Shakespeare’s Insults: A Pragmatic Dictionary 9780826498335, 9781780935898, 9781474252676

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Shakespeare’s Insults

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ARDEN SHAKESPEARE DICTIONARIES SERIES EDITOR Sandra Clark (Birkbeck College, University of London) Class and Society in Shakespeare Paul Innes Military Language in Shakespeare Charles Edelman Shakespeare’s Books Stuart Gillespie Shakespeare’s Demonology Marion Gibson Shakespeare’s Insults Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin Shakespeare and the Language of Food Joan Fitzpatrick Shakespeare’s Legal Language B. J. Sokol and Mary Sokol Shakespeare’s Medical Language Sujata Iyengar Shakespeare’s Non-Standard English N. F. Blake Shakespeare’s Plants and Gardens Vivian Thomas and Nicki Faircloth Shakespeare’s Political and Economic Language Vivian Thomas Shakespeare’s Theatre Hugh Macrae Richmond Women in Shakespeare Alison Findlay FORTHCOMING TITLES : Shakespeare and Domestic Life Sandra Clark Shakespeare and National Identity Christopher Ivic Shakespeare and Visual Culture Armelle Sabatier

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Shakespeare’s Insults A Pragmatic Dictionary

NATHALIE VIENNE-GUERRIN

Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint previously known as Arden Shakespeare 50 Bedford Square London WC 1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY, THE ARDEN SHAKESPEARE and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 © Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, 2016 Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN :

HB : ePDF : ePub:

978-0-8264-9833-5 978-1-4742-5267-6 978-1-4742-5268-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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To Serge, Pierre, François, Clément, Nicolas and Sophie, with loads of love

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Contents

Acknowledgements

viii

Series Editor’s Preface

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Abbreviations

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List of Headwords

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Preface

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A–Z

1

Bibliography

457

Index of Shakespeare’s Works

477

Index of Shakespeare’s Characters

481

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Acknowledgements

My first thanks must go to Sandra Clark, Series Editor of the Arden Shakespeare Dictionary Series, for her trust, her generous help and constant support and to Margaret Bartley, publisher of the Arden Shakespeare, for her benevolent patience. This book is the fruit of many years of work on Shakespeare’s insults. This work started under the supervision of Pierre Iselin when I was a PhD student. I remain grateful to him for accompanying me during so many joyful years of research. The idea for this dictionary emerged when I was a lecturer at the university of Rouen, and I would like to give warm thanks to my faithful friends Michèle Willems and Raymond Willems for encouraging me from the beginning of this project to the end. Finishing this dictionary at the university of Montpellier, I also wish to thank my Montpellier friends and colleagues. I am deeply grateful to the members of the Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l’âge Classique et les Lumières (IRCL , UMR 5186 CNRS /Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) for the help and support they have given me, particularly in the final months of this work. I warmly thank Jean-Pierre Schandeler, Brigitte Belin and Vanessa Kuhner-Blaha for their invaluable human and logistic support, without which I could not have put the finishing touches to this book. My deep gratitude also goes to my Montpellier friends and research companions, Janice Valls-Russell and Yves Peyré who have constantly helped me during the last six years; to Florence March and Jean-Christophe Mayer, with whom it is a pleasure to work; and Bénédicte LouvatMolozay, Nick Myers and Alban Déléris for their understanding support and friendship. It is a great privilege to work with such a team, in such a stimulating research environment, with the invaluable support of the CNRS and of the Université Paul-Valéry, whose Conseil Scientifique and Conseil d’Administration I wish to thank for generously granting me research leave (from January to June 2014). This sabbatical was essential for me to finish this dictionary. I also want to thank my colleagues and students from the English department, especially its director Claire Omhovère, for allowing me to put my teaching and administrative tasks aside to focus on this research project. Many thanks to Myriam Carminati, Director of the UFR 2 for her support and understanding. I also wish to thank other colleagues who have encouraged and helped me in one way or another on this long journey: Leo Carruthers, Évelyne Larguèche, François Laroque, Ann Lecercle, Jean-Marie Maguin, Marie-Madeleine Martinet, Patricia Parker and Christopher R. Wilson. I am grateful to Dominique Goy-Blanquet and the members of the Société Française Shakespeare for giving me the opportunity to discuss my methods and ideas at the SFS congress on ‘Shakespeare’s tongue’ in March 2013. I wholeheartedly thank my dear friend and colleague Victoria Bladen for her generous help in correcting this book. viii

Acknowledgements

My deepest gratitude goes to my friend – the best friend in the world – and colleague Sarah Hatchuel, for the unfailing support she has given me since 1998. It is a real treat to work with her, and her friendship is invaluable. Finally, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my family for their unfailing patience, love and support: my mother, Geneviève Vienne, my brothers (Jean-Paul and Frédéric Vienne) and my sisters (Catherine Fortin and Fanette Devin). I wholeheartedly thank my children, Pierre, François, Clément, Nicolas and Sophie, for their incredible patience, and my husband, Serge Guerrin, for his love and patient understanding.

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Series Editor’s Preface

The Arden Shakespeare Dictionaries aim to provide the student of Shakespeare with a series of authoritative guides to the principal subject areas covered by the plays and poems. They are produced by scholars who are experts both on Shakespeare and on the topic of the individual dictionary, based on the most recent scholarship, succinctly written and accessibly presented. They offer readers a self-contained body of information on the topic under discussion, its occurrence and significance in Shakespeare’s works, and its contemporary meanings. The topics are all vital ones for understanding the plays and poems; they have been selected for their importance in illuminating aspects of Shakespeare’s writings where an informed understanding of the range of Shakespeare’s usage, and of the contemporary literary, historical and cultural issues involved, will add to the reader’s appreciation of his work. Because of the diversity of the topics covered in the series, individual dictionaries may vary in emphasis and approach, but the aim and basic format of the entries remain the same from volume to volume. Sandra Clark Birkbeck College University of London

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Abbreviations

1. Shakespeare’s Works AC AW AYL CE Cor Cym Ham 1H4 2H4 H5 1H6 2H6 3H6 H8 JC KJ KL LLL Luc MA Mac MM MND MV MW Oth Per R2 R3 Rom Son TC Tem TGV

Antony and Cleopatra All’s Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Coriolanus Cymbeline Hamlet King Henry IV, Part 1 King Henry IV, Part 2 King Henry V King Henry VI, Part 1 King Henry VI, Part 2 King Henry VI, Part 3 King Henry VIII Julius Caesar King John King Lear Love’s Labour’s Lost The Rape of Lucrece Much Ado about Nothing Macbeth Measure for Measure A Midsummer Night’s Dream The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor Othello Pericles King Richard II King Richard III Romeo and Juliet Sonnets Troilus and Cressida The Tempest The Two Gentlemen of Verona

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Abbreviations

Tim Tit TN TNK TS VA WT

Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Twelfth Night The Two Noble Kinsmen The Taming of the Shrew Venus and Adonis The Winter’s Tale

2. Others DHLF: LEME: LCL: ODEP: OED: STC : SD:

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Dictionnaire Historique de la Langue Française Lexicons of Early Modern English (online) Loeb Classical Library Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs Oxford English Dictionary (online) Short Title Catalogue. In the bibliography, all STC numbers refer to the second edition. Stage direction

List of Headwords

Ab(h)ominable Abhor(red) Achitophel Acorn Adder Adult(e)ress/adulterer/adulterate/ adulterous Ajax Althaea(’s dream) Amaimon Anatomy/atomy Ape Apple-John Arrant Ass Baboon Bacon Baggage Bald-pated/Baldpate Banbury cheese Bankrupt Barbarous Barbason Barber-monger Bare-bone Barren Base Basilisk/cockatrice Basimecu Bastard Batch/botch(y) Bauble Bawd(y) Bead Bear (see ape)

Beard Beast(ly) Bed Bedlam Beetle-headed (see head) Beggar Bell-wether Benedick Besonian/Bezonian Bilbo Bitch Black Blasphemous Block/blockhead/blockish Blockhead Blood-sucker Bloodhound Bloody Blown/swollen Boar/boar-pig Bolingbroke Bolting-hutch Bombard Bombast Borrowed Bottle Bow-case Bowels Boy Brach Braggard Bran Brawn (see boar) Broker Buckram Bung xiii

List of Headwords

Burr Butcher Butter Buzz Buzzard Cacodemon Caitiff Callat/Callet Camel Candle-mine Canker(ed) Capocchia Capon Captain Carrion Cat Caterpillar Censer Cheese Chewet Chicken Child Chops Chuffs (see chops) Churl Cimmerian Cipher Circe Clot/clod-poll/pole Clown Cobloaf Cockatrice (see basilisk) Coistrel Commoner/common Companion Conger Consonant Consort Core Cornuto Counterfeit xiv

Courtesan Coward Coxcomb Cozener/cozening Crab Craven Cressid Cricket/winter-cricket Crone Crookback/crooked Cuckold(ly) Cuckoo Cullion(ly) Cur Cut Cut-purse/cutpurse Cut-throat/cutthroat Damn(ation) Dastard Deformity/deformed Devil Diminutive Dirt Disease Dog Dolt Dotard Drab Drone Drudge Drunkard Dull Dunghill Dwarf(ish) Earth Eel(-skin) Egg Egregious Elbow Elephant

List of Headwords

Elm Enchantress/enchanting/enchantment Envy Epileptic Ethiope Face Fellow Fiddler Fiend Fig/fico Filth(y) Fish Fish(-monger) Fitchew (see Polecat) Flap-dragon Flea Flemish Fleshmonger Fly Fool(ish) Football player Foul Foutre Fox/she-fox Fragment French (pox)/France Fustian Fustilarian Gall Garlick eaters Garment Giglot/giglet Gipsy Globe Goat Goose/geese Gorbellied Green-sickness Groat Groom

Gull Gut(s) Hag-seed Hannibal Hare Harlot Harpy Head Hedgehog Hell Hen Herring Hilding Hiren Hobby-horse Hogshead Homicide Horn Horse Hound Humidity Hungarian Hydra Hypocrite Iceland (see dog) Idiot Inexecrable Infect(ion) Infidel Inhuman Iniquity Jack/Jackanapes/ Jack-an-ape Jack-a-lent Jade (see horse) Jester/jesting Jew Jezebel Jolthead (see head) xv

List of Headwords

Judas Juggler/juggling Kite Knave Knight-errant Knob/Nob Knot-grass Lady/Lord Leaven Leek Leprosy Lie/liar Little/low Liver Loggerhead (see head) Losel/lozel Loon/lown Lousy Lout Lozel Lubber Lucifer Lump Maid Marian Mammet Mandrake Mangy (see leprosy) Manningtree Martius Maypole Mechanical Medlar Mephostophilus Milksop Minimus Minion Minnow Minx Miscreant xvi

Mome Mongrel Monkey Monster/monstrous Moor Moorditch Morsel Mouldy Mountain(eer) Movable Muddy Muleteer Murderer Mussel-shell Nag Nail Nation Natural Naught(y) Neat’s tongue Nero Ninny Nit Noddy Nothing Nunnery Nut Nut-hook O Orange Otter Owl Pagan Paint Paltry Pandar/pander Pantler Paraquito (see parrot) Parasite

List of Headwords

Parrot/paraquito Patch Pate Paunch Peasant Pernicious Phrygian (see Turk) Pilate Piled/pill’d/peeled (see bald) Pirate Pish Pizzle Pool/Pole Polecat Poltroon Popinjay Porcupine/porpentine Posthumus Leonatus Potion Princox Proditor Pudding/hodge-pudding Punk Puppet Quantity Quarter (see yard) Quean Quilt Rabbit Rag Rampallian Rascal Rat (see cat and pirate) Raven Rebel/rebellious Recreant Remnant Richard Robber Rogue

Rotten Rudeness Ruffian Runagate Runaway Runnion Rustic Salamander Salt Satan Saucy Scab Scald Scold/scolding Scot/Scotsmen Scoundrel Scullion Scum Scurvy Semiramis Senator Serge Serpent Shallow Sheath Sheep Sheep-biter/sheep-biting Shrew Shrimp Sirrah Slander/slanderer/slanderous Slave Slug/sluggard/slug-a-bed Slut Snail Solus Sot Spell Spider Sponge Staff (see block) xvii

List of Headwords

Stale Starveling Stewed (prunes) Stigmatic(al) Stockfish Stone Stool/joint-stool Strumpet Swaggerer Swain Swarthy (see black, Ethiope and Cimmerian)

Urinal

Tadpole Tailor Tallow Tartar Tawny Tennis-balls Thief Thimble Thing Thou/you Thread Thumb-biting Toad Toadstool Tortoise Traitor Trifler Trojan Trull Tun Turk Tyke/tick Tyrant

Wagtail Wanton Wasp Waterfly (see fly) Welsh/Wales (see cheese, goat and nation) Whore Whoreson Winchester (see goose) Wit(ted) Witch Wittol Wolf Woman Woodcock Woolsack Wretch

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Vagabond Vanity Vapour Varlet/varlot/varletto Vassal Velvet (see baldpate) Vice Villain Viper Vixen (see fox)

Yard Yea-forsooth Zany Zed

Preface Shakespeare’s Insults Why a dictionary of Shakespeare’s insults? Shakespearean insults are popular, marketable commodities: they appear on mugs and fridge magnets; they have inspired a ‘Shakespearean insults generator’ online; they have fed a number of anthologies and collections of witty words; they are used in secondary school teaching. From Rex Gibson’s Shakespeare’s Language, a Handbook for Teachers (1997), which includes worksheets entitled ‘Insults: make up your own!’, to the 1991 book Shakespeare’s Insults: Educating Your Wit (1991), and from Barry Kraft’s Create over 100,000 of Your Own Shakespearean Insults (1998) to the recent flip book Thou Spleeny Swag-Bellied Miscreant: Create Your Own Shakespearean Insults (2014), Shakespeare’s insults seem to be an entertaining and bankable topic, which are supposed to boost linguistic creativity. Such playful collections suggest that Shakespeare’s insults are enjoyable for a large readership but also that they are more often merely cited than thoroughly studied, with quotation prevailing over exploration. The purpose of this dictionary is to go beyond the surface of these words and to analyse why and how words become insults in Shakespeare’s world. The dictionary aims to contribute to transforming what is currently mainly a field of entertainment into a field of scholarly research. ‘Why an otter?’ (1H4, 3.3.125): the ‘pragmatic’ approach The question that Prince Hal asks when he hears Falstaff call Hostess Quickly an ‘otter’ is emblematic of the object of this dictionary. ‘Otter’ is not in itself an insulting word. Yet Falstaff uses it as an insult. Why? Why an otter? Why is it an insult to call Hostess Quickly an otter? The answer to the question can only be found if one considers the specific contexts of utterance of Falstaff’s words, within the play, within the Shakespearean canon and, more largely, within Shakespeare’s cultural world. The purpose of this dictionary is to answer this question: why are certain words used as insults in Shakespeare’s world and what do these words do and say? This approach of language which studies how speech acts can broadly be defined as ‘pragmatic’, a word that we borrow from linguistic analysis to adapt it to literary dramatic scripts. Any word may become an insult in a particular context of utterance. This explains why this dictionary includes such words as ‘acorn’, ‘bead’, ‘Benedick’, ‘bubble’, ‘earth’, ‘juggler’, ‘nail’, ‘senator’, or ‘zed’, which are not insulting terms per se. This also explains that such a dictionary cannot be exhaustive; the tone of a word delivered

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Preface

on stage being enough to transform it into an insult. Studying insults means that you must analyse words and gestures in their specific contexts of utterance and that your approach cannot be thematic or systematic. Words are insults when they are either delivered as insults, or received as such. One of the theoretical bases of this dictionary is provided by Évelyne Larguèche’s study of the effet injure (1983), an ‘insulting effect’ that is as much in the tongue that hurls words of abuse as in the ear that hears them. Also essential to this approach to insults are J.-J. Lecercle’s theory of the ‘remainder’ (The Violence of Language, 1990), J. Butler’s study of ‘linguistic vulnerability’ (Excitable Speech, 1997), J.-J. Lecercle and D. Riley’s study of the ‘force of language’ (2004), and Riley’s study of ‘language as affect’ (2005). Shakespeare’s insults give the impression that they do not need to be explained as they are speech acts rather than words but, at the same time, they are pregnant with treasures of meaning and need to be deciphered. Insults only exist when they are interpreted. There’s no insult without interpretation, because insults thrust us to the heart of the theatrical unpredictability of language, which Renaissance emblematists such as Paradin (137) or Wither (42) express through one question: ‘Lingua, quo tendis?’, ‘Tongue whither goest thou?’. This dictionary takes into account the various degrees of directness in insulting, that range from the direct ‘thou art a villain’ (Rom, 3.1.60), to the reference to a third person (‘That a monster should be such a natural!’, Tem, 3.2.31), including insults that are uttered in the presence (in praesentia) and in the absence (in absentia) of the abused, insults that are conveyed through direct exclamation but also through innuendo, punning and indirection. All words can be offensive in a given context, particularly on stage, but the purpose of this dictionary is to define what words are offensive in Shakespeare’s canon, in what contexts and what makes those words insulting. What words are belittling, debasing, denigrating, defiling in Shakespeare’s plays? What do Shakespeare’s insults mean? These are the questions that this dictionary aims to answer. Ambivalent insults Shakespeare’s insults constitute an ambivalent field of research. First, they combine verbal commonplace and theatrical invention. Such banal words as ‘villain’ or ‘rogue’ are so often used in Shakespeare’s canon that one could forget that they take on new inventive meanings depending on the context of each play or scene. Secondly, Shakespeare’s insults cultivate economy and excess. As they are often hurled as verbal ammunition, words of insult constitute a syntax of their own, often based on exclamation and economy of words. Yet, the rhetoric of excess that characterizes numerous insults probably explains why scholars have not considered them as a valuable object of study: when words of abuse come in long strings, one feels that putting them into pieces and into dictionary entries may disfigure them. Yet, focusing on these precise words of abuse in their specific contexts, anatomizing them, reveals a lot about the characters and the plays. Thirdly, Shakespeare’s insults are both abuse and ‘no abuse’ (2H4 2.4.313–19), that is serious and ludic. They have a traumatic effect on many characters, but they can also be part of a xx

Preface

‘flyting’ ritual in which they may become words of endearment. Finally, they can be the most spectacular part of language made of ‘unsavoury similes’ (1H4 1.2.76) constituting a ‘tempest of exclamation’ (2H4 2.1.81–2), but they can also be invisible, as when Oswald calls Lear ‘My lady’s father’ (KL 1.4.77), thus denying his kingly status. This essential multi-layered ambivalence makes the world of Shakespeare’s insults a fascinating field of research. The 431 entries which constitute this dictionary will not be enough to exhaust all the richness of the topic, but we hope that they will invite readers to reconcile the enjoyment of Shakespeare’s insults with their scholarly exploration. Editorial note The edition of reference for the Shakespeare quotations is, for each play, the Arden Shakespeare, Third Series, except for All’s Well That Ends Well, The Comedy of Errors, Cymbeline, King Henry IV Part II , King John, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (not published in the Third Series to date). For these latter plays, I refer to the Arden Shakespeare Complete Works (revised edition), ed. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan (London: Bloomsbury, 2011). For biblical passages, I refer to the Geneva Bible. I am much indebted to the Oxford English Dictionary online (OED ) to which I often refer in the A section, and to Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME ), which is an invaluable online resource. Most of the lexicons that provide early modern definitions are available through LEME , from which I have retained the spelling. Gordon Williams’s three-volume Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature (London: The Athlone Press, 1994) has also been an invaluable resource. Most of the primary sources are available through EEBO (Early English Books Online), a resource that has completely transformed the scope of research on the early modern English world.

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A ab(h)ominable (A) Detestable, abject, loathsome, repellent, execrable, cruel. In Shakespeare’s time, the word was very often spelt ‘abhominable’ because it was supposed to derive from Latin ab homine meaning ‘away from (ab) mankind’, ‘inhuman’, ‘beastly’. But dictionaries now relate it to ‘abominare’, that is ‘to deprecate’ (ab) as an ‘ill omen’ (OED and DHLF ). The adjective is often used as an intensifier of insults to express hate and disgust. (B) Shakespeare’s LLL draws attention to the term and its etymology when the pedant Holofernes rails against Don Armado, in absentia: He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-device companions, such rackers of orthography, as to speak ‘dout’ sine ‘b’, when he should say ‘doubt’, ‘det’ when he should pronounce ‘debt’ [. . .]. This is abhominable, which he would call ‘abominable’. (LLL 5.1.16–24) This comic metalinguistic comment shows that, for Holofernes, it is abominable to make a mistake on the word ‘abominable’ and people who mispronounce words deserve abhorrence. In MW , Ford laments that he stands ‘under the adoption of abominable terms’ such as ‘cuckold’ or ‘wittol’ (MW 2.2.279–84). In 1H4, Hal, playing the part of his father in the short play he improvises in the tavern, calls Falstaff ‘That villainous, abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan’ (1H4 2.4.450–1). The word is part of the spectacular conclusion of a ludic tirade of insults. It comes when Falstaff pretends not to understand he is the target of Hal/Hal’s father’s speech: ‘I would your grace would take me with you [ie, explain what you mean]. Whom means your grace?’ (1H4 2.4.448–9). The term ‘abominable’ belongs to the comic language of excess that characterizes the play and ironically announces the rejection of Falstaff at the end of 2H4, when Hal literally refuses to ‘take Falstaff with him’. In 2H4, Doll Tearsheet exclaims: ‘Captain! Thou abominable damned cheater, art thou not ashamed to be called captain?’ (2H4 2.4.137–8). In KL , Gloucester endlessly repeats the word ‘villain’, seeming to try and give it an ever greater impact by the use of intensifying adjectives: ‘O villain, villain! [. . .] Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain – worse than brutish! [. . .] Abominable villain, where is he?’ (KL 1.2.75–8). The word here too appears as the climax of the gradation, the worst word Gloucester can find to curse his son. The situation is highly ironical as Gloucester is here cursing Edgar in his 1

ab(h)ominable

absence while Edmund, who is precisely the ‘abominable villain’ in the play, is on stage and, being asked where the ‘villain’ is, answers: ‘I do not well know, my lord’ (KL 1.2.79). In his blindness, Gloucester chooses the wrong target, not knowing where the ‘abominable villain’ of the play is. The irony also lies in the fact that on stage, it is Edmund who receives these insults, the father, preoccupied by the ill omens of ‘late eclipses’ (KL 1.2.103) in fact unwittingly cursing the true villain of the play. The epithet ‘brutish’ that precedes the term refers to dull animals and shows that ‘abominable’ contributes to denying Edgar any humanity, thus excluding him from the world of human beings. (C) On insults as ‘abominable terms’ in MW , see Kegl. abhor(ed) (A) To have a horror of, to hate, to loathe, to detest. Hated, loathed, detested, abominable. The term derives from Latin ab-horrere (to shrink back from), horrere meaning ‘to shudder in fear’, ‘to bristle’. In Cotgrave, the French word Abhorrer means ‘to abhor, detest, loath extreamly, haue in abhomination; vtterly disagree from; wholly shunne, flie, hate the company of.’ (B) In KL , Gloucester addressing Edmund, calls Edgar ‘abhorred villain’ (1.2.76), thus excluding him from his world, verbally expelling him from his house. In Mac, Young Siward, trying to assault Macbeth with words before fighting, calls him ‘abhorred tyrant’ (5.7.10). In its context, the term is used to show that Siward is ‘hateful’ rather than ‘fearful’ (5.7.9). The word ‘abhorred’ here constitutes an insult in the etymological sense of ‘insult’ as deriving from Latin insultare (in-sultus [leap]), meaning assaulting, attacking. With this word, Young Siward literally attacks Macbeth: ‘Thou liest, abhorred tyrant: with my sword / I’ll prove the lie thou speak’st’ (5.7.10–11). Saying ‘I abhor you’ amounts to saying ‘I do not fear you’. This ‘abhorred’ is a word of assault. At the end of Cym, Posthumus Leonatus, in a self-deprecating sequence, claims that ‘it is I / That all th’ abhorred things o’ th’ earth amend / By being worse than they’ (5.5.215–17). In this episode of self-cursing, Posthumus wants to confess, by using this base comparison, that he is the worst creature or thing in the world. In Tem, when Caliban expresses his regret that Prospero prevented him from ‘violat[ing] the honour of [his] child’ (1.2.348–9), Prospero interrupts him: Abhorred slave, Which any print of goodness wilt not take, Being capable of all ill; (1.2.352–4) Prospero then gives very precise content to the insult, explaining in detail why Caliban is an object of repugnance. The act of rejection which is behind the word ‘abhorred’ is to be contrasted with the act of acknowledgement that takes place at the end of the play when Prospero concludes: ‘this thing of darkness [ie, Caliban] I / Acknowledge mine’ (5.1.275–6). Prospero seems to go from rejection, abhorrence to recognition or anagnorisis, from exclusion to inclusion. In Cor, the complex relationship between Martius Coriolanus and Aufidius is expressed in terms of abhorrence: 2

Achitophel

Martius: Aufidius:

I’ll fight with none but thee, for I do hate thee Worse than a promise-breaker. We hate alike: Not Afric owns a serpent I abhor More than thy fame and envy. (1.8.1–4)

These words of hate are pregnant with ambivalence: behind the figure of the ‘promisebreaker’ one can see an image of former love; Aufidius does not say he abhors Martius, but ‘his fame and envy’; ‘we hate alike’ suggests that there is concord in this discord and that these offensive words can be heard as words of love. The two characters love to hate each other and the language of repulsion meets the language of fascination and admiration (‘envy’). The insulting words are part of an ambivalent martial love-hate relationship. (C) See ab(h)ominable. Achitophel (A) The counsellor of Absolom, cursed by David. Spelt ‘Ahithophel’ in the Geneva Bible and in the Authorized King James Bible, the name is spelt ‘Achitophel’ in Coverdale and Taverner and in both Q and F1 of 2H4. The story of Ahithophel (2 Sam. 15–17) was well known in the sixteenth century. This biblical name refers to King David’s trusted counsellor who betrayed him by supporting the treason of Absolom, the King’s son, when the latter attempted to usurp his father’s throne. ‘The treason was Great’ (2 Sam. 15:12). When Ahithophel foresaw defeat, he hanged himself: ‘Nowe when Ahithophel sawe that his counsel was not followed, . . . he went home unto his citie . . . and hanged him selfe’ (2 Sam. 17:23). The name conveys the image of a treacherous friend, similar to Judas. (B) In 2H4, Falstaff curses Master Dommelton, the satin-merchant who refused to give him credit, calling him a ‘whoreson Achitophel’: Let him be damned like the glutton! Pray God his tongue be hotter! A whoreson Achitophel! A rascally yea-forsooth knave, (2H4 1.2.34–6) This insult in absentia is inserted in an invective which contains another biblical reference: the allusion to the Dives-and-Lazarus parable of the glutton who went to hell (Luke 16). There is an echo of Luke 16:24: ‘Then he [Dives] cryed, and said, Father Abraham, have mercie on me, and send Lazarus that he may dippe the typ of his finger in water, and coole my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ The reference to Achitophel is emblematic of Falstaff’s recurrent use of biblical quotations. According to Rubinstein the name calls for a sexual reading and conveys the image of a pimp. Ahithophel, David’s ‘counsellor’, when asked to ‘give counsel’, told Absolom, ‘Go in to thy father’s concubines, which he hathe left to kepe the house: and when all Israel shall heare, that thou art abhorred of thy father, the hands of all that are with thee, shalbe strong’ (2 Sam. 16:21). Rubinstein (247), finds confirmation of this sexual reading in the rest of the invective: ‘The whoreson smooth-pates do now wear 3

Achitophel

nothing but high shoes and bunches of keys at their girdles’ (2H4 1.2.37–9). ‘Keys were the equipment of pimps whose smooth, lewd and filthy heads were bald (from venereal disease) and whose high shoes indicated effeminacy’ (Rubinstein, 247). This reading is not confirmed in Partridge or Williams. (C) See Rubinstein, 4; 58; 247; Shaheen, 429. acorn (A) The fruit or seed of the oak-tree; an oval nut growing in a shallow woody cup or cupule. Thomas reads for ‘Glans’ ‘Mast of oke or other trees, an acorne: sometime the fruit of any tree: a plummet, or pellet of leade, or other mettall: also a kernel growing betweene the skinne and the flesh, the nut of a mans yarde: a suppositorie made like an acorn, & put into the fundament to cause solublenesse.’ (B) In MND , the word suggests a tiny creature, when Lysander calls Hermia ‘acorn’ in a miniaturizing string of abuse: Get you gone, you dwarf; You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; You bead, you acorn. (3.2.328–30) ‘Acorn’ is the climax of a series of words that portray Hermia as a dwarf, in a scene in which she is described as ‘nothing but “low” and “little” ’ (3.2.326). Referring to her supposedly small size, the word integrates Hermia into the fairy world of a play which alludes to creatures who ‘creep into acorn-cups’ (2.1.31). In AYL , Celia disparagingly compares Orlando to a ‘dropped acorn’, an insulting simile which Rosalind immediately integrates into a praise. Celia: Rosalind:

I found him under a tree, like a dropped acorn – It may well be called Jove’s tree when it drops forth such fruit. (3.2.227–30)

According to Rubinstein (4–5), ‘acorn’ (also ‘gland’) here has a sexual meaning, referring to the ‘glans’, the conical head of the penis or to the nut, the testicle. Both girls say that Jove’s fruit is ‘dropped’, thus transforming Orlando’s emotional and physical dejection into a sexual state of impotence. Dunn, commenting on Cym 2.5.15–17 [ie 2.4.168], notes that ‘acorn’ in German is Eichel, which is also the term for the glans penis. None of Partridge, Williams or Dusinberre (2006), validate Rubinstein’s reading, but Butler (Cym) notes that the image of the ‘full-acorn’d boar’ (2.4.168) arguably suggests ‘with huge testicles’. (C) See Fitzpatrick (2011), 1–3. adder (A) A small venomous serpent or snake, with reference to the serpent as a manifestation of the devil in the biblical account of the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Hence a treacherous, deceitful, malicious, or pernicious person. (B) In MND , Hermia, thinking that Demetrius has killed Lysander, calls him an ‘adder’, meaning that he is a lying traitor whose double tongue is deceptive: 4

adult(e)ress/adulterer/adulterate/adulterous

Could not a worm, an adder, do so much? An adder did it; for with doubler tongue Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung! (3.2.71–3) The adder was supposed to be deaf (TC 2.2.172; 2H6 3.2.76). Shakespeare may have had Psalm 140:3 in mind in the MND passage: ‘Thei have sharpened their tongues like a serpent: adders poyson is under their lippes’ (Shaheen, 149). This insult contains the elements of Hermia’s dream at the end of 3.1 and of the Fairies’ song ‘You spotted snakes with double tongue’ (2.2.9). The word is characteristic of MND which recycles the natural environment of the play into insults (see acorn). Hermia’s insult may sound ironical since she remains, like the adder, deaf to whatever Demetrius may say. Shakespeare regularly refers to the adder’s double tongue. In Mac, an ‘adder’s fork’ (4.1.16) is part of the witches’ venomous potion. In Tem, Caliban is ‘All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues / Do hiss [him] into madness’ (2.2.13–14). In R2, Richard, coming back from Ireland, asks his ‘dear earth’ to guard the flower his enemy will pluck ‘with a lurking adder, / Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch / Throw death upon thy sovereign’s enemies’ (3.2.20–2). In 2H6, the adder is described as ‘waxen deaf’ and ‘poisonous too’ (3.2.76–7). In 3H6, York curses Margaret by calling her: She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France, Whose tongue more poisons than the adder’s tooth! (1.4.111–12) The adder symbolizes the creature that cannot be trusted, as appears in Hamlet’s ironic comparison: ‘and my two schoolfellows – / Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged –’ (Ham 3.4.200–1). (C) For a description of the adder and some adder stories in the Renaissance, see Maplet, 69 and Topsell (1608), 50–3. Whitney’s emblem Latet anguis in herba (24) conveys the image of the false flattering friends that Hamlet describes. See basilisk, serpent, viper. adult(e)ress/adulterer/adulterate/adulterous (A) A man or a woman who betrays his or her partner by committing adultery. ‘Adulterate’ means ‘defiled, adulterous, defiling’ (Partridge). The word derives from Latin adulterare related to alterare (ie to alter), hence to change for the worse, to corrupt. (B) In Tit, Tamora complains to her sons, Chiron and Demetrius, that Bassianus and Lavinia have insulted her: And then they called me foul adulteress, Lascivious Goth, and all the bitterest terms That ever ear did hear to such effect. (2.2.109–11) Although they are integrated in a dishonest piece of narration, Tamora’s reported insults are in fact fairly true since the preceding sequence is a scene of insult in which Lavinia 5

adult(e)ress/adulterer/adulterate/adulterous

and Bassianus violently rail at Tamora. As a matter of fact, a few lines earlier, Lavinia, using the myth of Diana and Actaeon (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.150–304) mentioned by Bassianus and Tamora, provokes Tamora by saying that ‘’Tis thought you have a goodly gift in horning’ (2.2.67), thus accusing her of cuckolding her Actaeon-like husband with her ‘swart (ie black) Cimmerian’ (2.2.72). Tamora thus translates the Actaeon myth into a story of adultery implying horning. Many commentators have considered it strange that the otherwise innocent Lavinia should bawdily abuse Tamora in this scene. Followed by the word ‘lascivious’, the word ‘adulteress’ suggests whoredom. In Ham, the Ghost, addressing Hamlet, curses Claudius in absentia, calling him ‘that incestuous, that adulterate beast’ (1.5.42). The word may mean that Claudius stains and is stained by adultery as he has married his brother’s wife but also that he is simply corrupted, altered, defiled in a more general sense. As Thompson and Taylor note (214), it is never made clear whether Gertrude commits adultery before her husband’s death, so the two meanings can overlap. In AC , Maecenas tells Octavia: Only th’adulterous Antony, most large In his abominations, turns you off And gives his potent regiment to a trull That noises it against us. (3.6.95–8) This also shows the connection between adultery and whoredom, Cleopatra being identified as a ‘trull’ and the very strong word ‘abomination’ giving the adulterous Antony the status of an abominable monster which ‘o’erflows the measure’ (1.1.2). In MM , when Angelo tells Vincentio that Isabella ‘will speak most bitterly and strange’ (5.1.38), she attacks Angelo in public in the interrogative mode: That Angelo is an adulterous thief, An hypocrite, a virgin-violator; Is it not strange, and strange? (5.1.42–4) The term here is part of a series of rhetorical questions which oxymoronically associate the virtuous name of ‘Angelo’ with a series of sins and crimes. By using the word ‘adulterous’, Isabella refers to Angelo’s betraying his former beloved, Mariana. In WT , Hermione is the target of her husband’s fury: You, my lords, Look on her, mark her well. Be but about To say she is a goodly lady, and The justice of your hearts will thereto add ’Tis pity she’s not honest, honourable. Praise her but for this her without-door form – Which on my faith deserves high speech – and straight 6

Ajax

The shrug, the hum or ha, these petty brands That calumny doth use – O, I am out! That mercy does, for calumny will sear Virtue itself – these shrugs, these hums and ha’s, When you have said she’s goodly, come between Ere you can say she’s honest. But be’t known, From him that has most cause to grieve it should be, She’s an adulteress! (2.1.64–78) The word ‘adulteress’, probably pronounced in three syllables to give it more sonorous impact, comes as the spectacular climax of the tirade and is then repeated a few lines later (5.1.88). It is the conclusion of an insulting speech that is a public accusation in a trial scene. Leontes, in a sequence that ironically anticipates the statue scene, vainly looks for signs of guilt on Hermione’s face: ‘look on her, mark her’. The word ‘mark’ can be heard in a double way as Leontes is here ‘marking’, that is ‘branding’ his wife with the name of ‘adulteress’ to answer the ‘petty brands that calumny’ (2.1.71) will put on him as the cuckolded husband. (C) On adultery, see Williams, 1, 9–11. On Actaeon, see Lafont. See cuckold, harlot, horn, whore. Ajax (A) The name of an eminent Greek warrior. Vanquished by Ulysses, he fell into a state of madness in which he killed the sheep of the Greek army, mistaking them for enemies. When he realised what he had done, he committed suicide. The character is ridiculed by Shakespeare in TC and the pun on Ajax /a jakes (privy) can be found several times in Shakespeare’s plays. (B) In TC , the character is so strongly ridiculed by Thersites that the very name becomes an insult: Thersites: Achilles: Thersites: Achilles: Thersites: Achilles: Thersites:

You see him there, do you? Ay, what’s the matter? Nay, look upon him. So I do. What’s the matter? Nay, but regard him well. Well, why, I do so. But yet you look not well upon him; for, whosomever you take him to be, he is Ajax. (2.1.55–62)

The suspense, created by Thersites’ recurrent directions, transforms the name of Ajax into a spectacular word of abuse. The well-known pun on Ajax and ‘a jakes’ combines the sublime and the grotesque. In 1596, Harington published his treatise, entitled The Metamorphoses of Ajax, a paradoxical encomium in which he presented an innovative system of toilet flushing. The title plays on the pun ‘Ajax’ and ‘a jakes’; Harington uses the 7

Ajax

glorious name of Ajax to refer to lavatories, the Elizabethan ‘jakes’. This pun conveys insulting connotations in the play. When Thersites describes Ajax on the battlefield as ‘asking for himself’ (3.3.246–7), he refers to Ajax’s madness, but the words may also conjure up the image of Ajax calling for ‘a jakes’. The homophony may also give another meaning to Alexander’s words when he describes the monstrous, paradoxical Ajax: ‘They say he is a very man per se, / And stands alone’ (1.2.15–16). No commentator seems to consider the possibility that there might be a multilingual pun in this ‘per se’: in French ‘per se’ sounds like ‘percée’ (pierced) and the expression ‘une chaise percée’ refers to a privy, a privy stool. This reading is supported by Nestor’s definition of insults as ‘comparisons with dirt’ (1.3.194) and by the fact that there are several references to ‘stools’ in the play. In KL , Ajax is at the heart of an insulting compound. ‘None of these rogues and cowards / But Ajax is their fool’ (2.2.122–3) says Kent, referring to Oswald, who is one of the ‘rogues’ mentioned here. The meaning of this sentence is complex. The Riverside Shakespeare edition glosses it as follows: ‘Villains of this kind are always willing to boast that they are braver than Ajax’ (1317). In TC , however, Ajax is described as ‘blockish’ (TC 1.3.376) and as ‘the dull brainless Ajax’ (TC 1.3.382). In their editions of KL , Foakes (233) and Halio (153) suggest that ‘Ajax’ here refers to Cornwall, who is present on stage, which would explain why, feeling abused, he puts Kent in the stocks. The lines seem to suggest that in the upside-down world of KL , rogues and cowards are kings, whose fool is Ajax/Cornwall. Beyond the stupidity with which Ajax is associated in Shakespeare’s plays, the word suggests another insulting connotation: the well-known pun which conveys the nauseating world embodied by Oswald and Cornwall. This scatological meaning is anticipated when Kent advises Oswald to put his horse ‘i’ the mire’ (2.2.5), the only filthy and dirty place that suits them. It is also confirmed when Kent addresses Cornwall to tell him what he would like to do to Oswald: ‘My lord, if you will give me leave, I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar and daub the wall of a jakes with him’ (2.2.62–5). It is fitting that the pun on Ajax / a jakes is present in a play where Edgar grimes his face with ‘filth’ (2.2.180) and where the word ‘dunghill’ occurs twice (3.7.96; 4.6.239). In AYL , Touchstone provocatively calls Jaques ‘Master What-ye-call’t’ (3.3.68), a ‘circumlocution for a “jakes” (privy), i.e. Jaques’ (Dusinberre, AYL , 270). Brissenden (AYL, 176) comments that ‘Touchstone delicately avoids saying “Jakes” and thereby draws attention to the meaning of the name.’ (C) See Harington. On AYL , see Dusinberre (1994 and 2006); on TC , see Hillman (1997); Smith (1996 and 2012, chap. 2); Vienne-Guerrin (2001 and 2008). On ‘jakes’ meaning prostitute, see Williams, 2, 728–9. On jakes, close-stool and stool, see Iyengar, 182–3. See toadstool, stool, jack. Althaea(’s dream) (A) Commonly spelled ‘Althea’, was told by the Fates that her son Meleager would live until a brand that was then on fire was consumed. She took the brand out of the fire to prolong her son’s life, but when she learnt that her son had killed her brothers, she killed Meleager by throwing the brand back into the fire. The story is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8.586–705). 8

Amaimon

(B) Althaea’s ‘fatal brand’ (2H6 1.1.231) is referred to by the Page during an exchange of abuse with Bardolph in which the boy shows that he has much ‘profited’ (2H4 2.2.82) in the art of insult by living with Falstaff: Bardolph (to Page): Page: Prince: Page: Prince:

Away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away! Away, you rascally Althaea’s dream, away! Instruct us, boy; what dream, boy? Marry, my lord, Althaea dreamt she was delivered of a fire-brand; and therefore I call him her dream. A crown’s-worth of good interpretation! (2H4 2.2.83–9)

The Prince’s reaction shows that the meaning of the insult is not transparent and that the expression needs to be deciphered, ‘interpreted’. Weis (163) notes that the Page confuses the story of Althaea and the story of Hecuba. It is Hecuba who, when she was pregnant with Paris, dreamt that she would deliver a firebrand that would consume Troy (Ovid, Heroides 16.49; Virgil, Aeneid, 7.319–20 and 10.704–5). In TC , Cassandra laments that ‘Our fire brand brother Paris burns us all’ (TC 2.2.110). In addition to this confusion, by mentioning Althaea, the Page refers to Bardolph’s red nose that reminds him of the firebrand in the Ovidian tale. The exclamation prolongs an allusion to Bardolph’s red nose, when the Page notes that Bardolph’s face cannot be distinguished from the ‘red lattice’ window of an alehouse (2H4 2.2.77–8). It is also an echo of 1H4 in which Bardolph’s nose is the subject of a poetic mock-encomium, a sort of insulting blazon of the nose delivered by Falstaff who calls Bardolph ‘the Knight of the Burning Lamp’ (3.3.27): Falstaff:

[. . .] I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two-and-thirty years, God reward me for it. Bardolph: ’Sblood, I would my face were in your belly! Falstaff: God-a-mercy! So should I be sure to be heart-burned. (1H4 3.3.45–51) This passage, in which Falstaff’s rhetoric of hyperbolic praise produces insult, is in keeping with the allusion to Althaea’s/Hecuba’s dream of giving birth to a fiery torch and takes on a particularly ironic resonance when Bardolph wishes his face were in Falstaff’s ‘belly’, as if Falstaff were pregnant with a burning creature. The Page in 2H4 recycles a motif that is developed by Falstaff in 1H4, only less skilfully. (C) Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8.586–705. See face, salamander. Amaimon (A) The name of a fiend. Spelt ‘Amamon’ in 1H4 (2.4.327), ‘Amaymon, king of the east’ is, according to Scot (1584), one of the ‘principall divels’ (XV.iii, 393). Scot also refers to ‘King Baell, or Amoimon, which are spirits reigning in the furthest regions of the east’ (XV.xxix). 9

Amaimon

(B) The name of this fiend can be found twice in Shakespeare’s plays. In MW , ‘Amaimon’ would ‘sound well’ to Master Ford’s ear compared with the insult ‘cuckold’ or ‘wittol’ that Falstaff has just unwittingly hurled at him: Ford:

[I] stand under the adoption of abominable terms, [. . .]. Terms, names! Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer, well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils’ additions, the names of fiends. But cuckold? Wittol? Cuckold! The devil himself hath not such a name! (2.2.279–84)

Amaimon is an imaginary word of abuse which gives Shakespeare the opportunity to offer a metalinguistic reflection on insults by suggesting that there are various degrees of insults and that ‘devils’ additions’ are less abusive, because nobler, than sexual accusations. Here Shakespeare creates a paradoxical insult that ‘sounds well’. (C) On fiends, see Scot (1584); Gibson and Esra, 10–11. See Lucifer, Barbason, devil. Anatomy/atomy (A) Skeleton, a living creature reduced to skin and bones. (B) In CE , Antipholus of Ephesus describes Doctor Pinch as: [. . .] one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac’d villain; A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A thread-bare juggler and a fortune-teller, A needy-hollow-ey’d-sharp-looking-wretch; A living dead man. (5.1.238–42) Although Pinch is not on stage at that moment, this enumerative description is a string of abuse. This insulting portrait may be related to the physical appearance of the actor John Sincklo, for whom the part of Pinch was probably written and who is thought to have been pale and strikingly thin (see Gaw). In KJ 3.3.40, after describing death in detail and oxymoronically calling it ‘Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness’ (3.3.26), Constance calls it ‘that fell anatomy’, meaning ‘that cruel skeleton’. In Q 2H4, Hostess Quickly calls the Beadle, who is named Sincklo in the 1600 Q script, ‘Thou atomy, thou!’ (5.4.29). The word, which is ‘anatomy’ in F, is a blunder for ‘anatomy’, with an aphæresis of ‘an’ coming from a confusion of the initial syllable with the indefinite article ‘a’, ‘an’. It is characteristic of Hostess Quickly’s malapropisms. This insult, again, may have been chosen to suit the actor playing the Beadle (Humphreys, 2H4, 177). Sounding like a mixture of ‘atom’ and ‘anatomy’, the word contributes to conveying the Beadle’s thinness and to making him tiny, in a scene of abuse that is pregnant with anatomical insults. The Beadle/Sincklo is called: ‘thou damned tripe-visaged rascal’ (5.4.8), ‘thou paper-faced villain’ (5.4.11), ‘you thin man in a censer’ (5.4.19), ‘you filthy famished correctioner’ (5.4.21), ‘Goodman Death, Goodman Bones!’ (5.4.28), ‘you thin thing’ (5.4.30), ‘you rascal!’ (5.4.30). The word ‘atomy’ prolongs all these insults and rewrites the ‘Goodman 10

ape

Death, Goodman Bones’ delivered by Doll Tearsheet. Beyond the potential comic effect, the importance that is given to images of death in this scene prefigures the end of Falstaff’s world that will be represented in 5.5 and the triumph of Lent over Carnival. Contrary to Doll Tearsheet, who claims that she is pregnant, and to Hostess Quickly, whose generous body can be drawn ‘out of joint’ (5.4.3), the Beadle represents an indivisible, sterile matter (atom). Although the misuse for ‘anatomy’ (skeleton) is clear, one can nevertheless hear ‘atomy’ in this ‘atomy’ as it can also be the Elizabethan form for ‘atom’ and thus refer to a tiny being (OED 2). The malapropism is the way to a double meaning. (C) On Sincklo, see Morris, TS , 158; Gaw; Foakes, CE , 99; Iyengar, 19. ape (A) A primate, known for mimicking, imitating, ‘aping’ human form and gestures. Topsell (1607), notes that ‘Apes are much given to imitation and derision, and they are called Cercopes, because of their wicked crafts, deceipts, impostures and flatteries’ (B1v). He also notes: ‘And as the body of an Ape is Ridiculous, by reason of an indecent likenesse and imitation of man, so is his soule or spirit; for they are kept only in rich mens houses to sport withall, being for that cause easily tamed, following every action he seeth done, even to his owne harme without discretion’ (B2v). (B) When furious Antonio challenges Claudio and Don Pedro and calls them ‘Boys, apes, braggards, jacks, milksops!’ (MA 5.1.91), he may refer to their foolishness and clowning about, but he mainly means that, as they refuse to fight, they are no men but only have the form of men. Thomas glosses ‘simia’ as ‘an ape: also he that counterfaiteth, or endevoureth to be like an other’. What Antonio means is that Don Pedro and Claudio want to look like men but that they are none, which is confirmed by the recurrent use of the word ‘boy’ in the scene. In Cotgrave’s Dictionary, the French word ‘marmot’, which means ‘boy’, is related to the English ‘marmoset’. Antonio means they are marmosets, little monkeys, little boys, ‘fashion-monging boys’ (MA 5.1.94). In AYL , Rosalind professes she will be ‘more new-fangled than an ape’ (4.1.141–2), which confirms the association of the figure of the ape with the world of ‘fashion’ that is so present in MA . Ironically, Don Pedro and Claudio later refer to Benedick by using the image of the ape: Don Pedro: What a pretty thing man is when he goes in his doublet and hose, and leaves off his wit! [Q Enter Constables [Dogberry and Verges, and the Watch with] Conrade and Borachio.] Claudio: He is then a giant to an ape; but then is an ape a doctor to such a man. (MA 5.1.194–7) The image of the ape here conjures up the figure of the fool. In the Q version, the association is comically reinforced by the appearance on stage, after ‘leaves off his wit’, of the sot Dogberry who, although he goes without wit, is the ‘doctor’ to all men in the play. In this context, the word ‘ape’ takes on a highly ironical dimension, as it is applied to Claudio and Don Pedro, to Benedick and, through the apparently fortuitous arrival of the constables on stage, to Dogberry, which contributes to blurring the lines between 11

ape

wise men and fools in this play. In 1H4, the figure of the ape is used in a playful exchange between Lady Percy and her husband Hotspur: Lady Percy: What is it carries you away? [ie ‘What makes you so wild?’] Hotspur: Why, my horse, My love, my horse. Lady Percy: Out, you mad-headed ape! A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen As you are tossed with. (1H4 2.3.73–6) When Lady Percy calls Hotspur ‘you mad-headed ape!’ (2.3.74), it sounds like a playful and affectionate insult that seems to stress her husband’s childish hot temper and irritable emotions as well as his acting the fool by playing with her words. Yet it is the image of the horse that leads to the image of the ape, Lady Percy playing with her husband’s words too. As a matter of fact, this association of the horse and the ape recalls what Höfele (10) describes as ‘such sideshows as the baiting of an ape, or monkey, on horseback’. Mentioning contemporary testimonies, Höfele comments that ‘Exposing the victim’s fear and distress to the audience’s derisive laughter, the ape on horseback closely mirrors the charivari or other communal shaming rituals of the period. [. . .]’ (11). Lady Percy through her use of the image ominously victimizes Hotspur, transforming him into the ape on horseback, a victim whose ‘spleen’ may have to do with his being ill-treated, his being ‘tossed’ (ie ‘thrown about’, ‘hurled this way and that’, OED ) on horseback. In 2H4, when he sees the little Page that he gave to Falstaff, Hal exclaims ‘look if the fat villain [ie Falstaff] have not transformed him ape’ (2.2.68–9), which suggests that Falstaff is the fool and the Page his little ape. Siemon (R3, 255) notes that Fools carried apes, ‘as does Will Somers in the anonymous Hampton Court painting of Henry VIII ’s family, c. 1545’. Subsequently, it is Falstaff himself who is reduced to the status of ‘poor ape’ (2H4 2.4.215) by Doll Tearsheet, which blurs the distinction between man and monkey. (C) See ‘Ape’ in Maplet, 69v–70r and Topsell (1607), B1v–B3 (2–5). On apes, see Feinberg; on ‘marmosets’, see Knowles’s 2004 article, the title of which (‘Can you not tell a man from a marmoset?’) refers to a quotation from Chapman’s Sir Giles Goosecap (1606?) when Bullokar, the ‘French page’ of a ‘French affected traveller’, is accosted by two English pages, Will and Jack (144). See Chapman, Sir Giles Goosecap, 1.1.11–20 and 1.1.32–35. See Höfele, 10–11. For an illustration of the association of fools and apes, see the image of Will Sommers in the anonymous Hampton Court painting of Henry VIII ’s family (c. 1545) where he is represented with an ape on his shoulder: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Family_of_Henry_VIII _c_1545.jpg See baboon, bear, fool, jackanape, monkey. apple-john (A) A kind of apple which keeps a long time and is edible when it is withered. It is so called because it is said to ripen about St John the Baptist’s day (24 June) and 12

arrant

then to keep for two years. Huloet has: ‘Apple, called apple Iohn, or Saint Iohns apple, or a sweting [ie sweeting], or an apple of paradise.’ (B) In 1H4, Falstaff describes himself as ‘withered like an old apple-john’ (3.3.4), with an obvious pun on his name, Sir John Falstaff. In 2H4, the image is said to have an insulting effect: Francis:

