Lingua (play)

Lingua, or the Combat of the Tongue and the Five Senses for Superiority is an allegorical stage play of the first decade of the 17th century, generally attributed to the academic playwright Thomas Tomkis.

Lingua was entered into the Stationers' Register on 23 February 1607 (new style), and was published later that year in a quarto printed by George Eld for the bookseller Simon Waterson. The play proved to have unusual long-term popularity for an academic work, and was reprinted in 1610, 1617, 1622, 1632, and 1657. Its use of English rather than the more normal Latin gave Lingua a wider accessibility to a general audience than academic dramas of its era usually had. In 1613 Lingua was translated into a German version titled Speculum Aestheticum, by Johannes Rhenanus; a Dutch translation followed in 1648, by Lambert van den Bosch.

The date of the play's stage premiere is uncertain. The play's text itself contains a reference to the year 1602: "About the year 1602 many used this skew kind of language" (Act III, scene v). Some scholars have supported this date by noting apparent contemporary references and allusions; the personification of "Queen Psyche" (IV, vii), for example, is the type of complement to Queen Elizabeth common during her reign, and is logical in play written prior to her 1603 death. Other commentators have demurred, however; apparent allusions to Shakespeare's Macbeth suggest a date closer to the 1607 publication to some critics.

The early editions of Lingua were all printed with no attribution of authorship. A manuscript list of books and papers from the hand of Sir John Harington assigns the play to Tomkis; and the play's resemblances with Tomkis's Albumazar have persuaded scholars that Harington's attribution of Lingua to Tomkis is correct.

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