For Shakespeare, this act appears to be transhistorical: by this I mean not only that the need for tongues crosses historical periods, from antiquity to early modernity, from the Roman tragedies to the English histories, but also that the struggle for the dominant narrative of same-sex conquest persists well beyond the death of any soldier. In single opposition, hand to hand (1.3.93-98).ĥIn an effort to convince the king that Mortimer performed “valiantly,” Hotspur engages in an act that appears to be commonplace among Shakespeare’s soldiers, that is, using their tongues to invade and (re)signify the wounded bodies of others. Those mouthèd wounds, which valiantly he took Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds, He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,īut by the chance of war. As he pleads with Henry to pay the ransom for Mortimer’s release, Hotspur uses his tongue to give meaning to his uncle’s wounds: Rather, they require citizens to “put tongues into those wounds and speak for them” (2.3.6-7).ĤDoubtless Hotspur is aware of this need for tongues. These wounds do not speak for themselves. Menenius exhorts the citizens to “Think/Upon the wounds his body bears” (3.3.50-51). In Coriolanus, too, wounds have the potential either to make or unmake martial masculinity-to buttress or belie protestations of courageous service to the state. This act represents yet another sequence of homoerotic violence, one that is integral to the formation of the martial self: it is this moment of infiltration, as opposed to the initial act of homoerotic violence, that narrates the same-sex conquest of Caesar. Figured here and elsewhere in the play as tongueless mouths-“poor poor dumb mouths” (3.2.216)-Caesar’s wounds cease to mean anything until Antony infiltrates them with his tongue and signifies them. Hence, in Julius Caesar, Antony endeavors to stick his tongue in and ascribe meaning to Caesar’s wounds: “Over thy wounds now do I prophesy-/Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips/To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue” (3.1.262-264). Without these signifying organs, wounds fail to signify anything at all rather, they remain meaningless orifices. This semiotic crisis points to the need for others’ tongues. But through the discursive operations of virtus, wounds become central to the signification of masculine virtue 5”. As Coppélia Kahn has shown, “ounds mark a kind of vulnerability easily associated with women: they show the flesh to be penetrable, they show that it can bleed, they make apertures in the body. Warriors, Wounds, and Women, New York and London, Routledge, 1997 (.)ģThis need for others’ tongues arises, I would suggest, from the interminable (mis)interpretability of wounds, which serve, on the one hand, as markers of valiant martial service and, on the other, as orifices of same-sex penetration and infiltration. To put it another way, Hotspur’s reputation as a soldier-as an agent of martial violence-rests, ultimately, in the mouths of other men. This is a queer prospect indeed, as it suggests that a soldier’s identity is contingent not upon acts of homoerotic violence, as various scholars have suggested, but upon competing narratives-or, in Hotspur’s case, themes- signifying those acts 4. What is particularly striking about this lament is Henry’s proclamation that Hotspur is a “theme” articulated by “honor’s tongue.” In these terms, Hotspur’s identity as a valiant soldier exists only as it is reported by others, presumably nobles and other soldiers who can attest to his triumphs in battle. 4 According to Bruce Smith, “Masculine identity is something that men give each other, they do (.)ĢUnaware that his son is merely playing the role of the prodigal, Henry expresses his desire to trade one Harry for another 3.3 On Hal’s proficiency as an actor, see David Boyd’s, “The Player Prince: Hal in Henry IV, Part 1”, (.).