What the devil hast thou brought there – apple-johns? Thou knowest Sir John cannot endure an apple-john. 2 Drawer: Mass, thou sayst true. The Prince once set a dish of apple-johns before him, and told him there were five more Sir Johns; and, putting off his hat, said, ‘I will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old, withered knights’. It angered him to the heart; but he hath forgot that. Francis: Why then, cover, and set them down, [. . .] (2H4 2.4.1–9) Here is an example of reported abuse, the story of an insult that leaves traces in the characters’ memories. What Larguèche has termed ‘effet injure’ (1983), the insulting effect, is thrown into relief (‘It angered him to the heart’) at the same time as it is negated by ‘but he hath forgot that’. This is typical of the fine line between offensive and ludic insults in these carnivalesque plays and of what Bakhtin calls the ‘dual tone of words’ (433). The association of Falstaff with the apple-john is ambivalent: it stresses his old age and withered appearance but it also suggests that although he is old, he is still good, and even all the better since he is old. Yet the two occurrences merely seem to stress his being old and decrepit. Humphreys (2H4, 62–3) notes that ‘Jonson uses apple-john in a way which seems equivalent to “apple-squire”, i.e. pimp; viz., Bart. Fair, I. iii. 55 [. . .] – “She may call you an apple-Iohn, if you use this” (i.e. if you throw your wife and a rival together)’. The shrivelled apple, like the ‘withered elder’, might refer to Falstaff’s impotence (2H4 2.4.258), an idea that is further emphasised when Falstaff is called ‘thou dead elm’ (2H4 2.4.331), which means that Falstaff is a bad support for his friends. Here the insult is indirect: the Prince does not call Sir John ‘apple john’ but calls the apples and Sir John ‘six dry, round, old, withered knights’. Transforming the apples into knights, he transforms the knight, Falstaff, into an old apple, using his very name, John, as food for insult. Perkins Wilder (100) shows that the apple-johns are ‘later recalled in the “last year’s pippins” brought out by Shallow’ (5.3.2) and that this insult paradoxically contributes to making Falstaff ‘an object of consumption rather than a consumer’. (C) On this insult and its relation to memory, see Perkins Wilder, 99–100. On the history of the apple, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 14–17: ‘There is a distinction between deliberate maturing, which is said to enhance flavour and can be detected from the fruit’s exterior, and a rotten interior that comes as a surprise and spoils the fruit’ (16). arrant (A) Opprobrious intensifier. A variant of ‘errant’, the word originally means, ‘wandering’, ‘vagrant’, ‘vagabond’. It became an intensifier, meaning ‘notorious, 13

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downright’, ‘very’ and is thus frequently used in derogatory rhetoric with such words as ‘thief’, ‘coward’ or ‘knave’. (B) Hamlet enigmatically reports the Ghost’s words to Horatio: ‘There’s never a villain dwelling in all Denmark / But he’s an arrant knave’ (Ham 1.5.122–3). The use of the intensifier is part of a tautology and thus seems useless. Yet, as these words are supposed to be the ghost’s, a revelation that should be kept secret, they are made spectacular by the dramatic situation and the suspense of the sequence. In the context of the play it makes sense that the word ‘arrant’ should appear after the apparition of the ghost, that is to say an arrant, ‘errant’ (wandering) knave. This general insult to all the villains of Denmark is extremely banal in its content but spectacular in its delivery, leading from climactic suspense to anti-climax. As Horatio says, ‘There needs no ghost [. . .] come from the grave / To tell us this’ (Ham 1.5.124–5). However, in this case, the words are all the more memorable for an audience since they are banal. In the nunnery scene Hamlet uses the same expression when he tells Ophelia: ‘we are arrant knaves [F: knaves all]’. Preceded by the question: ‘What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?’ (3.1.126–7), the word suggests that we are all errant knaves. The word is part of the world of H4 where the characters cultivate insults and hyperbolic language. Falstaff calls Poins and Hal ‘arrant cowards’ in absentia (1H4 2.2.97), which takes on a particularly ironic ring when we see Falstaff running away, leaving the booty behind him. In 2H4 the word is used four times to emphasize the word ‘knave’. Mistress Quickly exclaims ‘No, thou arrant knave’ (2H4 5.4.1) when the beadle comes to arrest her, thus reversing the parts. In H5, ‘arrant’ is part of Fluellen’s idiolect as he uses the word four times in 4.7 and 4.8. Gower too uses the word when he describes Pistol, after his exit: ‘Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal; I remember him now – a bawd, a cutpurse’ (H5 3.6.60–1). Here the word means ‘notorious’ but it can also refer to Pistol’s wandering life which Gower describes a few lines later (3.6.66–80). This arrant-errant link can be found in KL where the Fool mentions ‘Fortune, that arrant whore’ (2.2.242) and in Tim where Timon says that ‘the moon’s an arrant thief’ (4.3.432). (C) See vagabond. ass (A) A beast of burden, the ass is known for its long ears and is a figure of stupidity and ignorance. The word refers to the animal and as a term of reproach it means ‘stupid fellow’. Cotgrave defines the French word asne as ‘an Asse [. . .], also, a dunce, blockhead, sot, loggarhead, dull-pated fellow’. Topsell (1607) notes that the ass ‘is intituled or phrased with many epithites among Poets; as, slow, burthen-bearing, backbearing, vile, cart-drawing, mill-labouring, sluggish, crooked, vulgar, slow-paced, longeared, blockish, braying, ydle, devill-haired, filthy, saddle-bearer, slow-foot, four-foot, vnsavoury, and a beast of miserable condition’ (20). Yoder notes that ‘Some theatre historians [. . .] recognize the “hanging eares” of the ass in the eared Fool’s cap, worn up to Shakespeare’s time’ (31). Of all the ass’s characteristics, foolishness is the most obvious but the figure also suggests servility. Cotgrave mentions a proverb: ‘Oreille d’asne: Pro. The part, or dutie of a seruant; to heare all his angrie master sayes without 14

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replying; from the nature, and custome of an Asse, that (whatsoeuer noise is made about him) only claps downe his eares, and followes on his way.’ Yoder (12), analysing the ass of the Aesopian tradition, mentions two versions of the fable of ‘The ass in the lion’s skin’. In the first version, the ass dons a lion’s skin and spreads terror everywhere until his ears betray him. He ends up beaten for his impudence, the morale of the story being that undeserved honours inevitably lead to disgrace. The second version has its setting in Cumae: an ass that is weary of living in a state of servility goes to the forest and finds a lion’s skin, dons it and terrifies all men and beasts around, which is an easy task because the Cumanians have never seen a lion before. Then comes a visitor who, having seen lions and asses before, recognizes the trickery. He beats the ass and takes him back to his owner. The two versions show that one cannot usurp honours that one does not deserve. In the two cases, the ass gets beaten and the second version presents the ass as a beast of burden. The ass also appears as stupid, as he does not realize that his long ears may betray him. (B) One finds a trace of this Aesopian fable in KJ in an exchange between the Bastard and the Duke of Austria: Austria: Bastard:

Blanche: Bastard:

What the devil art thou? One that will play the devil, sir, with you, And a may catch your hide and you alone: You are the hare of whom the proverb goes, Whose valour plucks dead lion by the beard. I’ll smoke your skin-coat, and I catch you right; Sirrah, look to’t; i’faith I will, i’faith. O, well did he become that lion’s robe That did disrobe the lion of that robe! It lies as sightly on the back of him As great Alcides’ shoes upon an ass: But, ass, I’ll take that burthen from your back, Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack. (KJ 2.1.134–46)

To understand the insult, one needs to remember that the Bastard is Richard Lionheart’s illegitimate son, and that Austria killed Richard. Austria is represented as wearing a lion’s skin taken from Richard Coeur-de-Lion, which explains Philip the Bastard’s bitter insults. This exchange combines several proverbial expressions, among which is ‘an ass in a lion’s skin’ (Tilley, A351). Braunmuller (145) notes that the same combination of proverbs can be found in Gosson’s The Schoole of Abuse (1579): ‘You will smile to see how this moral philosopher toils to draw the lion’s skin upon Aesop’s ass, Hercules’ shoes on a child’s feet’ (A3v). Braunmuller (145) notes that ‘the phrase describes an incongruous mixture of great and small, important and trivial’. Austria is associated with the ass that has usurped the lion’s identity by wearing his hide but that will soon be unmasked. The image of the usurper is prolonged in 3.1 when Constance exclaims: 15

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‘Thou wear a lion’s hide! doff it for shame, / And hang a calve’s skin on those recreant limbs’ (KJ 3.1.54–5), a line which is provocatively repeated several times by the Bastard. In Shakespeare’s plays, the motif of the ass mostly refers to foolishness. In MA , the word occurs eight times and is associated with Dogberry. Beyond the dramatic irony that has the ass, that is the fool, discover what witty characters do not manage to see, one must analyse how Shakespeare uses this common word of abuse. Conrad first tells Dogberry: ‘Away! You are an ass, you are an ass’ (4.2.75). Dogberry’s reaction emphasizes this metaphoric insult: ‘Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years?’ (4.2.75–6). He ironically confirms that he is ‘an ass’ with the malapropism ‘suspect’ for ‘respect’ and literalizes the metaphor by referring to his ‘years’, a word that could be heard as ‘ears’. Humphreys (MA , 190) notes that: ‘Dogberry appears unwittingly to achieve a pun. Years could be a variant of ears, as in the phrase “as long as donkeys’ years” ’. In the anonymous Interlude Misogonus, 1.2.63–4 (c. 1570), the Fool says, ‘Nothinge greves me but my yeares be so longe / my master will take me for balames asse’. Dogberry prolongs the insult by giving himself one of the physical characteristics of the ass. This insult constitutes a kind of trauma for Dogberry who keeps repeating it as if it were impossible for him to swallow it: O, that he [the Sexton] were here to write me down an ass! But masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass. No, thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be proved upon thee by good witness. I am a wise fellow, and which is more, an officer, and which is more, a householder, and which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one that knows the law – go to! – and a rich fellow enough – go to! – and a fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns, and everything handsome about him. – Bring him away. – O, that I had been writ down an ass. (MA 4.2.77–88) Dogberry feeds the memory of the word, so much so that all that a spectator remembers of this self-portrait, which should contradict Conrade’s words, is that Dogberry is an ass indeed. The insult, which could have remained unnoticed, is thrown into relief by its victim. In Shakespeare After All (389), Garber notes that ‘The role of Dogberry was originally played by Will Kemp, the same actor who played Bottom in MND , and we might imagine that spectators would make this connection. Dogberry/Kemp had already been “writ down an ass,” with equal insouciant triumph, in Shakespeare’s earlier play.’ The text ironically switches again from ‘you are an ass’ to ‘I am an ass’ in Act 5: ‘And masters, do not forget to specify, when time and place shall serve, that I am an ass’ (5.1.245–6). The comedy comes from the fact that Dogberry cannot use indirect speech, even if the indirect speech appears a little later: Moreover, sir, which indeed is not under white and black, this plaintiff here, the offender, did call me ass. I beseech you let it be remembered in his punishment. (5.1.294–7)

16

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As the word ‘plaintiff’ is misused as a synonym for ‘offender’, Dogberry, who is the plaintiff, is saying: ‘I said that I am an ass’, and is thus still calling himself an ass. Dogberry’s endless harping on his being an ass may echo Harvey’s mock-encomium, Pierces supererogation or A new prayse of the old Asse (1593) in which, as an answer to Nashe, he spends a great number of pages praising the figure of the ass. The figurative meaning of the word, which suggests stupidity, often prevails. In TC , the word is defined through Pandarus’ enumerative exclamation ‘Asses, fools, dolts’ (1.2.233). Thersites tells Ajax: ‘thou hast no more brain than I have in my elbows; an asinico may tutor thee. Thou scurvy-valiant ass [. . .]’ (TC 2.1.42–5). The word ‘asinico,’ which means ‘little ass’ from Spanish ‘asnico’, diminutive of ‘asno’, belittles Ajax even more. In TS , Grumio’s exclamation, about Gremio who is being duped by Lucentio, ‘O, this woodcock, what an ass it is!’ (1.2.158), associates two animals that are known for their stupidity. Yet Shakespeare often plays on the literal and metaphoric meanings of the word, notably in CE where one finds nine occurrences of the word ‘ass’: Antipholus of Syracuse: Thou hast thine own form. Dromio of Syracuse: No, I am an ape. Luciana: If thou art chang’d to aught, ’tis to an ass. Dromio of Syracuse: ’Tis true, she rides me, and I long for grass; ’Tis so, I am an ass, else it could never be But I should know her as well as she knows me. (CE 2.2.197–201) The word ‘ass’ is here part of a complex game on the literal and figurative senses of the term. It is inscribed in a reflection on the metaphoric power of words, that is on the ability of words to ‘trans-form’ men (2.2.194). When Luciana calls Dromio an ‘ass,’ she uses Dromio’s word ‘ape’ and continues with the field of animal imagery to suggest his foolishness. However, Dromio transforms and defuses the insult by literalizing it and referring to the ass as being a tyrannised beast of burden rather than a symbol of stupidity. The same mechanism occurs later, in an exchange between Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus. This time it is Dromio of Ephesus who is called an ass: Antipholus of Ephesus: Dromio of Ephesus:

I think thou art an ass. Marry, so it doth appear By the wrongs I suffer and the blows I bear. I should kick, being kick’d, and being at that pass, You would keep from my heels, and beware of an ass. (3.1.14–18)

The servant excludes the metaphoric meaning of the word and prefers to interpret it in a more literal sense that refers to the ass’s servility. Again the insult is defused by the interpretation chosen by Dromio. The twinship of the two servants appears in their common use of the word ‘ass’ which, for them, refers to a beaten beast. The stage 17

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directions (‘Beats Dromio’ CE 2.2.23 and 4.4.46) leave no doubt as to their being beaten. Dromio of Ephesus underlines the same idea a little later when, addressing his twin, he says, in a passage that has puzzled editors: ‘If thou hadst been Dromio to-day in my place, / Thou wouldst have chang’d thy face for an aim [a name in F], or thy name for an ass’ (CE 3.1.46–7). In Act 4, the gap between the master and the servant appears in the different meanings they give to the word ‘ass’: Antipholus of Ephesus: Thou whoreson, senseless villain. Dromio of Ephesus: I would I were senseless, sir, that I might not feel your blows. Antipholus of Ephesus: Thou art sensible in nothing but blows, and so is an ass. Dromio of Ephesus: I am an ass indeed; you may prove it by my long ears. I have served him from the hour of my nativity to this instant, and have nothing at his hands for my service but blows. When I am cold, he heats me with beating; when I am warm he cools me with beating; I am waked with it when I sleep, raised with it when I sit, driven out of doors with it when I go from home, welcomed home with it when I return, nay, I bear it on my shoulders as a beggar wont her brat; and I think when he hath lamed me, I shall beg with it from door to door. (4.4.25–40) The pun on ‘ears’ and ‘years’ as well as the ambiguous use of the word ‘senseless’, which can mean both ‘stupid’ and ‘insensitive’, reveal the two meanings in the word ‘ass’. The master refers to Dromio’s foolishness while Dromio sees in the figure of the ass the embodiment of painful service. One can measure the gap between masters and servants in the different uses they make of the word. Being literalized, the word loses part of its insulting content but reveals what Schalkwyk (2008) calls the ‘bestialisation of servants’ (90). In TS , Kate plays on the figurative and the literal in the following exchange: Petruccio: Katherina:

[. . .] come, sit on me. Asses are made to bear, and so are you. (2.1.199–200)

At the end of LLL , Boyet, Berowne and Dumaine mock Holofernes performing the part of Judas by playing on the name ‘Judas’: Boyet: Dumaine:

18

Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go. And so adieu, sweet Jude. Nay, why dost thou stay? For the latter end of his name.

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Berowne: For the ass to the Jude? Give it him. Jud-as, away! Holofernes: This is not generous, not gentle, not humble. (LLL 5.2.619–23) Parker (2003) convincingly shows that there is a pun on ‘ass’ and ‘arse’. Armado announces that the performance will take place in ‘the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon’ (LLL 5.1.82–3). Holofernes develops the idea by saying that the word is ‘well-culled’ (LLL 5.1.86), with a pun on ‘cul’, meaning ‘arse’ in French. It may not be fortuitous in this context that the word ‘excrement’ (LLL 5.1.96) is used a bit later to refer to an outgrowth of hair. Parker notes that ‘the series of scatological references culminates in the “close-stool” linking “Alisander the Great” with Ajax or “A-jakes” (5.2.575–78)’ (Parker, 2003, 16). All this allows the pun on ‘Jud-as’ to be interpreted as a pun on ‘ass’ and ‘arse’ in a play that is ‘filled with scatological references to “ends” of various kinds’ (Parker, 2003, 17). Parker also notes (Margins, 33 and 2003, 16) that the ‘conflation’ (2003, 16) of ‘ass’ and ‘arse’ appears in TS when Lucentio calls Hortensio, the music-master, ‘preposterous ass’ (3.1.9), referring to the ‘ability of the body’s posterior to produce musical farts’ (Parker, 2003, 16). In AC , Cleopatra imagines the asp could insult Caesar: ‘O, couldst thou speak, / That I might hear thee call Great Caesar ass / Unpolicied!’ (AC 5.2.304–7). Hughes (1991, 219) notes that ‘the insult anticipates Charmian’s posthumous compliment’: ‘lass unparallel’d’ (AC 5.2.315). In her book on service and dependency in Shakespeare’s plays, Weil notes that ‘if a wise serpent could hiss in English syllables, this is how it might sound’ (104). The sonority of the word ‘ass’ makes it an appropriate insult for a serpent’s tongue. In Tim, when the Second Lord tells Apemantus ‘Away, unpeacable dog, or I’ll spurn thee hence.’ (1.1.278), Apemantus strikes back, saying: ‘I will fly like a dog the heels o’th’ ass’ (1.2.279). A few scenes later, Apemantus calls the servants ‘asses’ in a witty dialogue that cultivates enigmatic insults: All Servants: Apemantus: All Servants: Apemantus:

What are we, Apemantus? Asses. Why? That you ask me what you are and do not know yourselves. (2.2.62–6)

Dean Williams (1999) suggests that the crux in F1 of MW , when the Host asks Shallow ‘Will you go, An-heires [F]’ (2.1.197) can be based on a multilingual pun that shows the closeness of the French and English tongues. She believes that it is an anglicized form of ‘asnier’ or ‘ânier’, a French term for ‘mule-driver’. I suggest there might be another multilingual pun in 1H4 when the prince and Poins play with Francis and laugh at the only words he has: ‘Anon, anon’ (2.4.31–84). The word means ‘I come without tarrying’ but one may hear the French word asnon which refers to a young ass (see Hollyband and Cotgrave) which has given in 1606 (DHLF ) annoner in French, meaning ‘to talk and recite like a young ass’. It is tempting to hear this insulting pun, related to a character that is presented as an ass. 19

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In H5, Fluellen unintentionally insults Gower when he says ‘I will tell you ass [‘as’ with a Welsh accent] my friend, Captain Gower’ (5.1.4–5), which creates a comic effect. (C) See Maplet, 71rv and Topsell (1607), 20–8. For a lexical approach, see Cotgrave. For the parallels drawn between men and asses, see Della Porta, De Humane Physiognomonia (ed. 1586); Hill (1571). On the name of Nick Bottom in MND and more generally on the pun on ass/arse, see P. Parker (2003), P. Parker (1996), chap. 1 and P. Parker (1993). On the ass/arse couple of words, see Hughes (2006). On the image of the ass, see Witte (2002). On the figure of the ass in relation to the image of the servant, see Burnett (1992); Burnett (1997); Evett (2005), chapter 7: ‘Perpetuus asinus: Bad Service and the Primacy of the Will’ (133–58), Schalkwyk (2008). On the pun on Ajax/A-Jakes, see Harington (1596) and Smith (2012). On the insult ‘ass’, see Rawson (1989). On the scatological meaning of ‘ass’ especially in MW , see Stockton (2011), chap. 2: ‘Shakespeare’s Ass. The Merry Wives of Windsor and the Butt of the Joke’ (25–43). See Harvey’s mock encomium, Pierces supererogation (1593) in which one finds innumerable ass stories.

20

B baboon (A) A monkey, that is characterized by a dog-like face and big canine teeth embodying both lechery and idiocy. Florio (1598) defines ‘Babbione’ as ‘a great babuine, monkie or ape, a gull, a sot, a ninnie, a foole’. Cotgrave translates the French Babion as ‘A Babion, or Baboone’; the word Cynocephale is defined as ‘A Baboone’ and the word Magot as ‘A Baboone, or Ape, thats faced like a dog’. The French Baboin is translated: ‘as Babion; also, a trifling, busie, or craftie knaue; a crackrope, waghalter, vnhappie rogue, retchlesse villaine’. Cotgrave also has: ‘Babouïnner. To baboonize it; to play the Monkey; to vse apish or foolish tricks, waggish or knauish prankes; also, to deceiue, cosen, gull.’ Topsell (1607, 10–12) describes baboons as ‘evill manered and natured, wherfore also they are picturd to signifie wrath’. They are also known for imitating ‘all humaine actions, loving wonderfully to weare garments, and of their owne accord they cloth themselves in the skinnes of wilde beasts they have killed’. Baboons were thought to be particularly lecherous. Topsell writes that ‘they are as lustfull and venereous as goats, attempting to defile all sorts of women’. Topsell also observes that baboons are known for mimicking human behaviour: (B) The image of the baboon is contrasted with humanity in Tim where Apemantus declares that mankind degenerates and that ‘The strain of man’s bred out into baboon and monkey’ (1.1.256–7). The context of this aphorism suggests that monkeys and baboons are associated with a world of flattery, a world of smiling villains, a world where ‘sweet knaves’ (1.2.255) show much courtesy but small love, where grimaces and appearances prevail over true feeling. The association of monkeys with flattery and fawning also appears in JC when Antony exclaims against Caesar’s murderers: ‘You showed your teeth like apes, and fawned like hounds’ (5.1.41). The image of the baboon is also used to convey sexual characteristics. In Per, when Marina deters Boult from attacking her virtue, she compares him to a baboon to suggest he is inhuman: ‘For what thou professest a baboon, could he speak, / Would own a name too dear’ (4.5.181–2). Marina here refers to the baboon’s lechery. Gosset (362) notes that baboons were in vogue on stage at the time and mentions the antimasque of Beaumont’s Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn (1613) where spectators could see a He baboon and a She baboon. In TNK the schoolmaster introducing a Morris dance announces ‘Then the beest-eating Clown and next the Fool, / The Bavian with long tail and eke long tool’ (penis) (3.5.130–1). The word ‘Bavian’, derived from ‘baboon’, refers to a Fool, a Morris-dancer who was costumed as an ape. TNK shows a link between the fool and the baboon and suggests a mixture of sexual 21

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and intellectual meanings in the insulting word ‘baboon’. Laroque (1991, 126) notes that: ‘The long tail and the phallic shaped bladder that the Fool carried around drew attention to his fabled hyper sexuality which was somewhat curiously associated with his mental debility, while at the same time making it possible for him to raise a laugh with various obscene mimes.’ In MW , Falstaff compares Pistol and his ‘coachfellow’ Nim (2.2.7) to ‘a gemini of baboons’ (2.2.8), suggesting that they are stupid. In 2H4, Falstaff, not knowing that Poins can hear him, insultingly compares him to a baboon: Doll: Falstaff:

They say Poins has a good wit. He a good wit? Hang him, baboon! His wit’s as thick as Tewkesbury mustard; there’s no more conceit in him than is in a mallet. (2H4 2.4.239–42)

The word ‘baboon’ here means ‘Fool’ or ‘Bavian’. This blending of sexual and intellectual meaning attached to the word ‘baboon’ can also be felt when Iago tells Roderigo: ‘Ere I would say I would drown myself for the love of a guinea hen I would change my humanity with a baboon’ (Oth 1.3.315–17). (C) See Topsell (1607), 10–12. On ‘Apes and Others’, see Knowles (2004) who studies what Cotgrave means by ‘baboonize’ and the presence of baboon figures in early modern masques. In Dekker(?)’s Blurt, Master-Constable (1602), Hippolito addresses Curuetto saying: ‘come my little letcherous Baboone’ (D2r). In Chapman’s Al Fooles a Comedy (1605), Valerio describes someone sitting ‘on his posteriors, / Like a Baboone’ (Ev). bacon (A) Deriving from old French bacon, etymologically related to the ‘back’, the buttock, the word refers to swine’s flesh, pork, mainly consumed by the rural population in England in Shakespeare’s days. It was considered hard to digest. In The Government of Health (1595), Bullein writes that ‘Bacon is verie hard of digestion, and much discommended, and is hurtfull. Onelie unto a hote cholericke labouring bodie, the fleshe of a Bore is more wholesomer than the flesh of any Sow’ (62v). (B) The word appears in the Falstaffian plays and is used as an insult in 1H4, a play that is full of images of food, which contributes to its carnivalesque dimension. During the Gadshill robbery episode, Falstaff calls his victims ‘bacon-fed knaves’ and then ‘bacons’: Falstaff:

Strike! Down with them! Cut the villains’ throats! Ah, whoreson caterpillars! Bacon-fed knaves! They hate us youth. Down with them! Fleece them! 1 Traveller: O, we are undone, both we and ours for ever! Falstaff: Hang ye, gorbellied knaves, are ye undone? No, ye fat chuffs; I would your store were here. On, bacons, on! You are grand-jurors, are ye? We’ll jure ye, faith. (2.2.81–9) 22

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By calling them ‘bacon-fed knaves’, Falstaff suggests both that they are fat and, paradoxically, that they are rustics, unsophisticated labourers. Cotgrave gives the following definition: ‘Taille-bacon: m. A clunch, clowne, boore; one that vsually feeds on nought but Beanes and bacon.’ The situation is highly ironic as Falstaff attributes to the travellers his own characteristic feature, his fatness and he suggests they are poor men at the same time as he robs them. This reversal is emblematic of the carnival world of the play and is made even clearer a few lines later, when Hal comments on Falstaff’s flight: ‘Falstaff sweats to death, / And lards the lean earth as he walks along’ (1H4 2.2.105–6). The word ‘lard’ (the fat of a swine), derived from the French, is equivalent to the word ‘bacon’. In French the expression Faire du lard means ‘To liue idly, fare daintily, grow fat with ease, pleasure, and good cheere’ (Cotgrave). Falstaff goes from ‘bacon-fed fellows’ to the metonymy ‘bacons’. OED defines ‘bacon’ as ‘A rustic, a clown, a “chaw-bacon.” Obs. (Referring, like many of the compounds, to the fact of swine’s flesh being the meat chiefly consumed by the rural population of England)’, but on another level of meaning, through this insult, one can see the travellers as Falstaff’s fat ‘bacon’, the flesh he feeds on. (C) In his 1547 Dietary of Health, Boorde writes, in a section entitled ‘Of porke, brawne, bacon, & pygge’, that ‘Bakon is good for carters and plowmen, the whiche be ever laborynge in the earth or dung’ (F2v-F3r). In Moore’s The Hope of Health (1564), in a chapter entitled ‘Of meates engendring corrupt humours, because they be of ill juyce’, one finds the idea that bacon, among other meats, is ‘harde of digestion’: ‘made of olde swyne’, it ‘never breede(s) good bloude in any mannes bodie. And therefore it is good to eschue [it], although labouryng men maye often use [it], without any great hurt ensuing, by meanes of their great bodily laboure & vehement exercises, wherby the hurte that would ensue is avoided by swette and other excrementes’ (xxiiirv). See also Bullein’s Bulwarke of defence against all sicknesse (1562), 74v. See Fitzpatrick (2011), 22–3; Vienne-Guerrin (1996). baggage (A) Harlot, whore. The word, which derives from French bagage, meaning the luggage that one takes for a journey, is often related to filth and to loose women in seventeenth and eighteenth century lexicons. Nowell defines ‘Filð’ as ‘Unclenlinesse, baggage, filth’. Levens defines ‘baggage’ as ‘Fex, ecis, hæc’, that is dregs, deposits. Bright associates ‘Baggage’ with ‘Filth’; Florio (1598) defines ‘Bagascia’ as ‘a baggage wench, a harlot, a strumpet, a whore’. He notes that ‘Bagasciare’ means ‘play the baggage, harlot or whore’ and that ‘Bazzicature’ refers to ‘stealings, filchings, burglaries, purloinings, prowlings. Also baggage, foolish things, rags, trash, tatters, things much worne. All manner of houshold stuffe.’ Cotgrave defines the French word bagage as ‘The cariage of an armie; luggage, bag, and baggage; also, the carters, boyes, and Mulettiers, that looke vnto it’, while bagasse means ‘A Baggage, Queane, Iyll, Punke, Flirt’. The French word bagues is used to refer to the stuff, particularly the clothes, you take with you, in a bundle (DHLF ). (B) These contemporary definitions give a specific meaning to the occurrence of the word in MW , where Falstaff, running away, disguised as an old woman called ‘Mother Prat’ – a word which means ‘buttocks’ – undergoes Ford’s string of abuse: ‘Out 23

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of my door, you witch, you rag, you baggage, you polecat, you runnion, out, out!’ (4.2.174–6). The word figures Falstaff as a loose woman, a whore, a quean, as he is called a bit earlier (4.2.162) but it also reminds the spectator of the old knight being evacuated in a basket of dirty linen in 3.3, as if he were some rag and filth himself. Falstaff remembers the trauma he has undergone: ‘a couple of Ford’s knaves [. . .] were called forth by their mistress to carry me in the name of foul clothes to Datchet lane’ (3.5.90–2); ‘and away went I for foul clothes’ (3.5.98). The association of the fat, greasy Falstaff with dirty clothes appears when he refers to ‘stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease’ (3.5.104–5). Thus, the word ‘baggage’ here carries all the associations of dirt attributed to the character in the previous scenes while the word ‘rag’ is perfectly appropriate for a character who has been transformed into some filthy linen; the word ‘polecat’ suggests that Falstaff still carries the unbearable stink of the basket. The word also appears at the very beginning of TS in the quarrel between the hostess and Sly: ‘You’re a baggage, the Slys are no rogues’ (Ind. 3). Hodgdon (139) notes ‘goodfor-nothing woman, prostitute’ but in the context of a play where Petruccio says of Kate: ‘She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, / My household-stuff, my field, my barn, / My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything’ (3.2.231–3), the word ‘baggage’ may take on a stronger, more literal meaning and transform woman into men’s baggage, into the luggage that a man carries with him. Kate is going to become precisely that, namely Petruccio’s ‘baggage’, the burden that he is going to take on his journey. One also finds the insult in CE where it is Antipholus of Ephesus who calls Luce ‘Baggage’ (3.1.57) because she refuses to let him in. The word is also used twice in Rom where Capulet expostulates against his daughter Juliet: ‘Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage, you tallow-face’ (3.5.156–7). A few lines later, he uses the same word: ‘Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!’ (3.5.160), meaning that she is a good-for-nothing if she refuses to marry Paris. Through this word, Juliet is rejected by her father as a piece of ‘refuse’. (C) Florio (1598) has ‘Ciarpa, a scarffe. Also any filth, trash, rabble, matter, or stuffe. Also a flurt, a slut, a baggage, a trull, a minxe, a gill, a gickesie, a queane’; ‘Ciarpame, trash, rifraffe, baggage things, pelfe, things of no woorth, luggage’; ‘Fogna, an interiection of contempt, as we say fogh. Also carrion, or baggage stuffe, filth, a common shore, iakes or sinke’; ‘Gagglioffa, a pocket, a pouch, a budget. Also a baggage or filthie queane’; ‘Impedimenti, cariages, luggage, bag and baggage of an armie.’ In the lexicon integrated in Philemon Holland’s translation of Plutarch’s Morals (1603), the word ‘Catamite’ is defined as ‘A boy abused against kinde: a baggage’ (Zzzzz2r). Rawson (31) notes that ‘Originally just a collection of portable packages, baggage has referred to women since the sixteenth century, probably because the baggage trains of armies traditionally included loose-living camp followers’. Rawson and Williams (‘Bag’) refer to Botero’s The Worlde or an historical description, translated by R. Johnson (rev. 1603), where the author alludes to ‘every common soldior carrying with him his she-baggage, besides his bag and other furniture’ (81). On Falstaff’s being evacuated, see Hall (1998), Vienne-Guerrin (2008); Stockton (2011), chap. 2: ‘Shakespeare’s Ass. The Merry Wives of Windsor and the Butt of the Joke’, 25–43. See quean, strumpet, trull, whore. 24

bald-pated/Baldpate

bald-pated/Baldpate (A) Having a bald, hairless head. The pate is the crown of the head. Often applied to priests and friars because of their customary tonsures. The expression ‘baldpate priest’ has negative connotations. (B) In MM Lucio provocatively calls the Duke, who is disguised as a Friar, ‘goodman Baldpate’ (5.1.324–5). Associated with the ironic term of address ‘goodman’, the reference to the bald pate is insulting. Editors note that Lucio cannot see the Friar’s head at that moment but that he supposes that he has the traditional tonsure under his hood and that the cowl makes the monk. The word ‘bald-pate’ is included among the offensive words that Lucio hurls at the Friar: Lucio:

[. . .] Why, you bald-pated, lying rascal! – You must be hooded, must you? Show your knave’s visage, with a pox to you! Show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an hour! Will’t not off? [Pulls off the friar’s hood and discovers the Duke] (5.1.348–52)

The figures of the Duke and the Friar ironically meet and overlap in the use of the image of the bald pate. Ironically, Lucio calls the Friar/Duke ‘bald pate’ at the very moment he pulls off his hood, thus uncovering his head and making it ‘bald’. In a play that is full of allusions to syphilis, known as the French pox, one can hear a sexual allusion in ‘baldpate’ that is followed by the term ‘pox’, the loss of hair being one of the symptoms of this disease. Behind the word ‘bald pate’, addressed to the Friar, one can hear all the abuse that Lucio spoke against the Duke who, according to him, ‘would eat mutton on Fridays’ (3.2.174), that is would go and see prostitutes. When the Duke unveils himself, he refers to this sexual aspect of Lucio’s slanderous words: ‘You, sirrah, that knew me for a fool, a coward, / One all of luxury’ (5.1.497–8). In MM , the connection between baldness and syphilis is underlined from the start in the play on the words ‘pilled’ and ‘piled’: Lucio: 1 Gentleman: Lucio:

[. . .] thou thyself art a wicked villain, despite of all grace. Well, there went but a pair of shears between us. I grant: as there may between the lists and the velvet. Thou art the list. First Gentleman: And thou the velvet; thou art good velvet; thou’rt a threepiled piece, I warrant thee: I had as lief be a list of an English kersey, as be piled, as thou art pilled, for a French velvet. Do I speak feelingly now? Lucio: I think thou dost: and indeed with most painful feeling of thy speech. I will, out of thine own confession, learn to begin thy health; but whilst I live, forget to drink after thee. First Gentleman: I think I have done myself wrong, have I not? (1.2.25–41) The sartorial insult paves the way for the sexual insult and the allusion to a venereal disease, the word ‘pilled’ meaning ‘peeled’, ‘deprived of hair’, ‘bald’. Through the 25

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expression ‘French velvet’ the Gentleman suggests that Lucio is infected with the ‘French pox’. Thus the image of the bald pate has sexual connotations and the bawdy context of the play explains why Lucio uses this word even without seeing the Friar’s face. Among the series of curses that Timon hurls at the world, he wishes consumptions to ‘Make curled-pate ruffians bald’ (Tim 4.3.159). (C) See Kendall’s Flowers of Epigrams (1577), where one finds an epigram translated from John Parkhurst’s Latin epigrams which denounces Bossus, a ‘baldpate priest’ (95rv). On syphilis, see Bentley. On the various meanings of the hair, see Iyengar (156–9). See French, goose. Banbury cheese (A) A proverbially thin kind of cheese from Banbury, a town in Oxfordshire known for the number of its Puritan inhabitants. (B) In MW , Bardolph calls Slender ‘You Banbury cheese!’ (1.1.120), thus confirming the mirror effect between his name and his thin physical appearance. It also refers to the leanness of the actor who probably played Slender’s part, John Sincklo. Given that Bardolph is one of Falstaff’s companions, the association of Slender with Banbury cheese should be read in the context of traditional iconography on the conflict between Carnival and Lent, for example in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Fight between Carnival and Lent (1559); the insult to Slender is in contrast with Falstaff being called ‘hodge-pudding’ (5.5.150) by Ford at the end of the play. The reference to Banbury also characterizes Slender as a Puritan as the town was well-known for being a centre of Puritanism. Thus, the insult divides the world of Windsor into two groups: the Lean and the Fat. When Nim exclaims ‘Slice, I say! Pauca, pauca, slice, that’s my humour’ (MW 1.1.124), he echoes Bardolph’s insult and alludes to the slicing of Slender, the ‘Banbury cheese’. As Melchiori notes (MW , 133), Nim may be ‘brandishing a weapon in a threatening attitude’. (C) Tilley, C268, quotes the proverb ‘As thin as Banbury cheese’, used from 1562 onwards. See Fitzpatrick (2011), 26–7; Bruegel, The Fight between Carnival and Lent (1559), available online. See bilbo, cheese. bankrupt (A) An insolvent trader, an unthrifty person. One who cannot pay his creditors. The word is related to the Italian banca rotta (bank broken, bench broken) and its French adaptation banqueroute and to Latin ruptus. OED notes that rotto, rotta means ‘wreck’ (for a ship). (B) In MV , Shylock says that he has come to court ‘To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there’ (4.1.121). It is Antonio who is called ‘bankrupt’ and in the context of the play and in Shylock’s mouth, the term takes on an insulting meaning that one can measure in 3.1 when he describes Antonio: There I have another bad match: a bankrupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto, a beggar that was used to come so smug upon the mart. Let 26

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him look to his bond. He was wont to call me usurer; let him look to his bond. He was wont to lend money for a Christian courtesy; let him look to his bond. (3.1.39–45) Shylock describes the bankrupt as a beggar who no longer dares face his creditors (‘who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto’). Calling Antonio ‘bankrupt’, he remains in the domain of the law that he wants to enforce in 4.1 (‘I crave the law’, 4.1.202). To assault his adversaries, Shylock uses legal language and substitutes accusation for insults so that his words may lead to deeds. It is only at Court that foul words can become deeds and that is why Shylock chooses this legal context to brand Antonio with the opprobrious name of ‘bankrupt’, which was an ‘actionable word’, as is shown by Baker (Introduction, 1999, 499): By Elizabethan times it was established that imputations might be actionable, even if they would not otherwise be actionable. Thus it was not in itself actionable to call someone a bankrupt; but to call a merchant a bankrupt would obviously threaten his livelihood, and subject him to statutory penalties. ‘Bankrupt’ constitutes an answer to the insulting names ‘usurer’, ‘cur’ or ‘Jew’ that Shylock bears throughout the play. Calling Antonio a ‘bankrupt’ amounts to saying that he has committed a crime and must be punished for it. (C) For a further study of bankruptcy laws, see Cowell (H4v–H1r), who refers to anno. 34. H. 8. ca. 4. (An Act against suche parsons as do make bankrupt) and anno. 1. Iacobi. ca. 15. On bankruptcy laws in early modern England, see Jones (1979). The first sin that is represented in Dekker’s The Seven Deadly Sinnes (1606) is ‘Politick Bankruptisme’ (1–9). See Innes, 32–3. barbarous (A) Extremely cruel, savage. The word derives from Latin barbarus which refers to all the people that are not Greek or Roman and figuratively means ‘rude’, ‘coarse’, ‘uncivil’. According to Hemmingsen (1569), ‘Barbarous, is properly he that is not a Greeke or a Roman, which name is now applyed to any that is in conditions, and manners rude, feerce, cruell, vnciuill, vnnurtured, or in speeche grosse, vnlearned, harshe, vneloquent. Also it signifieth an Alient, Forreyner, or Straunger borne.’ Thomas defines the term: ‘Barbărus, a, um, adiect. Barbarous: rude in doing or speaking: fierce: cruell: ignorant: rusticall: churlish: without eloquence: vnciuill: in old time all sauing Greekes were called Barbari.’ These definitions show that the word not only emphasizes origin but also language. (B) In Tit, Lavinia insults Tamora: ‘Ay, come, Semiramis, nay, barbarous Tamora, / For no name fits thy nature but thy own!’ (2.2.118–19). The word is used as an intensifier to stress Tamora’s inexpressible inhumanity and cruelty. Lucius calls Aaron, Tamora’s lover, ‘this barbarous Moor, / This ravenous tiger, this accursed devil’ (Tit 5.3.4–5) after having exclaimed about Tamora’s sons ‘O barbarous, beastly villains like thyself [Aaron]!’ (5.1.97). Mother, lover and sons share the same cruelty and constitute a

27

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barbarous family. The word no doubt refers to Tamora and her sons’ being Goths and Aaron being a Moor: they are ‘barbarous’ because they are not Roman. Ironically, the first occurrence of the word is applied to the Romans when Chiron exclaims, after his mother’s oxymoronic comment on the Roman sacrifice of her son Alarbus, ‘O cruel, irreligious piety!’, ‘Was never Scythia half so barbarous!’ (1.1.133–4). In 2H6, Queen Margaret addresses, in an aside, the words ‘Ah, barbarous villains!’ (4.4.14) to those who have killed and beheaded her beloved Suffolk. In KL , the Duke of Albany refers to Goneril and Regan, Lear’s ungrateful daughters, as ‘Tigers, not daughters’ (4.2.41), ‘most barbarous, most degenerate’ (4.2.44) symbols of a humanity ‘prey[ing] on itself, / Like monsters of the deep’ (4.4.50–1). Again, one can feel the irony when we remember that it is Lear who first conjures up the image of the ‘barbarous Scythian’ when he banishes his faithful daughter Cordelia at the beginning of the play: […] The barbarous Scythian, Or he that makes his generation messes To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom Be as well neighboured, pitied, and relieved, As thou my sometime daughter. (1.1.117–21) Lear erroneously associates his good daughter with the barbarous Scythian, meaning that she is a monster and from then on will become a stranger to his heart. Scythians, people from the area around the Black Sea and Asia Minor, were proverbially considered as savage. (C) On Scythia and its legendary savagery, see chapter 150 of Batman vppon Bartholome. See also chapter 9 (entitled ‘of Scythia and the barbarous manners of the Scythians’, 105–16) of Boemus (1611). Barbason (A) The name of a fiend. It is probably Shakespeare’s rewriting of ‘Marbas, alias Barbas’ in Scot’s The Discovery of Witchcraft (1584). In a chapter that is an ‘Inventorie of the names, shapes, powers, government, and effects of divels and spirits’ (XV.iii, 378), one can read: Marbas, alias Barbas is a great president, and appeareth in the form of a mightie Lyon; but at the commandement of a coniuror commeth up in the likenes of a man, and answereth fully as touching anie thing which is hidden or secret: he bringeth diseases and cureth them; he promoteth wisdom, and the knowledge of mechanicall arts, or handicrafts; he changeth men into other shapes, and under his presidency or governement are thirtie six legions or divels conteined. On the same page one finds Amon and Barbatos and on the following page ‘Purson, alias Curson’ (379). (B) In MW , Ford describes the name as an ‘abominable term’ that sounds well: 28

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Ford:

[I] stand under the adoption of abominable terms, [. . .]. Terms, names! Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer, well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils’ additions, the names of fiends. But cuckold? Wittol? Cuckold! The devil himself hath not such a name! (2.2.279–84)

Like Amaimon or Lucifer, Barbason sounds well to Ford’s ears because it refers to a powerful devil rather than to the dishonourable figure of the cuckold. Shakespeare transforms Barbas into Barbason probably to make the name more ‘mouth-filling’ (1H4, 3.1.250) and to have the same number of syllables as Lucifer and Amaimon. The names of the other fiends that appear on the same pages of Scot’s book (Barbason and Curson) may also have influenced the term. Barbason is also referred to by Nym as the name of a fiend, when he quarrels with Pistol in H5 (a play that was probably written at about the same time as MW ): ‘I am not Barbason, you cannot conjure me’ (2.1.55), he says, meaning ‘I am not a fiend, you cannot control me by hurling big words at me’. Nym’s words answer Pistol’s harping on the word ‘solus’: ‘I do retort the solus in thy bowels’ (2.1.52). Most editors, from Walter’s 1954 edition of H5 (33), mention a possible link with the name of a French knight who encountered Henry V in single combat at the siege of Melun (Holinshed, iii. 577). Gettings, noting that Barbason ‘has passed into exoteric history through Shakespeare’ also suggests that in H5, ‘The reference would [. . .] have something of a humorous slant, being a play on the word “solus” in the previous conversation between Nym and Pistol, for the lion is the beast of the Sun (Sol) in medieval astrology’ (47). In H5, the use of the name ‘Barbason’ may be an answer to the offensive solus. (C) On ‘devils’ additions’ see Scot. See Gettings; Gibson and Esra, 25–6. See Amaimon, devil, Lucifer, solus. barber-monger (A) Someone who goes to the barber’s shop regularly, a vain fop, someone who is excessively attentive to his appearance. OED quotes one single occurrence of the word, which is usually considered to be Shakespeare’s coinage. (B) The term only appears in KL when Kent violently abuses Oswald: ‘Draw, you rogue, for though it be night, yet the moon shines. [Draws his sword.] I’ll make a sop o’ the moonshine of you. Draw you whoreson cullionly barber-monger! Draw!’ (2.2.29– 32). In the context of the scene, Kent means that Oswald is a coward (see cullion) who dares not draw his sword against him and aims to avoid combat. The word suggests that Oswald is a vain man who is only preoccupied with appearances and manners and who lacks courage. This is confirmed when Kent describes him as a ‘glass-gazing’ rogue (2.2.17–18) and when he reproaches him with taking ‘Vanity the puppet’s part’ (2.2.35), an expression that means that he serves his mistress Goneril (Vanity) but which also associates him with vanity itself. The same idea appears when Kent calls him ‘you neat slave’ (2.2.40) and when he declares: ‘a tailor made thee’ (2.2.53–4). In the context of the whole play, this reference to the beard seems to be ironically announcing the moment 29

