The Book of Tells (Peter Collett)[unlocked]

FOREIGN TELLS
distance, simply by observing how they use their hands.
That's partly because some nations gesticulate more than
others. If there were a league table for gesture, the Italians
would win hands down. The identification of Italy with
wild gesticulation goes back a long way. In 1581 the
author of A Treatise of Daunces noted that 'The Italian in
his ... speeche . .. intermingleth and useth so many
gestures, that if an Englishman should see him afar off, not
hearing his words, [he] would judge him to be out of his
wit, or else playing some comedy upon a scaffold.' By
contrast, the author observed, a German preaching from a
pulpit would look as though he was physically
paralysed. 21
We tend to assume that nations that gesticulate a lot
have always been animated, and that nations that gesticulate
very little, like the English, have always been reticent
and undemonstrative. This isn't entirely correct. It is
generally accepted, even by the English themselves, that
they are not a particularly expressive people and they
don't go in for elaborate displays of gesticulation.
However, there was a time when gesture played a much
more prominent role in their lives. A thorough knowledge
of posture and gesture was a requirement for all
Elizabethan actors, and Shakespeare's plays are full of
references to expressive postures and movements of the
hands. Hogarth's drawing of scenes from English life show
that gesticulation was also popular during the eighteenth
century, and that it was not restricted to specific sectors of
society. The 'grand manner' of oratory, which appeared in
Parliament and the pulpit in the nineteenth century, also
relied on extravagant use of the hands. It was during
this period, however, that a more demure style of social
321