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This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands.

— Richard II, William Shakespeare.

What's the meaning of "in the office of a wall" in the second line?

KillingTime
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Sai Ma
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    Welcome to ELU. You must show your own research. What have you looked up for office? For example, senses 2 and 3 in Lexico can be made to fit. – Andrew Leach Jul 27 '22 at 06:47
  • If it helps, remember that Shakespeare is poetry and the language is old. So you have to reach for meaning beyond "Does he mean the sea used an office positioned inside a wall?" – Yosef Baskin Jul 27 '22 at 13:20
  • Office is a metaphor for 'serving'. – John Lawler Jul 27 '22 at 17:18
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    “In the office of” does not have an obvious meaning beyond reference to being within the confines of a room that is an office. ELU search is unproductive. Searching for the meaning of office is little help in interpreting the prepositional idiom. The context is complex. I therefore think it an interesting and reasonable question to ask. To close this newcomer’s question merely on a formality that often is ignored for other questions seems deterrent, unwelcoming, unproductive and high handed. This closure transcends the threshold of courteous welcome. Reopen. – Anton Jul 29 '22 at 07:17

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The key to not being confused by 'the office of a wall' is to know that the dominant present-day meaning of office is many steps removed from its origin in Latin officium, which means duty, or an action performed out of duty. Shakespeare's use of the word is much closer to its origin than ours. In that sense, something serves 'in the office of a wall', if it performs the 'duty' of a wall, or to put it less metaphorically, if it performs the function of a wall.

jsw29
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  • I can confirm that the editors of The Norton Shakespeare agree that the meaning of office here is function. My copy of the SOED lists this as the second meaning of the term office, albeit an archaic one. – Pound Hash Jul 29 '22 at 22:31
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You should have also included the next verse, which contains the recipient of all these praises:

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England...

Shakespeare praises England repeatedly for its geographical position protected from any danger by the sea which surrounds it LIKE a wall, thus shielding it from those less happier lands.

Richard Vliet Lindabury, in his book A Study of Patriotism in the Elizabethan Drama (1983), shows on p. 159 other such instances in Shakespeare:

As to naval power, it is only necessary, in order to realize its importance in Elizabethan minds, to look at plays which congratulate England upon her isolation. Naturally the isolation would have collapsed if her harbors had been at the mercy of hostile shipping. Since they were not, Lyly could say with some assurance that the gods had pitched England out of the world, “as not to bee controlde by any in the world.’ Shakespeare wrote a number of fine lines upon this theme,

Let us be back’d with God and with the seas
Which He hath given for fence impregnable
(3 Henry VI, IV.1.43-4)

and again,

That pale, that white-fac’d shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean’s roaring tides
And coops from other lands her islanders, . . .
That water-walled bulwark, still secure
And confident from foreign purposes
(Richard II, II.1.43-9)

Such a use of the expression in the office of with the meaning of serving as, acting as, serving the duty of is dated. Most of the times, it is now used followed by nouns that designate positions of authority or responsibility such as president, director, prime minister, secretary etc.

fev
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