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when Regan plucks Gloucester’s beard after Cornwall has tied him to a chair (3.7.33–4), in a kind of grotesquely cruel ‘barber’ scene. (C) Eliot (1593) gives an idea of the kind of conversation there would be at a barber’s shop (64–65 of the part entitled The Parlament of Pratlers). See beard. bare-bone (A) A person who is so lean that his or her bones are bare, that is visible. OED has ‘A lean, skinny person’, giving Shakespeare’s single occurrence as the only example. (B) In 1H4, Hal playfully welcomes Falstaff saying: ‘Here comes lean Jack; here comes bare-bone. How now, my sweet creature of bombast?’ (2.4.317–18). The term is an antiphrastic affectionately insulting nickname. The comedy of the word lies in the ironic discrepancy between the image of a skinny man and the figure of fat Falstaff who embodies Carnival rather than Lent and who is called ‘this huge hill of flesh’ by Hal a few lines earlier (2.4.236–7). Here Hal and Falstaff exchange their parts. In Luc the adjective ‘bare-boned’ is associated with ‘death’ (1761) in a passage that conjures up the image of ‘a death’s head or skeleton acting as a memento mori’ (Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen, 376). In the case of 1H4, it is noticeable that Hal uses the term ‘bare-bone’ after Falstaff has gone to answer, in his place, an old man, ‘a nobleman of the court’, whom he entitles ‘Gravity’ (2.4.278–85), coming from Hal’s father to announce ‘villainous news abroad’ (2.4.324) and thus interrupting a festive moment. This intrusion of the world of ‘Gravity’ into the tavern gives the term ‘bare-bone’ an ominous ring, in a scene that leads to the unsettling mock-banishment of Falstaff (‘I do; I will’, 2.4.468). One can see this affectionate insult as the fleeting insertion of a memento mori in the festive world of the tavern. (C) See, in Crooke’s Mikrokosmographia (1615), a section on baldness: ‘Now this baldnesse begins commonly in the forepart of the head, because (saieth Aristotle 5. generat. Animal. 3.) it is dryest, for there the skin lyeth vpon the bare bone, without any interposition of fat, as it is in the Nowle’ (Book 2, chap. 4, 69). barren (A) Unfruitful, sterile. ‘Mentally unproductive, yielding no mental food’ (OED 8), stupid. (B) In Shakespeare’s plays, the word is often used to refer to a lack of wit and to ignorance. In CE , Adriana, complaining about her husband neglecting her, exclaims: ‘Are my discourses dull? barren my wit?’ (2.1.92). In JC , Antony draws Octavius a derogatory portrait of Lepidus, calling him ‘A barren-spirited fellow’ (4.1.36). In MND , Puck describes Bottom as ‘The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort’ (3.2.13), meaning he is the most stupid and unimaginative of what he calls ‘A crew of patches, rude mechanicals’ (3.2.9). Hamlet mentions spectators who are so ‘barren’ that they are ready to laugh at any clown’s jest (3.2.38–41). In these examples, the word does not have a direct impact as it is uttered while the targets are not on stage. In LLL , Nathaniel, addressing Holofernes, compares Dull to ‘barren plants’ in his presence: 30

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Holofernes: Twice-sod simplicity, bis coctus! O, thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look! Nathaniel: Sir, he [Dull] hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book. He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink. His intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts. And such barren plants are set before us, that we thankful should be – Which we of taste and feeling are – for those parts that do fructify in us more than he. For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool, So were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school. (4.2.22–31) The whole exchange is insulting to Dull and gives meaning to his name. The comic dimension of the insult is double. It rests on Dull’s indifference to the insult, which confirms that he is ‘dull’ and barren but, on the other hand, it is full of irony as the spectators are led to wonder who is the more foolish of the characters: the ridiculous pedants or the barren ‘patch’? Dull’s apparent lack of understanding and wit does not prevent him from delivering truthful statements: ‘The collusion holds in the exchange’ (4.2.43) and ‘the pollution holds in the exchange’ (4.2.46). These two sentences suggest that he rightfully understands the dialogue between Holofernes and Nathaniel as a joint (‘collusion’) insulting (‘pollution’) exchange. In TN , the word has a strong insulting effect on Feste, the Fool. Malvolio says to Olivia in his presence: I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal. I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool that has no more brain than a stone. Look you now, he’s out of his guard already. Unless you laugh and minister occasion to him, he is gagged. I protest I take these wise men that crow so at these set kind of fools, no better than the fools’ zanies. (1.5.79–85) This insult is prepared in 1.3 when Maria plays with Sir Andrew and says she is ‘barren’ (1.3.77), meaning short of jests. The word may wink at the actor playing Maria, a male actor who ‘by definition can bear no children’ (Elam, 176). Malvolio’s words resonate until the very end of the play when Feste reminds Olivia of his insult: Why, ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrown upon them.’ I was one, sir, in this interlude, one Sir Topas, sir, but that’s all one. ‘By the Lord, fool, I am not mad.’ But do you remember, ‘Madam, why laugh you at such a barren rascal, an you smile not, he’s gagged’? And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges. (5.1.364–70) 31

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Feste makes a collage of the most striking Malvolio sequences and thus becomes the memory of the play, offering the spectators a series of flashbacks. It is his last speech before the final song, which shows that for him these words have had an insulting effect. As Elam suggests, ‘The clown’s confession of a personal grudge may cast doubt on the apparently detached role he has played until now’ (352). For the wittiest character in the play, to be called a ‘barren’ rascal is the supreme insult. base (A) Low in the social scale, base-born. Of low condition. Simple, poor, abject, vile. Low in the moral scale. Derived from Latin bassus meaning ‘thick, fat’ (sixth century) and then ‘short, low’ (eighth century) (DHLF ). Florio (1598) reads: ‘Abietto: abiect, base, vile, outcast, scornefull, contemptible’, ‘Adulterino’: ‘a base, bastard or degenerate fellow: false, sophisticated’. ‘Aggetto’: ‘abiect, despised, base, outcast’. The word ‘base’ refers jointly to social status and moral behaviour. Social denotation is pregnant with moral connotations. Through insults, characters draw distinctions; they settle a scale of values. That is why Kent, verbally assaulting Oswald, tells him ‘I’ll teach you differences’ (KL 1.4.88), meaning differences between the high and the low, between gentlemen and villains. The word ‘base’ shows that insults define degrees and classify, and it brings into question the articulation of social and moral judgements. (B) Shakespeare’s plays are full of what Falstaff calls ‘base comparisons’ (1H4 2.4.243), that is insulting comparisons, ‘de-basing’ words. The term is often used in contexts of insult as an intensifier in expressions such as ‘base slave(s)’ (Cor 1.5.7; Cym 2.3.123; 2H6 4.1.67), ‘base wretch’ (Cym 2.3.114), ‘villain base’ (Cym 4.2.80), ‘base drudge’ (2H6 4.2.141) which are redundant since the ‘common’ names to which the adjective ‘base’ is attached all refer to low socio-moral status. The word refers to base birth. In 1H6, Joan Puzel (La Pucelle), who wants to be of noble birth, ‘from the progeny of kings’ (5.3.38), rejects the shepherd who claims to be her father: Decrepit miser, base ignoble wretch, I am descended of a gentler blood. Thou art no father, nor no friend of mine. (5.3.7–9) The question of the baseness of Joan’s origins is at the heart of this insult which will be followed by ‘Peasant, avaunt!’ (5.3.21). In Cym Cloten who is obsessed with his noble birth keeps harping on Posthumus Leonatus’ ignoble origins, calling his rival ‘base wretch’ and ‘base slave’ (2.3.114; 123). Cloten follows the example of Cymbeline who calls Posthumus ‘Thou basest thing’ (1.2.56), mentions his ‘unworthiness’ (1.2.58) and reproaches Imogen with wanting to make his throne ‘A seat for baseness’ (1.2.72–3). Cloten gives meaning to the word ‘base’ when he describes Posthumus as ‘One bred of alms, and foster’d with cold dishes, / With scraps o’th’ court’ (2.4.115–16), ‘A hilding for a livery, a squire’s cloth, / A plantler; not so eminent’ (2.4.124–5). That is why Imogen replies to him in similar offensive terms: 32

base

Imogen:

Profane fellow, Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more But what thou art besides, thou wert too base To be his groom: [. . .] (2.3.125–8)

The insult is based on a boomerang effect as Imogen turns the very word ‘base’ against Cloten who first used it. The play dramatizes the confrontation of two scales of values: Imogen and Cloten do not have the same vision of what baseness is. Cloten gives the word a social meaning, while Imogen denounces moral baseness. Cloten later sticks to his view when he describes Posthumus as someone ‘From whose so many weights of baseness cannot / A dram of worth be drawn’ (3.5.89–90). Cloten is the comic king of social insults: ‘it is fit I should commit offence to my inferiors’ (2.1.28–9), he says to the ironic second lord. Shakespeare throws this banal little word into relief on several occasions. In KL , Edmund puts into question the way society brands people with this term: Why bastard? Wherefore base? [. . .] Why brand they us With base? With baseness, bastardy? Base, base? (1.2.6–10) Foakes notes that ‘Edmund harps on base, baseness, bastard and bastardy as if to bring out, and reject in relation to himself, the various senses that express an aristocratic society’s contempt for the low-born: vile, despicable, illegitimate, spurious, inferior; meanness and cowardice’ (180). Edmund wants to shake the ‘bases’ of his father’s world by questioning the very words on which it rests. ‘Edmund the base / Shall top the legitimate’ (1.2.20–1): through these words, Edmund plays with the literal meaning of ‘base’ and announces a complete reversal of values. In his mouth, it is the word ‘legitimate’ that becomes an insult while ‘base’ becomes a title of nobility. In R2, one finds the same play on the literal meaning of the word when Northumberland asks the King to go down to the ‘base court’ to meet Bolingbroke: Northumberland: King Richard:

My lord, in the base court he doth attend To speak with you. May it please you to come down? Down, down I come; like glist’ring Phaëton, Wanting the manage of unruly jades. In the base court? Base court, where kings grow base, To come at traitors’ calls and do them grace. In the base court? Come down? Down court, down king! For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing. (3.3.176–83)

The king is literally and symbolically ‘de-based’ by the injunction he receives to come down. Forker justly notes that ‘Richard puns acerbically on the symbolic “debasement” 33

base

of having to descend to obey the summons of inferiors (Northumberland and Bolingbroke), who, as subjects, are not only inferior in rank but also in morality since they are traitors’ (356). The summons to come down to the ‘base court’ constitutes an insult, but it can also have an ironic twist if we consider that Richard is invited to come and see his base court (ie his base, traitorous nobles). Richard goes on playing with the motif of debasement when Bolingbroke kneels down: King Richard:

Fair cousin, you debase your princely knee To make the base earth proud with kissing it. Me rather had my heart might feel your love Than my unpleased eye see your courtesy. Up cousin, up. Your heart is up, I know, [Raises Bolingbroke.] Thus high at least, [Indicates crown.] although your knee be low. (3.3.190–5)

This scene dramatizes the moment when the base Bolingbroke ‘tops’ the ‘legitimate’ Richard. ‘Base’ is also part of Pistol’s idiolect. In 2H4, MW and H5, he regularly uses the term: Puff i’ thy teeth, most recreant coward base! (2H4 5.3.92) A foutre for the world and worldlings base! (2H4 5.3.99) O base Hungarian wight (MW 1.3.19) Base Phrygian Turk! (MW 1.3.85) Base tyke, call’st thou me host? (H5 2.1.30) Base is the slave that pays. (H5 2.1.96) base Trojan (H5 5.1.19) Base Trojan, thou shalt die. (H5 5.1.32) In 2H4, Falstaff adopts Pistol’s style by calling him in return ‘O base Assyrian Knight’ (5.3.101). In MW , the word is part of the play’s ‘pistolisms’ and accompanies the exotic language and bombastic literary words that he cultivates. The use of the word 34

basilisk/cockatrice

‘base’ allows Shakespeare to make Pistol’s enunciation understandable as the exotic and enigmatic words ‘Hungarian’, ‘Trojan’ or ‘Phrygian’ cannot in themselves be identified as words of abuse. The use of ‘base’ leaves no doubt as to Pistol’s insulting intent. In H5, Pistol throws the word into relief by delivering a memorable aphorism based on a striking mixture of assonance and alliteration. Craik (164) notes that ‘Base is the slave that pays’ is ‘so characteristic of Pistol that its later proverbial use (Tilley, S523 examples from 1619 and 1631) probably originated here’. This association of Pistol with the term ‘base’ gives Falstaff’s words an ironic ring when he calls him ‘thou unconfinable baseness’ (MW 2.2.20). The insult is all the more ironic since the words seem to suit fat Falstaff who is ‘unconfinable’. In AC , Cleopatra comments on Seleucus’ treacherous behaviour by exclaiming: ‘Slave! Soulless villain! Dog! / O rarely base! (AC 5.2.156–7). The ‘rarely base’ is the climax of a string of abuse that leaves furious Cleopatra wordless. The phrase contains an oxymoronic association of ‘rare’ and ‘base’: even baseness is described in terms of exception in a play that cultivates excess. (C) See Cowell’s definition of ‘bas estat’ (Base estate). Woodbridge studies the ‘stigmatizing lexicon’ of KL , a play which ‘adopts a language of invective and insult from the discourse of vagrancy’ (227). She emphasizes how the key-words of Shakespeare’s art of insult, ‘rogue’, ‘villain’, ‘knave’, ‘rascal’, ‘slave’, ‘beggar’, ‘varlet’ are at the heart of a world in which ‘baseness’ is central. Woodbridge uses Slack’s Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (1988) and Jütte’s Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (1994). She quotes Jütte who mentions a labelling process that associated poverty with negative moral values. She also quotes Slack who writes that: ‘the image of the vagrant rogue produced laws which manufactured a class out of an amorphous group of poor migrants. The system made paupers and delinquents by labelling them’ (Slack, 107, quoted by Woodbridge, 228). It is this branding that Edmund questions in his ‘Why bastard, wherefore base’ monologue. Edmund denounces what Lewis has called ‘the moralisation of status-words’ (21). See bastard, beggar, bread-chipper, caitiff, drudge, groom, jack, knave, lozel, mountaineer, ostler, pantler, peasant, rascal, rogue, ruffian, scoundrel, scullion, sirrah, slave, varlet, villain, swain, wretch. basilisk/cockatrice (A) Deriving from the Greek word baliseus, meaning ‘king’, the word designates the king of serpents in mythology, who has the power to kill with his eyes or breath. Elyot (1538) describes it as follows: ‘Basiliscus, a Cocatrice, whiche is a serpent in the desertes of Aphrica, with a whyte cyrkle aboute his heed, hauynge a sharpe heed, redde eyen, and is somewhat blacke of colour, and is so venymous, that he sleeth men and beastes with his breth, & with the syght of his eyen.’ Thomas has: ‘Băsĭliscus [. . .]. A serpent killing man and beast with his breath & sight, called a Cocatrice.’ (B) The word is used as an insult in a play that is full of treasons and teems with images of serpents: 2H6. The ophidian symbol is used as an insult when the king denounces Suffolk’s treacherous nature: 35

basilisk/cockatrice

What, doth my Lord of Suffolk comfort me? [. . .] Hide not thy poison with such sugared words; Lay not thy hands on me – forbear, I say! Their touch affrights me as a serpent’s sting. Thou baleful messenger, out of my sight! Upon thy eyeballs murderous tyranny Sits in grim majesty to fright the world. Look not upon me, for thine eyes are wounding. Yet do not go away; come, basilisk, And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight. For in the shade of death I shall find joy, In life but double death, now Gloucester’s dead. (2H6 3.2.39–55) The Queen’s reaction, ‘Why do you rate my Lord of Suffolk thus?’ (3.2.56), shows that the word is uttered and received as an insult. The queen seems to prolong the image when she mentions another poisonous snake, the adder, and asks the king himself to ‘Be poisonous too and kill [his] forlorn queen’ (3.2.77). The term ‘basilisk’ ironically comes back when Suffolk, at the queen’s command, curses his enemies, in his turn, in the same scene: [. . .] Poison be their drink! Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste! Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees; Their chiefest prospect murdering basilisks; Their softest touch as smart as lizards’ stings; Their music frightful as the serpent’s hiss, And boding screech-owls make the concert full! All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell – (2H6 3.2.321–8) This cursing speech echoes the King’s words in the preceding passage. As Edelman (2000, 35) and Knowles (1999, 275) note, the word ‘basilisks’ may here refer both to the largest type of Elizabethan cannon named after the creature and to the royal serpent. The words ‘poison’, ‘serpent’, ‘sting’, ‘shade’, ‘touch’ are present in the two speeches while ‘murdering’ and ‘frightful’ echo ‘murderous’ and ‘fright’ in Henry’s speech. ‘Lizards’ stings’ echo ‘serpent’s sting’. Suffolk feeds on the images used by the king in a passage that ironically underlines that, contrary to what the king claims, he is no basilisk and that neither his breath nor his eyes can kill. In R3, Richard is associated with the image of the cockatrice when the Duchess, his mother, laments and curses him by cursing herself: O my accursed womb, the bed of death. A cockatrice hast thou hatched to the world, Whose unavoided eye is murderous. (R3 4.1.53–5) 36

bastard

The Duchess’s words echo Richard’s words in 3H6 where he declares: ‘I’ll slay more gazers than the basilisk’ (3.2.187) and ironically remind us of Anne’s wish, in the seduction scene, that her eyes were ‘basilisks’ to strike Richard dead (R3 1.2.153). (C) For another definition, see Bullokar. For descriptions of the cockatrice, see Maplet, 77v–78v (spelt ‘Coccatrise’); Munster, 90v; Topsell (1608), 119–25. See Pliny, Natural History, 8. 78 (Cairncross, 2H6, 82). Lobanov-Rostovsky analyses the ‘association of the basilisk’s gaze with a threatening female desire’ (206). On the word ‘cockatrice’ meaning ‘whore’, see Williams, 1, 262–3, although no Shakespearean case is mentioned. See adder, serpent, snake. Basimecu (A) A deformed version of the French expression baise mon cul, meaning ‘kiss my arse’. (B) In 2H6, Cade violently insults Lord Say for ‘giving up of Normandy unto Mounsieur Basimecu, the Dauphin of France’ (2H6 4.7.24–6). Partridge explains that ‘In reference to the Dauphin’s fawning manners, Basimecu constitutes a pun on baise mon cul, “kiss my backside!” ’ and he mentions the ‘low English catchphrase, “(Oh,) kiss my arse!”, an impatiently jocular insult.’ Referring to the Dauphin as Monsieur Basimecu is insulting, in absentia, to the Dauphin and the French nation but also to Lord Say who is on stage and who is thus accused of having had disgraceful relationships with the French. The insult is here turned into a name; it is part of the art of name-calling or nicknaming. Knowles (1999, 321) notes that it is a ‘Gallophobe vulgarisation from baise mon cul, “kiss my arse” ’. (C) See Purcell’s tavern song, ‘Once, twice, thrice I Julia tried / The scornful puss as oft denied / And I can no better thrive, / I’ll cringe to ne’er a bitch alive; / So kiss my arse disdainful sow / Good claret is my mistress now.’ See ‘Monsieur Baisecul’ in Rabelais, Pantagruel, chap. 10 et seq. (Oeuvres, I, 270 et seq.). The word is surprisingly not listed in Williams’s dictionary. bastard (A) According to OED , the word is derived from Old French bastard, meaning fils de bast (pack-saddle child), with the pejorative suffix ‘ard’. Hughes (2006, 18) mentions another meaning for fils de bast: ‘child born in a barn’, but the DHLF puts these two interpretations of bâtard into question and concludes that the word is of obscure origin. The bastard was one begotten and born out of wedlock, an illegitimate or natural child (OED ). Sokol & Sokol (2000, 23–31) examine the complex legal treatment of bastardy, notably the conflict between the Church and the common law courts. They note (23) that under canon law the status of bastardy conferred ‘certain civil disabilities’ while at common law an illegitimate child was ‘filius nullius, the child of no one’ (see Luc 522, ‘nameless bastardy’). Neill (2000), notes that the bastard ‘was not so much the son of nobody, as the heir of nobody’ (130). The common law and the cannon law ‘applied different rules to determine illegitimate status, which could have substantial effect on the outcome of arguments about the inheritance of real property’ (Sokol & Sokol, 24). Hughes (2006, 18) summarises the ambiguous use of the word: ‘the early use of bastard was literal, alluding 37

bastard

to the fact of illegitimacy, while the subsequent potency of the term as a swearword obviously derives from the stigma of the condition’. Shakespeare’s plays show a double, literal and derogatory, use of a word that is both abuse and ‘no abuse’ (2H4, 2.4.313–19). (B) The use of the word ‘bastard’ in Shakespeare’s plays conveys the ambiguous social attitude to bastardy at the time, as the word is both used in descriptive, literal ways and in insulting ways. The word ‘bastard’ can refer to a legal status (see Rawson, 36–7), yet it is also pregnant with pejorative connotations. In KJ , the reference to ‘the bastard Faulconbridge’ (3.3.171) is not insulting in itself but it is a surname that refers to his social and political status. The character is called ‘the Bastard’ throughout the play. During the opening legitimacy trial, when Philip says about his brother Robert that ‘once he slander’d me with bastardy’ (1.1.74), he raises a legal matter rather than recalling an insult (Sokol & Sokol, 27–8), but in the same play, Constance vividly reacts to Queen Eleanor’s words: Constance: My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think His father never was so true begot: It cannot be and if thou wert his mother. Eleanor: There’s a good mother, boy, that blots thy father. Constance: There’s a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee. (KJ 2.1.129–33) The image of the ‘blot’ reveals the infamy that may lie in the word ‘bastard’ and shows that the word goes beyond a mere legal matter to convey the image of a pollution (Neill, 2000, 132). In 1H6, quarrelling with Winchester, Gloucester uses the word as a direct insult: ‘Thou bastard of my grandfather!’ (3.1.42). Cairncross (1H6, 61) comments that ‘Such aspersions were the recognized practice in vituperative rhetoric.’ Gloucester uses Winchester’s doubtful birth by referring to his being the illegitimate son of John of Gaunt and Catherine Swynford whom Gaunt only married afterwards. Calling someone ‘bastard’ amounts to insulting mother, father and son, as appears in Ham when Laertes exclaims: That drop of blood that’s calm proclaims me bastard, Cries ‘Cuckold!’ to my father, brands the harlot Even here between the chaste unsmirched brow Of my true mother. (Ham 4.5.117–20) Laertes describes a triple insulting effect, or a multi-layered insult, the insulter being the calm drop of blood. In WT , every time Leontes calls his son ‘a bastard’, the word is in fact an insult to the baby’s mother, Hermione (2.3.72; 138; 153; 173). When the young John Talbot answers his father who incites him to fly, he also suggests the multiple insults that lie in one word: Is my name Talbot? And am I your son? And shall I fly? O, if you love my mother, Dishonour not her honourable name 38

bastard

To make a bastard and a slave of me. The world will say, ‘He is not Talbot’s blood, That basely fled when noble Talbot stood’. (1H6 4.4.12–17) Talbot’s injunctions are heard as an insult by young Talbot, who feels dishonoured by his father’s words. When Talbot later reports the words he hurled at the ‘Bastard of Orleans’, during their fight, one can feel the baseness and dirt (Neill, 2000, 134) that are associated with the word ‘bastard’: [. . .] ‘Contaminated, base, And misbegotten blood I spill of thine, Mean and right poor, for that pure blood of mine Which thou didst force from Talbot, my brave boy’. (1H6 4.4.76–9) The insult here is a prelude to the physical combat and is part of a ritual that consists in debasing the enemy. In H5, the Duke of Britain reduces his adversaries to the status of ‘bastard Normans, Norman bastards’ (3.5.10). In R3, during his oration to his army, Richard calls his enemies ‘these bastard Bretons’ (5.3.333), transforming them into base slaves, ‘famished beggars’ (5.3.329), ‘A sort of vagabonds, rascals and runaways’ (5.3.316), ‘A scum of Bretons and base lackey peasants’ (5.3.317). Social baseness goes with military weakness, as if honour and courage were reserved to men of noble birth. In KL, Edmund, the bastard son of Gloucester, questions the derogatory sense that has come to be associated with the word. [. . .] Why bastard? Wherefore base? When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous and my shape as true, As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us With base? With baseness, bastardy? Base, base? (1.2.6–10) This speech is a metalinguistic reflection on the origin, the root of an insult, which shows that the word is used as an insult indeed. Obsessed by his own bastardy, that his father Gloucester mentions at the beginning of the play, by calling him ‘the whoreson’ (1.1.22), he refers to it again when reporting to Gloucester the imaginary insults that Edgar, his brother, is supposed to have proffered: ‘Thou unpossessing bastard, dost thou think, If I would stand against thee, would the reposal Of any trust, virtue or worth in thee Make thy words faithed? No [. . .]’ (2.1.67–70) 39

bastard

The ‘thou unpossessing bastard’ epitomizes the ambiguous status of the word: the legal meaning implied by the word ‘unpossessing’ is integrated into an insult introduced by the offensive ‘thou’. Albany reminds Edmund of his baseness at the end of the play when he calls him ‘half-blooded fellow’ (5.3.81), making a monster of him (see Neill, 2000, 139–47). KL , as Sokol & Sokol (29) suggest, probably ‘reflects a turnabout of social attitudes’, by using the word ‘whoreson’ in a descriptive way (‘the whoreson must be acknowledged’, 1.1.22) and the word ‘bastard’ as an insult. When he calls Goneril ‘degenerate bastard’ (KL 1.4.245), the father repudiates his pelican daughter, and she becomes the daughter of nobody. Thus Shakespeare’s plays convey both the legal meaning and the insulting dimension of a word that is used both in a neutral and in a derogatory way. In MA , Benedick refers to ‘John the bastard’ (4.1.188) and to ‘your brother the bastard’ (5.1.184–5). The word is a surname but the negative content of the term is felt as the word is used only once Don John is discovered to be a villain, as if villainy were the fruit of bastardy. The in-between status of the word gives an ironic twist to Thersites’ eulogy of bastards when he meets Margareton: Margareton: Thersites: Margareton: Thersites:

Turn, slave, and fight. What art thou? A bastard son of Priam’s. I am a bastard too; I love bastards. I am bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in everything illegitimate. One bear will not bite another, and wherefore should one bastard? Take heed, the quarrel’s most ominous to us. If the son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts judgement. Farewell, bastard. [Exit] Margareton: The devil take thee, coward! (TC 5.8.5–15)

The first occurrence of the word in ‘A bastard son of Priam’s’ is uttered proudly by Margareton who wants to impress his potential adversary by connecting his birth to the noble Priam. This leads to Thersites’ praise of bastards, a praise that he uses as a way of avoiding combat. The speech sounds like a paradoxical encomium and its comic effect comes from and reveals the fact that the name ‘bastard’ is insulting. One can call someone a bastard without using the word ‘bastard’ or the word ‘whoreson’. In 2H6, Suffolk indirectly calls Warwick a bastard: Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour! If ever lady wronged her lord so much, Thy mother took into her blameful bed Some stern untutored churl, and noble stock Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art, And never of the Nevilles’ noble race. (3.2.210–15) 40

batch/botch(y)

In 3H6, Richard tells the Prince: Whoever got thee, there thy mother stands, For well I wot thou hast thy mother’s tongue. (2.2.131–2) He catches two birds with one stone with a simple ‘whoever got thee’, both insulting mother and son. (C) See DHLF , 1, 193 (‘bâtard’); Findlay (1994); Hughes (2006), 18–19. Neill (2000), 127–65, in a chapter entitled ‘In everything illegitimate: imagining the Bastard in English Renaissance Drama’, explains what it meant ‘to be branded a bastard in Edmund’s world’ (128) and shows that the figure of the bastard in the Renaissance was disruptive because it meant dirt (‘the dirty bastard’), counterfeiting (‘the cheating bastard’) and monstrosity (‘the monstrous bastard’), three features that ‘Edgar the legitimate’ ironically endorses in KL : he is associated with filth, role-playing and Gloucester, his father, describes him as a monster, be it negatively, when he exclaims ‘He cannot be such a monster’ (1.2.94). See Rawson, 36–7; Sokol & Sokol, 23–32; Innes, 35–9; Dunkling, 48; Brailowsky. batch/botch(y) (A) A batch is a quantity of corn, flour or bread, a quantity of anything. A botch is (1) an ulcer, a swelling, a tumour; (2) ‘a botched place or part, a flaw or blemish resulting from unskilful workmanship’ (OED ). Thomas reads: ‘Vlcus, ėris, n.g. A boyle, an vlcer, a running or matterie soare, a botch, corrupt matter perishing the skinne, and couered with a scabbe: [. . .] Such a sore as is great and hath had swolne brimmes: a bile sore, a sore incurable. Malignum, tetrum, verminosum [. . .] A venemous, matterie, foule, and filthie sore’. The two terms are almost homophonic. (B) The two terms are used in TC . ‘Botchy’ appears in a dialogue between Ajax and the railer Thersites: Ajax: Thersites: Ajax: Thersites:

Thersites! Agamemnon – how if he had boils, full, all over, generally? Thersites! And those boils did run (say so), did not the general run, then? Were not that a botchy core? Ajax: Dog! Thersites: Then there would come some matter from him. I see none now. Ajax: Thou bitch-wolf’s son, canst thou not hear? Feel, then. Strikes him. (2.1.1–10) Bevington (182) glosses the expression ‘botchy core’ in two ways: ‘(1) tumour with a central hard core (a “botch” is a tumour); (2) badly patched up heart or body (lacking courage)’. Thersites’ words are an insult to Ajax as they show his indifference to Ajax’s summons. These words belong to a play that teems with disease imagery. Ajax prolongs this imagery by calling Thersites ‘thou vinewed’st leaven’ (2.1.13), which suggests he is a source of contamination and which associates images of food and disease. These words 41

batch/botch(y)

seem to be echoed at the end of the play when Achilles addresses Thersites: ‘How now, thou core of envy? / Thou crusty batch of nature, what’s the news? (5.1.4–5). Bevington (370) notes that ‘batch’ fits the culinary imagery of the scene (‘crusty’, ‘fragment’, ‘dish of fool’ 5.1.8–9), but that editors have often adopted Theobald’s choice of ‘botch’ as ‘the correction of an easy error’. The editorial history of the word allows for two readings, each of which suits the world of TC that is full of food and disease images. Wiles (147) notes that the expression, whether it be ‘botch’ or ‘batch’, conveys the ‘physical grotesqueness that is essential for this type of fool’, that is for such a fool as Thersites, who would be played by Armin who ‘revelled in the physical qualities of his fools’. (C) On Armin’s physical qualities, see Wiles, 146–50. bauble (A) Probably deriving from the old French babel designating a child’s toy, a trinket (babiole in French) and from the Middle English babyll, bable (babble), the word is often used to refer to the fool’s bauble: ‘A baton or stick, surmounted by a fantastically carved head with asses’ ears, carried by the Court Fool or jester of former days as a mock emblem of office’ (OED 4). DHLF notes that the French word babiole derives from the Italian babbola (meaning something foolish, childish). Cotgrave defines the French word: ‘Babiole: f. A trifle, whimwham, guigaw, or small toy, for a child to play withall. Babioles. Trifles, nifles, trinkets, toyes; also, faire (but deceitfull) tearmes.’ The word may refer to a childish person and to things that are bobbed up and down. (B) In Cym, Pisanio, who is revolted by the calumnious letter written by Posthumus Leonatus, curses it as follows: O damn’d paper! Black as the ink that’s on thee! Senseless bauble, Art thou a feodary for this act, and look’st So virgin-like without? (3.2.19–22) Pisanio insults the letter and accuses it of being Posthumus’ villainous accomplice. The most obvious meaning is that the paper is a ‘paltry piece of rubbish’ (OED 5d). The insult suggests that Posthumus is a fool making use of a senseless bauble. Williams (1, 77–9) explores the sexual content of the word that can refer to the penis, a meaning that may not be absent here if one considers that this letter symbolically soils the virgin Imogen. The sexual meaning of the word is present in AW where the Clown declares: ‘And I would give his wife my bauble, sir, to do her service’ (4.5.29–30), as well as in Rom where Mercutio conjures the image of a ‘bauble in a hole’ (2.4.89). The bauble may also here evoke the babbling tongue that slanders the innocent Imogen as well as the tongues of Babel that are tongues of discord. bawd(y) (A) A Pandar, a procurer, one who makes commerce of sexual activities. The word is of uncertain origin and, according to OED , has no link with the French baud meaning ‘gay, merry’. Baret has: ‘a Baude, or marchaunt of hoores’. Thomas defines 42

bawd(y)

‘Prōstĭtuo’ as ‘To set open to euery man that commeth, to play the common bawd or whore, to practise bawdry and harlotry, to abandon to euery mans abusing: to get mony by.’ In Florio’s World of Words (1598): ‘Roffiana’ is defined as ‘a bawd, a pander, a ruffian’. For Cotgrave, ‘Maquerelle’ is ‘A (woman) bawd; the solicitrix of lecherie’. The word may refer both to men and women. In OED 2 ‘bawd’ means ‘hare’. The adjective ‘bawdy’ means ‘lewd’, ‘obscene’. Hollyband defines crasseux as ‘filthie, slutish, greasie, baudie’, bawdy possibly being related to Welsh bawaidd (dirty) coming from baw and to boue (mud) in French (see OED ). (B) Shakespeare’s plays constitute a ‘bawdy planet’ (WT 1.2.200) and the word ‘bawd’ is several times used as an insult. The word designates two characters in MM , Pompey Bum and Mistress Overdone, which explains why the play contains about a third of the occurrences of the term. The names ‘Pompey Bum’ and ‘Mistress Overdone’ of course give some clues as to their profession. Elbow accuses Pompey of being A tapster, sir; parcel bawd; one that serves a bad woman; whose house, sir, was, as they say, plucked down in the suburbs; and now she professes a hot-house; which I think is a very ill house too. (2.1.62–5) He calls Pompey and Mistress Overdone’s house ‘a naughty house’ (2.1.75) where there is ‘fornication, adultery, and all uncleanliness’ (2.1.79). Then follows the dialogue between Escalus and Pompey: Escalus:

Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing about you; so that in the beastliest sense you are Pompey the Great. Pompey, you are partly a bawd, Pompey, howsoever you colour it in being a tapster, are you not? Come, tell me true, it shall be the better for you. Pompey: Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live. Escalus: How would you live, Pompey? By being a bawd? What do you think of the trade, Pompey? Is it a lawful trade? Pompey: If the law would allow it, sir. (2.1.213–23) The word oscillates between legal accusation and abuse. What makes the word abusive is that, as Escalus answers, ‘the law will not allow it’ (2.1.224). Yet, Pompey Bum cannot be offended by the term ‘bawd’ since it refers to his true profession. In 3.2 Duke Vincentio, disguised as a friar, tries to reform him by chiding him, when Elbow naively says that Pompey is a thief who has ‘a strange pick-lock’ (3.2.16). Vincentio understands that the ‘locks’ that Pompey ‘picks’ are those on chastity belts and he exclaims: Fie, sirrah, a bawd, a wicked bawd; The evil that thou causest to be done, That is thy means to live. Do thou but think What ’tis to cram a maw or clothe a back 43

bawd(y)

From such a filthy vice. Say to thyself, From their abominable and beastly touches I drink, I eat, array myself, and live. Canst thou believe thy living is a life, So stinkingly depending? Go mend, go mend. (3.2.18–26) This tirade is to be read under the light of the scene that follows, in which Lucio, thinking he addresses a friar, slanders Duke Vincentio himself, telling that ‘he had some feeling of the sport’ and that ‘His use was to put a ducat in her clack-dish’ (3.2.121), a phrase that probably contains sexual innuendoes: the word ‘ducat’ is related to the word ‘Duke’; the clack-dish suggests the woman’s genitals, all the more so since ‘clapdish’ may also refer to an open, talkative mouth. Lucio then says that the Duke ‘would eat mutton on Fridays’ and that ‘he would mouth with a beggar though she smelt brown bread and garlic’ (3.2.174–7). Lucio draws the ironic portrait of Vincentio as a man who is as ‘stinkingly depending’ (3.2.26) as Pompey the Bawd. Calling Desdemona a ‘whore’, Othello also calls Emilia, her attendant, ‘a simple bawd’ (4.2.20), in a passage that blurs the limit between the bawd and the whore (4.2.21–3). In WT , Hermione’s defenders, Camillo and Paulina, are successively called ‘pander’ (2.1.46) and ‘most intelligencing bawd’ (2.3.67). When Paulina is called a ‘callat / Of boundless tongue’ (2.3.89–90) and ‘lewdtongued wife’ (2.3.170), one can again feel how the figures of the whore and the female bawd overlap. Juliet’s Nurse, another figure of attendant, is playfully called ‘bawd’ in Rom, when Mercutio hears her say that she desires ‘some confidence’ with Romeo: Mercutio: A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho! Romeo: What hast thou found? Mercutio: No hare, sir, unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent. He walks by them and sings. An old hare hoar, and an old hare hoar Is very good meat in Lent. But a hare that is hoar is too much for a score When it hoars ere it be spent. (2.4.126–33) Blakemore Evans (125) notes that ‘bawd’ means ‘hare’ in North Midland dialect and deciphers Mercutio’s words: ‘The Nurse is no hare, or if she is, she is mouldy (hoar) and stale (‘stale’ as a noun = whore) as an old hare (= whore) in a lenten pie’. The sportsman’s cry ‘So ho!’ introduces the motif of the sexual hunt. Mercutio here puns on ‘hare’, a symbol of ‘immoderate lust’ (Topsell, 1607, 207 quoted by Williams, 2, 645) and ‘hoar’ (whore), while the words ‘meat’ and ‘stale’ (whore) are also sexual references. Again the figures of the bawd and the whore, or the hare and the hoar (whore) become indistinguishable. The Nurse’s comic reaction to this insult in song appears when she 44

bead

turns to Peter, her man, and exclaims: ‘And thou must stand by too and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure!’ (2.3.148–50), an expression of indignation which again, ironically, feeds the bawdy content of the sequence. She concludes: ‘I am so vexed that every part about me quivers’ (2.3.155–6), thus describing a physical reaction to the insult she has just received. In AYL , Touchstone comically imports a courtier’s world into the shepherd Corin’s rustic world by calling him a ‘bawd’: That is another simple sin in you: to bring the ewes and the rams together and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crooked-pated old cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. (3.2.75–80) In Luc, Lucrece ‘places primary responsibility for her sufferings on ‘Opportunity’, the random operation of “occasion” or chance’ (Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen, 45). Echoing the proverbial ‘Opportunity is whoredom’s bawd’, she curses opportunity: ‘Thou foul abettor, thou notorious bawd!’ (Luc 886). Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen (311) note that ‘the association between opportunity and bawdry became proverbial’ (Dent, O70 and Tilley, O70 and O71). The abettor is the one who encourages to the committing of offence. When Hamlet expostulates in absentia against Claudius, he relates sex crime and blood crime by exclaiming: ‘bloody, bawdy villain, / Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain’ (2.2.515–16), an insult that echoes the ghost’s describing Claudius as ‘that incestuous, that adulterate beast’ (1.5.42). This bloody/bawdy pair of words seems to epitomize the whole play. (C) See Williams, 1, 79–81 (‘bawd’) and 2, 645–6 (‘hare’). Williams mentions Dekker’s Lanthorne and Candle-Light (1608, G4v) in which ‘officials who should be controlling prostitution become ‘parcell-bawdes to winck at such damned abuses” ’ (81). In W. Rowley, A Match at Midnight (E3v), a ‘Hare Pye’ is the figurative equivalent for a bawd’ (mentioned by Blakemore Evans, 125). See John Taylor’s text on the Bawd in All the Workes of Iohn Taylor the water-poet, 92–104. On the etymology of ‘bawd’ (‘Baud’) that is ‘all one with Bathe’ (334) and hence is related to stews, see Verstegan, 333–4. See fishmonger, flesh-monger, pandar, stale, stewed, whore. bead (A) ‘A small perforated body, spherical or otherwise, of glass, amber, metal, wood, etc., used as an ornament, either strung in a series to form a necklace, bracelet, etc., or sewn upon various fabrics’ (OED ). (B) In MND , Lysander insults Hermia by referring to her small height: Get you gone, you dwarf, You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; You bead, you acorn. (MND 3.2.328–30) 45

bead

‘Bead’ is part of the series of words that belittle, ‘de-base’ Hermia who is sensitive to Helena’s railing: Helena: Hermia:

And though she be but little, she is fierce. ‘Little’ again? Nothing but ‘low’ and ‘little’? Why will you suffer her to flout me thus? (3.2.325–7)

Instead of coming to her defence, Lysander prolongs Helena’s words and illustrates them with precise images of miniature things. bear. See ape. beard (A) Facial hair, esp. the hair that grows upon a man’s chin. The beard constructs gender differences but also the difference between men and boys. In early modern England, beards could be cut in many different and extravagant ways. To ‘beard’ someone literally means to pull someone by the beard and thus to challenge, to oppose with effrontery, to affront, to dare, to set at defiance. In Cotgrave (rasoir, foire, faire), one finds the expressions ‘Faire la barbe à quelqu’un sans rasoir. To affront, braue, abuse one’ and ‘Faire barbe de foire à. To disgrace, violate, wrong extreamely, abuse egregiously.’ ‘Faire la barbe à vn. To barbe one; also, to withstand, beard, or braue him to his teeth. Faire barbe de foare à. To contemne, scorne; cousen, delude; abuse.’ (B) The word is the basis of a number of insults that question masculinity. In MA , the term concludes Benedick’s challenging speech to Claudio: Boy, you know my mind. I will leave you now to your gossip-like humour. You break jests as braggarts do their blades, which, God be thanked, hurt not. My lord, for your many courtesies, I thank you. I must discontinue your company. [. . .] For my Lord Lack-beard there, he and I shall meet [. . .]. (5.1.180–7) By nicknaming Claudio ‘my Lord Lack-Beard’, Benedick calls him ‘boy’ and thus denies his being a man. In context this challenge delivered ‘in earnest’ (5.1.189) sounds ironical: Benedick is the other ‘Lack-Beard’ in the play as he has shaven, out of love. In 3.2, his beardless cheeks are the theme of the other men’s jests: Don Pedro: Claudio: Leonato:

Hath any man seen him at the barber’s? No, but the barber’s man hath been seen with him, and the old ornament of his cheek hath already stuffed tennis balls. Indeed, he looks younger than he did by the loss of a beard. (3.2.40–5)

Benedick is transformed into ‘Monsieur Love’ (2.3.34) and this appears in the ‘fashion’ of his beard, which suggests that he’s grown effeminate by yielding to love’s folly. This 46

beard

idea of effeminacy is illustrated by Beatrice’s reaction to Leonato when he tells her that she ‘may light on a husband that hath no beard’ (2.1.28) and she answers: What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waitinggentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man: [. . .] (2.1.29–32) In AYL , Touchstone puts the beard at the heart of his speech on quarrels and the seven degrees of the lie: I did dislike the cut of a certain courtier’s beard. He sent me word if I said his beard was not cut well, he was in the mind it was. This is called the ‘retort courteous’. If I sent him word again it was not well cut, he would send me word he cut it to please himself. This is called the ‘quip modest’. If again it was not well cut, he disabled my judgement. This is called the ‘reply churlish’. If again it was not well cut, he would answer I spake not true. This is called the ‘reproof valiant’. If again it was not well cut, he would say I lie. This is called the ‘countercheck quarrelsome’ – and so to the ‘lie circumstantial’ and the ‘lie direct’. (5.4.69–81) This speech is a satire of duelling codes but it also ridicules the fact that the cut of a beard could be a sensitive issue and lead to quarrels. John Taylor (1630) the water-poet sets the beard in the field of pride, suggesting that his contemporaries grant foolish importance to the style of their beards. One finds the same idea in Rom, when Mercutio accuses Benvolio of being a great quarreller: ‘Thou – why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more or a hair less in his beard than thou hast’ (3.1.16–18). Plucking a man’s beard is an affront to his virility. When Hamlet curses his own cowardice, he draws a list of unbearable injuries, among which the insult of a man who ‘Plucks off [his] beard and blows it in [his] face’ (Ham 2.2.508). One finds a cruel illustration of this humiliating gesture in KL where Goneril plucks Gloucester by the beard before gouging out his eyes (3.7.34). ‘These hairs which thou dost ravish from my chin / Will quicken and accuse thee’ (3.7.38–9) says Gloucester, thus suggesting that the plucked beard is a symbol of violated masculinity. In 1H6, Winchester and Gloucester quarrel in terms of ‘bearding’: Winchester: Do what thou dar’st, I beard thee to thy face. Gloucester: What? Am I dared, and bearded to my face? Draw, men, for all this privileged place; Blue coats to tawny coats. Priest, beware your beard; I mean to tug it and to cuff you soundly. Under my feet I stamp thy cardinal’s hat. In spite of Pope or dignities of church, Here by the cheeks I’ll drag thee up and down. (1.3.44–51) 47

beard

In 2H6 Cade uses the expression before his last combat, in an exchange with Iden: Iden: Cade:

But wilt thou brave me with these saucy terms? Brave thee? Ay, by the best blood that ever was broached, and beard thee too. (4.10.35–7)

In MV , Shylock complains that Antonio ‘did void [his] rheum upon [his] beard’ (1.3.113). Drakakis (215) notes that Shylock, the Jew, may here be ‘referring to a part of his theatrical costume’ and he mentions Trachtenberg (46–7) who suggests that the ‘Zeigenbart’ (goat’s beard, or goatee) ‘is intended to identify the Jew as the human goat’. (C) For a study of the beard and its significance in the Renaissance, see Fisher who numbers at least fifteen recognizable beard styles worn at the time (159) and notes that prosthetic beards were regularly used on stage (163) to produce masculinity (180). Fisher quotes John Taylor’s satiric catalogue of beards under James I in a text entitled ‘A Whip of Pride’ (John Taylor’s Works, 34). Fisher also mentions a passage on beards from Harrison’s Description of England (1587), 146–7. Fisher convincingly demonstrates that ‘the beard was one of the primary ways in which masculinity was materialized’ (184). See barber-monger. beast(ly) (A) Derived from the Latin bestia, the word means ‘animal’ and suggests an inhuman creature. In Renaissance culture, the beast is regularly opposed to man as being deprived of reason and of speech. The word often refers to cruelty and inhumanity but Partridge also insists on the sexual meaning of the term: ‘Beast: A god or a man, the former behaving like a sex-driven animal, the latter behaving with the sexual appetite of an animal.’ The French word beste is translated by Cotgrave who relates beastliness to foolishness: ‘Beste: f. A beast; also, a sot, luske, doult, lurdaine, loobie, blockhead; heauie, or dull, fellow.’ (B) In 1H4, when Falstaff tells the Hostess ‘thou art a beast to say otherwise’, she takes him at his word, ironically calling for more precisely insulting words: ‘Say, what beast, thou knave thou’ (3.3.121–3). The hostess’s reaction points to the polymorphous aspect of the word and to its essential indeterminacy and multiple insulting potential. There are often several layers of connotations in the word, which make its meaning difficult to grasp. The basic recurrent meaning of cruelty, inhumanity and monstrosity that is associated with the word is often combined with a sexual meaning. This can be found in Ham for example, when the ghost calls Claudius ‘that incestuous, that adulterate beast’ (1.5.42) or in Tit when Lavinia, who is about to be raped by Tamora’s sons, addresses the cruel mother: ‘No grace? No womanhood? Ah, beastly creature, / The blot and enemy to our general name’ (2.2.182). The latter example shows that, with the word ‘beast’, Shakespeare reveals what a creature does not have: grace, womanhood, humanity. The term is used again at the end of the play about Tamora’s sons when Lucius expostulates against Aaron: ‘O barbarous, beastly villains, like thyself!’ (5.1.97). Here the term expresses the cruelty 48

beast(ly)

and inhumanity of a ‘wilderness of tigers’ (3.1.54). Prospero calls Caliban ‘the beast Caliban’ (Tem 4.1.140) to deny his humanity but also probably to remind the audience that he has tried to rape Miranda. In MM , Isabella hurls ‘O, you beast’ at her brother Claudio when he invites her to yield to Angelo’s vicious sexual advances. She transfers Angelo’s vices onto her brother who becomes an incestuous accomplice: Isabella:

