i.109-10). This statement is used as a condemnation of Bianca in the death of Cassio, but the audience recognizes Bianca's silence as grief rather than guilt and furthers the sympathetic nature of her relationship in the play. Isabella, in Measure for Measure, and Paulina, at the end of The Winters Tale, both use silence as an emotional response to a marriage proposal.7 Cordelia in King Lear answers her fathers request for a measurement of his love with silence, not because she doesn't love him, but because she cannot express the depth of her emotion.7 Christina Luckyj, associate professor at Dalhousie University and accomplished author, found in her paper, "Volumnia's Silence," many instances in renaissance literature of women dumb in the face of overwhelming emotion, including Elizabeth Cary's Mariam, Middleton and Rowley's Changeling, and Marlowe's Tamburlaine. 5 .
These few examples contain the emanate authors of the time and begin to make the argument for a convention of silence within renaissance drama. Examples of Shakespeare's use of that convention, though sparing, are convincing enough to inspire the drastic changes in the performance of this play. Luckyj concludes, "That Shakespeare knew and exploited the ambiguities of feminine silence [and this] should make critics wary of too hastily judging Volumnia's." 5 Indeed Volumnia's silence, when viewed with other characters written in the period in mind, might be considered a turning point for the play, and change the dynamic of the climax, such that Coriolanus" sacrifice for Rome is also a redemption for his mother.
Shakespeare's comedies also give credit to the idea that silence is a tool to convey character growth. Though arguably peripheral to Volumnia's silence, it is a well-documented fact that what is not said is often more important to the plot and development of these plays than the things that are said. Miscommunication is essential to the plots of Twelfth Night, and Midsummer Nights Dream.
