"They [...] Who, moving others, are themselves as stone": Instances of moving and being unmoved in English Renaissance Rhetoric and Shakespeare

This paper wishes to focus on the literary construction of characters who exert a powerful influence on others, but remain cold and aloof vis à vis the controversial situations in which they push their interlocutors. With reference to influential Renaissance rhetorical views of “movere”: i.e., those expressed in Thomas Wilson’s Arte of Rhetorique, and in Sir Philip Sydney’s Apologie, the dynamics of moving and remaining unmoved will be discussed starting from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 94. Princes, whose commands are not susceptible to being questioned or disregarded, are here depicted as examples of characters who move others but remain unmoved, and who ambiguously make others do what they are not willing to do themselves. This dispassionate quality seems to belong to some of Shakespeare’s most compelling villains (Iago and Richard III) whose lucid machinations drive their naive victims to disastrous action. Not being moved can take on ambivalent connotations: on the one hand, it is the equivalent of balanced emotion and sound judgment but, on the other hand it indicates callousness, cynicism and lack of pity.