O, you beast! O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch! Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice? Is’t not a kind of incest, to take life From thine own sister’s shame? (3.1.135–9)

Although the insult may here be a general expression of disgust, the word ‘incest’ suggests a sexual content. In Oth, the word ‘beast’ means ‘cuckold’: ‘A horned man’s a monster, and a beast’ (4.1.62), says Othello, which is a proverbial phrase: ‘A cuckold is a beast’ (Dent, C876.2). The connotations of cruelty and inhumanity attached to the word ‘beast’ make Katherine’s address to Boyet, ‘gentle beast’ (LLL 2.1.221), oxymoronic. This playful insult can only be understood in context: Katherine compares Boyet and Berowne to two ‘hot sheeps’ (2.1.218), another oxymoronic expression, to refer to the battle of wit between the two men. The jest goes on: Boyet: Katherine: Boyet: Katherine:

[. . .] No sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips. You sheep, and I pasture. Shall that finish the jest? So you grant pasture for me. [He tries to kiss her.] Not so, gentle beast. My lips are no common, though several they be. (LLL 2.1.219–22)

There is a sheep behind this beast but the word is also pregnant with bawdy innuendoes. In R3, Richard ironically plays with Lady Anne’s words: Anne:

Villain, thou knowst nor law of God nor man. No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. Richard: But I know none, and therefore am no beast. (1.2.70–2)

Richard defuses the insult through literalisation and syllogism. The word often connotes stupidity or folly (OED 5a) and is related to the French bête which means ‘foolish’. The beastly cuckold described by Othello is a monster with horns but also a fool, someone who lacks reason and intelligence. In Rom, when the Prince addresses his unruly subjects who have just shown their folly by indulging in a ‘civil brawl [. . .] bred of an airy word’ 1.1.87), he exclaims ‘What ho, you men, you beasts / That quench the fire of your pernicious rage / With purple fountains issuing from your veins’ (1.1.81–3). The term expresses a loss of reason and is analogous to the 49

beast(ly)

French bête. In MA, when Beatrice replies to Benedick: ‘a bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours’ (1.1.133–4), she associates Benedick with speechless, dumb creatures in a passage that teems with animal images. McEachern translates the phrase as ‘better a talking bird than a mute beast’. Shakespeare often plays on the opposition and articulation of ‘man’ and ‘beast’. In Tim, the term is the object of complex manipulations that lead to the idea that men are beasts. Lucius, one of Timon’s false friends who refuses to help him, first feigns to curse himself: What a wicked beast was I to disfurnish myself against such a good time, when I might ha’ shown myself honourable! How unluckily it happened that I should purchase the day before for a little part and undo a great deal of honour! Servilius, now before the gods, I am not able to do – the more beast I, I say – I was sending to use Lord Timon myself, these gentlemen can witness. [. . .] (3.2.45–52) These hypocritical words are pregnant with irony as the following scenes clearly confirm that, beyond Lucius, men are indeed turned to beasts in Tim. Timon curses his false friends saying: ‘Of man and beast the infinite malady / Crust you quite o’er!’ (3.7.97–8). He decides to exile himself from the society of men: ‘Timon will to the woods, where he shall find / Th’unkindest beast more kinder than mankind’ (4.1.35–6). When Alcibiades asks him ‘What art thou there?’, Timon answers ‘A beast, as you are. The canker gnaw thy heart / For showing me again the eyes of man’ (4.3.49–51). This insult, based on the literalisation of the term ‘beast’, contributes to erasing the difference between man and beast. The dialogue between Apemantus and Timon plays on the literal and metaphorical meanings of the word: Timon:

[. . .] What wouldst thou do with the world, Apemantus, if it lay in thy power? Apemantus: Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men. Timon: Wouldst thou have thyself fall in the confusion of men and remain a beast with the beasts? Apemantus: Ay, Timon. Timon: A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t’attain to. If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat thee; if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee when peradventure thou wert accused by the ass; if thou wert the ass, thy dullness would torment thee, and still thou lived’st but as a breakfast to the wolf; if thou wert the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee and oft thou shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner. Wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury; wert thou a bear, thou wouldst be killed by the horse; wert thou a horse, thou 50

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wouldst be seized by the leopard; wert thou a leopard, thou wert germane to the lion, and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life – all thy safety were remotion and thy defence absence. What beast couldst thou be, that were not subject to a beast? And what a beast art thou already that seest not thy loss in transformation! Apemantus: If thou couldst please me with speaking to me, thou mightst have hit upon it here. The commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of beasts. Timon: How! Has the ass broke the wall, that thou art out of the city? (4.3.320–49). The whole declination of beasts (animals) leads to the climactic ‘And what a beast art thou already’, which must be heard metaphorically as ‘What a fool art thou’. The literal ‘beast’ leads to the metaphoric ‘ass’. Thus, when Apemantus hurls at Timon’s face the single word ‘Beast!’ (4.3.370), it brings with it all the declination of beasts that we have heard and all the animal ‘transformations’ that the text has conveyed. It has become a metamorphic term that has absorbed numerous connotations and figures. The obsessive presence of beasts leads to Timon’s arch-insulting epitaph that echoes the tradition of the Latin defixiones: ‘Some beast read this, there does not live a man’ (5.4.4). Here is an insult from beyond the grave addressed to humanity as a whole. It comes as the conclusion of the central human/beast motif that was introduced in the play by Lucius’ initial hypocritical comment. In 1H4, Shakespeare makes Falstaff the epitome of all the beastly qualities in the world when Hal, impersonating his kingly father, calls him ‘that bolting-hutch of beastliness’ (2.4.437–8), meaning that Falstaff is the receptacle, the container of all the beastly characteristics possible, such as unintelligence, rudeness, brutality, cowardice, gluttony, drunkenness, filthiness, and bestiality (OED ). (C) See Yoder, who distinguishes ‘beast’ from ‘animal’ by quoting Hamlet’s speech on man: What piece of work is a man – how noble in reason; how infinite in faculties, in form and moving; how express and admirable in action; how like an angel in apprehension; how like a god; the beauty of the world; the paragon of animals. And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?’ (2.2.269–74) She notes that ‘Hamlet [. . .] uses the word “animals” and not “beasts”. Animals are living creatures; “beast” is a derogatory term. A beast “wants discourse of reason”, and it is men and women who abandon themselves to their passions that become beasts’ (61). See Fudge. On the connection, opposition, interdependence of men and beasts, see Boehrer, esp. the introduction ‘How to do things with animals’ and chap. 1 ‘Shakespeare’s beastly buggers’. The book offers an interesting ‘further reading’ section. Dunkling, 49. See monster. 51

bed

bed (A) The place for sleep and sexual encounters. (B) The word appears in two compound insults. In 1H4, Hal calls Jack Falstaff a ‘bed-presser’: ‘This sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horse-back breaker, this huge hill of flesh –’ (2.4.235–7). The word means that he is so lazy and so heavy that he ‘presses’ his bed. Falstaff is the embodiment of laziness in the play. A few sequences later, Peto and the Prince find the ‘oily rascal’ (2.4.513), ‘Fast asleep behind the arras and snorting like a horse’ (2.4.515–16). The insult ‘bed-presser’ is also related to the first image that we get of Falstaff in the play: Falstaff: Prince:

Now, Hal, what time of the day is it, lad? Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack, and unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? [. . .] (1.2.1–6)

As Scott Kastan notes (149), many productions show Falstaff asleep and waking when Hal enters. This first portrait of Falstaff includes bawdy content and Falstaff is constantly associated with flesh and lechery. Thus one can, like Williams (1, 90), hear ‘whoremonger’ behind ‘bed-presser’, the bed being the place of sleep but also of sexual encounters. For Partridge, the word applied to Falstaff means ‘A fornicator; a whoremonger or womanizer’ (64). In 2.4, Falstaff is also called ‘thou whoreson obscene greasy tallowcatch’ (2.4.220–1), which confirms this combination of fatness and lechery. So if the word describes ‘one whose weight will flatten a bed’ (Scott Kastan, 220), it also has a strong sexual content, to which Falstaff answers with insults that have strong sexual connotations such as ‘bull’s pizzle’ (2.4.238) or ‘eel-skin’ (2.4.237). In WT , Leontes calls Hermione a ‘bed-swerver’, accusing her of being unfaithful, swerving, deviating from the marital bed by having an affair with Polixenes: ‘A bedswerver, even as bad as those / That vulgars give bold’st titles’ (2.1.93–4). Leontes calls Hermione an adulteress ‘to whom the common people give the most immodest names’ (Pitcher, WT , 193). Behind the word ‘bed-swerver’, Leontes hears a buzz of other insulting words coming from Rumour. These imaginary bad words are present in Leontes’s mind from the beginning of the play when he says in an aside: ‘They’re here with me already, whispering, rounding, / “Sicilia is a so-forth” ’(1.2.215–16). (C) On the sexual meanings of the bed, see Williams, 1, 89–90. See adulteress, cuckold. bedlam (A) Lunatic, mad. The word is an antonomasia deriving from the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem, in London, which was from 1547 a royal foundation for the reception of lunatics situated just outside Bishopsgate. In Florio’s World of Words (1598), the term appears in several definitions of words related to fury: ‘Furibondo: furious, ragie, frantike, mad, bedlam’; ‘Furioso: furious, raging, mad, frantike, bedlam, outragious’; ‘Furore: furie, rage, madnes, outrage, bedlam madnes.’ 52

beggar

(B) King John interrupts Constance’s cursing tirade against Queen Eleanor with ‘Bedlam, have done’ (KJ 2.1.183), thus underlining her fury. After the King’s summons, Constance goes on railing, which shows that her rage cannot be contained. King Philip then asks her to ‘be more temperate’ (2.1.195). King John already associates disorder with madness in 1.1 when he exclaims about Philip Faulconbridge, the Bastard: ‘Why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here! (1.1.84), while in 2.1 Lewis the Dauphin asks that ‘Women and fools, break off your conference’ (2.1.150). In KJ , lack of control is associated with madness. In H5, Pistol reacts to Fluellen’s calling him ‘you scurvy, lousy knave’ by saying: ‘Ha, art thou bedlam?’ (5.1.18–19), in the same way as Falstaff reacts to Hal’s long strings of abuse in 1H4: Prince:

These lies are like their father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou clay-brained gut, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson, obscene greasy tallow-catch. Falstaff: What, art thou mad? Art thou mad? Is not the truth the truth? (1H4 2.4.218–23) Excess of language thus appears as a sign of insanity. In the context of the play Hal is indeed a ‘madcap’ as he himself says (1.2.135) and as Hotspur describes him when he asks: ‘Where is his son, / The nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales / And his comrades that daffed the world aside / And bid it pass?’ (4.1.93–6). The ‘bedlam’ is the one who turns the world upside down and brings chaos and disorder. (C) See Iyengar, 29–30. In KL , Edgar disguises himself as Tom o’Bedlam, ironically playing the part that his brother Edmund briefly endorses in 1.2 when he says ‘My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o’Bedlam’ (1.2.135–6). See KL 2.2.172– 92 where Edgar describes ‘Bedlam beggars’ and declares that he is now ‘poor Tom’. Harman describes ‘Abraham men’ as ‘those that fayn themselues to haue bene mad, and haue bene kept either in Bethelem, or in some other pryson a good time, and not one amongst twenty that euer came in prison for any such cause: yet will they say how pityously and moste extreemely they haue bene beaten and dealt with all’ (ed. 1573, D1rv). Awdelay (1561) describes an Abraham man as ‘he that walketh bare armed, and bare legged, and fayneth hymselfe mad, and caryeth a packe of wool, or a stycke with baken on it, or such lyke toy, and nameth himselfe poore Tom’ (ed. 1575, Aiir). See Carroll (1996), esp. chap. 3 (‘Bedlam and Bridewell’), 97–124. See beggar. beetle-headed. See head. beggar (A) Someone who begs, who asks alms; a needy fellow, a rogue. The Elizabethan period makes a distinction between ‘sturdy beggars’ (beggars who could work but do not) and poor beggars, poor people who cannot work and who thus should be helped. The word remains negatively connoted, as is shown in Cotgrave where Coquin is 53

beggar

translated as ‘A beggar, poore snake, needie wretch, tattered rogue, lousie vagabond that begs from doore to doore; any base scoundrell, or scuruie fellow’ and defines Caignarder as ‘To play the idle rogue; or (like a nastie and slothful beggar) lye, and lowse himselfe, vnder a hedge, or in the Sunne.’ Beggars and kings are often contrasted as the lowest and the highest levels of the social scale. The figure of the beggar is associated with poverty, but also with vagrancy, idleness and laziness. (B) In 3H6, in a provocative description of Margaret’s marriage with Henry VI , Yorkist Edward Plantagenet insults the queen by referring to her father’s poverty: But when he [Henry VI ] took a beggar [you, Margaret] to his bed And graced thy poor sire with his bridal day, Even then that sunshine brewed a shower for him That washed his father’s fortunes forth of France And heaped sedition on his crown at home. (3H6 2.2.154–8) Edward refers to the fact that Henry VI received no dowry from Margaret’s father, but instead had to pay for her reception (see 2H6 1.1.55–9). This oxymoronic image of the beggar king echoes Richard’s offensive speech when he insults Margaret for her poor nobility a few lines earlier: Iron of Naples hid with English gilt, Whose father bears the title of a king, As if a channel should be called the sea, Sham’st thou not, knowing whence thou are extraught, To let thy tongue detect thy baseborn heart? (3H6 2.2.139–43) In R3, Richard addresses a halberdier who opposes him as follows: Unmannered dog, stand thou when I command! Advance thy halberd higher than my breast, Or by Saint Paul, I’ll strike thee to my foot, And spurn upon thee, beggar, for thy boldness. (1.2.39–42) Richard draws the figure of the beggar who, like the ‘unmannered dog’, is sitting on the ground in a posture that reveals his low status. The word ‘beggar’ goes together with the image of the dog and with Richard’s threats: ‘I’ll strike thee to my foot, / And spurn upon thee’. In his oration to his army, Richard reduces his enemies to the status of beggars: Remember whom you are to cope withal, A sort of vagabonds, rascals, runaways, A scum of Bretons and base lackey-peasants, 54

beggar

[. . .] Let’s whip these stragglers o’er the seas again, Lash hence these overweening rags of France, These famished beggars, weary of their lives, Who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit, For want of means, poor rats, had hanged themselves. (5.3.315–17; 327–31) As Siemon notes (409), Richard’s words refer to the punishment prescribed by the Elizabethan statutes against vagabonds: whipping and return to their place of origin. His speech also relates beggary to melancholy, social baseness to moral frailty. In Cym, Shakespeare uses the motif of the king and the beggar when the King accuses Imogen of wanting to put a beggar on the throne: Cymbeline: Thou took’st a beggar, wouldst have made my throne A seat for baseness. Imogen: No, I rather added A lustre to it. Cymbeline: O thou vile one! (1.2.72–4) For King Cymbeline, the choice that Imogen makes of the ‘beggar’ Posthumus is an insult to his throne while Imogen reverses the scale of values saying that the beggar adds ‘a lustre to it’. Cloten uses the same word to emphasize Posthumus’ worthlessness, calling him ‘that beggar Posthumus’ (3.5.119–20). In KL , the term is used both with contempt and pity as Kent disparagingly calls Oswald ‘beggar’ (2.2.20) while Gloucester refers to Edgar as ‘a poor unfortunate beggar’ (4.6.68). In MM , Lucio unwittingly slanders Duke Vincentio to his face by suggesting that he would have ‘sport’ with women including ‘your beggar of fifty’ (3.2.120) and that ‘he ‘would mouth with a beggar though she smelt brown bread and garlic’ (3.2.175–7). Here beggary is associated with lechery. In Tim, the figure of the beggar is used to intensify the image of the dog when Timon tells Apemantus: ‘I had rather be a beggar’s dog than Apemantus’ (4.3.355–6). (C) Cowell (1607) relates rogues and beggars: ‘Roag (Rogus) seemeth to come of the French (Rogue. i. arrogans). It signifieth with vs an idle sturdie beggar, that wandring from place to place without pasport, after he hath beene by Iustices bestowed vpon some certaine place of aboade, or offered to be bestowed, is condemned to be so called who for the first offence, is called a Roag of the first degree, and punished by whipping, and boring through the grissell of the right eare with a hot yron an inch in compas: & for the second offence, is called a Roag of the second degree, and put to death as a felon, if he be aboue 18. yeares ould.’ On the legislation on beggary and on Poor Laws in Elizabethan England, see Carroll (1996); Drouet; Pugliatti. On beggary and poverty laws, see Sokol & Sokol, 265–77. On the iconography of beggary, see Nichols’s study of the ‘art of poverty’. See bedlam. 55

bell-wether

bell-wether (A) The leading sheep of a flock, with a bell around his neck. The wether is a male sheep, a ram, often castrated. (B) In MW , Falstaff uses the image when, addressing Master Brooke alias Master Ford, he tells him of his misadventure and of the anxiety that he might ‘be detected with a jealous rotten bell-wether’ (3.5.101). The comedy of the situation is emphasized when Falstaff insultingly compares Ford to a castrated ram, leading the ‘rabble of his companions’ (3.5.71), like a flock leader, without knowing that he addresses Ford himself. The image of the bell-wether here combines the horns of the cuckold, the boisterous, noisy chase and the impotency of the castrated ram. In AYL , Touchstone calls Corin the shepherd ‘bawd to a bell-wether’: That is another simple sin in you: to bring the ewes and the rams together and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to crooked-pated old cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou be’st not damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds. I cannot see else how thou shouldst scape. (3.2.75–82) (C) See Rider (1589). Benedick (A) The name of a character in MA . It derives from benedictus, meaning one ‘who is blessed’ or ‘a blessing’. Etymologically, it also refers to good speech (bene dicte). (B) Benedick’s name is the object of several sorts of verbal insulting games in MA . Beatrice and Benedick are skilful nicknamers and play with proper and common names. Beatrice calls Benedick ‘Signor Mountanto’ (1.1.28), an expression deriving from the fencing term for an upward thrust and also referring to social climbing combined with a sexual reference (‘mount on to’). Then she transforms his name into a common name designating a disease: O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease! He is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! If he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand pound ere ’a be cured. (1.1.81–5) Benedick is ironically both a disease and a medicine in the play, as appears in the exchange between Margaret, Hero and Beatrice: Beatrice: [. . .] By my troth, I am sick. Margaret: Get you some of this distilled carduus benedictus, and lay it to your heart; it is the only thing for a qualm. Hero: There thou prick’st her with a thistle. Beatrice: Benedictus? Why benedictus? You have some moral in this benedictus. (3.4.66–72)

56

besonian/bezonian

Obviously, Beatrice has ironically ‘caught the Benedick’ by falling in love with him and the remedy consists in fighting fire with fire, carduus benedictus referring to a thistle plant with a lot of healing virtues. Benedick integrates his name into an imaginary insult: The savage bull may [ie bear the savage yoke], but if ever the sensible Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull’s horns and set them in my forehead; and let me be vilely painted, and in such great letters as they write ‘Here is good horse to hire’, let them signify under my sign, ‘Here you may see Benedick, the married man.’ (1.1.244–9) Behind the name ‘Benedick’, one can see the image of the cuckold’s horns, and Don Pedro’s words at the end of the play, ‘How dost thou, Benedick, the married man?’ (5.4.98), sound all the more ironical. Yet, Benedick claims that these words will have no insulting effect on him: I’ll tell thee what, Prince; a college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humour. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram? No, if a man will be beaten with brains, ’a shall wear nothing handsome about him. In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it. For man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion. (5.4.99–107) (C) The proper name becomes a common name on several occasions in Shakespeare’s plays. In the phrase ‘this Prince is not an Edward’ (R3 3.7.70), Edward is synonymous with ‘lewd’. Cleopatra says to Antony: ‘O, my oblivion is a very Antony, / And I am all forgotten!’ (AC 1.3.92–3), Antony becoming a byword for oblivion. See also Cym, ‘every villain / Be call’d Posthumus Leonatus’ (5.5.223–4). On Carduus Benedictus, see Iyengar (55). besonian/bezonian (A) Scoundrel. From Italian bisogno, ‘needy’. The French word besogne, besoigne (work) is related to besoin (need). The word also refers to a raw recruit. In the ‘Table’ or glossary that concludes Barret’s The Theorike and Practike of Moderne Warres (1598), the word is given the following definition: ‘Bisognio or Bisonnio, . . . a Spanish or Italian word, and is, as we terme it, a raw souldier, vnexpert in his weapon, and other Military points’ (Y4, quoted by Edelman, 2000, 50). The word has come to refer to base fellows. In Cotgrave, Pagnote is defined as ‘A Bisonian, scoundrell, cowardlie or scuruie souldier; one that hath neither wit, nor courage’ while Bisongne is defined as ‘as Bison; Also, a filthie knaue, or clowne; a raskall, bisonian, base humored scoundrell.’ (B) In 2H6, Suffolk, before dying, insults his captors by calling them ‘bezonians’ in the form of an aphorism: 57

besonian/bezonian

Come, soldiers, show what cruelty ye can, That this my death may never be forgot. Great men oft die by vile Bezonians. A Roman sworder and banditto slave Murdered sweet Tully; Brutus’ bastard hand Stabbed Julius Caesar; savage islanders Pompey the Great; and Suffolk dies by pirates. (2H6 4.1.134–40) The text shows the link between the Bezonians and the ‘soldiers’, a word that is here uttered with aggressive irony. In 2H4, Pistol calls Shallow ‘Besonian’ (5.3.114) to refer to his base nature and the term is part of his pistolisms, expressions and exclamations that often include foreign words. According to Edelman (2000, 50), ‘Pistol’s predictably fustian retort “Under which king, besonian? Speak, or die” [. . .] is one of his many expressions satirizing the histrionic excesses of Edward Alleyn of the Admiral’s Men in such plays as Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, but Shakespeare could also be poking fun at the very Marlovian diction of his own early play, 2 Henry VI .’ (C) See Barrett, Y4; Edelman (2000). See Thomas de Fougasses, The generall historie of the magnificent state of Venice (1612): ‘He is not worthie to be termed a souldier, but a base Bisonian, who whilest his Captaine shall fight, doth shamefully retire from the battell. For my owne part, if I shall perceiue any one to march fearefully to the fight, I will be as great an enemie vnto him, as to the Greekes against whom wee fight’ (220). bilbo (A) A sword taking its name from the Spanish city of Bilbao, which was an armourer’s centre famous for being a place ‘where the best of blades are made’ (Blount, 1656). It is known for the elasticity and the temper of its blade. (B)

I combat challenge of this latten bilbo. Word of denial in thy labras here! Word of denial! Froth and scum, thou liest! (MW 1.1.150–2).

Here is how Pistol challenges Slender, who has accused him of having picked his purse (1.1.119; 141). Like ‘Banbury cheese’ (1.1.120), ‘latten bilbo’ (‘Latine bilbo’ in F) is an allusion to Slender’s thin body and probably to the lean physical appearance of the actor impersonating him, possibly John Sincklo. It also suggests that Slender is a tin sword, as worthless as a stage ‘dagger of lath’ (TN 4.2.125) and thus unfit for combat. ‘Latten’ is thin, inferior metal. Pistol, in his bombastic ranting may choose the word ‘Bilbo’ for its Spanish ring that can be heard in the use of the exotic labras too. The insult is part of the quarrel between the Fat and the Lean that the Falstaff plays dramatize. (C) For a more detailed description of a bilbo, see Edelman (2000), 51. On bilbo meaning ‘penis’ in other works, see Williams, 1, 106. 58

black

bitch (A) A female dog, associated with lechery. The sexual content of the term is present in Renaissance dictionaries. Hollyband gives the definition: ‘Lice, or Lyce, or chienne, a bitch: also a whore, as c’est vne faulse lice, faulse louve, or faulse chienne, she is a false whore’. Florio (1598) defines Calda as ‘a heating, a flaming, a skalding. Also hot, proude, lecherous, or saut (salt) as a bitch’ and translates Foiare as ‘to lust for beastly leacherie, to be salt as a bitch.’ For Saláce Florio has: ‘leacherous, wanton, lustfull, saut as a bitch, hot in lust, much inclined to leacherie.’ (B) Shakespeare never uses ‘bitch’ as an insult per se but the term appears twice in expressions that mean ‘son of a whore’. In KL when Kent calls Oswald ‘the son and heir of a mongrel-bitch’ (2.2.21–2), the expression is a sophisticated variation on the more common ‘whoreson’ that is used several times in the previous and following lines. In TC Ajax calls Thersites ‘Thou bitch-wolf’s son’ (2.1.10), to which Thersites answers by calling Ajax ‘thou mongrel beef-witted lord!’ (2.1.11–12). In the case of Thersites, the term relates him once more to the figure of the dog, the cynical railing satirical figure. The image of the bitch also implicitly appears in Tim in a dialogue between the Painter and Apemantus: Painter: You’re a dog! Apemantus: Thy mother’s of my generation – what’s she, if I be a dog? (1.1.203–5) (C) See Cotgrave (s’appaillarder; chaleur; lyce). Partridge (66) defines ‘bitch’ as an ‘Opprobrious term for a woman; it connotes wantonness and a general lack of shame and decency (from a rutting bitch’s attitude towards all sex-sniffing dogs)’. See Williams, 1, 108–10. Dunkling, 52–3. See brach, dog, mongrel, whoreson. black (A) The darkest colour possible, contrasted with white. The word ‘denigrate’ (from Latin dēnigrāre, to blacken) suggests that the black colour is negatively connoted. Hollyband, defines Denigrer as ‘to make blacke, to defame and report euill of one.’ When you denigrate people, you make them ‘black.’ The prejudice against the black colour is integrated into the very word. ‘Black will take no other hue’ (ODEP , 65; Tilley, B436) and ‘To wash an Ethiop (blackamoor, Moor) white’ (ODEP , 868; Tilley, E186) are proverbial expressions. (B) In Shakespeare’s plays, there are many other words than ‘black’ to refer insultingly to blackness, such as ‘swarthy’, ‘tawny’, ‘Ethiope’, ‘Moor’. Othello is successively called ‘the thicklips’ (1.1.65), ‘an old black ram’ (1.1.87), ‘a Barbary horse’ (1.1.110), ‘Moor’ (1.1.115; 124; 162; 175), ‘an extravagant and wheeling stranger’ (1.1.134). Although these words are not addressed to Othello himself, they constitute insults, as appears when Iago cunningly calls them ‘such scurvy and provoking terms / Against your honour’ (1.2.7–8). Delivered by Iago, these words of insult remain indirect and subterranean while Brabantio later expresses his disgust for Othello in clearer terms, referring to ‘the sooty bosom / of such a thing as thou’ (1.2.70–1). 59

black

In Tit, Aaron, the Moor, questions the prejudices against the black colour, in the same way as Edmund will question the prejudices against bastards in KL . Bassianus insults Tamora by denigrating her ‘Moor’: Believe me, queen, your swart Cimmerian Doth make your honour of his body’s hue, Spotted, detested and abominable. Why are you sequestered from all your train, Dismounted from your snow-white goodly steed, And wandered hither to an obscure plot, Accompanied but with a barbarous Moor, If foul desire had not conducted you? (2.2.72–9) Everything in his speech expresses the negative connotations associated with blackness. Lavinia refers to Aaron as Tamora’s ‘raven-coloured love’ (2.2.83). Aaron is a ‘coalblack Moor’ (3.2.79), who has engendered what the nurse calls ‘a devil’ (4.2.66), ‘A joyless, dismal, black and sorrowful issue’ (4.2.68). Aaron answers all the insults that target him and his race by questioning the whole system of values that lies behind the nurse’s words of disgust: Zounds, ye whore, is black so base a hue? [To the baby] Sweet blowze, you are a beauteous blossom, sure. (4.2.73–4) Calling his black baby ‘sweet blowze’, a term that means ‘ruddy fat faced wench’ (Johnson), Aaron transforms what was said to be foul into something fair. Addressing Chiron and Demetrius, Tamora’s white sons, Aaron contrasts black and white and completely reverses the scale of values: What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys, Ye white-limed walls, ye alehouse painted signs! Coal-black is better than another hue, In that it scorns to bear another hue; For all the water in the ocean Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white, Although she lave them hourly in the flood. (4.2.99–105) Blackness becomes synonymous with truth while whiteness is associated with hypocrisy. Waith (156) notes that ‘white-limed’ means ‘whitewashed’ and ‘may allude to the “whited sepulchres” of Matthew 23: 27, meaning “hypocrites” ’. Bate (224) remarks that ‘the whole passage inverts the traditional idea that white is the “natural” colour, making it on the contrary a crude artificial covering, where black is authentic and incapable of bearing false face’. 60

blasphemous

(C) See Hughes (2006), 25–9; Kim F. Hall; D’amico; Floyd-Wilson. See Cimmerian, Ethiope, Moor, tawny. blasphemous (A) Speaking profanely, impiously, foul mouthed, disrespectful to God and religion. To blaspheme literally means to ‘speak ill’, to ‘blame’ (blasmer, blâmer in French). Florio (1598) gives the following translations: ‘Essecrabile: execrable, abhominable, detestable, blasphemous, cursing’ and ‘Impio: impious, vngodly, wicked, vngratious, vnrighteous, cruell, hating god and man, blasphemous’. (B) In KJ , King Philip tells King John that he commits blasphemy after hearing his long tirade on the Pope’s usurping authority: King John:

What earthy name to interrogatories Can taste the free breath of a sacred king? Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name So slight, unworthy and ridiculous, To charge me to an answer, as the pope. Tell him this tale; and from the mouth of England Add thus much more, that no Italian priest Shall tithe or toll in our dominions; But as we, under heaven, are supreme head, So under Him that great supremacy, Where we do reign, we will alone uphold Without th’ assistance of a mortal hand: So tell the pope, all reverence set apart To him and his usurp’d authority. King Philip: Brother of England, you blaspheme in this. (3.1.73–87) The rejection of the pope’s authority is considered as blasphemy and is followed by curse and excommunication (3.1.99). King John’s words constitute a blasphemous insult to Pope Innocent and all his followers. Tem opens with a shipwreck that causes a noisy tumult on stage. The spectators can hear the storm and the roaring waves who care not ‘for the name of king’ (1.1.17), as well as the boatswain who struggles to keep the ship from crashing and gives noisy orders. Sebastian, Antonio and Gonzalo’s inactive presence on board leads to the following dialogue: Boatswain: Yet again? What do you here? Shall we give o’er and drown? Have you a mind to sink? Sebastian: A pox o’your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog. Boatswain: Work you, then. Antonio: Hang, cur! Hang, you whoreson, insolent noise-maker! (1.1.37–43) 61

blasphemous

The boatswain’s blasphemy may have been covered by the noise of the storm as there is no trace of blasphemy in the text. The word may refer to a general lack of respect from an inferior to the nobility. In any case it contributes to introducing the character of the boatswain as a ‘noise-maker’, a big-mouthed, ‘wide-chopped rascal’ (1.1.56). The whole scene suggests that language cannot be controlled in such stormy circumstances. Stormy weather, stormy language. block/ blockhead/ blockish (A) A block is a solid piece of wood. A blockhead originally is a wooden head on which a hat or wig was kept, a wooden mould used to shape felt hats, changing according to the fashion. Thus ‘blockhead’ metaphorically refers to a stupid fellow having no more brains than a blockhead. (B) In TGV , Lance and Speed deliver a stichomythic exchange: Speed: Lance: Speed: Lance:

What an ass art thou! I understand thee not. What a block art thou that thou canst not! My staff understands me. What thou sayst? Ay, and what I do too. Look thee, I’ll but lean, and my staff understands me. Speed: It stands under thee indeed. Lance: Why, stand-under and under-stand is all one. (2.5.22–9) Without the ‘head’, the block is even more material and calls for a comparison with another dull object, the ‘staff’ that ‘stands under’ Lance. Speed is thus put on the lowest level of the scale of intelligence. In R3, Richard exclaims about the people who have remained silent and refused to acclaim his name: ‘What tongueless blocks were they! Would not they speak?’ (3.7.42). This echoes Buckingham, who describes the people as ‘dumb statues or breathing stones’ (3.7.25). The word ‘block’ here both conveys a lack of wisdom and a lack of feeling. Richard’s task consists in making silent people speak, as he does with Hastings’s head, once the latter has been ‘lead to the block’ (3.4.105) and when Richard gives him words, post mortem. Richard’s ventriloquism in 3.5 is so powerful that the Mayer concludes: ‘your graces’ words shall serve / As well as I had seen and heard him [Hastings] speak’ (3.5.62–3). Ironically at the end of 3.7, he will tell these ‘blocks’ that he is ‘not made of stones’ (3.7.223). In MA , ‘block’ is again related to silence and dullness when Hero describes how Beatrice transshapes everyone’s virtues into vices: Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man – How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured – But she would spell him backward. If fair-faced, She would swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why Nature, drawing of an antique, Made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed; If low, an agate very vilely cut; 62

blasphemous

If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side out, And never gives to truth and virtue that Which simpleness and merit purchaseth. (3.1.59–70) The term refers to an insensible object, as is the case when Benedick exclaims: ‘O, she misused me past the endurance of a block!’ (2.1.219). Beatrice also uses the term at the beginning of the play when she tells the messenger that Benedick ‘Wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat: it ever changes with the next block’ (1.1.70–2), thus probably suggesting that Benedick’s friends are blockheads. In JC , Murellus, one of the tribunes, insults the handicraftsmen because they ‘strew flowers in his way / That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood’ (1.1.51–2): ‘You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!’ (1.1.36). Murellus and Flavius want to ‘drive away the vulgar from the streets’ (1.1.71), calling the commoners ‘blocks’, here meaning that they are ‘senseless’, that is both incapable of feeling and wisdom. Murellus insists on the people’s quickly forgetting Pompey: ‘O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, / Knew you not Pompey?’ (1.1.37–8). The word ‘blockhead’ only appears in Cor in a dialogue between the citizens: 2 Citizen: 3 Citizen:

2 Citizen: 3 Citizen:

[. . .] Which way do you judge my wit would fly? Nay, your wit will not so soon out as another man’s will; ’tis strongly wedged up in a blockhead. But if it were at liberty, ’twould, sure, southward. Why that way? To lose itself in a fog where, being three parts melted away with rotten dews, the fourth would return for conscience’ sake, to help to get thee a wife. (2.3.24–32)

The joke, that the second citizen has problems understanding, is not clear but suggests that even with a little wit wedged in a blockhead, one can get a wife. Here ‘blockhead’ conveys a possible etymological origin which relates the English ‘block’ to the German bloch meaning ‘closure, obstruction, shut place’ (See OED and DHLF ). The citizen’s wit is described as being ‘blocked’, enclosed in a shut place, the ‘block-head’, a head that blocks the wit, like a fortress or ‘block house’. The word ‘blockish’ is only used once in TC when Ulysses refers to ‘blockish Ajax’ (1.3.376), meaning sottish, foolish. (C) See Dekker, Seven Deadly Sins of London (1606): ‘the blocke for his heade alters faster then the Feltmaker can fitte him’ (32), quoted by McEachern, 154. Dunkling, 53–4. For ‘block’ meaning ‘shut’, see Thomas: ‘Prōpugnācŭlum’ defined as ‘A fortresse, a strong hold, a bulwark, a defense, a block house’. See also Florio (1598), ‘Bastia’ and Cotgrave (bloquer). 63

blood-sucker

blood-sucker (A) An animal that feeds on blood, such as a leech. Elyot (1538) reads ‘Hirudo, inis, a horseleche, or blode sucker.’ A blood-guilty, bloodthirsty person, someone who sheds the blood of another, a murderer. (B) In 2H6, Warwick calls Suffolk ‘Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men!’ (3.2.226), referring to the murder of Gloucester in his sleep. Knowles (269) notes that the term appears in Hall (1548) where the Duke of York denounces the ‘bludsuckers of the nobilitie’ (Clxiiiv). In R3, Grey, being led to death by Ratcliffe, tells him ‘God bless the Prince from all the pack of you / A knot you are of damned bloodsuckers’ (3.3.4–5). The metaphor is echoed by Rivers when he addresses the prison: O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison, Fatal and ominous to noble peers! Within the guilty closure of thy walls, Richard the Second here was hacked to death; And for more slander of thy dismal seat, We give to thee our guiltless blood to drink. (3.3.8–13) The prison of Pomfret becomes a blood-sucker. bloodhound (A) A large, very keen-scented dog (Canis sanguinarius), often used for tracking large game, stolen cattle, and human fugitives. (B) In 2H4, Mistress Quickly calls the Beadle who has come to arrest her ‘you starved bloodhound’ (5.4.27), an expression that sounds comically oxymoronic as bloodhounds are supposed to be stout dogs. The text here refers to the thin actor, probably Sincklo, who was playing the part. (C) For a description of the bloodhound, see Topsell (1607), 165–6. See Caius’ treatise on dogs (1576). See anatomy, cur, dog. bloody (A) Full of blood, covered in blood, cruel. In Shakespeare’s days, the term does not have the offensive intensifying role that it has from the end of the eighteenth century. It is not yet the intensifier expletive that we know. In Thomas’s dictionary, the word is associated with other derogatory terms: ‘Spurcus, & Spurcissimus, a, um. Vncleane, filthie, vnpure, stincking, cruell, bloody, dishonest, vile: barren, drie, foule and great.’ The word is not in itself offensive but it appears in insulting contexts. (B) The history plays are so full of blood that the word ‘bloody’ crops us numerous times among terms of insult. In 1H6, Joan of Arc, hoping to move her opponents, exclaims ‘I am with child, ye bloody homicides’ (5.3.62). In 2H6, York calls King Henry VI ‘blood-bespotted Neapolitan, / Outcast of Naples, England’s bloody scourge!’ (5.1.117–18), drawing a link between the disastrous blood alliance of Margaret and Henry and the bloody wars that plague England. In 3H6, Margaret laments and curses Prince Edward’s murderers: 64

blown/swollen

What’s worse than murderer, that I may name it? No, no, my heart will burst an if I speak – And I will speak, that so my heart may burst. Butchers and villains! Bloody cannibals! How sweet a plant have you untimely cropped! You have no children, butchers; [. . .] (5.5.58–63) Child-killers are called ‘butchers’ and ‘bloody cannibals’, ‘deathsmen’ (5.5.67). In R3, the word is used numerous times to draw the picture of Richard as a cruel, murderous tyrant. Lord Hastings exclaims ‘O bloody Richard! Miserable England!’ (3.4.102). Richmond calls Richard ‘The wretched, bloody and usurping boar’ (5.2.7) and ‘A bloody tyrant and a homicide; / One raised in blood, and one in blood established’ (5.3.246–7) before concluding that ‘The day is ours; the bloody dog is dead’ (5.5.2), thus fulfilling both Queen Margaret’s dream that she may live and say ‘The dog is dead’ (4.4.78) and the Duchess’s prophecy ‘Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end’ (4.4.195). In MV , Gratiano tells Shylock that his desires ‘Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous’ (4.1.137). This expresses cruelty but also reflects the association of the usurer with the figure of the blood-sucker. In Ham, Hamlet, unpacking his ‘heart with words’, calls his father’s murderer ‘Bloody, bawdy villain, / Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! (2.2.515–16). (C) On the evolution of the word ‘bloody’ that ‘has been debased’ (90), see ‘The word bloody’ in Partridge, Word, words, words! (1933), 79–90 and Montagu, chap. 13, ‘Bloody: The natural History of a Word’, 239–77. Partridge (1933) states that ‘bloody no longer chills the blood’ (80). In Shakespeare’s plays, it still did. On Jews and the ‘blood accusation’, see Trachtenberg, 140–55. blown/swollen (A) Inflated, swollen. Cotgrave has ‘Boursouffleure: f. A swelling of the guts, or of any other part, by windinesse; any swelling, puffing, or blowing vp.’ Nicot reads ‘Boursouflure. Emphysema, C’est vne enflure venteuse, Tumor’; ‘Boursoufler, Insufflare, Sufflatione tumefacere. Comme font les bouchiers, pour plus aiséement escorcher les bestes, ou pour faire apparoistre le bestial plus gros et rebondy’ (which is what butchers do to slaughter the beasts or to make them appear bigger than they are). (B) In 1H4, Hal plays the part of his kingly father chiding his ‘ungracious boy’: There is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man; a tun of man is thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that boltinghutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly [. . .]. (2.4.435–41) ‘Dropsies’ refers to a disease that bloated the body. The inventiveness of the insults is characteristic of the flyting sequences (ritual exchanges of abuse) that are at the heart of 65

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1H4. This explains why Hal greets Falstaff with ‘How now, blown Jack? How now, quilt?’ (4.2.48). The term both confirms that Falstaff is a creature of bombast (1H4 2.4.318) and refers to his being out of breath, due to his fatness. In MW , Falstaff is called a ‘puffed man’ (5.5.151), which also conveys the image of Falstaff’s inflated body. (C) On fatness and the medieval vision of the body being puffed up with wind and air, see Vigarello (2008), 33–5. Vigarello quotes Jean de Salisbury’s poem on the belly and the members where the belly is described as ‘soufflet remply de vent infect’ (bellows full of foul wind). On the carnival world of Henry IV based on the Bakhtinian ‘praiseabuse’ and the grotesque body, see Laroque (1998), and Hall (1998). boar/boar-pig (A) The male of the swine, considered as emblematic of fierceness and wildness (Maplet, 73v). In heraldic symbolism, the boar represents chivalric courage. (B) The symbolism of the boar is perverted in R3 where the image, which is constantly associated with Richard, becomes insulting. The white boar is Richard’s emblem but it becomes synonymous with cruelty and savagery rather than valour. The first offensive use of the image appears when Anne calls him ‘hedgehog!’ (1.2.104), referring to Richard’s humped back, bristled like a boar and playing on the word ‘hog’. A little later, it is Margaret who calls him ‘Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog’ (1.3.227). As Siemon notes, the expression suggests that Richard ‘attacks lineal succession as a hog unroots plants’ (183). Stanley then tells ‘That in the sty of the most deadly boar / My son George Stanley is franked up in hold’ (4.5.2–3) while Richmond describes Richard as a boar in very precise terms at the end of the play: The wretched, bloody and usurping boar, That spoiled your summer fields and fruitful vines, Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough In your embowelled bosoms, this foul swine Is now even in the centre of this isle, (5.2.7–11) The boar becomes a symbol of destructive savagery, so much so that in KL , Goneril is said to have ‘boarish’ fangs (3.7.57). Transforming Richard into a boar, the play suggests that the final battle is a boar hunt, as is shown by Laurence Olivier’s film version (1955). Richard Loncraine’s 1995 version makes Richard’s boarish aspect truly visible in nightmarish sequences. In 2H4, the term is used in an affectionate tone when Doll Tearsheet calls Falstaff ‘Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig’ (2.4.230). Here the word conveys the carnival world of food, Falstaff being transformed into foodstuff. Doll alludes to the young boar that was traditionally eaten during the feast of Saint Bartholomew (24 August) whereas Hal called Falstaff ‘the old boar’ (2.2.139). With the words ‘little’, ‘tidy’ and even ‘whoreson’, the line becomes a phrase of endearment that goes together with the ‘brawn’ to which Falstaff is associated. The word ‘brawn’ refers to the fleshy 66

bolting-hutch

parts and muscles of the body and to animal muscle or flesh as food (OED ) but it more precisely refers to the flesh of the boar that is turned into food. It is used in an insulting context in 1H4 when Hal, before Falstaff arrives on stage, offers to put on a show: ‘I prithee, call in Falstaff. I’ll play Percy, and that damned brawn shall play Dame Mortimer his wife. ‘Rivo!’ says the drunkard. Call in Ribs; call in Tallow’ (2.4.106–8). Contrary to what Fitzpatrick writes, Shakespeare here uses the term ‘brawn’ to refer to food and Falstaff is associated with the cooked flesh of the boar, which announces Doll Tearsheet’s Bakhtinian words of praise-abuse in 2H4 2.4.230. Lord Bardolph calls him ‘Harry Monmouth’s brawn’ (2H4 1.1.19) at the very beginning of the play. Thus the image is used here to suggest the carnival world of the play. (C) For a description of the boar, see Maplet, 73r–74v and Topsell (1607), 694–705. Fitzpatrick (2011, 31) describes the Bartholomew boar as ‘Pork sold at the annual fair held in West Smithfield, London’. On brawn, see Boorde’s Dyetary of Health where the section entitled ‘Of brawne’ reads: ‘Brawne is an vsual meate in wynter amonges Englysshe men, it is harde of dygestyon the brawne of a wylde bore, is muche more better than the drawne of a tame bore, yf a man eate nother of them bothe it shall neuer do hym harme’ (F3r). On brawn as muscle, see Iyengar, 46–7; on brawn as food, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 53–4. Bolingbroke (A) King Henry IV (1367–1413), before becoming king, was often referred to by the surname ‘Bolingbroke’, spelt ‘Bullingbrooke’ in Q 1H4 at 1.3.136 and ‘Bullenbrooke’ at 1.3.244, from the name of the castle where he was born in Lincolnshire. (B) In 1H4, Hotspur keeps calling King Henry IV ‘Bolingbroke’, which amounts to negating his kingship. Hotspur unpacks his heart once his target has left the stage, as if his words could hurt in absentia. He expostulates against ‘this unthankful King’, ‘this ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke’ (1.3.135–6), ‘this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke’ (1.3.175). He goes on: ‘All studies here I solemnly defy, / Save how to gall and pinch this Bolingbroke’ (1.3.226–7), then explaining that Bolingbroke is in himself an insult to him: Why, look you, I am whipped and scourged with rods, Nettled and stung with pismires, when I hear Of this vile politician Bolingbroke. (1.3.237–9) Hotspur not only negates Henry’s kingship but also transforms a proper name into a common name by regularly using the derogatory demonstrative ‘this’. bolting-hutch (A) A trough used to collect sifted flour. The word derives from the French huche, meaning ‘a chest, a kneading trough’ (Hollyband) and ‘bo(u)lt’ (French bulter, bluter) meaning ‘to sift’. In The World Runs on Wheels (1623), John Taylor notes that ‘There is almost nothing, but when it is worne out, it will serue for some vse’ and gives the example ‘of an old Barrell’ that can be used as ‘a bolting hutch’ (B8v), thus suggesting that the bolting hutch is barrel-shaped. 67

bolting-hutch

(B) In 1H4, Falstaff is called a ‘bolting-hutch of beastliness’ (2.4.437–8), which is one of the numerous reifying insults that associate him with food and that turn him into a huge container, a storing vessel. He is also called ‘greasy tallow-catch’ (2.4.221), ‘a tun of man’ (2.4.436), ‘that trunk of humours’ (2.4.437), ‘that huge bombard of sack’ (2.4.439). In 2H4, he is transformed into ‘a huge full hogshead’ (2H4, 2.4.60–1) and a ‘hulk’ (2H4, 2.4.63). (C) See ‘Bolt’ in Fitzpatrick (2011), 49–50. bombard (A) A leather vessel, a jug or bottle for alcohol, ‘probably from some resemblance to the early cannons’ (OED ). Cotgrave has for bombarde ‘A Bumbard, or murthering peece.’ Leroy (1594) has: ‘The Canon at the first was called a Bombard, for the noise which it maketh’ (V3v). Paré’s The method of curing wounds made by gunshot (transl. in 1617), reads: ‘this engine was first called Bombard, by reason of the sound that it causeth: which the Latines conformably doe call Bombus’ (B2r). In Latin, bombus refers to a buzz or humming sound. (B) In 1H4, Falstaff is called ‘that huge bombard of sack’ (2.4.439), which is one of the numerous insulting metaphors that transform him into a vessel or container. Falstaff is nicknamed ‘Sir John Sack and Sugar’ (1.2.108) by Poins and is associated, from his very first dialogue with Hal, with ‘drinking of old sack’ (1.2.2). He is also called ‘a tun of man’ (2.4.436). His name, Jack Falstaff relates him to a tankard, a vessel as a Jack is ‘A vessel for liquor (either for holding liquor, or for drinking from); orig. and usually of waxed leather coated outside with tar or pitch (= black jack n.2 1); a (leathern) jug or tankard’ (OED ). The military meaning of the word that refers to a big noisy cannon may not be absent as Falstaff is a noisy braggart. In Tem, the two meanings overlap when Trinculo comments on a brewing storm saying that ‘Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor’ (2.2.20–1). (C) For the military meaning of the word, see Edelman (2000), 54–5. bombast (A) The soft down of the cotton-plant; cotton used as padding or stuffing for clothes, especially quilts and jackets. Deriving from the French word bombace (bonbace, banbace, banbauce) which means cotton or cotton wool (bourre de coton, see Godefroy), the word also refers to inflated, high sounding language. (B) In 1H4, Hal playfully questions Falstaff: ‘How now, my sweet creature of bombast? How long is’t ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own knee?’ (2.4.317–19). This is an example of what Bakhtin described as the ‘praise-abuse’ characterizing the language of carnival. The expression, like ‘woolsack’ (2.4.129) and ‘quilt’ later (4.2.48), emphasizes Falstaff’s corpulent body by presenting it as being stuffed. The image also plays on Falstaff’s nickname, Jack, that appears in the previous line, ‘Here comes lean Jack; here comes bare-bone’ (2.4.317), a jack being a soldier’s quilted jacket. Falstaff is also called ‘that stuffed cloak-bag of guts’ (2.4.439–40) and ‘a bag of flax’ (MW 5.5.150). Falstaff’s bombastic aspect applies to his body as much as to his high-flown language. In Oth, Iago plays on the same double level of meaning, when he describes Othello ‘with a bombast circumstance / Horribly stuffed with epithets of war’ (1.1.12–13). 68

bottle

borrowed (A) Not one’s own. Taken on credit, used temporarily. Hence assumed, counterfeit, put on, not true. (B) KJ starts with an insult based on the word ‘borrowed’: King John: Chatillon:

Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us? Thus, after greeting, speaks the King of France In my behaviour to the majesty, The borrow’d majesty, of England here. Queen Eleanor: A strange beginning: ‘borrow’d majesty’! (1.1.1–5) Chatillon then explains the meaning of the word: Philip of France, in right and true behalf Of thy deceased brother Geoffrey’s son, Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim To this fair island and the territories: To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, Desiring thee to lay aside the sword Which sways usurpingly these several titles, And put the same into young Arthur’s hand, Thy nephew and right royal sovereign. (1.1.7–15) ‘Borrowed’ here means ‘usurped’ and suggests that King John is no king. As Braunmuller (120) notes, ‘majesty’ both means sovereignty and external magnificence befitting a sovereign while ‘England’ both refers to the nation and its king. The King of France is calling the King of England a usurper through his embassy, Chatillon, while King John reaffirms his ‘strong possession’ (1.1.39). bottle (A) A flagon, a vessel with a narrow neck, used to hold liquids, that was originally made of leather. (B) The word is used in a few insults. In 2H4 Doll Tearsheet insults Pistol, calling him ‘you bottle-ale rascal’ (2.4.129). Humphreys (2H4, 71) notes that the meaning is uncertain, perhaps ‘cheap’, or ‘small beer’, or ‘frothy’ and quotes Marston’s Scourge of Villanie, Satire VI , 1–2 which has ‘Why, thou bottle-ale, / Thou barmy froth!’. Weis (2H4, 176) only glosses ‘Perhaps meaning cheap ale’. Elam (TN , 214) considers that ‘bottle-ale houses’ (TN 2.3.27) means ‘low-class taverns’. In H5, Gower partly explains the insult when he describes such ‘fellows’ as Pistol, who has just gone out after giving him the fig: And this they con perfectly in the phrase of war, which they trick up with newtuned oaths; and what a beard of the General’s cut and a horrid suit of the camp will do among foaming bottles and ale-washed wits is wonderful to be thought on. (3.6.73–8) 69

bottle

Doll describes Pistol as a foaming (cursing) bottle and an ale-washed wit. In Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament, Vertumnus describes Bacchus as ‘god fatbacke’ and summons: ‘Baron of dubble [double] beere and bottle ale / Come in & shew thy nose that is nothing pale’ (Works, 3, 264). Considering the bawdy innuendoes that pervade the scene, one can suggest that the image of the frothy bottle of ale associated with Pistol may have a sexual meaning. Alexander Nowel is mentioned in Thomas Fuller’s 1662 History of the worthies of England as being the inventor of the first bottled ale: ‘Without offence it may be remembred, that leaving a Bottle of Ale (when fishing) in the Grasse; he found it some dayes after, no Bottle, but a Gun, such the sound at the opening thereof: And this is believed (Casualty is Mother of more Inventions than Industry) the Original of bottled-Ale in England’ (115). Comparing the sound of the opening bottle with the sound of a gun, it is tempting to consider that the ‘bottle-ale rascal’ may contain an acoustic dimension that corresponds to the sound associated with Pistol’s name. At the end of the play Doll insults the beadle who has come to arrest her by calling him ‘you blue-bottle rogue’ (2H4 5.4.20–1), referring to the fact that Elizabethan beadles wore blue coats. The only ‘bottle’ that can be associated with this kill-joy, this ‘filthy famished correctioner’ (5.4.21) is the ‘blue-bottle’. It is probably not fortuitous that this insult should contain the only occurrence of the term ‘blue-bottle’ in the Shakespearean corpus, in a play that depicts the world of the tavern. In R3, the bottle appears when Richard is called ‘that bottled spider’ (1.3.241) by Queen Margaret. Siemon (185) notes that the term means ‘swollen, protuberant’. It refers to the swollen shape of a bottle as well as to a body that is swollen with venom (see also Hammond, 164). Jowett (186) notes that ‘bottles would have been rounded and made of leather’. The insult is followed by the image of the ‘poisonous bunch-backed toad’ (1.3.245), which confirms the idea. The two insults are repeated by Queen Elizabeth later in the play (4.4.81) and are thus emphasized as memorable, which explains why Antony Sher decided to play Richard as a ‘bottled spider’ in the 1984 Royal Shakespeare Company production, with modern crutches and long sleeves giving the impression that he was a six-legged insect and with a bottle-like hunch back. (C) In Nashe’s Pierce Penniless (1592), the persona addresses ‘good Brother Bottleale’, meaning one who haunts taverns (Works, 1, 214). On brewing of bottle-ale, see Markham, Countrey contentments, or The English huswife (1623), 229. On ale and alehouses, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 3–8; on ‘ale-wife’, see Findlay (2010), 5; on ‘ale’ as the ‘popular drink for the less well-off’, see Innes, 8–9. bow-case (A) A long thin case in which unstrung bows are kept. (B) In 1H4, Falstaff calls Hal ‘you bow-case’ (2.4.241) in a string of insults that returns Hal’s epithets targeting Falstaff’s great size. The word obviously mocks Hal’s thinness. In what Laroque has termed the battle of Carnival and Lent, referring to Brueghel’s famous painting, Hal definitely represents Lent. Bevington (1H4, 190) underlines the sexual meaning of the image. Side by side with ‘you tailor’s yard’, ‘you sheath’, and ‘you vile standing tuck’, the ‘bowcase’ is suggestive of the female anatomy 70

bowels

and thus of male impotency, the word ‘case’ often referring to the vagina and ‘bow’ often referring to the penis (see Williams). Lean body means sexual insufficiency and immaturity. In 2H4, Falstaff confirms this idea by alluding to ‘the juvenal the Prince [. . .], whose chin is not yet fledge’ (ie not yet covered with down) (1.2.19–20). (C) On H4 and Carnival and Lent, see Laroque (1998); on the sexual meaning of ‘bow’ and ‘case’, see Williams, 1,138–9; 211–13. bowels (A) The intestines, the inwards, the entrails, the guts; organs usually thought to be the seat of feelings. Hillman (1997) calls the period from the early sixteenth century to the early seventeenth ‘the visceral century’ (83) to suggest that it is very much preoccupied with the study of human anatomy, as Sawday’s study of ‘the body emblazoned’ has shown. (B) In TC , Thersites calls Ajax, who is beating him, ‘thou thing of no bowels’ (2.1.48) in a passage that denies him any kind of wit: Ay, do, do! Thou sodden-witted lord, thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; an asinico may tutor thee. Thou scurvy-valiant ass, thou art here but to thrash Trojans, and thou art bought and sold among those of any wit, like a barbarian slave. If thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel and tell what thou art by inches, thou thing of no bowels, thou! (2.1.42–8) All the editors consider that the insult here means that Ajax is a cruel, unfeeling wretch, lacking compassion. Bevington notes that ‘bowels’ means ‘sensitivity, human feeling’ (TC , 185); Dawson translates ‘bowels’ into ‘sympathy’ (175); Muir considers that ‘of no bowels’ means ‘without compassion’ (86) and Palmer suggests that ‘bowels’ means ‘feelings’ (53). Yet in context this does not make much sense because what Thersites is regularly targeting is Ajax’s lack of wit, spirit and human substance rather than his mere lack of feeling or compassion. This meaning can be found in Wilson’s Christian Dictionarie (1612) where the first figurative meaning of ‘bowels’ that is mentioned is ‘The most secret thoughtes and cogitations of the minde’, a meaning referring to Prov 20:27. Thersites denounces Ajax’s lack of inner substance through the use of a physical term that belongs to his ‘anatomizing’ Ajax, to his ‘telling’ what he is ‘by inches’, which reflects a period that is much interested in discovering the secrets of the ‘insides of the human frame’ (Hillman, 1997, 85). Thersites here plays the anatomist. Hillman describes TC as Shakespeare’s ‘most sceptical play’, which manifests the ‘desire to penetrate to the body’s deepest layers’ (87) and notes that the play ‘reintroduces, as it were, the interior of the body into the Trojan legend’ (88). The insult ‘thing of no bowels’ contributes to denying any substance to the character and hints at the mere ‘citationality’ (Hillman, 89) of the hero Ajax who is presented, like Agamemnon, as a mere mythological image without any ‘matter’. This emptying process goes on a few lines later: Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! His evasions have ears thus long. I have bobbed his brain more than he has beat my bones. I will buy nine sparrows 71

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for a penny, and his pia mater is not worth the ninth part of a sparrow. This lord, Achilles – Ajax, who wears his wit in his belly and his guts in his head – I’ll tell you what I say of him. (2.1.66–72) The rest of the scene obsessively deprives Ajax of any wit or brain. The image of the bowels is, moreover, particularly relevant in a play that associates Ajax with ‘a jakes’ and draws attention to all kinds of bodily humours such as spleen (1.3.178) and gall (1.3.193, 237). (C) For a description of the bowels, see Batman vppon Bartholome, 58v–59v (cap. 42); La Primaudaye (1594), 347–52 (chap. 62); Wilson (1612), 37. For a study of visceral knowledge and the presence of the entrails in Shakespeare’s plays, especially in TC , see Hillman (1997) On the Renaissance fascination for the opening of the human body as a source of knowledge, see Sawday. See paunch, solus. boy (A) The common meaning, male child or youth, emerged later than the original meanings of ‘male servant’ and ‘churl’, thus the insulting potential of the word is very old. The word is often used as a term of abuse that may derive from the French emboié, embuié, which means ‘fettered’ and refers to a person in chains. Another possible, though less popular, etymology mentions the French baiasse, boiasse, referring to a female servant (see Godefroy). Thus as a term of insult, ‘boy’ means ‘A male person of low birth or status’, ‘a worthless fellow, a knave, a rogue, a wretch’ (OED 2). (B) Shakespeare uses the term many times as an insult with various meanings and connotations. The word appears in the opening scene of AYL during the quarrel between the two brothers: Orlando:

Oliver: Orlando:

I know you are my eldest brother, and in the gentle condition of blood you should so know me. The courtesy of nations allows you my better in that you are the first-born, but the same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us. I have as much of my father in me as you, albeit I confess your coming before me is nearer to his reverence. What, boy! Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this! (1.1.41–51)

When Oliver calls his brother ‘boy’ (1.1.49), probably adding to the word a rude or insulting gesture, the term contemptuously refers to Orlando being younger and also to living under the unfair law of primogeniture that Montrose studies in his article on ‘The state of a brother’ (28–54). The word ‘boy’ articulates his living in a state of ‘servitude’ (1.1.22), a state against which Orlando is rebelling at the beginning of the play. It shows that Oliver considers his younger brother as a knave and a worthless 72

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wretch and it ironically prefigures Orlando’s proudly quoting the name of his father: ‘I am no villain. I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys’ (1.1.53–4). The full meaning of the insult ‘Boy’ emerges when considered in the context of the conflict between elder and younger brother. In MA the term conveys a lack of maturity and manliness when the old Leonato and then the old Antonio address Claudio in a comic sequence of challenge: Leonato: Canst thou so doff me? Thou hast kill’d my child; If thou kill’st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man. Antonio: He shall kill two of us, and men indeed. But that’s no matter, let him kill one first. Win me and wear me! Let him answer me. Come, follow me, boy. Come, sir boy, come, follow me, Sir boy! I’ll whip you from your foining fence! Nay, as I am a gentleman, I will. (5.1.78–85) The comedy of the scene comes partly from the way in which Antonio echoes Leonato’s first speech by repeating the word ‘boy’ three times. Then Antonio calls Claudio and Don Pedro ‘boys’ (5.1.91) and ‘scambling, outfacing, fashion-monging boys’ (5.1.94), which amounts to saying that they are worthless but also takes all its comic meaning in the context of a scene which dramatizes the battle of Old Age and Youth. Benedick uses the same term, ‘boy’ (5.1.180) when he challenges Claudio in a much darker sequence that seems to restore the serious offensive potential of such an insult. He then calls Claudio ‘my Lord Lack-Beard’ (5.1.187), which again throws into relief both Claudio’s young age and his unmanliness. In Rom, Shakespeare also represents the fight between Youth and Old Age when Capulet chides Tybalt for his lack of respect for seniors by calling him ‘goodman boy’ (1.5.76). As Weis notes, the expression is doubly insulting since ‘goodman denotes a rank below that of gentleman and boy is the equivalent of “whippersnapper” ’ (Rom, 172). In the same scene, Capulet tells Tybalt ‘You are a saucy boy’ (1.5.82) and ‘You are a princox, go / Be quiet’ (5.1.85–6), two expressions which suggest he is regarded as an insolent boy lacking courtesy and respect for his elders and betters. The insult is all the more striking since Capulet has just described Romeo as ‘a virtuous and well-governed youth’ (1.5.68). In the duelling scene, in order to force him to fight, Tybalt calls Romeo ‘Boy’ (3.1.65) after calling him ‘villain’ (3.1.60), two insults that Romeo refuses to answer. The last words that Tybalt utters in the play transform Romeo the ‘portly gentleman’ (1.5.65) into a ‘wretched boy’ (3.1.132). Ironically, Romeo uses the same word when he challenges Paris at the end of the play: ‘Wilt thou provoke me? Then have at thee, boy!’ (5.3.70). Friar Laurence goes on questioning the character’s manliness and honour when he asks Romeo who offers to stab himself ‘Art thou a man?’ (3.3.109). He then transforms him into a ‘freakish hermaphrodite’ (Weis, Rom, 265) by telling him ‘Thy tears are womanish’ (3.3.109) and by describing him as an 73

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‘Unseemly woman in a seeming man’ (3.3.111). Tears are womanish and boyish in Shakespeare’s plays. In KJ , the Bastard calls Lewis the Dauphin ‘a beardless boy, a cock’red silken wanton’ (5.1.69–70) in absentia before delivering an insulting speech in his face: Now hear our English king, For thus his royalty doth speak in me: He is prepar’d, and reason too he should – This apish and unmannerly approach, This harness’d masque and unadvised revel, This unhair’d sauciness and boyish troops, The king doth smile at; and is well prepar’d To whip this dwarfish war, this pigmy arms, From out the circle of his territories – (5.2.128–36) The Bastard applies the boyish figure of the Dauphin to the Dauphin’s whole army. In AC , Shakespeare again dramatizes the quarrel between generations as Caesar complains that Antony calls him ‘boy’ (4.1.1). As a matter of fact, Antony constantly emphasizes Caesar’s youth by referring to ‘the young man’ (3.11.62), ‘the boy Caesar’ (3.13.17) who ‘wears the rose / Of youth upon him’ (3.13.20–1), ‘the young Roman boy’ (4.12.48). At the end of Cor, Aufidius publicly humiliates the martial hero Coriolanus by calling him ‘boy’ and obviously creates an insulting effect: Aufidius:

Coriolanus: Aufidius: Coriolanus: Aufidius: Coriolanus:

1 Lord: 74

[. . .] But at his nurse’s tears He whined and roared away your victory, That pages blushed at him, and men of heart Looked wondering each at others. Hear’st thou, Mars? Name not the god, thou boy of tears. Ha? No more. Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart Too great for what contains it. ‘Boy’? O slave! – Pardon me, lords, ’tis the first time that ever I was forced to scold. Your judgments, my grave lords, Must give this cur the lie and his own notion – Who wears my stripes impressed upon him, that Must bear my beating to his grave – shall join To thrust the lie unto him. Peace both and hear me speak.

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Coriolanus:

Cut me to pieces, Volsces men and lads; Stain all your edges on me. ‘Boy’, false hound! If you have writ your annals true, ’tis there That, like an eagle in a dovecote, I Fluttered your Volscians in Corioles. Alone I did it. ‘Boy’! (5.6.99–117)

The figure of the boy is associated with tears and whining, which are signs of weakness and cowardice. Parker (Cor, 355) notes that Coriolanus had shown his scorn of ‘schoolboys’ tears’ in 3.2.117. Both Parker and Holland (Cor, 407) emphasize the impact of the word and its effect on stage. Parker mentions the 1959 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre production (dir. Peter Hall) where Coriolanus/Olivier’s reaction revealed a ‘shock of recognition that showed its accuracy’ (Parker quoting Laurence Kitchin, MidCentury Drama, London, Faber, 1960, 141). The insult suggests that Coriolanus is and remains his mummy’s boy throughout the play, an image that Martius cannot digest. He repeats the term as if it were stuck in his throat. The punctuation of the final ‘boy’ is different in F (‘it, Boy.’) which leaves the readers two possibilities: either Coriolanus still quotes a word that he does not manage to swallow or he turns the insult back at Aufidius, reversing the parts and calling him ‘Boy’. In any case Coriolanus’ outraged reaction tends to confirm the content of Aufidius’ insult. It ironically recalls Dogberry’s reaction to being called an ass in MA as, by repeating the word, Coriolanus, like Dogberry ironically feeds its insulting impact and makes it so memorable that the audience feels that Coriolanus is indeed a boy, in the same way that Dogberry is indeed an ass. Parker also suggests that the word may refer to social inferiority and ‘carry overtones of the sexually passive partner in a homosexual liaison’ (Cor, 355), as is the case in TC when Thersites retorts to Patroclus who has just called him ‘adversity’ (ie perversity, contrariety): Thersites: Patroclus: Thersites:

Prithee, be silent, boy. I profit not by thy talk. Thou art thought to be Achilles’ male varlet. Male varlet, you rogue? What’s that? Why, his masculine whore. (5.1.14–17)

By describing Patroclus as a ‘boy’ subject to ‘preposperous discoveries’ (ie sodomical acts) (5.1.23), Thersites answers the word ‘adversity’ (5.1.12), calling Patroclus, as it were, ‘adversity, yourself’. This sexual meaning may be present in Achilles’ words when he calls for Hector ‘Come, come, thou boy-queller’ (5.5.47). Bevington (TC , 341) notes that Achilles is here looking for ‘an excuse to call Hector a coward’ as in Homer and in the play, Patroclus is a warrior and is not like the boys guarding the soldiers’ luggage who are ‘defencelessly slaughtered’ in H5. Yet the insult ‘boy-killer’ probably also contains the sexual meaning of the term ‘boy’ that Thersites has underlined when calling ‘Achilles’ masculine whore’ ‘boy’. Hector has not killed a boy but Achilles’ ‘boy’. 75

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In TS , Sly tells the hostess ‘I’ll not budge an inch, boy’ (Ind. 13), which is the only Shakespearean instance of addressing a woman as ‘boy’. The word may here be a term of endearment, meaning ‘old chap’ but Hodgdon (TS , 140) notes that it probably calls attention to the boy actor playing the part. This gender issue is present in AC as well where Cleopatra anticipates the abuse she will have to bear if she yields to Caesar: ‘and I shall see / Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness / I’th’ posture of a whore’ (5.2.218–20), a phrase that sounds all the more ironical since it is delivered by the boy actor playing Cleopatra’s part. (C) On the sexual meaning of the word ‘boy’ as ‘passive homosexual’, see Rubinstein, 32–3. brach (A) A bitch-hound; a kind of hound that hunts by scent, the word probably being connected with Latin flagare, meaning ‘to smell’ (DHLF ). Caius (7) defines the ‘Brache’ (‘Rache’ in Scottish) as what ‘Englishmen call bytches, belonging to the hunting kind of dogges’. Rider (1589) has: ‘A bitch, or brach. Canis fœmina.’ (B) In TC , Thersites calls Patroclus ‘Achilles’ brach’ (2.1.111). Bevington (TC , 188) glosses ‘bitch hound, fawning hanger-on; prostitute, catamite’ and notes that Q and F have ‘brooch’ instead of ‘brach’ but that an error is likely as the compositor or copyist may have read ‘broch’. ‘Brach’ makes more sense in a play that teems with images of dogs and curs. Achilles acknowledges the insulting potential of the word by commenting: ‘There’s for you, Patroclus’ (2.1.113). The insult may suggest that Patroclus’ previous line ‘No more words, Thersites. Peace!’ (2.1.110) must be delivered in a loud voice, as if he were baying at Thersites. In 1H4, when Lady Percy asks Hotspur to ‘Lie still, ye thief, and hear the lady sing in Welsh’, he answers ‘I had rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in English’ (3.1.231–2). In TS the Lord refers to the ‘deepmouthed brach’ (Ind. 1.17) while in KL the Fool alludes to ‘the Lady brach’ (1.4.110), probably referring to Goneril or Regan. Edgar includes the brach in a series of dogs: ‘Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim, / Hound of spaniel, brach or him’ (3.6.65–6). Foakes (KL , 291) considers that it is not very plausible that ‘brach and him’ should refer to the she-dog versus the male dog as ‘no similar use has been noticed’ but in Caius’ Of Englishe Dogges the brach is associated with the ‘shee sex’ (7). (C) In Corrozet’s Memorable conceits (1557), translated in 1602, the quarrelsome and noisy wife is compared to a brach (chienne in the French text, 83–4). See Caius, 7. See bitch, dog, cur. braggart (A) Also spelt ‘braggard’, the word refers to the man who uses his tongue rather than his sword and who boasts about martial feats that he never achieves. One of the meanings of the word ‘brag’ is ‘the loud noise of a trumpet’ (OED 1). In French, there is the same acoustic link between fanfaron (which means ‘braggard’, from the seventeenth century onwards) and fanfare which refers to ‘the sound of the trumpets when they runne at the Tilt, a bragge’ (Hollyband). ‘Fanfarer & faire fanfares’, means ‘to brag much’ (Hollyband). Cotgrave has ‘Fanfarer: To sound, or resound, as Trumpets; 76

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to challenge, or braue one another with sound of Trumpets; to brag, vaunt; make a great flourish, or brauado’ and ‘Fanfaronnades: f. Resoundings of Trumpets; gallant, brauing, or bragging acclamations.’ (See also Cotgrave, braguerie). (B) The word targets the characters’ lack of manliness. In Rom, Mercutio curses Tybalt as a ‘braggart’ who has just killed him, which makes his death all the more humiliating: ‘A braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic’ (3.1.103–4). In MA , when Antonio calls Claudio and Don Pedro ‘Boys, apes, braggarts, jacks, milksops!’ (5.1.91), he means that they are all words and no matter and thus cowards. Benedick applies the same term to Claudio after calling him ‘boy’: ‘You break jests as braggarts do their blades, which, God be thanked, hurt not’ (5.1.181–2), thus implying that he is a coward. By calling Coriolanus ‘this unholy braggart’ (Cor 5.6.119), Aufidius insultingly debunks and denies his martial feats. The proximity between the braggart and the coward appears in MND when Puck challenges Demetrius by taking Lysander’s voice: ‘Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars / Telling the bushes that thou look’st for wars, / And wilt not come? Come, recreant, come thou child!’ (3.2.407– 9). In KL , when he calls for ‘the stocks’ to punish Kent, Cornwall calls him ‘you reverent braggart’ (2.2.124) because he has been insulting Oswald and has provoked him in words. By calling him an old braggart, Cornwall opposes words to deeds and insists on his physical weakness, which implies a ‘killing tongue’ but a ‘quiet sword’ (H5 3.2.34). In H5, the term crops up when Nym and Pistol quarrel: Nym:

Pistol:

[…] I have a humour to knock you indifferently well. If you grow foul with me, Pistol, I will scour you with my rapier, as I may, in fair terms. If you would walk off, I would prick your guts a little, in good terms, as I may, and that’s the humour of it. O braggart vile and damned furious wight, The grave doth gape, and doting death is near; Therefore exhale. (2.1.56–63)

The fight cannot but peter out as the two men are described as cowards by the Boy in 3.2 where we learn in particular that Nym ‘never broke any man’s head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk’ (3.2.40–1). Pistol’s use of the word ‘exhale’ to say ‘draw your sword’ is particularly revealing: the verb deriving from the French exhale and the Latin exhalare (ex-halare), meaning to ‘breathe out’, to ‘evaporate’, suggests that indeed only ‘foul breath’ (MA 5.2.50) and bragging words will come out of this quarrel. bran (A) The husk that remains once it has been separated from the flour, after grinding, bran is considered as poor food. The term derives from the French bren, bran, meaning ‘filth’, ‘excrement’. Hollyband has ‘Du Bran & son, branne, turd’ and ‘Et va, Bran pour toy, goe thy way, a turde for thee.’ Cotgrave reads: ‘Bran: m. The branne of Wheat; also, as Bren; a turd’; ‘Bren: A turd, mans dung, excrement, ordure’; ‘Brenasserie: f. Scuruie shitten sturre, or stuffe’ and ‘Breneux: m. euse: f. Beshitten, all-to-berayed; full of turd, filth, ordure.’ 77

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(B) In TC , Pandarus, who strives to promote Troilus in Cressida’s eyes, comments on the arrival of common soldiers on stage by exclaiming: ‘Asses, fools, dolts; chaff and bran, chaff and bran; porridge after meat!’ (1.2.233–4), thus suggesting they are mere refuse and worthless matter compared with the Trojan hero, Troilus. The excremental meaning of the word makes particular sense in a play that dramatizes Ajax and cultivates the scatological jakes (privy)/Ajax pun. (C) On bran as foodstuff, see Fitzpatrick (2011), who quotes Elyot’s The Castell of Health (ed. 1595): ‘Bread having much branne filleth the bellie with excrements, and nourisheth little or nothing, but shortly descendeth from the stomacke (G1r–G1v, quoted by Fitzpatrick, 53). On scatological onomastics, see Smith (2012), chap. 2, 60–104. See Ajax. brawn. See boar. broker (A) A broker is a dealer, an intermediary, a person who negotiates a deal, hence a proxenete, a procurer. The word is linked to the French brokiere (from Lat. broccātor, ‘celui qui vend du vin au broc’, Godefroy), related to ‘broaching, tapping’. Huloet has ‘Broker, or byer, of marchaundyse and wares. Proxeneta, Licitator’. See also Withals and Thomas. (B) At the end of TC , Troilus curses Pandarus: ‘Hence, broker-lackey! (QF ‘broker, lacky’) Ignomy and shame / Pursue thy life, and live aye with thy name!’ (5.11.33–4). The word ‘lackey’, deriving from the French laquais, enhances the insult as it indicates that Pandarus is a mere varlet. When Troilus leaves the stage with these words, Pandarus is then free to close the whole play with a speech on pandars that sounds like a mockencomium, an ironic praise of bawds (5.11.35–56). This tirade is a response to Troilus’ insult that strives to restore the image of panders by presenting them as ‘good traders in the flesh’ (5.11.45). Pandarus ironically insults the spectators in return by transforming them into an assembly of panders whom he addresses as ‘Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade’ (5.11.51). (C) See bawd, Pandar, procurer. buckram (A) A cloth that is described as either fine or coarse, often used in book binding and found as paper of buckram/bockram in the printing trade. (B) In 2H6, Cade insultingly plays on Lord Saye’s name: ‘Ah, thou say, thou serge – nay, thou buckram lord!’ (4.7.21–2). Editors note the pun that is built on the enumeration of kinds of cloth, from the ‘say’ (sometimes equated with the French soie, silk), to ‘serge’, which derives from the French serge, sarge and refers to a woollen fabric mostly worn by poorer people, and to ‘buckram’ which is a coarse linen often stiffened and used for linings or in ‘the theatre to make dummy figures and costumes’ (Knowles, 2H6, 320). The enumeration seems to have a degrading effect, going from fine to coarser cloth. Knowles suggests that Cade may be commenting on Lord Saye’s appearing in modest apparel: 78

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Presumably Saye has appeared dressed with deliberate modesty in order to provoke by dressing according to his status and the sumptuary laws . . . Cade seizes on the discrepancy between aristocratic entitlement demarcated by silk and the relative plainness before him’ (320). Knowles underlines that the word reflects Saye’s probably stiff attitude in front of Cade’s judgement. The word should also, I suggest, be related to the speech that follows, in which Cade rails on Lord Say for being a man of books and words: Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school; and, whereas, before our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used and, contrary to the King his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. [. . .] (4.7.29–34) The speech is obsessed with the world of books and printing, so that it seems possible to hear the word ‘buckram’ as ‘bookram’, all the more so since the cloth is related to the world of printing in several ways: it is used for binding and covering books and also referred to as ‘paper of buckram’ (see Hellinga and Trapp, 1999, 162). (C) See Knowles, 2H6, 94–5. On paper of buckram/bokram, see Hellinga and Trapp, III , 162. In Herrick’s Hesperides (1648) in a section entitled ‘Lines have their Linings, and Bookes their Buckram’, one reads: ‘As in our clothes, so likewise he who lookes, / Shall find much farcing Buckram in our Books’ (235). bung (A) Cutpurse. In thieves’ cant, a bung (boung) is a purse. A bung is also the stopper of a vessel, the cork of a cask. (B) The word is used by Doll Tearsheet when she insults Pistol: ‘Away, you cutpurse rascal, you filthy bung, away!’ (2H4 2.4.126). OED concludes from this only Shakespearean occurrence, that the word means ‘cutpurse’, ‘pickpocket’, which makes sense in context as Doll goes on using thieves’ cant terms in the following lines: ‘By this wine, I’ll thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps and you play the saucy cuttle with me’ (2.4.127–8). ‘Cuttle-bung’ was a cant term for the knife used by pickpockets to cut the strings of purses. The word ‘stale’ in ‘you basket-hilt stale juggler’ (2.4.129) may be related to the cant term ‘stale’ (decoy-bird) which means a rogue who helps another pickpocket by distracting the victim’s attention (‘He that faceth the man’, ie the victim, Greene, C2). The word ‘ruff’ (2.4.132; 142) is reminiscent of the cant word ‘ruffler’ that is described by Awdelay (1575): ‘A Ruffeler goeth wyth a weapon to seeke seruice, saying he hath bene a Seruitor in the wars, and beggeth for his reliefe. But his chiefest trade is to robbe poore wayfaring men and market women’ (A2r, quoted by OED ). The ‘abominable damned cheater’ (2.4.137) is part of this world of cony-catching thieves where Pistol gives the fig. Partridge acknowledges this meaning that relates the world of the tavern to the underworld but he also suggests that Doll may mean ‘bung-hole’ (anus), a meaning that is further explored by Rubinstein (39–40). One could also suggest that 79

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the ‘bung’ is related to the world of drinking as Doll swears ‘by this wine’ and Pistol may be seen as the bung that may pop out and ‘discharge’ its drink, like a pistol would his bullets, the ‘filthy bung’ symbolism thus combining sex and drink. (C) On the ‘Figging Law’ based on the cutting of purses and picking of pockets, see Greene (1592), esp. C1v-C2r; Dekker, The Belman of London (1608), esp. H2v–H3rv. See also Harman; Drouet. burr (A) The rough or prickly seed-vessel or flower-head of a plant, especially of the burdock. To cleave (hang or hold) like burrs is proverbial (ODEP , B723). The anonymous Medulla Grammatice has: ‘Larpa a clete or a burr’ and ‘Philantropos is a burre’. Elyot (1538) has: ‘Boaria, an herbe callyd a clote or burre’ and Baret mentions ‘the hearbe called cloates that beareth the great burre’. Maplet notes that ‘The Burre of the Greekes is called Philanthros, mannes friend, for that it coueteth to catch holde and to cleaue vpon man his Garment holding fast by such kinde of roughnesse as it hath’ (35rv). (B) In MND Lysander, feeling disgust for Hermia, exclaims ‘Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! Vile thing, let loose, / Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent’ (3.2.260). Hermia, who is still in love with Lysander (philanthros), sticks to him like a burr, hence the insult. A few lines later, she is called ‘You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made’ (3.2.328). The knot-grass is ‘a common creeping weed, polygonum aviculare, an infusion of which was supposed to stunt growth’ (OED ) but the word ‘hindering’ may also suggest that she keeps being an obstacle for Lysander by sticking to him. In MM , Lucio, who refuses to leave the Duke/Friar alone, says to him: ‘I am a kind of burr; I shall stick’ (4.3.176) while in TC , Pandarus says about his kindred (ie about Cressida) ‘They are burs, I can tell you; they’ll stick where they are thrown’ (3.2.107–8). In AYL Celia relates the burs to ‘holiday foolery’, when she invites Rosalind to play with the ‘briers’ she is complaining about and to consider them as a source of fun rather than of trouble: ‘They (briers) are but burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday foolery’ (1.3.13–14). This holiday aspect of the bur is probably present in the festive world of MND where Puck exclaims ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’ (3.2.115). (C) See Hollyband: ‘Glatteron, ou glouteron & bardane, herbe, a burre’; Heywood (1546, C4r); Huloet (1572). About the burr in relation to friendship, see La Primauday, The French Academie (1586), 140. butcher (A) One whose trade consists in slaughtering animals, cutting them into pieces for food and selling their flesh and meat. Figuratively, the word designates a slaughterer, a savage person who cruelly slaughters human beings. The word derives from the old French word bochier, related to Provencal boc (‘buck’ in English), bouc in modern French, that is he-goat. The original meaning is thus ‘dealer in goat’s flesh’. Thomas reads ‘Lănio, as. To cut like a butcher, to teare or rent in peeces, to quarter, to cut in peeces’ and ‘Lănio, ōnis, & Lănius, nij, m.g. A butcher that selleth flesh, a slaughter man.’ Rider (1589) includes the metaphorical meaning ‘To play the Butcher bloodesucker, or tyrant.’ 80

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(B) The word is used as an insult in bloody plays. In 2H6, where Shakespeare dramatizes a character named Dick the butcher, Margaret comments on Warwick’s words when he accusingly insinuates that Suffolk has killed Gloucester: Warwick: Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh And sees fast by a butcher with an axe, But will suspect ’twas he that made the slaughter? [. . .] Queen: Are you the butcher, Suffolk? Where’s your knife? (3.2.188–95) Warwick insultingly uses the image of the butcher to refer to a murderer while the Queen, in order to defend Suffolk, literalizes the metaphor by asking for the knife. In 3H6, Richard (Gloucester) addressing Clifford asks: ‘Are you there, butcher?’ (2.2.95), which expresses his fury against the murderer of his brother Rutland and of his father York. At the end of the play, Queen Margaret curses her son Edward’s murderers in her turn and looks for extreme words to describe them: What’s worse than murderer, that I may name it? No, no, my heart will burst, an if I speak – And I will speak, that so my heart may burst. Butchers and villains! Bloody cannibals! How sweet a plant have you untimely cropped! You have no children, butchers; [. . .] (3H6 5.5.58–63) In this world of savagery, Richard is finally called ‘that devil’s butcher’ (5.5.77) in absentia. Richard shares his surname with the ‘butcher of Ashford’ who appears in 2H6 (4.3.1): the two characters are called ‘Dick’. In this context of bloody butchery, when, just before dying, Prince Edward calls Richard, ‘thou misshapen Dick’ (3H6 5.5.35), the insult is reminiscent of the figure of Dick the butcher. Macbeth is called ‘this dead butcher’ (5.9.35) by Malcolm at the end of a play in which the butcher is said, again, to have ‘no children’ (4.3.216). In Rom, Mercutio comically and ironically calls Tybalt, his butcher-to-be, ‘the very butcher of a silk button’ (2.4.23). In AYL , Phoebe’s cruel eyes are called ‘butchers’ and equated with tyrants and murderers (3.5.14) who slaughter the unrequited lover Silvius. (C) See Fitzpatrick (2011), 59–62. butter (A) Oily food obtained from milk by churning. The Dutch were considered to be great eaters of butter. Salt-butter was not fresh and thus was cheaper. Salted butter imported from Flanders was considered as being of poorer quality than English butter. (B) In MW , Falstaff exclaims about Ford, without knowing he is in fact in front of him (disguised as Master brook): ‘Hang him, mechanical salt-butter rogue!’ (2.2.264), which Melchiori translates as ‘mean, cheap, avaricious’ (192). This interpretation is in 81

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keeping with Falstaff’s explaining his financial motivations in his wooing of Mistress Ford (2.2.256–61). This insult sounds all the more comical since it is uttered by one who is called ‘Tallow’ (1H4 2.4.108) and who is described as ‘A gross, fat man’, ‘As fat as butter’ (1H4 2.4.497–8) and who is compared to a ‘dish of butter’ (1H4 2.4.115). When Evans the Welsh Parson tells Falstaff that his ‘belly is all putter’ (ie ‘all butter’, MW 5.5.139–40), Falstaff is more offended by the mispronunciation of the word than by the word itself: “‘Seese” and “putter”? Have I lived to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English?’ (MW 5.5.141–2). (C) In Nashe’s Pierce Penniless (1592), a man is described as having high social standards but ‘living otherwise all the yeere long with salt butter and Holland cheese in his chamber’ (B2v, quoted by Melchiori). On butter, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 63–5. For a description of butter, see Batman vppon Bartholome (1582), cap. 73, 406rv; Cogan, The Haven of Health (1584), chap. 196, 157–8. buzz (A) A sound, like the hum of bees. (B) In TS , when Kate says that she is as heavy as her weight ‘should be’, her words have a pinball effect: Petruccio: Katherina: Petruccio: Katherina: Petruccio: Katherina:

‘Should be’? Should – buzz. Well ta’en, and like a buzzard. O slow-winged turtle, shall a buzzard take thee? Ay, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard. Come, come, you wasp, i’faith you are too angry. If I be waspish, best beware my sting. (2.1.207–11)

Petruccio plays with Katherina’s ‘be’ and transforms it into a bee, which leads to the word ‘buzz’. As Hodgdon notes (205–6), the word may have a musical meaning in the wake of the word ‘burden’ (2.1.203); it may also suggest that Petruccio has heard about Kate’s buzzing reputation. She also refers to Reed’s (1803) defining the term as ‘a common exclamation (of impatience or contempt) when anyone was telling a wellknown story’ and defining the term as ‘a sound to command silence’. One can add that Petruccio here turns Kate into a bee, a buzzing and stinging insect that paves the way for the image of the wasp. Partridge notes that ‘buzz’ is the Shakespearean convention for the ‘rude sound’ caused by ‘the anal emission of wind’ (75). If one considers this possible sense, then the word ‘buzzard’ takes on another meaning, supported by the images of the ‘ass’ (2.1.200), of the ‘stool’ (2.1.198) and of the ‘tail’ (2.1.218–9). One finds the same kind of pun in an exchange between Hamlet and Polonius: Polonius: Hamlet: Polonius: Hamlet:

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The actors are come hither, my lord. Buzz, buzz. Upon my honour. – Then came each actor on his ass. (Ham 2.2.329–32)

buzzard

Partridge comments on this ‘buzz’: Hamlet, already possessed of the news, as, referring to Roscius, he subtly shows the far from subtle Polonius, is irritated by the old busybody’s stupidity: to indicate his irritation, he makes that ‘rude noise’, imitative of the breaking of wind, which, from probably even before Shakespeare’s acting days, has been ‘the gods” and the groundlings’ means of showing their disapproval of bad acting, and thus repeats his intimation that he knew all about the arrival of the actors. When Polonius, thinking that this unexpectedly coarse ‘raspberry’ (or rarzer, as the Cockney prefers to call it) signifies the prince’s disbelief, solemnly avers ‘Upon mine honour’, Hamlet puns on the word honour and impugns Polonius’s conception of honour by saying, ‘Then came each actor on his ass’, thus passing from windbreaking to the source of the noise. (10–11) Whatever the degree of scatology one grants this ‘buzz’, it constitutes an insult to Polonius and transforms him into something annoying. (C) Partridge writes about Shakespeare’s use of scatology: ‘Shakespeare was not a Rabelais: he took very little pleasure in the anatomical witticism and the functional joke unless they were either witty or sexual’ (8–9). On onomastic scatology in Ham, see Smith (2012), 87–91. See buzzard. buzzard (A) An inferior kind of hawk that is useless for falconry; hence a worthless, stupid person, this latter sense being connected with the French buse, meaning ‘buzzard’ but also ‘idiot’ (‘personne sotte et ignare’) as soon as 1545 (DHLF ). ‘A blind buzzard’ is proverbial (Tilley, B792). Cotgrave reads: ‘Bruthier: m. A Buzzard, or Bauld-kite. Iamais tu ne feras d’vn bruthier vn esperuier: Prov. A bald, and beastly kite will neuer proue good hawke.’ (B) In TS , Katherina plays with Petruccio’s use of the word ‘buzz’ by comparing him to a ‘buzzard’ (2.1.207), meaning a worthless and senseless person (Hodgdon, 206). The buzzard is an inferior kind of falcon that mistakes his preys but the term may also have referred to a buzzing beetle. The insult takes on an ironic dimension when Petruccio describes his taming process in terms of falconry: My falcon now is sharp and passing empty, And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged, For then she never looks upon her lure. Another way I have to man my haggard, To make her come and know her keeper’s call: That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites That bate, and beat and will not be obedient. (4.1.179–85) 83

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The buzzard is taming the ‘proud disdainful haggard’ (4.2.39). Shakespeare opposes the noble eagle to the inferior ‘kites and buzzards’ in R3 where Hastings declares ‘More pity that the eagles should be mewed, / While kites and buzzards prey at liberty’ (1.1.132–3). (C) On falcon and buzzard, see R. Wilson, The pleasant and stately morall (1590), B2v. See buzz, kite.

