Quibble (plot device)

In literature, a quibble is a common plot device, used to fulfill the exact verbal conditions of an agreement in order to avoid the intended meaning. Its most common uses are in legal bargains and, in fantasy, magically enforced ones.

In one of the best known examples, 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.

Examples

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; Brokk is able only to sew his lips shut.

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 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, not knowing that the king is listening.

In Piers Anthony's fantasy world, Xanth, the law requires that the king be a magician and forbids ruling queens, but when in Night Mare one king after another falls to an invasion's hostile magic and it appears that no more magicians exist to take the throne, the last magician king observes that while the law forbids ruling queens, it nowhere restricts the title of "king" to men, and several sorceresses take the throne to fight the invasion.

Quibbles are the theme of the Twilight Zone episode The Man in the Bottle. A genie freed from a bottle grants a couple four wishes, warning that every wish has consequences. One of the man's wishes is to be in a position of great power, the leader of a modern and powerful country who cannot be voted out of office. The genie turns him into Adolf Hitler during his final days in World War II.

In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode The Way of the Warrior, Captain Sisko is forbidden to tell the Cardassians about an imminent invasion of their empire by the Klingons, however if the Klingons take Cardassia the Federation and Bajor will be put at risk, so he calls in the station's resident Cardassian tailor/spy to measure him for a suit while he discusses the imminent invasion with his senior officers.

Prophecies and spells

Exploiting loopholes in prophecies and spells is also sometimes called quibble.

When Croesus was told by the Pythia that going to war with Cyrus the Great would destroy a great empire, the empire was not Cyrus's but Croesus's.

In Macbeth, Macduff was able to kill Macbeth, who was unable to be harmed by anyone of woman born, because Macduff was "from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd" — born via a Caesarean section.

In The Lord of the Rings, Glorfindel's prophecy states that "not by the hand of man will the Witch-king of Angmar fall,". The Witch-king is slain by Éowyn, a woman, during the battle of the Pelennor Fields. She is aided by Merry, a hobbit who distracted him by stabbing him with his Elvish blade as the Ring Wraiths are harmed by such swords.

In Ruddigore, the baronets are cursed to die if they do not commit a horrible crime every day, but failing to commit such a crime is committing suicide, a horrible crime (a realization that brings one of them back to life).

In Terry Pratchett's Moving Pictures, a book is said to inflict terrible fates on any man opening it, but causes only mild annoyance to the Librarian, who is in fact an orangutan.

In Disney's Aladdin, the main villain Jafar, after becoming a genie, is unable to use his powers to directly kill living beings. However, he is able to use his powers to create situations that could kill or harm his enemies, including possibly torture as Jafar darkly suggests, "you would be surprised what you can live through."

Jack Sparrow (from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) promised to be Davy Jones' slave for 100 years in exchange for receiving the Black Pearl (a ship) and being made captain of that ship, for thirteen years. When Jones reminds Sparrow of his debt, Jack argues that he wasn't captain during those thirteen years, for a mutiny quickly occurred and he was abandoned on an island by his crew. To that, Davy Jones replies that regardless of this, he still owes him his soul, for he has been introducing himself as Captain Jack Sparrow during those thirteen years (and indeed, it is a running gag in the movies that each time he is called "Jack Sparrow", Jack will correct the other by saying "Captain Jack Sparrow").

In Death Note, the Shinigami Ryuk warns the protagonist Light Yagami to "Don't think that a human who's used the Death Note can go to heaven or hell". At the end of the series it is revealed that there's no heaven or hell and that all humans, no matter what they did in life, are equal in death. When a human dies, the human goes to "Mu" (Nothingness), or rather ceases to exist. What Ryuk tried to said to Light at the beginning of the series was that not even a human who's used the Death Note can go to heaven or hell, like all other humans, when that human dies, it will cease to exist.