"Bisson Conspectuities"

"Bisson conspectuities" is one of my all-time favorite Shakespearean oxymorons. Although it's not as transparent as, say, "hot ice" or "living death," it's much more quirky and colorful. "Bisson conspectuities" appears in Coriolanus in one of the scenes in which Menenius banters with the Roman crowd. They attack and he parries by enumerating his own strengths and weaknesses. He concludes with an insult that flaunts his patrician education: "What harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character?" (In this case, a "character" is a summary statement of a person's habits or nature, a "characterization".)

The odd word "conspectuities" is an invention of Shakespeare's. He derived it from the participial form of the Latin verb "conspicio" -- to observe, gaze, or watch. It's a nonce word, a hapax legomenon; unlike some of Shakespeare's more inspired coinages, conspectuities never domesticated into English -- the OED lists only this sole appearance. "Bisson," on the other hand, which means "blind," was not new to the language but was in fact an ancient word of Germanic origin -- and already obsolescent in 1608, although the venerable proverb "the bysom ledys the blynde" might still have been current in the provinces. In Hamlet, the deliberately archaizing First Player uses the expression "bisson rheum" for "blinding tears." 

"Bisson conspectuities" means "blind sight" or "blear vision." It's an especially striking oxymoron because its component parts are drawn from opposite ends of the word hoard -- old and new, plain and polysyllabic, Germanic and Latin, rustic and citified.

But there's a complication. The word "bisson" doesn't actually appear in the Folio; there it is "beesome." "Beesome, usually spelled besom, meant and still means, "broom." But in the context of Coriolanus, broom is meaningless; and so, beginning  with Lewis Theobald in the 1720s, editors have uniformly substituted "bisson" -- an inspired conjecture but still a guess. It's possible that Shakespeare wrote "bisson" and a scrivener or printer incorrectly read 'beesome" -- but perhaps not. An oxymoron of transcendent genius might be merely an illusion -- a creation not of Shakespeare but of editorial tradition.

"Bisson conspectuities" puts quite a burden on members of the Blackfriar's audience. It's hard to believe that Shakespeare thought his first hearers would grasp the phrase's meaning on the fly. It's easy for us to understand it now, four hundred years later, with a treasury of annotations at the foot of every page. Perhaps Shakespeare didn't care if the audience comprehended? Is it possible that he was writing just for his own delight, for his pleasure in words? For readers rather than playgoers? Or perhaps he had already divined that he was writing for enthusiasts and scholars of a latter age.

Comments

[Martin Mangold]

Wonderful approach to this phrase. My takeaway definition is “idiotic observations.”

[Barbara Hennessy]

Thank you for the great blog on directional dyslexia. I have difficulties with left/right and routinely get lost or mess up in aerobics classes, but I am great with paper maps so I get people to tell me whether I need to go north or south, etc. To all those who are embarrassed, I say be loud and proud of your quirk. I tell all my medical caregivers and employers. They need to know in case you cannot follow instructions and much less embarrassing. Forewarned is usually forgiven.

[Barbara (Bisson) Hennessy]

My maiden name was Bisson (ancestors from the island of Jersey between England and France). I was also told that "Bisson" was from the French word "buisson" meaning "bush" so you may wish to check further.

[Thomas Stumpf]

Thanks for the illumination of "bisson conspectuities," a phrase that's fascinated me for a long time. I didn't know the textual history and would never have thought Theobald could make an inspired emendation. "Glean" is the perfect word, too, since it implies a painstaking, discerning picking out, something a bleared vision could never do.