ABSTRACT
This chapter presents as a paper at the 2002 Medieval English Theatre (METh) meeting at Nottingham, which took as its theme ‘Language and Languages’. The play it considers falls distinctly outside METh’s normal chronological range: Thomas Tomkis’s Lingua was first published in 1607, probably shortly after its first performance at the University of Cambridge. Apart from Lingua herself the play’s cast personifies, among others, the Five Senses, Common Sense, Memory, and Imagination, living in the land of Microcosm governed by the queen Psyche. So Lingua’s characterisation has various contextual roots in both popular and academic tradition. But her female persona also contributes importantly to the ways in which she signifies and reveals contemporary perceptions of spoken language.