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C cacodemon (A) An evil spirit, ‘an yll spirite’ (Elyot, 1538), deriving from the Greek κακοδαίμων, kakos (evil, ugly) and daimon. ‘Cacodemon signifieth a crafty knower and full of suttelcie and deceipt al set on mischief’ (Richard Taverner, On Saynt Andrewes day, 1542, xxxvv). In Batman vppon Bartholome (1582), the devil is called, among other names, ‘Demon, and Plato in Thimeo calleth him Cacodemon, that is to vnderstand, knowing euill. For Demon is to vnderstand, knowing. And he is called so for sharpnesse that hee hath of kindly wit. Hee is sharpe in wit of kinde, and by experience of time, in knowing and vnderstanding of Scriptures’ (‘Of evil angels’, book 2, chap. 19, 11r). (B) In R3, Margaret curses Richard in an aside: ‘Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave the world, / Thou cacodemon! There thy kingdom is’ (1.3.142–3). There may be an allusion to Richard’s deformed body in the prefix kakos, which we find in the word ‘Cacochexia, an yll habite or deformitie of the body, caused by syckenesse’ (Elyot, 1542). (C) The word appears in Minsheu (‘devil’). Gibson and Esra, 55–7 (‘Demon’). See devil, fiend. caitiff (A) The word expresses both commiseration and contempt as it refers both to a poor wretch and a despicable person. It derives from captivus, the Latin word for a prisoner or a captive and is related to the French word chétif, which Cotgrave defines as: ‘Caitiue, wretched, miserable, vnfortunate, forlorne, poore needie, bare, beggerlie; also, scarce, little, paultrie, scantie, small; also, knauish, curst, shrewd; naughtie, bad, lewd’. Like chétif, it means both miserable and bad (Huguet) in the sixteenth century. Phillips, in The New World of English Words (1658), has ‘wretched wicked from the French Chetif, or the Italian Cattivo’. Rawson notes that ‘the base meaning of caitiff reflects the traditional view of victors toward the vanquished’ (70). The word involves moral disapprobation. (B) It appears four times in MM and is applied to the bawd and tapster, Pompey Bum, as well as to Angelo, thus drawing a parallel between the two characters. Elbow abuses Pompey: ‘O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked Hannibal!’ (2.1.170–1) and then asks Escalus ‘What is’t your worship’s pleasure I should do with this wicked caitiff? (2.1.178–80). The word is offensive and means ‘wretch’ but the situation is ironic as Elbow is striving to make Pompey a prisoner, a ‘captive’, while Escalus will just dismiss him, warning him to mend his ways. Considering the part Pompey plays in 4.2 and 4.3, in the prison, assisting the executioner, enumerating the names of the prisoners and comparing the house of correction to a house of prostitution (‘house of 85

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profession’, 4.3.2), the use of the word ‘caitiff’ sounds all the more ironic. In 5.1, Isabella first indirectly insults Angelo: ’Tis not impossible But one, the wicked’st caitiff on the ground, May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute As Angelo; [. . .] (5.1.55–8) Indirection is followed by a more direct accusation when Isabella goes on: Isabella: Duke: Isabella:

I went To this pernicious caitiff deputy. That’s somewhat madly spoken. Pardon it; The phrase is to the matter. (5.1.90–3)

The Duke throws into relief the particularly offensive portent of the phrase. It is not fortuitous that the word ‘caitiff’ should be applied both to Pompey Bum and Angelo, both prisoners of their passions and sins. The use of the word shows how much Angelo has in common with Pompey the pimp. The one is as bawdy as the other thus deserving one of the meanings of the Italian cattivo, lewd. In R3, Margaret calls Queen Elizabeth, ‘a very caitiff crowned with care’ (4.4.101), an alliterative insult that both suggests the pitiful state in which Elizabeth is and her being a captive. In Tim, the ambiguity of the word appears when Apemantus tells Timon: ‘I flatter not, but say thou art a caitiff’ (4.3.234), which is here both an expression of commiseration and disapprobation for a character that has become the embodiment of ‘misery’ (4.3.233). The word takes on a more offensive dimension in Timon’s cursing epitaph, read by Alcibiades: ‘Here lies a wretched corpse, of wretched soul bereft. Seek not my name. A plague consume you wicked caitiffs left! Here lie I, Timon, who alive all living men did hate. Pass by and curse thy fill – but pass, and stay not here thy gait.’ (Tim, ed. Jowett, Sc. 17.71–4) Through this much debated, because contradictory, epitaph (Dawson and Minton, 104–9, have decided not to include the first part of the epitaph), we hear Timon’s cursing voice from beyond the grave. Oliver (Tim, xxxii–xxxiii) notes that in North’s ‘Life of Marcus Antonius’, from which Timon’s epitaph originates, the word ‘caitiffs’ does not appear but that the expression is ‘you wicked wretches left’. He suggests that the use of ‘caitiff’ here may have come from Painter’s Palace of Pleasure (1566) where one can read ‘My wretched catife dayes’ (58v), but perhaps Shakespeare just wanted to include some variation in a passage that already contains two ‘wretched’. The lines show the proximity between the 86

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words ‘caitiff’ and ‘wretch’. In KL , the word ‘caitiff’ is not far from ‘wretch’ when Lear inveighs against humanity, on the heath, ‘Tremble, thou wretch [. . .] / [. . .] Caitiff, to pieces shake’ (3.2.51; 55). The word here is synonymous with ‘villain’ but it is also part of a language that reflects on human general misery and wretchedness. Othello uses the word to express Iago’s villainy: ‘O thou pernicious caitiff !’ (Oth 5.2.318), while the term was used in commiseration by Cassio about Bianca: ‘Alas, poor caitiff!’ (Oth 4.1.109). (C) See wretch. callat/callet (A) A lewd woman, a strumpet, a whore. One of the numerous words for ‘prostitute’. The word also means ‘scold’. Findlay (2010) notes that ‘in early modern English, the analogy between sexual looseness and women’s volubility means the term also indicates an outspoken and unruly woman’ (65). Cotgrave illustrates the two meanings through the words ‘Paillarde: f. A whore, punke, drab, strumpet, harlot, queane, courtezan, callet’ and ‘Ricalde: f. A gill, flirt, callet; scould; a long-tongued and short-heeled, a light and tatling, huswife.’ (B) In 2H6, Queen Margaret complains about Eleanor, the ‘Lord Protector’s wife’ (1.3.77) and calls her in absentia a ‘contemptuous base-born callet’ (1.3.84). Knowles explains the word by recalling that ‘Gloucester’s illicit relationship with Eleanor before his first marriage to Jacqueline of Bavaria had been annulled, provoked some public abuse’. He also notes that the shameful penance that Eleanor undergoes in 2.4 was that ‘normally meted out for prostitutes’ (Knowles, 2H6, 178). After being called a ‘callet’, Eleanor is ‘bewhored’ (Oth 4.2.117) in deeds: Methinks I should not thus be led along, Mailed up in shame, with papers on my back, And followed with a rabble that rejoice To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans. (2H6 2.4.30–3) Ironically it is Queen Margaret who is, in her turn, called ‘this shameless callet’ in 3H6 when Edward insultingly compares her to the adulteress Helen of Troy: A wisp of straw were worth a thousand crowns, To make this shameless callet know herself. Helen of Greece was fairer far than thou, Although thy husband may be Menelaus; And ne’er was Agamemnon’s brother wronged By that false woman, as this king by thee. (2.2.144–9) The word ‘callet’ transforms Margaret into a whore and a scold as the ‘wisp of straw’ was a figure used for scolds to rail at as part of their punishment. In Oth, Emilia ironically enhances Othello’s insulting words to Desdemona when she comments: ‘He called her whore. A beggar in his drink / Could not have laid such terms 87

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upon his callat’ (4.2.122–3). Emilia utters the words that Desdemona strives to avoid in her exchange with Iago: Desdemona: Iago: Desdemona:

Am I that name, Iago? What name, fair lady? Such as she said my lord did say I was. (4.2.120–1)

As Honigmann notes (281), she ‘feels Desdemona’s pain, yet adds to it by repeating the word’. She not only repeats the insult but adds still another one, ‘callat’, thus ‘bewhoring’ (4.2.117) her even further. In WT , Leontes uses the word to insult Paulina when he calls her ‘A callat / Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband / And now baits me!’ (2.3.89–91). The word epitomizes the figure of the both sexually and verbally unruly woman that Leontes delineates by calling Emilia ‘Dame Partlet’ (2.3.74), ‘Lady Margery’ (2.3.158), two contemptuous terms for unruly women, but also by referring to her as Antigonus’ ‘lewdtongued wife’ (2.3.170). Paulina, by defending Hermione, becomes the ‘most intelligencing bawd’ (2.3.67), the midwife who has played a guilty part in the bastard’s coming to the world. (C) See Findlay (2010), 65. The word is used numerous times in Gammer Gurdon’s Needle (performed c. 1550–60?), see especially 3.3.23: ‘a cart for a callat’. In the anonymous A pleasant conceited comedie, called, A knacke to know an honest man (1596), Servio calls his daughter Phillida ‘callet, harlot, worse then nought’ (F2r) after calling her ‘Thou Challet carrine drab’ (Fv). In Greene’s The Scottish historie of Iames the fourth (1598), Jaques calls Dorothea ‘you calletta, you strumpetta’ and she answers: ‘Callet, me strumpet, Cative as thou art’ (Hr). The Works of our Antient and Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer (1598) has: ‘calot, a lewd woman’. Harington’s Orlando Furioso (1607) refers to ‘this old ilfauord spitefull Callet’ and comments in the margin ‘Callet is a nickname that they vse to a woman, it signifies in Irish a witch’ (book xx, stanza 97, 160). This recalls Paulina who is also called ‘witch’ and ‘hag’ (WT 2.3.66; 107). Williams relates the word ‘callet’ to the figure of the gipsy (1, 192). See adulteress, baggage, bawd, courtezan, drab, fornicatress, giglot wench, gipsy, harlot, hobby-horse, minion, nag, quean, slut, strumpet, thing, trull, wanton, whore. camel (A) The animal Camelus, distinguished by its humped back, long neck and slow pace. According to Topsell (1607), authors describe it as ‘rough, deformed, and thirsting’ (92). It is used as a ‘term of reproach for a blunt, heavy fellow’ (Schmidt). (B) In TC , Thersites answers Ajax’s blows with insults: ‘Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness, do, camel; do, do!’ (2.1.52). The image of the camel prolongs the word ‘rudeness’, which conveys Ajax’s rough behaviour, confirmed by the image of the elephant. Alexander describes him as ‘slow as the elephant’ (1.2.21), while Thersites calls him ‘the elephant Ajax’ (2.3.2). At the beginning of the play, Pandarus calls Achilles ‘A drayman, a porter, a very camel’ (1.2.240) to better praise Troilus by debunking the image of Achilles as a 88

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great man and warrior. The camel also appears as a beast of burden in Cor when Brutus aims to tell the people that Coriolanus considers them as ‘mules’ (Cor 2.1.241), [. . .] holding them In human action and capacity Of no more soul nor fitness for the world Than camels in their war, who have their provand Only for bearing burdens and sore blows For sinking under them. (2.1.242–7) In TC , Ajax is thus debunked from the status of heroic warrior to the state of beast of burden. Bevington notes that it is perhaps ‘a riposte to porcupine and Cobloaf ’ (2.1.24 and 36) which, like the camel, are misshapen: ‘Camels can also be regarded as misshapen and lumpy beasts of burden, of ungainly proportions and with small brains for their huge bodies’ (TC , 185). The image conveys Ajax’s hulking clumsiness and metaphorically his lack of wit and subtlety, which can be found in the much debated proverbial biblical sentence used by Shakespeare in R2 when Richard declares: ‘ ’It is as hard to come as for a camel / To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye’ (5.5.16–17). It may not be fortuitous that the word ‘needle’ should appear a little later: ‘I say, this Ajax – [. . .] Has not so much wit – [. . .] As will stop the eye of Helen’s needle, for whom he comes to fight’ (2.1.74–9). The image of the camel also invites the reading of another layer of meaning behind Thersites ‘His (Ajax’s) evasions have ears thus long’ (2.1.67), which is an obvious reference to the ass’s ears but which may also contain an echo of Aesop’s fable of the camel and Jupiter. (C) See Maplet, 75r–76r. Rubinstein defines the camel as ‘outstanding for its hump’ (43) and reads the image as bawdy. Williams (1, 192–3) explores the sexual ideas that are associated with the camel but does not mention any Shakespearean examples. candle-mine (A) A mine of fat or tallow, with which candles are made. ‘Candle’ (chandelle in French) derives from Latin candella, from the verb candēre (to shine). Withals (1556) distinguishes ‘A Talowe candle, Candela sebacea’ from ‘A waxe candle, candela cerea.’ (B) Hal calls Falstaff ‘You whoreson candle-mine’ (2H4 2.4.300), meaning that he is an inexhaustible source of tallow, of fat, of grease. The term contains many of the images that are associated with Falstaff, who is described as ‘fat as butter’ (1H4 2.4.498), nicknamed ‘Tallow’ (2.4.108) and called ‘thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch’ (1H4 2.4.220–1), and ‘oily rascal’ (1H4 2.4.513). This also prolongs the image of Falstaff sweating to death, who ‘lards the lean earth as he walks along’ (1H4 2.2.105–6). The candle can refer to the penis, which corresponds to the context of the insult as Falstaff has just been frolicking with Doll Tearsheet. Yet the candle-mine is obviously less phallic than a candlestick could be and conveys the image of a ‘huge hill of flesh’ (2.4.237), rather than of a figure of sexual potency. 89

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(C) Williams analyses the candle as a phallic image, a symbolism that one finds in the French word chandelle (see the famous popular though bawdy song ‘Au Clair de la Lune’), but does not refer to the candle-mine. See tallow. canker(ed) (A) The word has three main meanings that are connected and sometimes overlap. 1. A plant-blight, a worm that preys upon blossoms. 2. Tumours and ulcers, gnawing the flesh, that refuse to heal and that extend to the surrounding tissues. 3. The canker rose, a wild and odourless rose. Iyengar notes that ‘Shakespeare’s many references to the plantblight known as canker connote the figurative implications of canker in humans’ (52). (B) In MND , Hermia insults Helena and exclaims: ‘You juggler! You canker-blossom! / You thief of love!’ (3.2.282–3). Schmidt offers two readings: either ‘a blossom eaten by a canker or the same as canker-bloom’ that is to say ‘wild rose’. Brooks (76) and Holland (203) think that the insult means that Helena is the grub that ruins (cankers) the blossom of love, and is reminiscent of the ‘cankers in the musk-rose buds’ mentioned by Titania (2.2.3) and that appear in Sonnet 35.4: ‘And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud’. For Foakes (97) the word means ‘canker-worms (as at 2.2.3) or the flower of the dog rose or brier’. Sonnet 54 draws a distinction between the sweet, odorous roses and the canker roses (canker-bloom) whose only virtue is their ‘show’ (Sonnet 54.5). In MA , Don John also emphasizes the contrast when he says ‘I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace’ (MA 1.3.25–6). Whether the term refers to the caterpillar or to the wild rose, the insult means that Helena proceeds traitorously and has only a semblance of fairness. It is also in keeping with the imagery of nature that pervades the play, illustrated by the names of the fairies ‘Peaseblossom’, ‘Cobweb’, ‘Mote’ and ‘Mustardseed’. In 1H4, Hotspur contrasts the late King Richard II , ‘that sweet lovely rose’ (1.3.174), with Bolingbroke, described as ‘this ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke’ (1.3.136) and ‘this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke’ (1.3.175). The vegetal and medical meanings meet here as Bolingbroke is presented as the one who disfigures England’s beauteous garden. (C) For more details on the medical meaning of the word, see Iyengar, 51–5. For an analysis of Sonnet 54 and the contrast between the sweet rose and the canker-bloom, see Vendler, 261–8. For the political metaphor of the canker disease destroying England, see Malynes, A treatise of the canker of Englands common wealth (1601). capocchia (A) The Italian word for head, deriving from capa, head. Florio (1598) has: ‘Capocchia, the foreskin or prepuce of a mans priuie member’ and ‘Capocchio, a doult, a noddie, a loggarhead, a foolish pate, a shallow skonce’ and ‘Cappocchio, as Capocchia or Capocchio’. (B) In TC , Pandarus mocks Troilus and Cressida, once they have slept together: Ha, ha! Alas, poor wretch! Ah, poor capocchia! Has ’t not slept tonight? Would he not – ah, naughty man – let it sleep? A bugbear [ie hobgoblin] take him! (4.2.32–4)

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It is not clear whether Pandarus addresses Troilus or Cressida and the word capocchia seems to carry both the intellectual meaning and the sexual innuendo. The insult is all the more blurred since Pandarus uses the neutral ‘it’, which may be interpreted both as the sexual organ and a condescending way of addressing Cressida, whose reaction shows that she feels she is abused: ‘Did not I tell you? Would he were knocked i’th’ head!’ (4.2.35). (C) On the sexual meaning, see Rubinstein, 44. capon (A) A cockerel that is castrated to be better fattened for eating. Palsgrave (1530) has ‘I Carue a cockerell to make hym a capon.’ The bird has come to denote stupidity, probably through the story of the cock and the capon. Blague, in A schole of wise conceytes (1569), tells the story of the cock and the capon: A Cock and a Capon dwelled together in a poultry house, but the Cock was lord of the Hens, and the Capon fed amongst them: It happened that a Fox caught this Cock, and deuoured him, and his combe he touched not, but kept it safe and brought it to the Capon, saying: O brother capon, thy fellow is dead, wherfore I haue broughte thee his combe euen for pure loue which I beare to thee, nowe if it please thee to come downe, I wil crown thee, that thou mayst take the regiment of the Hens as the cock dyd: the Capon being ambitious & greedie of promotion, flew down from his roost, and cam to ye Fox, who reioycing therof, caught the Capon incontinent, and killed hym. Mor. Take hede how thou credit al men. (147) (B) In CE , Dromio of Syracuse calls Dromio of Ephesus ‘Mome, malthorse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch’ (3.1.32), answering with six words of insult the list of six names that Dromio of Ephesus has just called out: ‘Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cicely, Gillian, Ginn!’ (3.1.31). Shakespeare here uses the playful and comic dimension of insults as well as the twinship that relates the two Dromios, whose words echo one another. Dromio-the-capon would obviously like to play the cock with the six ‘wenches’ (3.1.34) who are called here. All the insults target Dromio of Ephesus’ lack of wit and the word ‘capon’ leads to the cock’s ‘comb’ (fool’s cap) in a possible echo of the story of the cock and the capon. In this cock and capon context, the rather unclear expression ‘sit down at the hatch’ may take another resonance when Dromio of Syracuse tells Dromio of Ephesus ‘Either get thee from the door or sit down at the hatch’ (3.1.33), to ‘hatch’ meaning ‘To bring forth young birds from the egg by incubation’ (OED ). In MA , the image of the capon is used in a sequence of challenge and is associated with cowardice: Benedick:

Claudio:

[Aside to Claudio] You are a villain. I jest not. I will make it good how you dare, with what you dare, and when you dare. Do me right, or I will protest your cowardice. You have killed a sweet lady, and her death shall fall heavy on you. Let me hear from you. Well, I will meet you, so I have good cheer.

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Don Pedro: What, a feast, a feast? Claudio: I’faith, I thank him, he hath bid me to a calf’s head and a capon, the which if I do not carve most curiously, say my knife’s naught. Shall I not find a woodcock too? Benedick: Sir, your wit ambles well; it goes easily. (5.1.143–55) Prolonging Don Pedro’s evocation of a feast, Claudio translates Benedick’s challenging words into words that are related to feasting but that are suggestive of insults. As McEachern notes, ‘a calf’s head is a fool (a calf being a type of immaturity), a capon (a castrated rooster) is a figure for cowardice; the woodcock, for stupidity, as it is a bird easily captured’ (291). Claudio wants to defuse and soften Benedick’s serious insult (‘you are a villain’) to transform it into playful abuse, through wit. The scene is based on the uncomfortable discrepancy between Benedick’s earnest humour and Claudio’s ‘gossip-like humour’ (5.1.181). In Claudio’s words, the capon-woodcock-calf can be either Benedick, who has just been gulled, has fallen in love, has shaved his beard, and who is going to write a capon (a love letter, poulet in French) or Claudio himself, if one considers that his words mean that he ‘has been called a capon and a calf’ by Benedick. Claudio proceeds through indirection to answer Benedick’s absolutely direct challenge so that the insulting effect is unclear. The two terms, cock and capon, are also associated in Cym when the second Lord, in an aside, comments on Cloten’s comparing himself to ‘a cock, that nobody can match’: ‘You are cock and capon too, and you crow, cock, with your comb on’ (2.1.21–4). The comedy of the insult comes from the fact that Cloten seems to half hear it: ‘Sayest thou?’ (2.1.25). Only the audience hear an insult which means that Cloten is as stupid as the capon of the story and is worthy of wearing a cockscomb (ie a fool’s cap). In context, the word also suggests that Cloten is a coward. He should be potent (a cock) but behaves timorously, like a castrated cock, like a capon or eunuch. Cloten has just told the second lord how he manages to avoid combat under pretext that his opponents are not worth him: ‘Would he had been one of my rank!’ (2.1.14–15) is a bad excuse for not fighting and reveals the character’s boasting cowardice. (C) See Batman vppon Bartholome (1582), ‘Of the Capon’, Liber XVII , chap. 17, 184v. On capon as food, see Fitzpatrick (2009) and Fitzpatrick (2011), 73–4; on capon as ‘gelded cock; hence eunuch or fumbler’, see Williams, 1, 202–3. See Boehrer, chap. 2, ‘The cuckoo and the capon’, 71–98. See coward, cuckold. captain (A) A chief, a headman (derived from Latin caput, capit, head), the commander of a ship; a soldier. Used ironically to refer to a braggart and a pander (Williams; Rubinstein). (B) In 2H6, Suffolk insults the Lieutenant who is going to kill him: [. . .] this villain here, Being captain of a pinnace, threatens more Than Bargulus the strong Illyrian pirate. 92

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Drones suck not eagles’ blood but rob beehives. It is impossible that I should die By such a lowly vassal as thyself. (4.1.106–11) These words of rage play on the contrast between the pompous ‘captain’ and the little vessel (‘pinnace’) he conducts and they underline that, for Suffolk, it is particularly degrading, insulting, to be killed by such a base villain. Rubinstein offers two glosses: 1. ‘Captain of a man of war’s tender’ 2. ‘Pimp for a whore’. In 2H4, the word unleashes a long tirade delivered by Doll Tearsheet: Hostess: Doll:

No, good Captain Pistol, not here, sweet captain. Captain! Thou abominable damned cheater, art thou not ashamed to be called captain? And captains were of my mind, they would truncheon you out, for taking their names upon you before you have earned them. You a captain? You slave! For what? For tearing a poor whore’s ruff in a bawdy-house? He a captain? Hang him, rogue, he lives upon mouldy stewed prunes and dried cakes. A captain? God’s light, these villains will make the word as odious as the word ‘occupy’, which was an excellent good word before it was ill sorted: therefore captains had need look to ’t. (2.4.136–47)

What this angry tirade suggests is that if the word ‘captain’ is ‘ill-sorted’ and applied to a bawdy villain, then it becomes synonymous with the words ‘bawdy villain’. The word is contaminated by the vile nature of the person it designates; meaning is affected by context. The comment on the word ‘captain’ here illustrates the idea that any word can become an insult if it is ‘ill sorted’ and becomes pregnant with negative connotations. This passage on the word ‘captain’ describes the very process of connotation, and shows how neutral or positive words may acquire derogatory connotations when they are ‘illsorted’. Williams mentions several examples that suggest that the word can refer to ‘A gaming or bawdy house bully’ and that there is a connection between captain and brothel. He mentions Aretino’s Ragionamenti II .i.151 in which one finds the idea that ‘nowadays everyone calls himself “il capitano’ ” (Williams, 1, 203). Doll Tearsheet’s speech is a comment on the process of debasement that some words, such as ‘captain’ or ‘occupy’ (for ‘take up possession’ and ‘coit’) undergo. (C) On this process of debasement that affects words, see Puttenham, who comments on the word ‘poet’, that has ‘become, of honorable infamous, subject to scorne and derision, and rather a reproch than a prayse to any that useth it: for commonly who so is studious in th’Arte or shewes him selfe excellent in it, they call him in disdayne a phantasticall: and a light headed or phantasticall man (by conversion) they call a poet’ (33–4). Puttenham shows that as the word ‘poet’ is full of negative connotations, anyone can use it as an insult (33–4). On the sexual meaning of Captain (Pandar), see Jonson’s The Alchemist: ‘Where’s your Captain Face, / That parcel broker and whole bawd, all 93

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rascal?’ (4.6.32–33); ‘the Captain Pander’ (5.5.19); and Bartholomew Fair, where ‘Captain Whit’ is ‘the bawd’. In A Fair Quarrel (1607), Middleton and Rowley dramatize ‘Captain Albo, an Irish pander’ and have a Bawd sing: Then here thou shalt resign Both captain and commander; That name was never thine, But apple-squire and pander (4.4.103–6) Williams (1, 203–4) does not mention Doll Tearsheet’s speech but defines Captain as ‘A gaming or bawdy house bully’ and gives a few sixteenth and seventeenth century examples. See Innes, 69–71. carrion (A) A dead body, a corpse, a carcass; corrupted, rotten flesh, hence, sometimes, whore. The word derives from old French charoigne, carogne, in modern French charogne, which has also probably given the word ‘crone’, from Old Northern French carogne (Picard carone, Walloon coronie) ‘a cantankerous or mischievous woman’. The French word itself derives from Latin caronia, caro, meaning ‘flesh’. DHLF also mentions a possible though problematic origin in carionia, meaning pourriture (something rotten). (B) In Rom Capulet calls his daughter Juliet ‘you green-sickness carrion’ (3.5.156), when she confronts him and refuses to marry Paris. The insult echoes Romeo’s words on Juliet’s pale and virginal appearance: ‘Her vestal livery is but sick and green’ (2.2.8). The green-sickness was a disease attributed to unmarried girls, thus it conveys her reluctance to marry. The word ‘carrion’ also suggests that she is as pale as a corpse, a paleness that is also emphasized by another insult, ‘tallow-face’ (Rom 3.5.157), a word that refers to a ‘bleake visage, pale countenance’ (Cotgrave). In the context of the play, the insulting association of Juliet with a carrion, that is a cadaver, is highly ironical as she will be just that later in the play. Beyond transforming Juliet into a vile, filthy, whorish creature, the word ‘carrion’ already anticipates her death. In MV , Shylock is called ‘old carrion’ by Salanio when he complains about his daughter Jessica’s flight: Jew: Salanio: Jew: Salarino:

My own flesh and blood to rebel! Out upon it, old carrion, rebels it at these years? I say my daughter is my flesh and blood. There is more difference between thy flesh and hers than between jet and ivory, more between your bloods than there is between red wine and Rhenish. (3.1.31–6)

Shylock’s words, ‘flesh and blood’, lead to the choice of this insult. Drakakis (282) notes that the word ‘carrion’ here means not only ‘rotting flesh’ but also ‘indicates concupiscence’ (OED sb 3b) and implies some ‘morbid sexual desire’. The term also 94

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ironically announces the ‘weight of carrion flesh’ (4.1.40), the pound of putrefying flesh that Shylock prefers to the three thousand ducats Antonio owes him. The ‘old carrion’ wants to feed on carrion flesh. In KJ , Constance embraces death as a ‘carrion monster’ in an oxymoronic love-hate speech of fascination-repulsion: No! – I defy all counsel, all redress, But that which ends all counsel, true redress: Death! death, O amiable, lovely death! Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness! Arise forth from the couch of lasting night, Thou hate and terror to prosperity, And I will kiss thy detestable bones And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows, And ring these fingers with thy household worms And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust And be a carrion monster like thyself: Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil’st, And buss thee as thy wife. Misery’s love, O, come to me! (3.3.22–36) Meaning ‘corrupted flesh’, the word has come to be sexually connoted and mean ‘whore’. One may find traces of this meaning when mistress Ford calls Hostess Quickly in absentia ‘that foolish carrion’ (MW 3.3.178–9), an expression that is not violent invective here, as most editors note, but that nevertheless may take some sexual meaning when applied to Mistress Quickly, who is the hostess of the Boar’s Head Tavern in H4 and H5. In TC , Diomedes describes Helen to Paris: For every false drop in her bawdy veins A Grecian’s life hath sunk; for every scruple Of her contaminated carrion weight A Trojan hath been slain. [. . .] (4.1.71–4) In the wake of the word ‘bawdy’, ‘carrion’ takes on a sexual meaning in a speech that transforms Helen into a whore. She is like the Greek killed by Hector at the end of the play: a ‘Most putrefied core, so fair without’ (5.9.1), in a world that Thersites reduces to lechery, ‘nothing but lechery’ (5.1.95). (C) On ‘carrion’ meaning ‘whore’, see Williams, 1, 206. See crone. cat (A) A familiar beast that is known for catching mice (hence its Latin name Murilegus or Musio), seeing sharply, scratching and being ‘wonderful nimble’ (Topsell, 1607, 104), 95

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an animal ‘whose durte doth stinke ful foule’ (Batman vppon Bartholome, 374v). According to Topsell (1607), the word is ‘deriued of Cautus, signifying wary: Ouid saith, that when the Gyantes warred with the Goddes, the Goddes put vpon them the shapes of Beasts, and the sister of Apollo lay for a spy in the likenes of a cat, for a cat is a watchfull and warye beast, sildome ouertaken, and most attendaunt to her sport and prey’ (102). It was proverbial that cats had nine lives (Tilley, C154). The cat is an object of both fascination and repulsion. (B) The word is used offensively in Rom when Mercutio feeds on Tybalt’s name to compare him to a cat: Mercutio: Tybalt: Mercutio:

Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk? What wouldst thou have with me? Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives. (3.1.74–7)

For Mercutio, Tybalt is ‘More than Prince of Cats’ (2.4.19). Shakespeare probably plays with the name Tybert (a near homophone of Tybalt), the name of the cat in Reynard the Fox. Even at the moment of his death, Mercutio goes on playing with Tybalt’s abhorred name when he first comments on his wound: ‘Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch’ (3.1.94) and then curses ‘A plague a’ both your houses! Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death!’ (3.1.101–3). Even on the fringe of death, insult takes the form of a pun. The other occurrences in the plays show that the cat was considered as an object of phobic repulsion. The repulsive nature of the cat appears in Bertram’s asides when he comments on Parolles’s disloyal behaviour in AW : ‘I could endure anything before but a cat, and now he’s a cat to me’ (4.3.233–4), ‘A pox upon him! for me, he’s more and more a cat’ (4.3.257–8), ‘A pox on him! He’s a cat still’ (4.3.269). The word suggests something that is a source of aversion, as when Volumnia calls the ‘rabble’ ‘cats’ (Cor 4.2.34). This meaning is also found in MV where Shylock alludes to ‘Some that are mad if they behold a cat’ (4.1.47), as well as in TC where Thersites draws a catalogue of the least attractive creatures, which are nevertheless still better than Menelaus: ‘To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus! I would conspire against destiny’ (5.1.59–61). Bevington notes that the cat is associated with ‘spitefulness and wantonness’ (TC , 371). According to Snyder the ‘cat’ in AW may be slang for ‘prostitute’, a meaning which could apply to Bertram’s ‘changing adherence in each new situation’ (AW , 184). Another passage suggests that Bertram, by using the image of the cat, may refer to the repulsion caused by the filthy smell of cats’ faeces (Batman vppon Bartholome, 374v). In 5.2 Parolles, addressing Lavatch (with a possible pun on Fr. lavage, washing), the Clown, insists on the smell: Parolles:

96

Good Monsieur Lavatch, give my Lord Lafew this letter; I have ere now, sir, been better known to you, when I have held familiarity with fresher clothes; but I am now, sir, muddied in Fortune’s mood, and smell somewhat strong of her strong displeasure.

caterpillar

Clown:

Parolles: Clown:

Truly, Fortune’s displeasure is but sluttish if it smell so strongly as thou speak’st of. I will henceforth eat no fish of fortune’s butt’ring. Prithee, allow the wind. Nay, you need not to stop your nose, sir. I spake but by a metaphor. Indeed, sir, if your metaphor stink I will stop my nose, or against any man’s metaphor. (AW 5.2.1–13)

It seems that Bertram has transformed Parolles into a stinking, repulsive cat, Parolles’s ‘foul words’ implying ‘foul wind’ (MA 5.2.49). The image of the close-stool puts the emphasis on the smell and the Clown’s following lines prolong the image of the cat that has been applied to Parolles: Foh! Prithee stand away. A paper from Fortune’s close-stool, to give to a nobleman! Look, here he comes himself. Enter Lafew Here is a pur of Fortune’s, sir, or of Fortune’s cat, but not a musk-cat, that has fall’n into the unclean fishpond of her displeasure and, as he says, is muddied withal. (5.2.16–22) The word ‘pur’ may both refer to the cat’s sound (purr) and to some animal dung (Fr. purin); the ‘unclean fishpond’ also recalls the sexual meaning of ‘cat’ as ‘prostitute’, while the word ‘scratch’ that appears several times in the next lines (‘I am a man whom Fortune hath cruelly scratch’d’, 5.1.26–27) is reminiscent of the cat. In MND , Lysander rejects Hermia as a cat: Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! Vile thing, let loose, Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent. (3.2.260–1) In context, the word, associated with the word ‘burr’, refers to Hermia’s desperately clinging to Lysander and it is then prolonged when Hermia threatens Helena: ‘I am not yet so low / But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes’ (3.2.297–298). The nails convey the idea of scratching that is associated with the cat and the shrew Kate. (C) For a general description of the cat, see Batman vppon Bartholome (1582), Book XVIII , chap. 76 (‘De Murilego’), 374v. On the sexual meanings of ‘cat’, see Williams, 1, 214–6. On cats as objects of aversion, see Topsell (1607), 102–7, esp. 106. In Maplet, the image of the cat is more positive (77r). caterpillar (A) The larva of the butterfly. Hollyband has: ‘Chenille, a worme with many feete that eateth vines, also a snaile, a caterpiller: f.’ A parasite, that, together with the ‘Palmer woorme, Grassehopper, Cankerwoorme’ consumes and devours ‘Corne, graine and fruit’ (Lemnius, 1587, 118). The word was associated through false etymology to

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piller, pilour meaning pillager, plunderer, spoiler, hence the meaning of ‘extortioner’. The expression ‘caterpillars of the commonwealth’ is proverbial (Dent, CC 7). (B) In 1H4, Falstaff ironically calls the men he is robbing ‘whoreson caterpillars’ (2.2.82) thus ironically applying to them a term that suits him, as one can consider that Falstaff is the caterpillar in the play. The expression means ‘vile parasite’ but the connection with the word piller (ie robber), adds to its comic effect here as it is Falstaff who is the pillager in this scene. In 2H6, the term appears in a speech reporting the insults delivered by Cade and his followers: ‘All scholars, lawyers, courtiers, gentlemen, / They call false caterpillars and intend their death’ (4.4.35–6). The word, which parallels York’s charge when he says aside that ‘caterpillars eat my leaves away’ (3.1.90), represents the world as eaten by parasites, vile creatures which prey upon society. Knowles (2H6, 314) remarks that ‘In the course of the sixteenth century the figurative meaning of “rapacious extortionner” (OED Caterpillar 2) absorbed the meaning of the earlier “piller”, a robber, despoiler, thief’. Cairncross (2H6, 119) quotes Hall’s text ‘oppressors . . . flatterers, suckers of his purse and robbers of his subjects’ (Hall, 220) and suggests that there is an ironic pun on ‘pillars’ and ‘pillers’: those who are supposed to be the ‘pillars’ of the commonwealth are mere ‘caterpillars’. In R2, Bolingbroke denounces ‘Bushy, Bagot and their complices, / The caterpillars of the commonwealth, / Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away’ (2.3.165–7). The image is in keeping with the symbolism of the garden, which is emphasized in a play where Gaunt describes England as ‘This other Eden’ (2.1.42) but where the gardeners’ speech ‘on the maintenance of political and horticultural order’ (as Forker notes in R2, 360) deplores that the ‘wholesome herbs’ of ‘our sea-walled garden, the whole land’ is ‘swarming with caterpillars’ (3.4.43–7). (C) See Woodstock (quoted by Forker in R2, 491), where Bagot and Bushy are referred to as ‘caterpillars’, ‘cankers’ who ‘eat the fruit / That planting and good husbandry hath nourished’ (1.3.155–8) and commoners are described as ‘caterpillars’ (3.3.138). For other examples and uses, see Forker, R2, 491. See canker, parasite. censer (A) A vessel in which incense is burnt; a thurible, a perfuming-pan. ‘Censor’ is its homophone. (B) In 2H4, Doll Tearsheet calls the first beadle ‘you thin man in a censer’ (5.4.19). Humphreys (2H4, 178) explains that censers had ‘figures thinly embossed on them’ and notes that Shakespeare often likens ‘thin men to low relief carved or hammered figures’. It is the case, for example, in LLL where Holophernes is put ‘out of countenance’ (5.2.615) when his face is compared to ‘a cittern-head’, ‘the head of a bodkin’, ‘a death’s face in a ring’, ‘the face of an old Roman coin, scarce seen’, ‘the pommel of Caesar’s falchion’, ‘the carved-bone face on a flask’, ‘Saint George’s half-cheek in a brooch’ (5.2.600–15), Holofernes thus becoming a grotesque figure. The beadle in 2H4 was probably played by Sincklo who was known for being thin. One may hear ‘censor’ in this ‘censer’, as the situation suggests that the beadle is here the one who exercises ‘official or officious supervision over morals and conduct’ (OED 2a) by arresting Doll Tearsheet. 98

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(C) In TS , Hodgdon prefers the term ‘cithern’ (a type of lute with grotesque carvings) to the word ‘censor’ (F), when Petruccio wants to impress Kate by verbally assaulting the tailor and insulting his creation: ‘Here’s snip, and nip, and cut, and slish and slash, / Like to a cithern in a barber’s shop’ (4.3.92–3). On citterns being commonly kept in barber’s shops, see Wilson and Calore, 101–3. cheese (A) One of the foods prepared from milk (whitemeat), along with butter. ‘Cheese as food was regarded with ambivalence’, writes Thirsk (1999, 22). Elizabethan writers note that it is hard to digest and at the same time it should be eaten at the end of meals, in little quantities, to facilitate digestion; it is generally thought to be eaten by the poor but is also part of the diet of the rich. The image of cheese is used in national insults against the Welsh, who were known as great eaters of cheese, and the Dutch, who were associated with dairy products in general. Cogan (1584) contrasts students who should avoid eating cheese as being ‘hard of digestion and of evill nourishment’ and the ‘labouring men eating it daily’ and who ‘feel no inconvenience thereby’. The text is structured in a way that suggests that the Welsh are the best examples of those labouring eaters of cheese: The Welshe folks of al others use to eate much Cheese, and oftentimes rosted, which they think to be a good meate. But I thinke, rosted cheese is more meete to baite a trap, to catch a mouse or a ratte, than to be received into the bodie, for it corrupteth in the stomache both it selfe and other meates, and sendeth up ill vapours and fumes, which corrupt the breath. (161) (B) MW insultingly relates cheese to Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh Parson when Falstaff exclaims: ‘Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!’ (5.5.81–2). The insult plays out in the following lines: Falstaff: [. . .] Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? Shall I have a coxcomb of frieze? ’Tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese. Evans: Seese is not good to give putter – your belly is all putter. Falstaff: ‘Seese’ and ‘putter’! Have I lived to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English? (5.5.136–42) In a context that suggests that Falstaff is roasted by the fairies’ tapers, he seems to ironically become some ‘toasted’ cheese himself. The Welsh accent that disfigures the English language is the arch insult for Falstaff as Evans’s ‘broken English’ (Blank, 1996) becomes some battered food. In TC , Achilles, seeing Thersites arrive, asks him: ‘Why, my cheese, my digestion, why hast thou not served thyself in to my table so many meals?’ (2.3.39–40). The image conveys a mixture of praise and abuse that is based on the idea that cheese may be an aid to digestion but also turns Thersites into a base bodily function. It is supposed to be a compliment: if for Ajax Thersites is a poisonous mushroom, the ‘toadstool’ (2.1.19), 99

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for Achilles the satirist is a good digestive. If Achilles relishes Thersites’ words, Ajax has problems ‘digesting’ them. At the end of the play, Thersites mentions that ‘stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nestor’ (5.4.9–10). In Batman vppon Bartholome, one finds a description of old cheese (‘De Caseo Veteris’): ‘Also the olde cheese is harde and drye, with many holes and poores, because of drinesse, and breaketh soone, and hath neither fatnesse nor moysture, but grieueth the body’ (407r). (C) Cheese is described in chapters 74 (‘De Caseo’) and 75 (‘De Caseo Veteri’) of Batman vppon Bartholome (1582), fol. 406v–407v. See also Cogan, The Haven of Health (1584), chap. 197, 159–62; Twyne, The schoolemaster, or teacher of table philosophie (1576) in which chapter 25 distinguishes green cheese and old cheese (C4v). See Elyot’s The Castell of Health (1595), 48. For a general view of cheese in Shakespeare’s plays, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 84–6. See also, Thirsk (1999), 22–3 and Thirsk (2006), 278–83. See Banbury. chewet (A) A jackdaw or other crow-like bird, hence, metaphorically a chatterer. The word derives from French chouette ‘a chough, cadesse, daw, jackdaw’ (Cotgrave). It also designates a dish, a pie made of various kinds of meat or fish. (B) In 1H4, Hal hushes Falstaff when he intervenes in a dialogue between Worcester and the King on a matter of state: ‘Peace, chewet, peace’ (5.1.29). Hal means that it is no time for jesting and that Falstaff’s joking humour is out of place in such a situation. If the most obvious meaning is ‘chatterer’, one cannot but think of the alimentary meaning of the word that fits well into the ‘foodscape’ of the play. Even if OED expresses doubt as to the etymology of the word, it is tempting to hear the verb ‘chew’ in this ‘chewet’. Fitzpatrick (2011) notes that, given Falstaff’s appetite and ‘the common associations between Sir John and foodstuffs (see, for example, pudding)’ (89), Prince Henry might also be referring to the pie. The way Hal forbids Falstaff to speak announces the end of 2H4 when he asks Falstaff to leave ‘gormandizing’ (5.5.53), a word that refers to Falstaff’s two major sins of the tongue, gluttony and babbling. This word, ‘chewet’, already targets Falstaff’s two forms of ‘gormandizing’. chicken (A) The young of fowls. Shakespeare used the word to suggest innocence and cowardice. (B) In Mac, the term is used to refer, with tenderness, to young defenceless innocent children killed, ‘at one fell swoop’ (4.3.219) by the ‘hell-kite’ (4.3.217) Macbeth, when Macduff mourns his ‘pretty chickens’ (4.3.218). The same image of the chicken and the kite appears in 2H6 (3.1.248–50). In Cym, Posthumus uses the word ‘chickens’ to refer to the cowardly fleeing Romans (5.3.42). In Tim, the image is used abusively in a dialogue between Apemantus and his fool and the servants who have come to claim for Timon’s money: Apemantus: Fool: 100

[. . .] Speak to ’em, Fool. How do you, gentlemen?

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All Servants: Gramercies, good Fool. How does your mistress? Fool: She’s e’en setting on water to scald such chickens as you are. Would we could see you at Corinth! Apemantus: Good, Gramercy. (2.2.66–72) In context, Apemantus’ injunction ‘Speak to them’ is an invitation to insult, as Apemantus has been insulting the three ‘usurers’ men’ (2.2.96) relentlessly and now gives the floor to the Fool. Rebounding from the words of Apemantus, who has just called the servants ‘Poor rogues and usurers’ men, bawds between gold and want’ (2.2.60–1), the Fool relegates the servants of Timon’s ungrateful friends to the world of the brothels. Between the words ‘bawds’ and ‘Corinth’, which refers to a brothel, Corinth being known as a place of prostitution, the word ‘chickens’ takes on a precise sexual meaning. Chickens were scalded in water to remove their feathers and ‘scald’ has several sexual meanings. Comparing the servants to chickens that his mistress is going to ‘scald’, the Fool associates them with loose sexual behaviour and venereal diseases. Jowett (Tim, 215) summarizes the meanings that ‘scald’ can have and notes that ‘Scalding applies to the like of the servants as (a) inflamed with sexual desire (setting on could also mean ‘sexually arousing’), (b) fleeced, stripped of money, (c) made to suffer venereal disease, (d) treated for venereal disease by sweating in a heated tub’. Losing one’s hair was part of the symptoms of venereal diseases. Apemantus mocks the servants by turning the word ‘gramercy’ that they have just used against them when he thanks the Fool for his good insult with ‘Good, gramercy’: thanks for this insult. The meaning of cowardice may not be absent and the image of the scald chickens may anticipate the banquet scene in which Timon feeds his ‘knot of mouth-friends’ with ‘smoke and lukewarm water’ (3.7.88). (C) See Williams (Glossary); Williams, 3, 1200–1 (‘scald’); Fitzpatrick (2011), 89–90. See kite, scald. child (A) A human offspring; a young, innocent, frail, defenceless, unmanly human being. The term sometimes refers more specifically to a girl. (B) In 1H6, the Countess of Auvergne insults Talbot when she sees him appear: Countess: Messenger: Countess:

[. . .] What? Is this the man? Madam, it is. Is this the scourge of France? Is this the Talbot, so much feared abroad That with his name the mothers still their babes? I see report is fabulous and false. I thought I should have seen some Hercules, A second Hector for his grim aspect, And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs. Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf: 101

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It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp Should strike such terror to his enemies. (2.3.13–23) The countess compares herself to one of the nine female worthies, ‘Scythian Thomyris’ (2.3.6), known as a figure of revenge for having ritually insulted the corpse of the Persian king Cyrus by dipping his face into a wineskin full of human blood (Herodotus 1.212–14). The countess’s feat is a verbal attack, an episode of insult in the etymological meaning of the word, related to insultare (to triumph over). By comparing him to an impotent child, the countess mocks Talbot’s small stature and probably refers to the small stature of the actor playing the part, perhaps the same as the one playing the role of Richard Gloucester, according to Cairncross (1H6, 44). The use of the child figure also questions the virility that such a ‘writhled shrimp’ can have. Yet the rest of the scene restores and even enhances Talbot’s heroic stature. The warrior, by laughing at the insult and calling his soldiers, shows how the countess ‘did mistake / The outward composition of his body’ (2.3.73–4): No, no, I am but shadow of myself: You are deceived, my substance is not here; For what you see is but the smallest part And least proportion of humanity. I tell you, madam, were the whole frame here, It is of such a spacious lofty pitch, Your roof were not sufficient to contain’t. (2.3.49–55) One may hear Talbot’s answer to the insult as a metadramatic comment suggesting that theatre spectators can only see the ‘shadow’ of the world but the countess understands that Talbot is no ‘child’ when his soldiers arrive on stage. Talbot restores his manly stature thanks to his army that proves that he is a ‘man’ (2.3.47–8) indeed. The conclusion of the scene reveals the sexual overtones of the episode when Talbot says: What you have done hath not offended me; No other satisfaction do I crave, But only, with your patience, that we may Taste of your wine and see what cates you have; For soldiers’ stomachs always serve them well. (2.3.75–9) Talbot claims that there is no offense, ‘no abuse’ (2H4, 2.4.313–19) but, as Findlay suggests (2010, 85), the ‘satisfaction’ that he asks for smells of rape and pillage. In 3H6, when Richard calls Clifford ‘that cruel child-killer’, Clifford provokingly answers ‘I slew thy father: call’st thou him a child? (2.2.112–13). Clifford suggests that Richard is himself ironically insulting his father by calling him a child. He thus returns

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the insult against its enunciator. What is also ironical is that Richard himself, like Clifford who has killed his ‘tender brother Rutland’ (2.2.115) will kill young Prince Edward, after contemptuously calling him ‘brat’ (5.5.27). (C) See Findlay (2010), 84–85. One finds a description of Hercules as a ‘babe, a child, a shrimp’ in LLL (5.2.584), which is reminiscent of the description of Talbot in 1H6. See boy. chops (A) A piece of meat that is ‘chopped off’, a cutlet. The term also designates the jaws, the sides of the face, hence a person with puffed up cheeks. Cotgrave has: ‘Dodu: m.: A fat chops, or chuffe’ and ‘Fafelu, Puffed vp, fat cheeked, a chops’. (B) In 1H4, Poins calls Falstaff ‘chops’ (1.2.129) in a festive context, when he invites him to be part of the Gadshill robbery episode. The term is part of the ambivalent praiseabuse mode of address that characterizes the world of the tavern. Poins thus refers to Sir John’s fat cheeks but in the carnival world of H4, the idea that Falstaff is a fat piece of meat is not incongruous. Ironically, Falstaff uses the same type of image when he attacks the travellers: ‘Hang ye, gorbellied knaves, are ye undone? No, ye fat chuffs; I would your store were here. On, bacons, on!’ (2.2.86–8). Scott Kastan points out that ‘The irony of Falstaff abusing the travellers for being fat inevitably draws a laugh in performance’ (1H4, 196). The word ‘chuff’ (bouffe, in French, as appears in Palsgrave) designates ‘A cheek swollen or puffed with fat’ (OED ). In 2H4, the term, again applied to Falstaff, is part of the bitter-sweet terms of insult that characterize Doll Tearsheet who seems to be unable to speak without words of abuse: ‘Ah, you sweet little rogue, you! Alas, poor ape, how thou sweat’st! Come, let me wipe thy face. Come on, you whoreson chops!’ (2.4.215–17). In MW , Falstaff is called a ‘puffed man’ (5.5.151). (C) See Cotgrave, in the masque entry: ‘The picture of Shroue-tewsday; a guts, gulch, gorbellie, fat chuffe, or chops.’ On the word ‘chuff’, Scott Kastan (196) points out another meaning: ‘rich misers, cf Florio “Averone: a chuff, a niggard, a great covetous man’ ”. See blown. chuff. See chops. churl (A) A rustic, a peasant, a villain, an ill-bred fellow. The anglo-saxon form ceorl meant ‘a peasant, a labourer’. Hence churlish means rude, rough, unkind, without courtesy. (B) In 2H6, Suffolk uses the word to emphasize Warwick’s ignoble nature: Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour! If ever lady wronged her lord so much, Thy mother took into her blameful bed Some stern untutored churl, and noble stock Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art, And never of the Nevilles’ noble race. (3.2.210–15)

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Suffolk is here calling Warwick a bastard and a villain, as is shown by Warwick’s reaction when he says that ‘it was thy mother that thou mean’st, / That thou thyself wast born in bastardy’ (3.2.222–3). In Rom, Juliet affectionately calls Romeo ‘churl’ when she understands that he has not left her a drop of poison (‘O churl! Drunk all, and left no friendly drop / To help me after?’, 5.3.163–4). The word here means ‘niggard’, Juliet accusing Romeo of being selfish and too niggardly to leave her anything. Timon calls Apemantus a ‘churl’ to suggest that he is bad-mannered and not fit for the society of men: Fie, thou’rt a churl, you’ve got a humour there Does not become a man; ’tis much to blame. They say, my lords, ira furor brevis est, But yond man is ever angry. Go, let him have a table by himself, For he does neither affect company Nor is he fit for’t indeed. (Tim 1.2.26–32) Timon seems to give here a definition of the term ‘churl’. Apemantus is presented as a ‘boor’ (Dawson and Minton, 185), but given the context, one may also read the word as a reference to the management of money, Timon accusing Apemantus of being ungenerous, of being a miser who does not want to give, while Timon himself is bounteous. Moreover, the irony appears when we note that Timon will soon become a ‘churl’ himself: he will soon be angry and mad and abjure forever the society of men. In WT Polixenes angrily calls the shepherd ‘churl’ (4.4.437) when he discovers his son wants to marry the presumed shepherd’s daughter, Perdita. He uses the word with contempt to signify that his son Florizel cannot marry a base peasant’s daughter. (C) See Huloet; Nowell; Thomas; Florio (1598). On ‘Cherles Termes’, an expression that was used in medieval times to refer to ‘low-class language’, see Hughes (2006), 73–4. On ‘churl’ as a ‘class insult’, see Innes, 99. See clown, peasant. Cimmerian (A) One of a people fabled to live in perpetual darkness, especially by Homer (Odyssey, book xi, 14). (B) In Tit, Bassianus, addressing Tamora, both insults her and Aaron, the Moor: Believe me, queen, your swart Cimmerian Doth make your honour of his body’s hue, Spotted, detested, and abominable. Why are you sequestered from all your train, Dismounted from your snow-white goodly steed. And wandered hither to an obscure plot, 104

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Accompanied but with a barbarous Moor, If foul desire had not conducted you? (2.2.72–9) Bassianus describes the darkness that characterizes the black Aaron as ‘Spotted, detested, and abominable’. According to James 1 (1584), sleeping in sinn is called ‘cimmerien night’ (D4r). The word ‘Cimmerian’ may thus be evocative of the lustful relation (‘foul desire’) between Tamora and Aaron. (C) See Ovid, Metamorphoses, xi (‘The house of Sleep’), 687–92. See Cooper (1584): Cimmerij, People inhabiting the furthest part of Europe, not farre from the fennes called Paludes Meotidis, aboute the sea Bosphorus Cimmerius, Northeast from Græcia. Plinie and other affirme, that by the farre distaunce of the sunne from it, that country is alway verie darke: wherof happened this prouerbe. Cimmerijs tenebris atrior, Blacker than the darkenesse of Cimmeria: applyed to much darkenesse, dulnesse of witte, or lacke of wisedome. The same definition is found in Elyot (1542); James I (1584), defines the expression ‘Cimmerian night’. See also Heywood (1637), 292 and Chapman’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey (1615), 160. See black, Ethiope, Moor. cipher (A) Zero, nought, hence naught (ie worthless). Derived from old French cyfre (chiffre in modern French) and from medieval Latin cifra, cifera, ciphra (from Arabic çifr, the arithmetical symbol ‘zero’ or ‘nought’). When placed after any figure, it increases its value tenfold, and when placed before a figure, it decreases its value tenfold. Hollyband has ‘Vn Zero, m: a cypher or naughts.’ Cawdrey reads: ‘cypher, [. . .] a circle in numbering, of no value of it selfe, but serueth to make vp the number, and to make other figures of more value.’ ‘He is a cypher among numbers’ is proverbial (Dent, C391). (B) In LLL , Moth calls Armado ‘cipher’ in an aside. To understand the image, one needs to quote the whole dialogue that rests on signs (1.2.1) and figures: Armado: Moth: Armado: Moth: Armado: Moth: Armado: Moth:

I have promised to study three years with the duke. You may do it in an hour, sir. Impossible. How many is one thrice told? I am ill at reckoning. It fitteth the spirit of a tapster. You are a gentleman and a gamester, sir. I confess both. They are both the varnish of a complete man. Then I am sure you know how much the gross sum of deuce-ace amounts to. Armado: It doth amount to one more than two. Moth: Which the base vulgar do call three. 105

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Armado: Moth:

Armado: Moth: [Aside]

True. Why, sir, is this such a piece of study? Now here is three studied, ere ye’ll thrice wink. And how easy it is to put ‘years’ to the word ‘three’, and study three years in two words, the dancing horse will tell you. A most fine figure! To prove you a cipher. (1.2.35–55)

The insult ‘cipher’ appears as the result of the almost mathematical demonstration achieved by Moth who wants to ‘prove’ that his master is a fool, a nonentity, a nothing. Moth plays with Armado’s word ‘figure’ that refers to rhetoric and logic to translate it into a mathematical sign in a sequence that constantly invites to decipher a cryptic language. Ironically, Moth is transformed into a nonentity in his turn when Holofernes calls him ‘consonant’ (5.1.49). In a play that is so obsessed with language, even insults have to do with linguistic signs. In AYL , Shakespeare again plays with the words ‘figure’ and ‘cipher’ in a context of insult: Jaques: Orlando: Jaques: Orlando: Jaques: Orlando:

By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you. He is drowned in the brook. Look but in, and you shall see him. There I shall see mine own figure. Which I take to be either a fool or a cipher. I’ll tarry no longer with you. Farewell, good Signior Love. [Exit Jaques] I am glad of your departure. Adieu, good Monsieur Melancholy.

