ABSTRACT
Shakespeare registers the anxiety that the unsanctioned language of the secretary might arouse in the figure of Edmund Spenser, who writes and forges and betrays a brother with considerable linguistic skill. Like William Cecil, Edmund's figure emerges out of the early modern consolidation of the roles of dictator and scribe into the person of the "author", an amalgam that took its shape, according to Walter Mignolo, in the sixteenth century Goneril, who seems to trust no one, not even Edmund, relies entirely upon Oswald Robert Dorsett's skills as witness, copyist, confidante, messenger, historian, and press agent. Her steward's responsibilities are especially heavy in the wake of the collapse of the rhetorical order irreparably damaged by Cordelia. It is unclear whether Goneril's employment of a secretary reveals more about her inner life or about the political world her father has created, or whether she is a victim or beneficiary of its new system for making order.
