`Pour This Oil Out of Your Language'

As a buffer against the always-turned-on television, I brought Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion to the garage to read while waiting for the guy to change the oil in my wife’s car. Naturally, I looked up oil, and the Crystals (David and Ben) did not disappoint. The first citation, “[vat of] boiling oil,” is from The Winter’s Tale, Paulina speaking to Leontes: 

“What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?

What wheels? racks? fires? what flaying? boiling?

In leads or oils? what old or newer torture

Must I receive, whose every word deserves

To taste of thy most worst?” 

Besides having obvious pertinence to our world, the passage reminds me of this cartoon. The Crystals’ second reference, from The Two Noble Kinsmen, is likewise attuned to twenty-first-century realities. They define this usage of oil as “smoothness, glibness, ingratiating manner.”  Palamon says to Arcite: 

“Pray hold your promise;

And do the deed with a bent brow. Most certain

You love me not; be rough with me, and pour

This oil out of your language. By this air,

I could for each word give a cuff, my stomach

Not reconcil’d by reason.” 

The Crystals continue the theme of contemporary relevance with oily from Antony and Cleopatra, which they define as “moist, clammy, greasy.” Charmian says to Iras: 

“Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful

prognostication, I cannot scratch mine ear. Prithee,

tell her but a worky-day fortune.” 

Oil appears fourteen times in Shakespeare. In The Tempest, the word is spoken by Gonzalo, adviser to King Alonso. His speech reminds me of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” perhaps the most witless song ever written:

“I' the commonwealth I would by contraries

Execute all things; for no kind of traffic

Would I admit; no name of magistrate;

Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,

And use of service, none; contract, succession,

Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;

No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;

No occupation; all men idle, all;

And women too, but innocent and pure;

No sovereignty;—”