As Dusinberre notes (AYL , 256), it is not certain whether Jaques’s first line is deliberately insulting or not. He may be referring to his finding another fool in the person of Orlando and/or to his seeking Touchstone. Orlando, invoking the myth of Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection, returns the word ‘figure’ against Jaques by transforming it into ‘cipher’. The term here is doubly an insult as it both means ‘nought’ (‘zero’) and ‘naught’. That is why Jaques leaves the stage, as if wounded by Orlando’s words. Dusinberre also suggests that ‘The word cipher could be a cue for Orlando to yawn, in which the mouth becomes an O’ (256). Ironically, Orlando himself was associated to ‘naught’ by his brother at the beginning of the play when Oliver told him to go to the devil, saying: ‘be naught awhile’ (1.1.33–4). Circe (A) A witch who turned the companions of Ulysses into swine. The story is told by Homer in Odyssey (book x). (B) In 1H6, Joan Puzel is compared to Circe: York: Damsel of France, I think I have you fast. Unchain your spirits now with spelling charms And try if they can gain your liberty. A goodly prize, fit for the devil’s grace. See how the ugly witch doth bend her brows 106

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As if, with Circe, she would change my shape! Joan: Changed to a worser shape, thou canst not be (5.2.51–7) Joan is regularly compared to a devil and a witch in the play. Talbot addresses her with ‘Devil, or devil’s dam, I’ll conjure thee’ (1.5.5), calling her a ‘witch’ (1.5.6) and then ‘that railing Hecate’ (3.2.63). Burgundy calls her ‘vile fiend and shameless courtesan’ (3.2.44); Talbot addresses her as ‘Foul fiend of France and hag of all despite, / Encompassed with thy lustful paramours’ (3.2.51–2). After calling her ‘Fell banning hag, enchantress’ (5.2.63) and declaring that ‘she hath lived too long, / To fill the world with vicious qualities’ (5.3.34–5), York curses her with: ‘Break thou in pieces, and consume to ashes, / Thou foul accursed minister of hell’ (5.3.92–3). Joan returns the insult to its sender by playing on the shape-changing figure. (C) For the story of Circe, see Cooper (1584). See Findlay (2010), 75–6. See courtesan, enchantress, fiend, hag, Hecate. clot/clod-poll/pole (A) A clod, also spelt ‘clot’, is a mass or lump of solid matter, hence a clod of earth, a clot of blood. The ‘poll’ designates the top part of the head, the head. Hence, clotpoll means ‘fool’, ‘blockhead’, referring literally to a head (poll, pole) made of a clod of earth. (B) In TN , Sir Toby comments on the letter of challenge written by Sir Andrew: ‘this letter, being so excellently ignorant [. . .] He [Viola/Cesario] will find it comes from a clod-pole’ (3.4.183–5). What is first a word of derision uttered in absentia becomes an outspoken insult at the end of the play when Sir Toby’s head is ‘broken’ by Cesario and he angrily rejects Sir Andrew’s help: ‘Will you help? An ass-head and a coxcomb and a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull?’ (5.1.202–3). Symbolically the fact that not only Sir Andrew’s head but also Sir Toby’s should have been broken by Cesario transforms Sir Toby into a Sir Andrew, that is a fool and a ‘coxcomb’, which explains his angry reaction. Lear calls Oswald ‘clotpoll’ in absentia (KL 1.4.46) because the servant has just outraged him by ignoring his question. In TC , Thersites leaves Patroclus, Ajax and Achilles after copiously insulting them, saying: I will see you hanged like clotpoles ere I come any more to your tents. I will keep where there is wit stirring and leave the faction of fools. (2.1.114–16) He plays on the term ‘hang’, which leads to the head (pole) and then prolongs the insult by referring to the warriors’ lack of ‘wit’ and to the ‘faction of fools’. In Cym, Guiderius insults Cloten post mortem by sending his ‘clotpoll down the stream, / In embassy to his mother’ (4.2.184–5). By cutting Cloten’s head, Guiderius translates words of abuse into a deed, as Cloten’s lack of wit had been his target in the preceding sequence: This Cloten was a fool, an empty purse, There was no money in’t: not Hercules 107

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Could have knock’d out his brains, for he had none: Yet I not doing this, the fool had borne My head as I do his. (4.2.113–17) Guiderius has taken Cloten’s threats literally when the queen’s son threatened to set down their heads ‘on the gates of Lud’s town’ (4.2.99), (ie on the gateway to London bridge), which was in common usage for traitors’ heads. The action of the play literalizes the common word of abuse ‘clotpoll’ and also plays on the name of Cloten, which associates him with ‘clot’. (C) See head, pate. clown (A) A country bumpkin, a rustic, a churl, a swain, a peasant. The word implies rude manners, ignorance and lack of refinement. Originally, it means ‘clot, clod, lump’ (OED ). Cotgrave has: ‘Lourdaut: A sot, dunce, dullard, grotnoll [ie grotesque head], iobernoll, blockhead; a lowt, lob [ie a country bumpkin: a clown, lout], luske [ie lazy fellow], boore [peasant], clowne, churle, clusterfist; a proud, ignorant, and vnmannerlie swaine’. For rustault Cotgrave reads: ‘A clowne, boore, churle, hob, hinde, swayne, lobcocke, rude or vnmannerlie lozell’. The word is also found under the French word vilain. It also designates a fool or jester as a stage character. (B) In AYL , Touchstone the ‘roynish clown’ (2.2.8) addresses the shepherd as ‘clown’: Touchstone: Rosalind: Corin: Touchstone:

Holla, you clown! Peace, fool, he’s not thy kinsman. Who calls? Your betters, sir. (2.4.63–6)

Touchstone’s word of address is full of contempt for countrymen, as appears when he answers ‘Your betters, sir’. Calling Corin ‘clown’ amounts to saying that he is ignoble, that he is a villain compared with those who are coming from court. Cotgrave associates ‘clown’ with ‘barbarous’ with the definition of ‘Barbaresque. as Barbare; Or, clowne-like, like a barbarous fellow’ and under the word Bisongne: ‘filthie knaue, or clowne; a raskall, bisonian, base humored scoundrell’. Rosalind’s rebuke is based on another meaning of the word ‘clown’ (jester, fool) but it also blurs the difference between the natural and the artificial fool, or the fool and the clown, which cannot but be insulting for Touchstone. The play transforms Touchstone into a hybrid ‘clownish fool’ (1.3.127). Shakespeare plays with the ironic address of the Clown (both actor and character), disparagingly calling a rustic ‘clown’. At the end of the play, Touchstone again dissociates himself from the rustic clown when he addresses William (originally perhaps played by Shakespeare), declaring ‘It is meat and drink to me to see a clown’ (5.1.11). The word is pregnant with a mixture of praise and dispraise: the clown is the one who does not have ‘good wits’ (5.1.12) and at the same time he is ‘meat 108

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and drink’. Touchstone again uses the word to threaten the rustic William, presented as a burlesque rival: Therefore, you clown, abandon (which is, in the vulgar, ‘leave’) the society (which in the boorish, is ‘company’) of this female (‘which in the common is ‘woman’); which together is: ‘abandon the society of this female’, or, clown, thou perishest! [. . .] (5.1.47–51) ‘You, clown’ sounds like an insult, like ‘you, villain’, in a burlesque scene of challenge, and the insult is all the more comic since it is uttered by the Clown Touchstone. The same comic use of the word appears in LLL when Costard, the Clown, exclaims, after a bawdy discussion with Boyet: ‘By my soul, a swain, a most simple clown!’ (4.1.139). (C) See Wiles’s pioneering book, Shakespeare’s Clown (1987), which explores the clown actor on Shakespeare’s stage. Wiles points out that when it appears in the stage directions and list of characters, the word ‘clown’ (often abbreviated as Clo.) is part of ‘specialized playhouse vocabulary’ (66), designating the actor playing the clown. See coxcomb, fool. cobloaf (A) A bun, a small, round lump of bread. The word derives from ‘cob’ (head) and ‘loaf’ (bread). Minsheu (1617) defines the term ‘cobloaf or bunne’ as ‘A little loaf made with a round head, such as Cobirons which support the fire’ (79). Then Minsheu defines ‘Cobirons’ as synonymous with ‘knobbe irons’, ‘because they be Andirons with great Knobbes or round heads, called also creepers, because they stand bowing on the chimney as though they were to creepe. They may be as well called Cobirons of their great heads round like gobbets, as wee say to poultrie or such like, they cobbe in their meat, that is, they eat great gobbets or morsels’ (79). (B) The word is used as an insult in TC (‘Cobloaf!’, 2.1.36) and is still puzzling editors. It is attributed to Ajax in F but to Thersites in Q. The logic of the exchange suggests that it is Ajax who uses the term, as he has already called Thersites ‘toadstool’ (2.1.19), has called him ‘vinewed’st (‘unsalted’ in Q) leaven’ (2.1.13) and threatened him: ‘I will beat thee into handsomeness’ (2.1.13–14). Ajax obviously likes the baking vocabulary and targets Thersites’ shape. Muir (TC , 86) comments by quoting John Foster’s A Shakespeare Wordbook (1908): ‘A crusty uneven loaf with many knobs and a round top . . . hence, from appearance, a rough, loutish, misshapen fellow’ and he ‘suspects that Foster had Thersites, rather than a loaf, in mind.’ For Dawson (TC , 114), ‘The aptness of the epithet is not apparent – perhaps a reference to Thersites’ deformities or to his small size? In general, Ajax’s insults are no match for those of his opponent, so he resorts to blows’. If one takes the description of the cobiron into account, the shape of the cobloaf is similar to that of the toadstool, which means that Thersites has a big head and a ‘creeping’ attitude. In Shakespeare’s Clown, Wiles notes that ‘Physical grotesqueness is essential for this type of fool’ (147) and interprets Thersites’ being called a ‘botch of nature’ (5.1.5) as revealing the grotesque physical aspect characteristic of the clown Armin who probably played the part. The figure of the cobloaf is coherent 109

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with the image of the ‘crusty batch/botch of nature’ (5.1.5), the adjective ‘crusty’ meaning ‘scabby’ but also ‘crustlike’, as on a loaf of bread. (C) In Cooper (1584), Thersites is described as ‘A prince that came with the Greekes to the siege of Troy, which in person and conditious (sic) was of all other most deformed.’ See batch. cockatrice. See basilisk. coistrel (A) Literally, a groom, hence a knave, a base fellow. A variant of ‘custrel’, which seems to be related to Old French coustillier-illeur, literally a soldier armed with a coustille. Cotgrave has for Coustillier: ‘An Esquire of the bodie; an Armourbearer vnto a Knight; the seruant of a man at Armes; also, a groome of a stable, a horse-keeper.’ Also spelt ‘coistrill’, ‘coisterel’. The metaphorical meaning of ‘base fellow’ seems to be related to the secondary sense ‘knave, base fellow’, which seems to have arisen from association with ‘custron’, derived from French coistron, which means ‘scullion, kitchen boy’ (marmiton), hence also ‘vile’ and ‘bastard’ (Godefroy). (B) In TN , Sir Toby Belch uses it as a hypothetical and paradoxical insult when he declares that ‘He’s a coward and a coistrel that will not drink to my niece till his brains turn o’ th’ toe, like a parish-top’ (1.3.38–40), in the same way as he says a few lines before ‘they are scoundrels and substractors that say so of him [ie Sir Andrew]’ (1.3.32–3). Sir Toby here defends Sir Andrew who is accused by Maria of being a heavy drinker. Sir Toby’s wide-ranging insult aims at showing that Sir Andrew is precisely neither a coward nor a ‘coistrel’ as he drinks to his niece’s health. As is noted by Story Donno (TN , 51) and Elam (TN , 173), after Muir (The Sources of Shakespeare’s Plays, 1978), Shakespeare may have borrowed the insult from Rich’s Farewell To Military Profession (1583), which includes the story of ‘Apolonius and Silla’, Shakespeare’s main source for TN , and which alludes to a lady who had ‘her Chastitie assailed, by suche a simple coisterell’ (D2r). The use of the word by Sir Toby shows how values are subverted in his world and how valour is put in drinking rather than in any other action. Sir Toby has his own system and scale of values on top of which he places drinking. Thus the term ‘coistrel’, beyond its general meaning, is newly defined as ‘one who will not drink to Sir Toby’s niece’. On the contrary, Sir Andrew who is described as being ‘drunk nightly in your company’ (1.3.34–5) becomes the ‘tall’, the valiant man for Sir Toby while Maria and the rest of the play show that he is a true coward. In the festive world of TN , values are turned upside down. In Per, Marina addresses Bolt the bawd as ‘the damned doorkeeper to every / Coistrel that comes enquiring for his Tib’ (4.5.169). (C) Warren and Wells (TN , 95) note that ‘the term is used abusively of the cowardly servant Michael in Arden of Faversham (published 1592) Sc. 5.41, 59’. The term is found in Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour (1598), 3.4.134 (‘You whoreson bragging coistrel’). On the mechanisms of linguistic subversion, see Northbrooke (1577), Address to the Reader: ‘It is a world to see and behold wicked people, how they wrest and turn the names of good things unto the names of vices.’ 110

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commoner/common (A) Literally, a member of a community; one of the common people; one who shares the commons (ie a common meal), hence, a ‘common woman’, one that is owned collectively by a community, a prostitute, one who makes her body ‘common’. There is no pre-seventeenth century record but ‘common’ has had this meaning from the fourteenth century (OED ). The word is more specifically used in a military context to refer to camp-followers. Edelman notes that ‘military authorities have always been concerned about the presence of prostitutes amongst their soldiers’ (2000, 95). Tilley illustrates as proverbial the phrases ‘as common as the highway’ (H457) and ‘as common as the cartway’ (C109). (B) The two Shakespearean occurrences of the word indeed appear in two plays the actions of which take place in a military context. In Oth, Othello calls Desdemona ‘public commoner’: Desdemona: Othello:

Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed? Was this fair paper, this most goodly book, Made to write ‘whore’ upon? What committed! Committed? O thou public commoner! (4.2.71–4)

The insult sounds like an echo of ‘committed’ uttered by Desdemona, which Othello repeats furiously in the following lines as if the very word were proof of her adultery. As a matter of fact, as Honigmann notes (277), ‘commit’ is used by Elizabethans to mean ‘commit adultery’ (see KL 3.4.79–80, ‘commit not with man’s sworn spouse’). The insult used by Othello is in Iago’s vein, as appears when the Ensign plays on the word with his wife Emilia: Iago: You have a thing for me? It is a common thing – Emilia: Ha? Iago: To have a foolish wife. (3.3.306). Iago’s words are pregnant with the image of woman as a ‘common thing’ (pudendum). In AW , Bertram denounces Diana as a ‘common gamester to the camp’ (5.3.188), which she ironically denies by showing the ring, which is supposed to prove that Bertram is lying: He does me wrong, my lord; if I were so He might have bought me at a common price. Do not believe him. O behold this ring, Whose high respect and rich validity Did lack a parallel; yet for all that He gave it to a commoner a’ th’ camp – If I be one. (5.3.189–95). The king then declares: ‘I think thee now some common customer’ (5.3.285), meaning ‘prostitute’. The insult ‘commoner’ is to be seen under the ironic light of the bed-trick 111

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in which Diana has indeed shared Bertram’s bed and made it ‘common’ by lending it to Helena. The image of Diana as a whore is also conveyed by Lafew, when he bawdily comments on her ambiguous and double discourse: ‘This woman’s an easy glove, my lord; she goes off and on at pleasure’ (5.3.276–7). In MA , Don Pedro adds to Claudio’s insults in the wedding scene by calling Hero ‘a common stale’ (4.1.64). In Ham, there is a possible insulting game on the word ‘common’ in the exchange between Hamlet and his mother Gertrude: Queen: Hamlet:

Thou knowst ’tis common all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity. Ay, madam, it is common. (1.2.72–4)

Considering Hamlet’s anger at what he considers as his mother’s adulterous behaviour, the word ‘common’ may here suggest that his mother is a ‘commoner’. Timon addressing the ‘damned earth’ he is digging, calls it ‘Thou common whore of mankind that puts odds / Among the rout [ie mob] of nations’ (4.3.42–4), presenting the earth as a lying body that is common to everyone and the source of disputes. Resuming his digging, he then calls the earth ‘Common mother’ (4.3.176). In 2H4, Doll Tearsheet is indirectly termed a ‘commoner’ through the image of a road: Prince: Poins:

This Doll Tearsheet should be some road. I warrant you, as common as the way between Saint Albans and London. (2.2.160–2)

‘Road’ here means ‘whore’, something that is trodden upon by everyone. (C) On the military meaning of the word, see Edelman (2000), 95–6 (‘commoner’). See Williams, 1, 285–7. companion (A) Deriving from Latin cum (together, with)-panis (bread), one who is in the company of another, a fellow, a mate, one in a (sometimes ill) company. A general, indeterminate term of contempt that is similar to ‘fellow’. Connected with Old French compaignon, it is used as a term of familiarity and contempt, which corresponds to the meaning that appears in Cotgrave: ‘Petit compagnon. An vpstart, meane companion; scoundrell, base fellow; a scuruie, saucie, or proud Groome.’ The negative connotations of the word appear regularly in Florio’s World of words (1598) where it is present in innumerable definitions of insulting words such as ‘Ghiotto, a craftie, knauish, slie, subtill, malicious man. Also a saucie iacke, a malapert or saucie companion’, or ‘Lumacone, a great snaile, a gull, a loggerhed, a ioulthead, a patch, a lubie, a sneaker, a lurking companion’, or ‘Vigliaccone, a filthy, base, rascally, scoundring companion’ or ‘Villaneggiare, to iniurie, to wrong, to abuse, to offer wrong in words or deeds. Also to plaie the base companion, or countrey clowne.’ (See also Perceval and Cotgrave.) ‘Companion’ is a key word to which lexicographers attach all kinds of negative epithets. As the word is regularly ‘ill sorted’ (2H4 2.4.146–7), it becomes an insult per se. 112

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(B) In 2H6, Iden calls Cade ‘rude companion’ (4.10.30) without knowing who he is: Why, rude companion, whatsoe’er thou be, I know thee not; why then should I betray thee? Is’t not enough to break into my garden And like a thief to come to rob my grounds, Climbing my walls in spite of me the owner, But thou wilt brave me with these saucy terms? (4.10.30–5) Here the derogatory ‘companion’ is a way of describing a poor famished man who has no name, until he identifies himself as Cade just before dying (4.10.64). For Iden, Cade is just an anonymous ‘rude companion’ who becomes a ‘traitor’ once Iden discovers whom he (or famine) has just killed: ‘Is’t Cade I have slain, that monstrous traitor?’ (4.10.65). In 1H4, Hal parodies his father and has him say: ‘a tun of man is thy companion’ (2.4.436), which is an insult both to Falstaff and to the Prince, who is thus accused of being in the worst possible ‘company’, and of becoming like Richard II , ‘a companion to the common streets’ (1H4 3.2.68). In 2H4, Doll Tearsheet insults Pistol: ‘I scorn you, scurvy companion’ (2.4.121). In JC , Brutus excludes the poet by derisively calling him ‘companion’: Brutus: Get you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow, hence. Cassius: Bear with him, Brutus, ’tis his fashion. Brutus: I’ll know his humour when he knows his time. What should the wars do with these jigging fools? Companion, hence. (4.3.132–6) The word is vague enough to contain all kinds of insults. In Cor, the second servingman exclaims, seeing that Coriolanus has entered Aufidius’ house: ‘Has the porter his eyes in his head that he gives entrance to such companions?’ (4.5.11–13). The ‘companion’ is here the anonymous fellow, the stranger one wants to get rid of. Later, Menenius addresses a watchman as ‘you companion’ (5.2.60) after calling him ‘fellow’ (5.2.58), two terms that express contempt towards an inferior. In AW , it is Parolles who is identified as a ‘companion’. Lafew asks him ‘Are you companion to the Count Rossillion? (2.3.193). Later the term is used again contemptuously by the widow to refer to Parolles, ‘that knave’, ‘a filthy officer’ (3.5.15– 17) and finally by the king who exclaims: ‘As thou art a knave and no knave. What an equivocal companion is this!’ (5.3.249–50). (C) To have an idea of the recurrence of the term in definitions of insulting words in dictionaries, see ‘companion’ on LEME . conger (A) The conger is a sort of large eel that is known for haunting muddy waters. Minsheu has: ‘It is a fish long and slipperie, not much unlike a great eele, whence in English it is called a Conger-eele.’ The conger is supposed to be hard to digest. Breton 113

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in Wits Trenchmour (1597) reads: ‘Fresh Sammon, Sturgeon, and Conger, are no victuals for poore people, especially for weake stomacks, that must haue wine for their disgestion’ (C2r). The term may also refer to cucumber, ‘of a cold temperature, and fit to be eaten only of choleric persons’ (Vaughan, 1600, 27). (B) The conger is part of the fish imagery that takes on sexual connotations in Shakespeare’s plays (see Partridge). In 2H4, Doll Tearsheet tells Falstaff: ‘Hang yourself, you muddy conger, hang yourself!’ (2.4.51–2). The insulting content comes as much from the word ‘muddy’, which Partridge glosses ‘smutty, dirty, indelicate, bawdy’, as from the image of the conger, which refers to Falstaff’s corpulent body, compared with the thinness of the eel to which Hal is associated in 1H4 when Falstaff calls him ‘eel-skin’ (2.4.238). At the same time the word obviously conveys Falstaff’s libidinous character. It is also used as an insult in Dekker’s 1599 The Shoemaker’s Holiday (sc. 4, 122): ‘Trip and go, you soused cunger, away!’, an insult that reminds of the ‘soused gurnet’ (ie ‘pickled fish’) to which Falstaff compares himself in 1H4 (4.2.11–12). ‘Conger’ is ironically used a little later by Falstaff himself when he answers Doll’s question about Hal’s affection for Poins: Doll: Why does the Prince love him so, then? Falstaff: Because their legs are both of a bigness, and a plays at quoits well, and eats conger and fennel, [. . .]. (2H4 2.4.243–5) The image of the conger is integrated into the world of food, where Falstaff reigns supreme. According to Humphreys, ‘he eats conger and fennel’ means that ‘he has a good digestion and a dull wit’, and fennel was ‘used as a sauce with fish hard for digestion’ (2H4, 79–80). The conger was considered as indigestible food that could dull the spirits of the eaters. Humphreys notes that in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster (2.2.39–40) the conger is one of the ‘dullers of the vital spirits’, with ‘fresh pork’ and ‘clarified whey’ (2H4, 80). It is in 2H4 that the only two occurrences of the word appear and it is tempting to relate them and to see Falstaff as a sort of indigestible food that dulls the spirits of his companions. Fitzpatrick suggests that, in this case, it may refer to ‘cucumber’, which was a common term in the Midlands and was known for ‘abating carnal lust’ (Fitzpatrick, 2011, 101, quoting Elyot, The Castell of Health, 1595, E2v). In the context of the play, the insult is ambivalent as it both suggests that Falstaff is sexually active and impotent. This is in keeping with a character that is both full of life and the embodiment of old age. (C) See eel, fish, mackerel, whale. See Partridge; Fitzpatrick (2011), 101. consonant (A) Lily (1567), defines the consonant as a ‘letter which needes must be sounded with a vowell: as B with E. And al the letters, except the vowels, are Consonantes.’ (B) In LLL , Holofernes the pedant questions Moth: ‘Quis, quis, thou consonant?’ (5.1.49). He means that Moth is a nonentity, a sound that, unlike vowels, cannot form a pronounceable syllable by itself. It is not fortuitous that the insult should be uttered in a scene that is obsessed with letters: 114

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Armado [to Holofernes]: Moth: Holofernes: Moth: Holofernes: Moth: Holofernes: Moth: Armado:

Monsieur, are you not lettered? Yes, yes! He teaches boys the hornbook. What is a, b, spelt backward with the horn on his head? Ba, pueritia, with a horn added. Ba, most silly sheep in a horn. You hear his learning. Quis, quis, thou consonant? The last of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the fifth, if I. I will repeat them: a, e, i – The sheep. The other two concludes it: o, u. Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit! Snip-snap, quick and home! It rejoiceth my intellect. True wit! (5.1.43–56)

The insult ‘consonant’ is borrowed from the field of orthography that is at the heart of this sequence. Behind this insult that emphasizes Moth’s little stature (he is a page, a boy), one can hear the sign of a harmonious exchange of wit as Moth is perfectly at ease in the language game that he plays with Holofernes and Armado. To that extent, he is ‘consonant’ with them, that is ‘accordant, harmonious, agreeing in sound, consorting with’ them (Cotgrave). The insult ‘consonant’ is in accordance with Moth’s name, related to French mot (word), as is mentioned by Costard: ‘I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus. Thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon’ (5.1.38–41). Reduced to being a consonant, Moth is indeed ‘not so long as honorificabilitudinitatibus’. The insult seems to be an answer to Moth’s calling Armado ‘a cipher’ in an aside (1.2.55), in a play that constitutes a world of numbers and letters. (C) On ‘consonants’, see Mulcaster (1582). See cipher, flap-dragon, zed. consort (A) To ‘consort’ means to ‘be together’, ‘to keep company with’. Cotgrave has: ‘Compagnonner. To accompanie, associate, consort, be familiar, ioyne in fellowship, walke together, goe cheeke by iowle, with.’ The noun ‘consort’ (erroneously confused with French concert, see OED n2) is used to refer to a company of musicians. (B) In Rom, Tybalt, addressing Mercutio, Romeo’s friend, says: ‘Mercutio, thou consortest with Romeo’ (3.1.44). Mercutio who has just been defined by Benvolio as a great quarreller (3.1.15–32) interprets Tybalt’s words as an insult: ‘Consort’? What, dost thou make us minstrels? An thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discords. Here’s my fiddlestick, here’s that shall make you dance. Zounds, ‘consort’! (Rom 3.1.45–8) 115

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‘Consort’ may here just mean ‘keep company with’ but Tybalt chooses to take it ill, obviously to find an excuse for quarrelling. The insult is here as much in Mercutio’s ear as in Tybalt’s tongue. The word ‘consort’ together with the word ‘minstrel’ can be interpreted as constituting a social insult as minstrels were, at best, no gentle-men, but professional entertainers who were paid for their services. When they did not have a patron, they were in the same category as vagabonds, rogues and beggars, who were the targets of the 1592 ‘Act for the punishment of vagabonds and for the relief of the poor and impotent’. The insult may also be interpreted as bearing sexual innuendoes. Weis (Rom, 235) notes that musicians were often ‘thought to be effete’ and ‘consort’ may ‘contain a taunt of homosexuality’. He suggests that the use of the term ‘consort’ to mean ‘have intercourse with’ may date back to earlier than 1600, the date given by OED for the first record of this use. John Florio’s A World of Words (1598) writes: ‘Consorte, a wife, a companion, a fellowmate. Also a consort, a fellow, a mate, make or a husband.’ Tybalt means that Mercutio and Romeo ‘go together’, constitute an ensemble, like husband and wife. This sexual reading is confirmed by the potentially bawdy image of the ‘fiddle-stick’ (3.1.47) that is used to refer to the duellist’s sword. Loehlin notes that in Joe Calarco’s all male Romeo and Juliet (1997, John Houseman Studio Theatre, New York), Mercutio, who ‘nursed a secret love for Romeo, took “consort” as implying a homosexual relationship, and overacted in furious denial’ (Shakespeare in Production, 2002, 166, mentioned by Weis, Rom, 235). It is this word that triggers off the duelling logic and Tybalt uses it again to provoke Romeo, after Mercutio’s death: ‘Thou wretched boy, that didst consort him here, / Shalt with him hence’ (3.1.132–3). (C) For a sexual reading of the scene, see Rubinstein, 162 (‘minstrel’) and 315 (‘Zounds’). Williams does not record either ‘consort’ or ‘minstrel’. Neither does Partridge. For a study of consort and minstrels, see Wilson and Calore, 114–16; 278–81. See minstrel. core (A) Central part, heart of something, stone of a fruit. ‘Core’ is often related to French coeur (heart) and cor(p)s (body and horn), probably erroneously, according to OED . Minsheu, for example, has ‘Core, wherein the kernell of any fruit lieth’ and derives the word from Latin cor, ‘because it lieth in the middle of the fruit, as the heart doth in the middle of the bodie’. In medical language it refers to the hard mass of tissue at the centre of a boil. Lily (1567) has: ‘Pus, sanies, & quicunque humor in putredinem versus. Matter or core’. (B) The word appears three times in TC . Achilles addresses Thersites with ‘How now, thou core of envy? / Thou crusty batch of nature, what’s the news? (5.1.4–5). Dawson (TC , 200) chooses to read ‘cur’ as in Q, instead of ‘core’ in F, which is coherent with Thersites’ being regularly called ‘cur’ in the play. Yet, ‘core’ also makes sense if one considers the innumerable medical images that are present in the play as well as the other two occurrences of the word. 2.1 opens with the non-dialogue between Ajax and Thersites: Ajax: Thersites! Thersites: Agamemnon – how if he had boils, full, all over, generally? 116

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Ajax: Thersites! Thersites: And those boils did run (say so), did not the general run, then? Were not that a botchy core? Ajax: Dog! Thersites: Then there would come some matter from him. I see none now. (2.1.1–8) The text plays with botch  /  batch, core and matter (that runs) and presents a world that is infected by diseases of all sorts. This is prolonged when Hector addresses the corpse of a Greek in his ‘goodly’ armour, calling it ‘Most putrefied core, so fair without’ (5.9.1), both meaning ‘rotten centre’ and ‘decaying body’, with a pun on ‘core’ and French corps (body), as most editors note. Bevington (TC , 347) signals the familiar antithesis ‘Fair without but foul within’ (Dent, F29). cornuto (A) Cuckold, from Italian cornuto meaning ‘horned’ (from Latin cornu, a horn). Florio (1598) has: ‘Cornuto, horned. Also a cuckold. Also a fish so called. Also a kinde of loafe, bun, or roll of bread.’ (B) The word appears just once in Shakespeare’s plays in the multilingual MW , when Falstaff calls Ford ‘the peaking cornuto her husband’ (3.5.66), without knowing he does so in his very face, as Ford is disguised as Brooke. The word ‘peaking’ emphasizes the image of the horn. The qui pro quo makes the insult particularly comic in a play that cultivates images of horned beasts such as the ‘buck’. Ironically, the character who calls the husband ‘cornuto’ will end up with buck’s horns on his head in 5.5, in a ritual that is usually reserved for cuckolds and is here orchestrated against Falstaff, the gull. The insult has a literal boomerang effect as Falstaff is himself turned into a cornuto at the end of the play. (C) On the origins of the horns associated with cuckoldry, see chapter ‘Cornutes’ in Brand, 2, 181–96. For early modern examples of the use of the word, see Williams, 1, 313–14. See cuckold, horn, wittol. counterfeit (A) One who feigns, falsifies, forges, deceives, imitates, dissembles. Huloet has ‘Counterfayte or forge. Adultero. as, Adulteror. aris, Assimulo. as, Fingo. is, Imagino. as, simulo. as’. The word derives from Old French contrefet, contrefait (from Latin contra-facere, made in opposing imitation), which means ‘misshapen’, ‘deformed’. (B) In TGV , Silvia, addressing Proteus, exclaims: ‘Thou counterfeit to thy true friend!’ (5.4.53). The insult gives all its meaning to the name of the character that derives from the ‘classical sea god who could change his shape at will’ (Carroll, TGV , 133). It is prolonged when Valentine in his turn exclaims: ‘Thou friend of an ill fashion!’ (5.4.61). The two terms ‘counterfeit’ and ‘fashion’ are etymologically related to Latin facere. In H5, Gower tells Pistol: ‘Go, go, you are a counterfeit cowardly knave’ (5.1.70, not in Q), using a term he has already applied to Pistol but in absentia and of which he has given

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Fluellen and the spectators a very precise definition. After describing Pistol as ‘an arrant counterfeit rascal, I remember him now– a bawd, a cutpurse’ (3.6.60–1), he draws the portrait of a counterfeit soldier: Why, ’tis a gull, a fool, a rogue, that now and then goes to the wars, to grace himself at his return into London under the form of a soldier. And such fellows are perfect in the great commanders’ names, and they will learn you by rote where services were done, at such and such a sconce, at such a breach, at such a convoy; who came off bravely, who was shot, who disgraced, what terms the enemy stood on. And this they con perfectly in the phrase of war, which they trick up with new-tuned oaths; and what a beard of the General’s cut and a horrid suit of the camp will do among foaming bottles and ale-washed wits is wonderful to be thought on. But you must learn to know such slanders of the age, or else you may be marvellously mistook. (H5 3.6.66–80) Fluellen summarizes what a counterfeit is when he answers: ‘I do perceive he is not the man that he would gladly make show to the world he is’ (3.6.81–3). The term here thus refers to what Hollyband defined: ‘Imaginaire vn soldat imaginaire, an imagined souldier, a counterfeit, which is not indeed, com.’ Pistol is described as being part of the world of cozening vagabonds who appear in Cotgrave under the term ‘Narquois: m. A Cousener, Imposter, counterfeit Rogue; most properly, one of those cheating and filching vagabonds, that call themselues Aegyptians, or Bohemians; also, the gibbridge, or barbarous language, vsed among them.’ In MND , Helena, who feels that Hermia is playing a cruel game with Lysander, exclaims: ‘Fie, fie, you counterfeit! You puppet you!’ (3.2.288). The insult is in the wake of Helena’s ironically saying ‘Ay, do! Persever: counterfeit sad looks’ (3.2.237) and it thus targets Hermia’s supposed art as a comedian. ‘Counterfeit’ bears a comic metadramatic truth as it can address the actor playing Hermia who is indeed a ‘counterfeit’. Yet, side by side with the word ‘puppet’, the word may also refer to Hermia’s being a ‘counterfeit’ human (ie a painted miniature), a meaning which is consistent with Hermia calling Helena ‘thou painted maypole’ (3.2.296) in return. Helena’s insult suggests that the whole scene is farcical, ‘Farcesque: Counterfeit, Playerlike’ (Cotgrave) and that Hermia is just a Figurine that is ‘A prettie little image, picture, counterfeit, figure’ (Cotgrave). The word may finally target Hermia’s low and thus somewhat deformed stature, contrefaite in French meaning misshapen and thus ugly. Nicholas’s The pleasant historie of the conquest of the Weast India (1578) reads: ‘Always at dinner he had Dwarves, Crookebackes, and other deformed counterfets’ (117, quoted by OED ), which is in line with Helena being called ‘dwarf’ (3.2.328). (C) See Florio (1598), ‘Simolacro’, ‘Imagine’. Cotgrave has: ‘Effigie: f. An image, picture, figure, counterfeit, resemblance, representation of a shape, or feature’ and ‘Peincture: f. A picture, counterfeit, peece of painting’. Puttenham (1589) defines ‘Hypotiposis, or the counterfeit representation’ (245). On the figure of the counterfeit soldier, see Dekker (1612): 118

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These may well be called Counterfeit Souldiers, for not one (scarce) among the whole Armie of them, euer discharged so much as a Caliver: nothing makes them Souldiers but old Mandilions, which they buy at the Broakers. The weapons they carry are short Crabtree Cudgels: and these, (because they haue the name of Souldiers,) neuer march but in troopes two or three in a company: of all sorts of Roagues these are the most impudent and boldest, for they knocke at mens doores, as if they had serious businesse there, whereas the doore being opened to them, they beginne this parle. (M3v) On the relationship between bastard and counterfeit, see Hollyband: ‘Abastardir, [. . .], corrompre, to corrupt, or abastardise, to counterfait’ and Neill (2000), chap. 5 (127–47), chap. 6, 149–65 (esp. 152–7: ‘The counterfeit coin’). On the counterfeit as ‘someone impersonating the king or other commander in a battle’, as is the case in 1H4 and R3, see Edelman (2000), 102–3. See puppet. courtesan (A) A court-lady, a prostitute related to court or high class. The word derives from French courtisane and Italian cortigiana. In Florio (1598) cortegiana is translated as ‘a curtezan, a harlot, a strumpet, a whore’. Cotgrave has ‘Paillarde: f. A whore, punke, drab, strumpet, harlot, queane, courtezan, callet.’ Minsheu has: ‘a courtlike whore, a professed strumpet, such as the Courts and Princes of Italy doe dispence withall, so that without controlement of Law, one may keepe as many as he list’. (B) In 1H6, the Duke of Burgundy, scorned by the triumphant Joan of Arc, replies: ‘Scoff on, vile fiend and shameless courtesan’ (3.2.44). Given her nickname ‘La Pucelle’ (Puzel), the insult is paradoxical but Findlay (2010) notes that she is called ‘courtesan’ for ‘her association with Charles and the nobles of the French court in defeating the English’ (88). It is this association with a king and a court that explains the use of ‘courtesan’, which usually refers to high-class mistresses and prostitutes. This is just one of the many sequences in which Joan Puzel is paradoxically called ‘whore’: Talbot calls her ‘this high-minded (ie arrogant) strumpet’ (1.5.12); she reports that young Talbot, judging her as ‘an unworthy fight’ (4.4.155), has called her ‘a giglot wench’ (4.4.153); she is called ‘cursed drab’ (5.3.32) by the shepherd and, again, ‘strumpet’ (5.3.84) by York. (C) See Findlay (2010), 88–9; Williams, 1, 323; Innes, 135–6. coward (A) One displaying a lack of courage, a poltroon. Derived from Old French coart (later couart, couard), from Latin cauda, Old French coe, meaning ‘tail’. OED notes that ‘the precise reference to tail is uncertain: it may be to an animal “turning tail” in flight, or to the habit in frightened animals of drawing the tail between the hinder legs’. Florio (1598) has: ‘Poltro, a colt or a filly, a varlet, a knaue, a villaine, a raskall, a base idle fellowe, a coward.’ Cotgrave has: ‘Coüard; m. A coward, a dastard, a cow’, ‘Coyon: m. A coward, cullion, scowndrell, base fellow, faint-hearted companion’ and ‘Tourne-dos: m. A turne-backe, run-away, coward.’ 119

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(B) The insult ‘coward’ is frequent in Shakespeare’s plays and almost exclusively applied to men or characters that are thought to be men, like Viola-Cesario in TN . It is one of the worst insults that can be addressed to a man as it questions virility and is a source of dishonour. The term is regularly found in history plays. In 1H6, Fastolfe is vehemently called ‘craven’ (4.1.15), ‘dastard’ (4.1.19) and ‘coward’ by Talbot who (like Kent in KL when he attacks Oswald in 2.2) inveighs against the fact that such a ‘cowardly knight’ (3.2.107) as Fastolfe should be allowed to wear the ornaments of knighthood: Talbot: [. . .] Then judge, great lords, if I have done amiss; Or whether that such cowards ought to wear This ornament of knighthood, yea or no? (1H6 4.1.27–9) The Garter is a symbol of valour and honour and Talbot tears it from Fastolfe’s leg because he judges that such a coward is unworthy of it: [Fastolfe] Doth but usurp the sacred name of knight, Profaning this most honourable order, And should (if I were worthy to be judge) Be quite degraded, like a hedge-born swain That doth presume to boast of gentle blood. (1H6, 4.1.40–4) Talbot draws a link between cowardice and villainy, as if courage and honour were the signs of nobleness. Calling a nobleman a ‘coward’ amounts to questioning the nobleness of his heart and of his birth. In 3H6, the King is presented as a coward whose political weakness is a dishonour for his country. In absentia, he is called ‘the fearful king’ (1.1.25), before being described as ‘bashful Henry [. . .] whose cowardice / Hath made us bywords to our enemies’ (1.1.41–2). Then he is called a coward in his face when Westmorland exclaims: ‘Base, fearful and despairing Henry!’ (1.1.178), and leaves him with: ‘Farewell, faint-hearted and degenerate King / In whose cold blood no spark of honour bides’ (1.1.183–4). His wife, Queen Margaret, calls him ‘timorous wretch’ (1.1.231). They all seem to say that the king is not a man. The coward is the man who speaks more than he acts, as appears in 3H6: York: Clifford:

Why come you not? What, multitudes, and fear? So cowards fight when they can fly no further, So doves do peck the falcon’s piercing talons, So desperate thieves, all hopeless for their lives, Breathe out invectives ’gainst the officers. (1.4.39–43)

Insults are the coward’s weapons. In Tit, Chiron conveys the same view when he answers his brother Demetrius, who frequently calls him ‘boy’: ‘Foul-spoken coward, that 120

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thunderest with thy tongue, / And with thy weapon nothing dar’st perform’ (1.1.557–8). A similar idea crops up again in H5 where the boy describes Pistol as one who ‘hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword, by the means whereof ’a breaks words and keeps whole weapons’ (3.2.33–4), while Gower tells the same Pistol: ‘Go, go, you are a counterfeit cowardly knave’ (5.1.70). Paleness reveals fear and is thus often associated with cowardice. Thus adjectives such as ‘white-livered’ (H5 3.2.32), ‘lily-livered’ (KL 2.2.16), ‘milk-livered’ (KL 4.2.51), or ‘epileptic’ (KL 2.2.79) are insulting. Macbeth calls the ominous messenger ‘thou cream-fac’d loon’ (Mac 5.3.11), ‘Thou lily-liver’d boy’ (5.3.15) and ‘whey-face’ (5.3.17). The term ‘whey’ refers to the ‘watery part of milk which remains after the separation of the curd’ (OED ). He mentions his ‘goose look’ (5.3.12) and ‘those linen cheeks of thine’ (5.3.16). This link between paleness and cowardice makes Prince Hal’s insult to Falstaff, when he calls him ‘this sanguine coward’ (1H4 2.4.235–6), oxymoronic. 1H4 frequently plays with the word. After the Gadshill episode (2.2), Falstaff keeps repeating ‘A plague of all cowards’ (2.4.110, 113, 127–8). Doing so, he opts for indirect insult, which is ironically typical of the coward who strives to avoid direct confrontation. The coward prefers insinuation to direct address and Falstaff’s general curse on cowards is all the more comic since the spectators have just seen him run away (2.2.100). ‘A coward is worse than a cup of sack with lime in it. A villainous coward!’ (2.4.120–1): these words confirm that Falstaff is himself the coward, as he again prefers linguistic evasion and refuses to choose any precise target. Then he delivers the word in the interrogative mode, which is another strategy of indirection. Addressing Prince Hal, he asks: Falstaff: Are not you a coward? Answer me to that. And Poins there? Poins: Zounds, ye fat paunch, an ye call me coward, by the Lord, I’ll stab thee. Falstaff: I call thee coward? I’ll see thee damned ere I call thee coward, but I would give a thousand pound I could run as fast as thou canst. (1H4 2.4.136–42) Falstaff’s art of evasion gives his insulting ‘coward’ a boomerang effect, giving an ironic ring to his aphorism ‘a coward is worse than a cup of sack with lime in it’ (2.4.120). The word is also part of rituals of challenge or verbal warming before combat. In MND , Puck orchestrates the failure of the duel between the rivals Lysander and Demetrius, by manipulating the word ‘coward’: Demetrius:

Puck:

Lysander, speak again. Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled? Speak! In some bush? Where dost thou hide thy head? Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars, Telling the bushes that thou look’st for wars, And wilt not come? Come, recreant, come thou child! 121

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I’ll whip thee with a rod; he is defil’d That draws a sword on thee. Demetrius: Yea, art thou there? Robin: Follow my voice; we’ll try no manhood here. (3.2.404–12) By keeping them apart, Puck transforms the two men into cowards, in the eyes of one another at least. This scene from MND is a comic version of what can be found in tragedies such as R2, where Bolingbroke and Mowbray call each other ‘slanderous coward’ (1.1.61), ‘pale trembling coward’ (1.1.69), ‘traitor coward’ (1.1.102) or TC where the word ‘coward’ is part of a ritualistic verbal warming before the combat: looking for Troilus, Ajax calls for ‘Troilus! Thou coward Troilus!’ (5.5.43) and shouts ‘Troilus, thou coward Troilus, show thy head!’ (5.6.1) and then Troilus calls Achilles in absentia, ‘thou greatsized coward’ (5.11.26). The word is often part of a verbal ritual that leads to physical combat between warriors. In MA , Benedick, after warning Claudio (‘Do me right, or I will protest your cowardice’, 5.1.145–6), informs Beatrice: ‘Claudio undergoes my challenge, and either I must shortly hear from him, or I will subscribe him a coward’ (5.2.54–5). (C) On ‘cowardice’, see Hughes (2006), 104–5. See dastard, liver, poltroon, recreant, runaway. coxcomb (A) A fool, a simpleton, an idiot. Literally, a cap worn by a professional fool, like a ‘cock’s comb’ in shape and colour. Hence also a ludicrous name for the head. Cotgrave has: ‘Coquard: m. A proud gull, peart goose, quaint fop, saucie doult, malapert coxcombe, rash or forward cokes’ and ‘Cocardeau: m. A proud Asse, pert Gull, shitten Saucebox; one that hath better store of clothes on his backe, then of wit in his head.’ (B) In TS , Kate plays on the word to suggest that Petruccio is a fool: Petruccio: I swear I’ll cuff you if you strike again. Katherina: So may you lose your arms. If you strike me you are no gentleman, And if no gentleman, why then, no arms. Petruccio: A herald, Kate? O, put me in thy books. Katherina: What is your crest – a coxcomb? Petruccio: A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen. Katherina: No cock of mine: you crow too like a craven. (2.1.222–9) Jumping from pun to pun, the text ends on an insulting comparison of Petruccio with a fool. The crest is the heraldic device that is set above the shield and helmet on a coat of arms but also the comb on a bird’s head. By playing on the literal meaning of the word, Kate conveys the metaphorical meaning of folly. This cock and hen game also implies some sexual innuendoes as the word ‘cock’ may mean ‘penis’ (Williams, 1, 258–61) and thus when Kate declares that Petruccio is no cock, she may also be emphasizing a lack 122

