Quibble (plot device)

In terms of fiction, a quibble is a plot device, used to fulfill the exact verbal conditions of an agreement in order to avoid the intended meaning. Typically quibbles are used in legal bargains and, in fantasy, magically enforced ones.

William Shakespeare used a quibble in The Merchant of Venice. Portia saves Antonio in a court of law by pointing out that the agreement called for a pound of flesh, but no blood, and therefore Shylock can collect only if he sheds no blood, which is not physically possible.

A pact with the Devil commonly contains clauses that allow the devil to quibble over what he grants, and equally commonly, the maker of the pact finds a quibble to escape the bargain.

In Norse mythology, Loki, having bet his head with Brokk and lost, forbids Brokk to take any part of his neck, saying he had not bet it; to venge himself Brokk instead sews his lips shut.

The Savoy Operas by Gilbert and Sullivan frequently feature quibbles; W. S. Gilbert had read law and had practiced briefly as a barrister, and regarded the minor technicalities of the law that typically gave rise to quibbles to be highly characteristic of the legalistic Victorian British society satirized in his works. For instance, in The Pirates of Penzance, Frederick's terms of indenture bind him to the pirates until his twenty-first birthday; the pirates point out that he was born on February 29 (a leap year) and will not have his twenty-first birthday until he is eighty-four, and so compel him to rejoin them.

When the hero of the Child ballad The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward is forced to trade places with an impostor and swear never to reveal the truth to anyone, he tells his story to a horse while he knows that the heroine is eavesdropping. In the similar fairy tale The Goose Girl, the princess pours out her story to an iron stove, but not knowing that the king is listening.

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