Shakespeare epigraphs and the changing world

Use in the book

The title-page line about squaring one's talk makes language answer to the narrator's body. Its adverb franticly also introduces the possibility that extraordinary speech will be treated as madness. The phrase does not merely label a geometrical character with a convenient pun; it asks what kind of speech can be framed by a figure missing a dimension.

Part I's counsel to be patient because the world is broad and wide fits a plane literally. As an epigraph it also asks a confined mind to imagine more than its present enclosure. The borrowed line's consolatory force becomes ironic when Flatland's rulers demand that the world remain exactly as their doctrine describes it.

Part II's brave new worlds opens a narrative of wonder. By its ending, the same larger field has become difficult to hold in memory and dangerous to proclaim. The closing reference to the baseless fabric of a dream returns Shakespearean language to the question of whether appearances and remembered visions have secure substance. The allusions frame a passage from astonishing enlargement to threatened confidence without simply cancelling the enlargement.

The Preface23 makes another kind of alteration. One touch of Nature makes all worlds akin extends a familiar Shakespearean saying across dimensions. What unites the worlds is their liability to prejudice and persecution, not just cheerful human fellow-feeling. The altered plural punctures the reader's claim to exemption.

Borrowed authority therefore cuts both ways. Shakespeare lends recognisable language to a strange world, while the dimensional setting changes what the familiar words can mean. The reader is asked to hear a phrase again rather than assume that recognition of its source has completed interpretation.

Places to read

1. Title Page“how franticly I square my talk” joins speech, shape and apparent derangement
2. Part I epigraph“the world is broad and wide” describes planar extent while inviting patience
3. Part II epigraph“brave new worlds” supplies a language of wonder
4. Preface23“all worlds akin” alters a familiar line to include shared dimensional prejudice
5. § 2223“the baseless fabric of a dream” gives the ending a Shakespearean dissolution

In this edition

The notes identify the relevant passages in Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest and Troilus and Cressida. They also report the Hamlet motto on the first edition's wrapper. That wrapper motto is edition history, not an additional epigraph printed in the supplied primary-text sequence.

Franticly

Madly or distractedly, in the Shakespearean motto about squaring one's talk. Its older spelling and double relation to speech and shape announce the risk that the Square's account will be heard as derangement. Printed form: franticly (Title Page). See Shakespeare epigraphs and the changing world.

Square as a verb

To shape or frame one’s speech. The Shakespearean motto turns that ordinary verbal sense into a pun on the narrator’s geometrical body and invites the question of how his available form constrains what he can say. Printed form: square my talk (Title Page). See Shakespeare epigraphs and the changing world.

Touch of Nature

A shared characteristic linking beings across worlds. In the adapted Shakespearean saying, what they share is prejudice and persecution, not only affectionate fellow-feeling. Printed form: touch of Nature (Preface23). See Shakespeare epigraphs and the changing world.

One touch of Nature makes all worlds akin (contextual phrase)

Preface23: “One touch of Nature makes all worlds akin!” The adapted saying extends likeness across dimensions. Its preceding list includes Points, Lines, Squares, Cubes and Extra-Cubes; its subject is their liability to dimensional prejudice. The common touch is consequently not a guarantee of kindness. It can be the shared tendency to persecute anyone who speaks beyond familiar experience. Recognizing the phrase without reading its immediate context would turn its sharper argument into a reassuring sentiment. The edition explains the Shakespearean source and its own less comforting sense; Abbott's change from a single world to all worlds makes the reader's supposed superiority part of the joke. See Shakespeare epigraphs and the changing world.