and satirical, pointing out faults and failings, and satirists are often described as surgeons, cutting away corrupt flesh and draining wounds. (In fact they have no such agenda; they’re being nasty for the sake of it.) The indefatigable Gonzalo starts up again, though. More gently he says to the king, we feel for you, we share your grief – it is foul weather in us all, good sir, when you are cloudy – but also, therefore, we need you to set the tone, we need you to be more commanding and more positive, so that everyone else will behave better too. And it looks for a terrible moment as if the chicken jokes are going to start up again…

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