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of virility that is confirmed by the word ‘craven’ which refers to a coward. Williams notes that the coxcomb is both ‘badge of fool and predestined cuckold’ (1, 261). By presenting himself as a ‘combless cock’, Petruccio in fact ironically expresses another self-insulting image while he is trying to dodge Kate’s insult. In CE , Dromio of Syracuse seems to be drawing his string of insults directly from a dictionary: ‘Mome, malthorse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch’ (3.1.32), as an echo to the list of six names that Dromio of Ephesus has just called out: ‘Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cicely, Gillian, Ginn!’ (3.1.31). In LLL , Berowne ironically echoes Dumaine’s expression of love: ‘O most divine Kate!’ and transforms it, in an aside, into ‘O most profane coxcomb!’ (4.3.81). Berowne means that Dumaine is making a fool of himself, thus becoming one of the ‘four woodcocks’ (4.3.79) he mentions. The irony is that Berowne himself will prove a fool when the ‘whoreson loggerhead’ (4.3.199), Costard, unwittingly betrays his secret. In MA , it is Dogberry who is called ‘coxcomb’ (4.2.71) before being called ‘an ass’. His reaction to the insult is to be noticed, as he wants the sexton to write it down: Conrade: Off, coxcomb! Dogberry: God’s my life, where’s the sexton? Let him write down the prince’s officer coxcomb! (4.2.71–3) The comic effect of the insult will be doubled when Dogberry is called an ass and again wants the sexton to write it down. The word is in keeping with the part held by Dogberry who is the Clown of the play. At the end of Oth, Emilia calls the Moor ‘murderous coxcomb’ (5.2.231). Hornback (2009), in a chapter entitled ‘Folly as Proto-Racism: Blackface in the “Natural” Fool Tradition’, studies an old tradition of black-faced clown and ‘the associations of blackness and folly’ (61). In the light of this study, one is tempted to give deeper meaning to what seems to be a banal insult. Othello, who is presented as a grimacing, monstrous, excessive character throughout the play, could well be a figure of this both sublime and tragic black clown, an object of insults and a scapegoat that is manipulated by Iago from beginning to end. Such a reading of Othello as a black-faced clown seems to be all the more relevant since the ‘Morris dance’ is related to the term ‘Moorish’ and one of the objects characterizing it is the handkerchief, an object which is so essential in the plot of the play. Emilia pursues with ‘what should such a fool / Do with so good a wife? (5.2.231–2), which seems to equate folly with blackness. This link is also emphasized when Emilia tells Othello: ‘O gull, O dolt, / As ignorant as dirt!’ (5.2.160). It is not fortuitous that the black fool Othello should be associated with ‘dirt’. Beyond this association of folly and blackness, by using the word ‘coxcomb’, Emilia is ironically calling Othello ‘cuckold’ as the image of the comb or crest on the head is reminiscent of the cuckold’s horns. Williams (1, 331–2) shows that the ‘comb’ is an emblem of cuckoldry. Denying that he ever was a cuckold, Emilia’s words ironically suggest that he indeed is one. The end of TN is obsessed with the characters’ ‘bloody coxcombs’ (ie bloody heads), as they have been hurt in fights: ‘Has broke my head across, and has given Sir Toby a 123

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bloody coxcomb too’ (5.1.171–2); ‘If a bloody coxcomb be a hurt, you have hurt me. I think you set nothing by a bloody coxcomb’ (5.1.185–6). One character finally becomes the ‘coxcomb’ (ie the idiot), in the play: Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who, in the end, is violently insulted by Sir Toby: ‘Will you help? An ass-head and a coxcomb and a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull?’ (5.1.202–3). (C) On folly and blackness, see Hornback, chap. 1, 24–63. On the sexual meaning of ‘cock’ and ‘comb’, see Williams, 1, 258–61 (‘cock’) and 331–2 (‘crest, comb’). See cuckold, dolt, gull. cozener/cozening (A) A cheater, a deceiver, a cony-catcher, an impostor, a trickster probably related to French cousin. Cotgrave has: ‘Cousiner: To clayme kindred for aduantage, or particular ends; as he, who to saue charges in trauelling, goes from house to house, as cousin to the owner of euerie one.’ Awdelay (1575) includes ‘a description of the crafty company of Cousoners and Shifters’ (Title page). The use of the term is probably related to the world and cant of vagabonds, as appears in Greene’s A notable discouery of coosnage (1591; 1592). (B) In MW , Ford inveighs against an old woman that Mistress Ford presents as ‘my maid’s aunt of Brentford’ (4.2.161), who is in fact Falstaff: A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean! Have I not forbid her my house? She comes of errands, does she? We are simple men; we do not know what’s brought to pass under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by charms, by spells, by the figure, and such daubery as this is, beyond our element: we know nothing. – Come down, you witch, you hag, you! Come down, I say! (4.2.162–9) As the old woman is Falstaff, the word ‘cozening’ can be understood in two ways: it refers to the charms practised by a so-called witch and also ironically to Falstaff’s being disguised as an old aunt, which makes of him a ‘cozener’ in a play that cultivates the motif of cozenage (see especially 4.5.61–77). MW is based on deceptions of all sorts and on the reversal of the cozener into the cozened: ‘I would all the world might be cozened, for I have been cozened and beaten too’ (4.5.87–8). In Oth, Emilia exclaims: I will be hanged if some eternal villain Some busy and insinuating rogue, Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office, Have not devised this slander, I’ll be hanged else! (4.2.132–5) ‘Cogging’ and ‘cozening’ are two ruffians’ terms that refer to cheating. The irony is that the ‘cozening slave’ is Emilia’s husband, Iago himself and that he is present on stage and answers: ‘Fie, there is no such man, it is impossible’ (4.2.136). What is delivered as an insult in absentia is received and contradicted in praesentia by Iago. The image of the 124

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cozener gives Iago’s question ‘How comes this trick upon him [Othello]?’ (4.2.131) a new meaning: he has indeed been ‘tricked’ by a cozener. In 1H4, Hotspur plays on the word ‘cousin’ that he has just uttered when he exclaims ‘O, the devil take such cozeners’!’ (1.3.252), which comes as the conclusion of his furious speech against Bolingbroke. Why, what a candy deal of courtesy This fawning greyhound then did proffer me! ‘Look when his infant fortune came to age’, And ‘gentle Harry Percy’, and ‘kind cousin’. O, the devil take such cozeners! – God forgive me. Good uncle, tell your tale; I have done. (1H4 1.3.248–53) (C) On the vocabulary of cozening, see Harman; Drouet. crab (A) Crab-fish, a crustacean; also a wild apple that was known for its sour taste. The crab-tree is known as malus sylvestrus as well as ‘Arbutus, The Wilding, or Crab tree’: ‘This tree and the fruit of it be stiptike or bynding: the fruite is euill for the Stomacke, and the head’ (Newton, 1580, 60v). Minsheu has ‘Crab: sowre apple or wilding’. (B) In TS , Kate and Petruccio play with the word: Petruccio: Katherina: Petruccio: Katherina: Petruccio: Katherina: Petruccio:

Nay, come, Kate, come; you must not look so sour. It is my fashion, when I see a crab. Why, here’s no crab, and therefore look not sour. There is, there is. Then show it me. Had I a glass, I would. What, you mean my face? (2.1.230–6)

Petruccio tries to defuse the insult by taking the word ‘crab’ literally (‘here’s no crab’). Although the term is linked to the sourness that is mentioned, the crab may both refer to the crustacean or the sour apple. In 2H6, the image of the crab-tree is used to target bastardy and inferior birth when Suffolk insults Warwick: Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour! If ever lady wronged her lord so much, Thy mother took into her blameful bed Some stern untutored churl, and noble stock Was graft with crab-tree slip; whose fruit thou art, And never of the Nevilles’ noble race. (3.2.210–15)

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As Knowles notes (2H6, 269), the crab-tree or wild apple-tree was ‘notedly crooked and gnarled, thus the ignominy of the slander’. (C) For a description of the crab-tree, see Gerard’s Herball, (ed. 1633), 1461. In TGV , Lance describes his dog Crab as ‘the sourest-natured dog that lives’ (2.3.5). See Fitzpatrick (2011), 109–10. craven (A) Coward, someone faint-hearted. A craven is a cock that is not game. Coles (1676) links the word to ‘craving mercy’: ‘Craven, Cravent, -vant, (q. craving mercy) a horrid word to be pronounced by the vanquished in a trial by battel, a Coward.’ In North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives (1579), one finds the proverb: ‘Like to the crauen cocke, he drowped downe his winges, / which cowardly doth ronne awaye, or from the pit out flinges’ (212 ‘Life of Alcibiades’). (B) In TS , when Petruccio expresses his wish that Katherina be his ‘hen’ (2.1.228), she answers: ‘No cock of mine: you crow too like a craven’ (2.1.229). Playing on the image of the coxcomb that precedes, she means that Petruccio would be an unworthy because feeble partner. According to Williams, the image of the crest or the comb has a sexual meaning and is ‘allusive of penis’ as ‘the excrescence on a cock’s head’ (1, 331). If one considers this sexual meaning, Kate may be targeting Petruccio’s lack of virility. In 1H6, Talbot punishes Fastolfe for his cowardice by a symbolic gesture: Shame to the Duke of Burgundy, and thee. [Tears the emblem of the Garter from Fastolfe’s leg.] I vowed, base knight, when I did meet thee next, To tear the Garter from thy craven’s leg, Which I have done, because unworthily Thou wast installed in that high degree. (4.1.13–17) The image of the cowardly craven is applied to Fastolfe after a sequence in which he is seen running away: Captain: Whither away, Sir John Fastolfe, in such haste? Fastolfe: Whither away? To save myself by flight – We are like to have the overthrow again. Captain: What? Will you fly, and leave Lord Talbot? Fastolfe: Ay, all the Talbots in the world, to save my life. Exit. Captain: Cowardly knight, ill fortune follow thee. Exit. (3.2.102–7) The ‘craven’s leg’ is the leg we have seen running away from combat. In H5, when Williams tells the king that he has sworn to fight against ‘a rascal that swaggered with me last night’ (4.7.123–4), the craven is defined as a soldier who would not keep his oath: 126

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King Henry: What think you, Captain Fluellen, is it fit this soldier keep his oath? Fluellen: He is a craven and a villain else, an’t please your majesty, in my conscience. (4.7.129–32) ‘Craven’ is an hypothetical insult that sounds ironical when we know that it is Fluellen himself who will fight against Williams and that it is the king himself who is the ‘rascal’ mentioned by Williams. (C) On the contrast between cock and craven, see Saker (1580): ‘O Narbonus, thou now braggest like a Cocke of the game: but when thou seest them, I feare me thou wilt be a crauen’ (61). See also Greene, Arbasto The anatomie of fortune (1589), C1v; Lodge, Euphues shadow (1592), H4v; Davies, Wittes pilgrimage (1605), Q1. Cressid (A) Cressida, lover of the Trojan Prince, Troilus, in medieval legend and the name of the female character in TC . Her name has become a byword for infidelity as she breaks her pledge to Troilus and starts another relationship with the Greek soldier Diomedes. (B) In TC , Cressida imagines that her own name becomes an insult: If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth, When time is old and hath forgot itself, [. . .], yet let memory, From false to false, among false maids in love, Upbraid my falsehood! When they’ve said ‘As false As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth, As fox to lamb, or wolf to heifer’s calf, Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son’, Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood, ‘As false as Cressid’. (3.2.178–91) The insult comes as the climax of the gradation, the text showing the very process of connotation in action. Ironically, what is delivered as a hypothesis and put under the sign of an ‘if’ contributes to transforming Cressida’s name into an insult. Cressida goes on harping on her own name when she says: ‘Make Cressid’s name the very crown of falsehood / If ever she leaves Troilus!’ (TC 4.2.101–2). The play ironically shows us Cressida turning her own name and falsehood into a derogatory proverb, first as a hypothesis, then in reality as she will indeed prove unfaithful to Troilus. In H5, Pistol, quarrelling with Nym, calls Doll Tearsheet, in absentia, ‘the lazar kite of Cressid’s kite’: Pistol: ‘Couple a gorge’! That is the word. I thee defy again. O hound of Crete, think’st thou my spouse to get? No, to the spital go, And from the powdering-tub of infamy 127

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Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid’s kind, Doll Tearsheet she by name, and her espouse. I have, and I will hold the quondam Quickly For the only she; and pauca, there’s enough. Go to. (2.1.72–81) Pistol is calling Doll a prostitute by using Cressid’s name. Craik (H5, 162) notes that ‘Cressid was afflicted with leprosy by the Gods in Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid and went to the “spittaill hous’ ” (1593, B3r) and that the phrase ‘kite of Cressid’s kind’ was proverbial (Tilley, K116). He suggests that Shakespeare borrowed the image from Barnabe Rich’s Farewell to the Military Profession (which is the direct source of TN ) where one finds: ‘Oh feminine flatterie. O fained faunyng. O counterfect courtesie. O deep dissimulation: But what hope is otherwise to be looked for in these Kites of Cressides kinde’ (1583 [1581], R2v). The ‘powdering-tub’ refers to the tub in which patients were treated for venereal diseases in ‘spitals’ that is ‘lazar’ (ie leper, diseased) houses. (C) See Whetstone (1576), in which one finds ‘The Argument, for Cressids complaint’ (17). Then follows the complaint itself (18–22). See Williams, 1, 330–1; Findlay (2010), 89–91. cricket/winter-cricket (A) A cricket is a grasshopper, a small insect that is remarkable for its powers of leaping and makes a thin, sharp, chirping, cracking sound. Derived from Anglo-Norman criket and Old French criquet, crequet cricket, cicada (modern French criquet, locust), the word is of imitative origin, reflecting the sounds made by the insects. OED only cites this occurrence of ‘winter-cricket’ (winter 3) to suggest that it refers to a cricket that appears in winter. ‘Merry as a cricket’ (Dent, C825, 1H4 2.4.86–7) was proverbial. (B) In TS , Petruccio calls the tailor ‘Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket, thou!’ (4.3.111). Morris (TS , 265) notes that ‘There seems to be no reason why the cricket (in winter or any other season) should be the climax of this list of diminutives’. The rhythm of the whole string of words makes the insults memorable. Editors have suggested that the list of diminutives probably meant that the part was played by a boy or the Clown John Sincklo who was known for his small size. The cricket is associated with smallness in Rom when Mercutio describes the tiny Queen Mab who holds a ‘whip of cricket’s bone’ (1.4.66), meaning a tiny whip. The word may also be evocative of an insect that leaps backward, and suggest that the tailor makes backward leaps of fear, trying to escape Petruccio’s probably menacing gestures. Playing the part of the tailor as a hopping Jiminy cricket can be a great source of comedy on stage. ‘Winter-cricket’ may also contain an allusion to the fable of the cricket and the pismire as told in A forme of Christian pollicie drawne out of French by Geffray Fenton (1574, a translation of Jean Talpin’s La Police Chrestienne): The Crycket after Sommer is spent, hauing not to liue vpon, but begging for his sustenaunce, asketh almes of the Pismyre, who demaunding what he did in the 128

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sommer, aunswered that he song, then daunce now if thou wilt, sayth the Pysmyre for me, my store serues mine owne turne and I haue neede of it. (154) The summer cricket sings while the winter-cricket dances, hopping to dodge Petruccio’s abusive words and gestures. In MW , Pistol addresses one of the fairies, Cricket, the chimney spirit: ‘Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap’ (5.5.43). In WT , Mamillius refers to Hermione’s ladies as ‘yon crickets’ (2.1.31) to suggest that they are chirping, chattering ladies. Crickets appear in gloomy contexts as insects singing or crying at night in Mac 2.2.15 and Cym 2.3.11, and the use of the word by Mamillius may thus sound ominous. (C) Maplet writes: ‘The Grashopper of some is called the Cricket, it hath his name of his shrill & sharpe voice. He vseth to go backward, and loueth to dig and bore in the harde earth and mortered places. He is heard most in the night time. [. . .]’ (87v). crone (A) A withered old woman; an old ewe. The word probably derives from French carogne (‘carcass’), charogne, related to Latin caronia (caro meaning ‘flesh’) and ‘carrion’. The Workes of our Antient and Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chavcer (1598) has: ‘crone, an old woman’ while Cawdrey has ‘crone, an old prating woman’. Verstegan has: ‘Crone. This properly is the appelation of an old yeow, and applyed in anger vpon an old or elderly woman’ (334). (B) In WT , Leontes calls Paulina ‘crone’ when he addresses Antigonus: Give her the bastard. Thou dotard; thou art woman-tired, unroosted By thy Dame Partlet here. Take up the bastard, Take’t up, I say; give’t to thy crone. (2.3.72–5) It is the only occurrence of the word. Pitcher (WT , 211) notes that after likening Paulina to an ‘angry clucking hen’, he compares her to a ‘bleating old sheep’. crookback/crooked (A) One who has a crooked back, a hunchback. (B) In 2H6, Old Clifford violently addresses Richard: Hence, heap of wrath, foul indigested lump, As crooked in thy manners as thy shape. (5.1.157–8) This insult is echoed in 3H6 in Margaret’s railing at York, Richard’s father, during the cruel mock crowning scene: ‘And where’s that valiant crook-back prodigy, / Dickie, your boy’ (3H6 1.4.75–7). The image is found again in 2.2: Richard: Are you there, butcher? O, I cannot speak! Clifford: Ay, crookback, here I stand to answer thee, 129

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Or any he, the proudest of thy sort. (2.2.95–7) In 5.5, it is Prince Edward who uses the term in echo to Richard’s words: Richard: For God’s sake, take away this captive scold [ie Margaret]! Prince Edward: Nay, take away this scolding crookback, rather! (5.5.29–30) Before dying, Prince Edward again insults Richard by calling him ‘misshapen Dick’ (5.5.35). The word is emblematic of plays where Richard’s portrait is drawn via insults and which suggest that a deformed and crooked body is in keeping with a crooked spirit. The word is so tightly associated with Richard that it becomes some kind of insulting Dick/nickname that will be explored in R3 where Richard starts with a self-portrait: I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them – (R3 1.1.18–23) At the beginning of R3, Shakespeare turns the insult into a glorious-though-negative self-portrait, before the image crops up again in Margaret’s tongue when she calls Richard ‘that bottled spider’ (1.3.241) and ‘This poisonous bunch-backed toad’ (1.3.245). In a less direct way, the figure of the hunchback seems to be present in a dialogue between Richard and young York: Prince:

My lord of York will still be cross in talk. Uncle, your grace knows how to bear with him. York: You mean to bear me, not to bear with me. – Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me. Because that I am little, like an ape, He thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders. Buckingham [Aside]: With what a sharp-provided wit he reasons: To mitigate the scorn he gives his uncle, He prettily and aptly taunts himself. So cunning and so young is wonderful. (3.1.126–35) As Siemon suggests (R3, 33 and 255), this passage can be read as an allusion to Richard’s crooked back as in popular entertainments a bear might carry a monkey on its shoulders, thus appearing hunchbacked. Only Buckingham comments on young York’s provocation but little York’s words have often led to strong reactions in performance: in Irving’s 130

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1896 theatre production, Richard looked at York in hatred; in Laurence Olivier’s film (1955), one feels that Richard decides to kill the little Princes at that very moment; in Richard Loncraine’s film (1995) Richard growls in rage and pain when little York grips his back, the image being then turned into the nightmarish flash of an enraged boar in Hastings’ dream sequence. (C) In Hall (1548), Richard is characterized as ‘croke backed’ (‘Life of King Edward V’, fol. Jv). Hall’s portrait of Richard that perpetuated the Tudor propagandist image of Richard Crookback is completed in the chapter entitled ‘The tragical doynges of Kyng Richard the thirde’ (Iix). See Iyengar, 87. See ape, bear, deformity, lump. cuckold(ly) (A) ‘A derisive name for the husband of an unfaithful wife’ (OED ). Derived from the Old French word cucuald or cucu, the English word ‘cuckold’ conveys the image of the cuckoo, well-known for laying its eggs in the nests of other birds. Brand (2, 198), notes the paradox that lies behind the word: ‘I know not how this word, which is generally derived from cuculus a cuckoo, has happened to be given to the injured husband, for it seems more properly to belong to the adulterer, the cuckoo being well known to be a bird that deposits its eggs in other birds’ nests’. An answer to the mystery can be found in Guiraud (71–5) where it is suggested that ‘cuckoo’ might derive from cucullus, meaning ‘hood’. The cuckold would then be the epitome of the ‘blind man’. (B) The image of the cuckold is latent in numerous puns and innuendoes, the word itself appearing 43 times in Shakespeare’s plays (Harvard Concordance). In CE , the image of the cuckold is worked into a pun: Dromio of Ephesus: Why, mistress, sure my master is horn-mad. Adriana: Horn-mad, thou villain! Dromio of Ephesus: I mean not cuckold-mad, (2.1.58–9) Adriana hears the word ‘cuckold’ and, behind it, the insult ‘adulteress’ in Ephesus Dromio’s ‘horn-mad.’ In MW , the term is made an insult within a point of mistaken identity. Falstaff believes he is addressing Brook, when he showers a string of scornful words about Master Ford, on Master Ford himself: Falstaff:

Hang him [Ford], poor cuckoldly knave, I know him not. Yet I wrong him to call him poor: they say the jealous wittolly knave hath masses of money, for the which his wife seems to me well-favoured. I will use her as the key of the cuckoldly rogue’s coffer, and there’s my harvest-home. (MW 2.2.256–61)

Falstaff also calls Ford ‘the peaking cornuto her husband’ (3.5.66–7) and gives the cuckold’s main attributes to the excoriated Ford: ‘horns’ (2.2.267). At the end of the play, Master Ford delightedly returns the insult and this humiliating emblem to the sender as Falstaff arrives disguised as Herne, ‘with buck’s horns on his head’ (SD , 5.5.1). 131

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Ford: Now, sir, who’s a cuckold now? Master Brook, Falstaff’s a knave, a cuckoldly knave. Here are his horns, Master Brook. (5.5.109–11) Master Ford here parodies the style Falstaff adopted with him throughout the play, based on the hammering repetition of ‘Master Brook’ which exasperated Ford to the point of making him ‘horn-mad’ (3.5.141). In the whole range of insults, the word ‘cuckold’ is the worst, according to Master Ford: Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer, well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils’ additions, the names of fiends. But cuckold? Wittol? Cuckold! The devil himself hath not such a name! (2.2.281–4) In TC , Achilles, feeling insulted by Menelaus’s indifference to him, calls him ‘cuckold’ in retaliation: Achilles: [To Menelaus]. Good Day, good day. Menelaus: How do you? How do you? [Exit.] Achilles: [To Patroclus]. What, does the cuckold scorn me? (3.3.62–4) This gap between the would-be heroic grandeur of the soldier and the baseness of the insult, reflects the irony and cynicism which pervade the whole play. The base word of abuse here uttered by Achilles is emblematic of the discrepancies and discords one finds in a play where ‘degree is shaked’ (1.3.101). In the world of TC , the great Achilles uses the same vocabulary as the base coward Thersites (5.8.1). In the fractured society represented in this play, both high and low characters appropriate the common denominator of gross insult. In Oth, Shakespeare integrates this insulting image into a tragic design (see horns). In WT , Leontes imagines, in an aside, a rumour that says he is a cuckold: Leontes: They’re here with me already, whispering, rounding ‘Sicilia is a so-forth’. ’Tis far gone When I shall gust it last. (1.2.215–17) The word ‘cuckold’ behind this ‘so-forth’ shows that Leontes cannot pronounce this dishonourable word. The King of Sicilia’s ears buzz with the word, even when it is not uttered. (C) See Brand, 2, 181–96 (‘Cornutes’), 196–202 (‘the word cuckold’); Hughes (2006), 107–10, Williams, 1, 338–44. See Boehrer (2002), ‘The cuckoo and the capon’, 71–98. For typologies of cuckolds, see ‘The tale of the three cuckolds’ in Tarltons newes out of purgatorie (1590); in the anonymous The cobler of Caunterburie (1590), one finds the list and description of the ‘eight orders of the cuckold’: ‘Machomite, Hereticke, Lunaticke, Innocent, Incontinent, By consent, By Act of Parliament, Quem Facit 132

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Ecclesia’ (14–16). On the meaning of the ‘so-forth’ in WT , see Vienne-Guerrin (2011). See cornuto, coxcomb, cuckoo, horn, wittol. cuckoo (A) A bird (Cuculus canorus) well known by the call of the male during mating time, of which the name is an imitation. Thus the expression ‘cuckoo’s note’ refers to the repetition of the same words (OED ). The cuckoo is one of the birds of ill omen whose cries were reputed in the Renaissance to terrify all husbands. An emblem of cuckoldry (Williams, 1, 345), the image of the cuckoo is several times associated with the cuckold in Shakespeare’s plays. Etymologically connected, the two words orthographically look like each other and aurally sound like each other. The cuckoo is renowned for laying its eggs in the nests of other birds. The fusion of the words ‘cuckoo’ and ‘cuckold’ is probably linked to their French origin, as the two words coucou and cocu seem to derive from the Latin term cuculus (OED ). Guiraud (71–5) suggests that ‘cuckoo’ might derive from cucullus, meaning ‘hood’. The cuckold would then be the epitome of the ‘blind man’, ‘reduced to impotence by wearing a blinding hood on his head’. (B) The word ‘cuckoo’ is a potential insult because it reminds husbands of the word ‘cuckold’ and there was superstition that hearing the cuckoo’s song brought bad luck to the married man. The final song in LLL translates the abusive content of the word: The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men; for thus sings he: ‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ O, word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear. (5.2.895–9) Aural and orthographic merging between ‘cuckoo’ and ‘cuckold’ is conspicuous in the Clown’s song in AW : Countess: Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouth’d and calumnious knave? Clown: A prophet I, madam; and I speak the truth the next way: For I the ballad will repeat Which men full true shall find: Your marriage comes by destiny, Your cuckoo sings by kind. (1.3.56–63) The Clown transforms into a song what he has just told the Countess: that it is in man’s nature (‘kind’) to be a cuckold. What the Countess sees as insulting slander, the Clown presents as inevitable fact. In MND , Bottom also conjures up the cuckoo’s cry in a song: Bottom:

[Sings.] The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, The plain-song cuckoo gray, Whose note full many a man doth mark, And dares not answer nay – 133

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for indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? Who would give a bird the lie, though he cry ‘cuckoo’ never so? (3.1.124–30) Although the husband feels insulted by the cuckoo, whose cry seems to transform all men who hear it into cuckolds, he should not answer the insult by giving it the lie. In MV , the bird is given a ‘bad voice’ (5.1.112–13) and in TNK one finds an allusion to the ‘sland’rous cuckoo’ (1.1.19). Thus the cuckoo is an unintentional, natural harbinger of derogatory invective, which offends the husband’s ear. In AC , Pompey uses the term when upbraiding Antony: Antony: Thou canst not fear us, Pompey, with thy sails. We’ll speak with thee at sea. At land thou know’st How much we do o’ercount thee. Pompey: At land indeed Thou dost o’ercount me of my father’s house; But since the cuckoo builds not for himself, Remain in’t as thou mayst. (2.6.24–9) The words of Antony spring to life again in Pompey’s speech – this ironic echoing is a very frequent insulting strategy. Pompey gives another meaning to the words ‘o’ercount’ (cheat) and ‘land’ (landed estate), which allows him to reiterate the image of the cuckoo that steals others’ nests and lives as a parasite, in the same way as Antony, who has stolen Pompey’s land by expropriation. In 1H4, the word takes on another significance: Falstaff: Well, that rascal hath good mettle in him; he will not run. Prince: Why, what a rascal art thou, then, to praise him so for running! Falstaff: A-horseback, ye cuckoo, (2.4.340–4) The context indicates that Falstaff is reproaching Hal with foolishly repeating – as a cuckoo would – the words he has just uttered (‘rascal’ and ‘running’). The cuckoo is characterised by its repetitive and monotonous cry (see ‘plain-song cuckoo’, in MND 3.1.125). (C) See Brand, 2, 196–202; ‘The Cuckoo Song’ (Abrams, ed. 1993); Janequin, ‘Le chant des oyseaulx (1528); on the ‘cuckoo’s note’, see Kahn (1985), 104–112; Rawson, 106; Silva 396–418; Williams, 1, 345–7; Wilson and Calore, 338 (‘plain-song’), 59–60 (‘birds’). See Boehrer (2002), ‘The cuckoo and the capon’, 71–98. See cuckold, horn, cornuto. cullion(ly) (A) Literally, testicle. The word ‘cullion’ derives from the French coïon, coyon (Cotgrave), couillon. In modern French the word couillon means ‘idiot’ but its original meaning is different. OED notes that ‘as a term of contempt’, ‘cullion’ refers to

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‘A base, despicable, or vile fellow; a rascal.’ Cotgrave translates the word coyon as ‘A coward, cullion, scowndrell, base fellow, faint-hearted companion’. Cotgrave also reads: ‘Couille: f. A mans yard; also, (but lesse properly) a cod, ballocke, or testicle; also, a long, lanke, and lubberlie coward; a heartlesse, faint-hearted, or white-liuered slimme.’ The French word couillon is translated as ‘A cod, stone, testicle, cullion’. The word coyon associates ‘cullion’ with cowardice rather than courage. The association with cowardice appears in Cotgrave’s translation of the word Poltronesque (cowardly) as ‘Knauish, rascallie, base-humored; cowardlie, faint-hearted, cullion-like; lazie, lozellie, sluggish, idle’. A ‘cullion’ is literally someone who has no ‘balls’, no testicles. DHLF notes that couillonnade (coyonade) meant acte du couard (a cowardly action) in 1592. (B) In TS , Hortensio, as Licio, tells to Tranio as Lucentio, of Bianca, courting Lucentio as Cambio, that he scorns to live in disguise: ‘For such a one as [. . .] makes a god of such a cullion’ (4.2.19–20). The contrast between ‘god’ and ‘cullion’ has a comic effect. In 2H6, Margaret shows her contempt for the common people when she gets rid of the petitioners, saying: ‘Away, base cullions!’ (1.3.41). Here the word means ‘low wretches’. In KL , when Kent calls Oswald ‘you whoreson cullionly barber-monger’ (2.2.32), one may just hear ‘rascally’ but what Kent precisely refers to is his cowardice. ‘Cullionly’ reinforces the figure of the coward used three times in the scene and associated with the image of the goose that conveys Oswald’s terrified paleness. This meaning is also present in H5 when Fluellen tries to force Pistol and Nym to fight: ‘Up to the breach, you dogs! Avaunt, you cullions’ (H5 3.2.21). The insulting word may just mean ‘wretch’ but it is also antiphrastic and means that they are cowards and have no testicles (coglioni in Italian). (C) See Nashe, Pierce Penniless (Works, 1, 212). See Williams, 1, 349. See Innes, 151. cur (A) Worthless, low-bred dog. The term can be more offensive than ‘dog’ and is systematically used with contempt when applied to a human being. Derived from the Middle English ‘curre’, which corresponds to Middle Dutch corre (‘canis villaticus, domesticus’), it is often related to the onomatopoeic verb Old Norse kurra (to murmur, grumble) and thus its primary sense seems to have been ‘growling or snarling beast’ (OED ). Withals has ‘A cur doggue, canis gregarius’; Rider (1589) has: ‘A farmers cur to keep the hous: Canis villaticus’. (B) ‘Cur’ and ‘dog’ are often used as insults indifferently and they are often just variations on the same motif. The two words usually appear side by side. In TGV , one can measure the possible difference between the two terms in the dialogue between Lance and Proteus: Proteus: Lance: Proteus:

[To Lance] How now, you whoreson peasant, Where have you been these two days loitering? Marry, sir, I carried Mistress Silvia the dog you bade me. And what says she to my little jewel?

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Lance:

Marry, she says your dog was a cur, and tells you currish thanks is good enough for such a present. (TGV 4.4.42–8)

The ‘cur’ holds a bad place in the catalogue of dogs. Crab is described as a cur, an illbred dog, which is comically illustrated by the clownish monologue in which Lance tells how Crab urinated on Madam Silvia: Lance: [to his dog Crab]. Nay, I remember the trick you served me when I took my leave of Madam Silvia. Did not I bid thee still mark me, and do as I do? When didst thou see me heave up my leg and make water against a gentlewoman’s farthingale? Didst thou ever see me do such a trick? (4.4.33–8) The cur appears as an ill-behaved, ill-smelling dog but this text also introduces a parallel between the dog-cur and the human ‘cur’, the servant, the inferior, when Lance opens his monologue with: ‘When a man’s servant shall play the cur with him, look you, it goes hard’ (4.4.1–2). Applied to a human character, ‘cur’ often refers to both social and moral baseness. In H5, Pistol calls the French soldier ‘cur’: ‘Yield, cur!’ (4.4.1), ‘Brass, cur?’ (4.4.18). One may imagine Pistol’s comically and bombastically uttering the word in a scene that is ironical as Pistol appears as the currish character in the play. The term has a prominent place in the insults that characterize the world of TC . Ajax uses it several times against Thersites, beating him and calling him ‘You whoreson cur!’ (2.1.39), ‘You cur!’ (2.1.51), ‘O thou damned cur’ (2.1.83). Patroclus later calls him ‘you whoreson indistinguishable cur’ (5.1.27–8), meaning he is a misshapen mongrel. These insults are in keeping with the character of Thersites, who embodies ‘cynicism’. The word ‘cynic’ derives from Greek κυνικός dog-like, currish, churlish, as it comes from κύων, κυνός, dog (OED ). In answer to these insults, Thersites draws a catalogue of the play’s heroes by using currish terms: ‘They set me up, in policy, that mongrel cur, Ajax, against that dog of as bad a kind, Achilles. And now is the cur Ajax prouder than the cur Achilles’ (5.4.11–14). Lear uses the term as an insult when Oswald refuses to recognize him as the king by calling him ‘my lady’s father’: Lear: My lady’s father? My lord’s knave, you whoreson dog, you slave, you cur! (KL 1.4.78–9) ‘Cur’ comes in the wake of ‘dog’, in a sort of gradation, as if ‘dog’ were not powerful enough as an insult. Kent emphasizes Oswald’s currish nature by tripping him (1.4.84). Lear sees the world as a world of curs when he imagines his three daughters as ‘Trey, Blanch and Sweetheart’ barking at him (3.6.61), to which Poor Tom (Edgar) reacts: Tom will throw his head at them: avaunt, you curs! Be thy mouth or black or white, Tooth that poisons if it bite; 136

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Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim, Hound or spaniel, brach or him, Or bobtail tyke or trundle-tail, Tom will make them weep and wail; For with throwing thus my head, Dogs leap the hatch, and all are fled. (3.6.62–70) Behind the word ‘cur’, one finds this ‘cynical’ vision of the world, which also appears when Macbeth draws the catalogue of dogs and men (Mac 3.1.91–107) as the first murderer declares ‘We are men, my Liege’ (Mac 3.1.90). Garber (Profiling, 190) suggests that Kent’s pseudonym in KL , Caius, may be an allusion to John Caius, the author of a catalogue of dogs entitled Of English Dogges (1570, transl. 1576). The figure of the cur is associated with baseness but also with cruelty, as when Richard is called ‘this carnal cur’ (R3 4.4.56) Coriolanus addresses the people with contempt at the beginning of the play: ‘What would you have, you curs, / That like nor peace nor wars?’ (1.1.163–4). Holland notes that the term both means ‘a worthless, low-bred, or snappish dog’ and ‘a surly, ill-bred, low, cowardly fellow’ (OED , quoted by Holland, Cor, 164). The word is among the first words he addresses the people and it is also among the last ones, when he curses the citizens who have just banished him: You common cry of curs whose breath I hate As reek o’ th’ rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcasses of unburied men, That do corrupt my air, I banish you. (Cor 3.3.119–22) His story with the people comes full circle, going from ‘curs’ to ‘curs’. While they consider him as ‘a very dog to the commonalty’ (1.1.26), that is ruthlessly cruel, he uses the image of the curs to target their baseness and their cowardice. The phrase ‘common cry’ suggests that the people, like curs, act in a gregarious way, contrary to Coriolanus who is ‘alone’ (‘Alone I did it’, 5.6.117). Ironically, he applies the same term to Aufidius at the end of the play when he asks the ‘grave lords’ to ‘give this cur the lie’ (5.6.108). In H8, Buckingham calls Wolsey in absentia ‘This butcher’s cur’ (1.1.120). Butchers’ dogs were proverbially vicious animals (Dent, B764.1) (C) See Caius, Of English Dogges (1576); Garber, ‘Shakespeare’s Dogs’ in Profiling Shakespeare (2008). On the dog/cur Crab in TGV , see Boehrer (2002), ‘The Dog Is Himself’, 156–68. See Innes, 151–53. See brach, dog, hound, mongrel-cur, sheep-biter, tike. cut (A) A short-tailed or gelded horse; a cart-horse, a labouring horse. Proverbial word of abuse. ‘Then call me cut’ is an idiomatic expression from c. 1495 (Dent, C940, Tilley, C940). 137

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(B) In TN , Sir Toby tells Sir Andrew Aguecheek: ‘If thou hast her not i’th’ end, call me cut’ (2.3.181–2). The insult is expressed in an hypothetical mode, as when Falstaff says to Hal: ‘I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse’ (1H4 2.4.186–7). Elam (TN , 225) and Warren and Wells note (TN , 133 and 146) a possible link between the insult and the letters C.U.T that are heard when Malvolio deciphers Maria’s tricky letter: ‘By my life, this is my lady’s hand. These be her very c’s, her u’s and her t’s’ (2.5.85–6), which is echoed by Sir Andrew’s question: ‘Her c’s, her u’s and her t’s. Why that?’ (2.5.89). If one considers this possible link, then Sir Toby’s ‘cut’ refers to female genitals. Williams notes that ‘the catchphrase may even glance at the whore sense’ (1, 359). What is interesting is that in this case, the insult is presented as a form of punishment for a sin or a crime: insult me if I lie. The irony of the phrase should be noted as in TN , Sir Andrew does not ‘have her’ in the end, and thus the insult should be put into action. (C) See Williams, 1, 357–9, who distinguishes four meanings for ‘cut’: whore, the food-metaphor, genitals and gelding (eunuch). See horse. cut-purse/cutpurse (A) One who stole by cutting purses that men wore at their girdles. A pick-purse, a pickpocket, a thief, a cozener, a cony-catcher. Cutpurses were punished by having their ears cut, as appears in Palsgrave: ‘His eares be cutte off it is a signe he hath ben a cut purse.’ Harman reads: ‘to nyp a bong [ie bung]: to cut a pursse.’ (B) Doll Tearsheet calls Pistol a ‘cutpurse’: Away, you cutpurse rascal, you filthy bung, away! By this wine, I’ll thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps and you play the saucy cuttle with me. (2H4 2.4.126–8) Greene’s A Notable Discovery of Cosenage (1591) reads: ‘The knife, a Cuttle boung’. Doll threatens to return Pistol’s own weapon against him. She is denouncing Pistol as a thief but considering that the ‘purse’ may mean the ‘vagina’ (see Williams, 3, 1116–19) and that Pistol’s name has an obvious phallic ring and may mean ‘penis’ (Williams, 3, 1043–5) – a sense on which Shakespeare plays by using the bawdy pun on ‘discharge’ in the same scene (‘I will discharge upon her, [. . .] with two bullets’, 2.4.112–13) –, one may give this ‘cutpurse’ a sexual meaning. This bawdy reading of the term is in keeping with the portrait that Doll draws of Pistol, ‘tearing a poor whore’s ruff in a bawdy-house’ (2.4.141–2). It may also be confirmed when Gower describes Pistol as ‘a bawd, a cutpurse’ in H5 (3.6.61), thus associating two kinds of ‘cut-pursing’. Pistol, leaving the stage, describes his future life, as if the names he had been branded with constituted a programme: ‘Well, bawd I’ll turn, / And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand.’ (H5 5.1.86–7) Hamlet, verbally assaulting his mother, calls Claudius a ‘cutpurse of the empire’: A murderer and a villain, A slave that is not twentieth part the kith Of your precedent lord, a vice of kings,

138

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A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem stole And put it in his pocket, – (Ham 3.4.94–9) Hamlet reduces the king to the status of a villainous thief and given the sexual context of the scene, the cutpurse may be heard with a bawdy ear. (C) See bung. See Williams, 3, 1043, 1045; 1116–19. Innes, 155. cut-throat/cutthroat (A) One who violently cuts throats, a murderer, a homicide, a bloody fellow. Cotgrave has: ‘Assassin: m. An appoasted manslayer, cut-throat, murtherer; one that kils another for gaine, or vpon hope, or promise, of reward.’ (B) In MV , Shylock, the Jew, remembering how Antonio has ‘rated’ (1.3.103) him in the Rialto, repeats the insults that the Christians hurl at him: ‘You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, / And spit upon my Jewish gabardine’ (1.3.107–8). The phrase is punctuated ‘cut-throat, dog’ by Halio (MV , 123). Drakakis mentions the myth according to which the Jews needed to shed Christian blood: ‘The Jew is quoting the Christian myth of the thoroughly degenerate theological (as opposed to the actual) Jew, guilty of blood-lust and an agent of Satan in entrapping unwary Christians’ (MV , 214). Trachtenberg studies the representation of the Jew as being involved in ritual murders and accused of blood-lust. Considering the end of the play and the fact that Shylock aims to cut a pound of Antonio’s flesh, this ‘cut-throat’ sounds ironic and the play suggests that the Jew is bound to be up to his insulting reputation, as appears when he declares: ‘But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs’ (3.3.7). Shylock transforms words into deeds, turning the insults he has to bear into reality. The play seems to dramatize the literalisation of a myth. In Mac, Shakespeare plays on the insulting content of the word to paradoxically transform it into a word of praise : 1 Murderer:

My Lord, his throat is cut; That I did for him.

Macbeth:

Thou art the best o’th’ cut-throats; Yet he’s good that did the like for Fleance: If thou didst it, thou art the nonpareil. (3.4.15–18)

The use of the word as compliment tells a lot about the paradoxical world of Macbeth where ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’. (C) See Trachtenberg, chap. 9 (‘Ritual Murder’, 124–39) and chap. 10 (‘The Blood Accusation’, 140–50). On insults in MV , see Vienne-Guerrin (2013). See dog, Jew.

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D damn(ation) (A) Derived from Latin damnāre, dampnāre, ‘to inflict damage or loss upon, to condemn, doom to punishment’ (OED ). Condemnation, the fact of being doomed to hell, sin deserving damnation. (B) In Rom, once the nurse has left the stage, after having incited Juliet to marry Paris, Juliet expostulates against her: ‘Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!’ (3.5.236). The nurse is described as an allegorical figure of damnation and sin (3.5.237). As Touchstone says in AYL , ‘wickedness is sin and sin is damnation’ (AYL 3.2.41). Juliet’s exclamation expresses her fury and incarnates the object of her anger and despair in the nurse. Weis (Rom, 287) glosses ‘ancient damnation’ as ‘Wicked old creature!’. ‘O most wicked fiend’ elucidates the insult, providing a footnote in effect. ‘Ancient damnation’ prolongs the fiend-angel motif that is present throughout the play. Earlier, Juliet amorously insults Romeo in absentia by calling him ‘fiend angelical’ (3.2.75) and ‘damned saint’ (3.2.79). She asks: O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh? (3.2.80–2) Yet, when insulting the nurse, Juliet abandons the ambivalent oxymoron. Williams (1, 363) glosses ‘damnation’ as ‘whore or bawd’, convincingly quoting three 1603–1604 plays by Marston (Dutch Courtezan) and Dekker (1Honest Whore and Westward Ho) as evidence of this use. Williams does not quote Rom, but it is tempting to take this meaning into account as it corresponds to the nurse’s bawdy nature and to Mercutio’s taunting her when he sees her and exclaims: ‘A bawd, a bawd, a bawd!’ (2.4.126). By offering Juliet to Romeo and then to Paris, the nurse proves indeed to be the epitome of sexual sin: the bawd. As Bertram says about Parolles in AW , for Juliet, the nurse is a ‘damnable bothsides rogue’ (AW 4.3.218). Levenson (Rom, 300) notes that the word ‘damnation’ refers both to perdition and the cause of perdition while ‘ancient’ means ‘aged’ and ‘hoary’ and echoes ‘Mercutio’s insult to the nurse’. The echo between the two scenes includes their sexual content. The words ‘damned’ (often spoken as ‘damnèd’, which makes the word more ‘mouthfilling’) and ‘damnable’ are used in insults, often as intensifiers but they are particularly recurrent in plays that are pregnant with the themes of evil and damnation. At the end of Oth, Roderigo calls Iago ‘damned Iago!’ (5.1.62) when he becomes aware of his villainy. 141

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Then Othello’s ensign is called ‘a damned slave’ twice, by Montano (5.2.241) and Lodovico (5.2.289, ‘cursed’ in F, ‘damned’ in Q), while Lodovico finally calls him ‘this damned villain’ (5.2.313). The word travels from character to character in a play that blurs the limit between vice and virtue. Brabantio first accuses Othello of having seduced his daughter: ‘Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her’ (1.2.63). When he is on the rack of Iago’s words in 3.3, Othello exclaims ‘Death and damnation!’ (Oth 3.3.399) before finally cursing Desdemona with the same word: ‘Damn her, lewd minx: O damn her, damn her!’ (3.3.478); ‘let her rot and perish, and be damned tonight’ (4.1.178–9). After Othello tells her ‘Come, swear it, damn thyself’ (4.2.36), her name ‘Desdemon’ (in F 4.2.42) resonates with even more demonic undertones, as if one were seeing a ‘demon’ in the making, who is said to be ‘false as hell’ (4.2.40). After Desdemona’s damnation, the play dramatizes Iago’s condemnation in terms of damnation, thus emphasizing the devilish nature of the character. In this ‘damned’ world, Emilia is ironically the key character that has, as Othello says, ‘the office opposite to Saint Peter’ and keeps the ‘gates of hell’ (4.2.93–4), a phrase that echoes Matthew 16:18–19. Hamlet applies the term ‘damned’ both to his murderous uncle and to the ghost. He starts cursing Claudius, in absentia, with ‘O villain, villain, smiling damned villain’ (1.5.106) and ends with ‘Here, thou incestuous, damned Dane!’ (5.2.309). Yet he uses the term to characterize the ghost only in the hypothetical mode when he declares that: If his [Claudius’] occulted guilt Do not itself unkennel in one speech It is a damned ghost that we have seen And my imaginations are as foul As Vulcan’s stithy. (3.2.76–80) Thus, it is either Claudius or the ghost who is ‘damned’ and it is the play within the play that reveals on whose side damnation is: Claudius’. In Per, Lysimachus and Marina, addressing Bolt, the ‘man’ of the brothel, the servant to Pander and Bawd, both use the image of the ‘damned doorkeeper’ (4.5.123 and 168). The doorkeeper of the brothel is thus associated with the doorkeeper of hell mentioned in Matthew 16:18–19. Lady Macbeth inveighs against the blood that spots her hand: ‘Out, damned spot! out, I say! – One; two: why, then, ’tis time to do’t. – Hell is murky.’ (5.1.36–7). Here ‘damned’ both expresses Lady Macbeth’s exasperation and the deeper awareness that the spot is the sign of her damnation. As Hassel remarks, the usage of ‘damn’ words ‘ranges from casual to serious’ (82). In comic contexts, the words ‘damned’ and ‘damnable’ are part of the emphatic and hyperbolic language that is characteristic of insults. The word is part of Pistol’s ranting idiolect: addressing Nym, he exclaims: ‘O braggart vile and damned furious wight’ (H5 2.1.61); he then calls the French soldier ‘Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat’ (H5 4.4.19). In MW , Ford exclaims about Falstaff: ‘What a damned epicurean rascal is this?’ (MW 2.2.272) and in TC , Patroclus calls Thersites ‘thou damnable box of envy’ (TC 5.1.24). In AYL , Touchstone plays with the word ‘damned’ in his incongruous battle of wit with Corin: 142

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Touchstone: Corin: Touchstone: Corin: Touchstone: Corin: Touchstone:

[. . .] Wast ever in court, shepherd? No, truly. Then thou art damned. Nay, I hope. Truly, thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side. For not being at court? Your reason? Why, if thou never wast at court thou never sawst good manners; if thou never sawst good manners then thy manners must be wicked, and wickedness is sin and sin is damnation. Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd. (3.2.30–42)

The dialogue continues with Corin trying to prove that he is not damned and Touchstone concluding that as Corin the shepherd plays the bawd by bringing ‘the ewes and the rams together’ (3.2.76), he cannot but be damned: ‘If thou be’st not damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds. I cannot see else how thou shouldst scape’ (3.2.80–2). Throughout the dialogue, Touchstone delivers insulting words that he integrates into the rhetoric of logical reasoning and proof. He adopts a mock serious approach to damnation, which allows him to insult the shepherd without seeming to do so. (C) See Gibson and Esra, 54–5. On ‘damn’, ‘damnation’, ‘damned’ and ‘damnable’, see Hassel, 80–2. Hassel considers that in the case of Juliet’s insult, ‘damnation’ is ‘a name for the Tempter, or at least temptation’ (81). On the sexual meaning of the word ‘damnation’, see Williams, 1, 363. See Hughes (2006), on ‘Damn’, 116–18 and on ‘Damnation’ in Shakespeare, 421–2. On the history of the word, see Montagu, chap. 14, ‘Damn!’, 278–99. dastard (A) Coward, a poltroon. One who yields in combat or who breaks faith and allegiance. The word also refers to one ‘inert or dull of wit, a dullard; a sot’ (OED ). It displays some acoustic similitude with ‘bastard’. (B) The term is used several times in H6. In 1H6, Talbot calls Fastolfe ‘this dastard’ (4.1.19), while tearing the Garter from his ‘craven’s leg’ (4.1.15) because he has run away from the battlefield, leaving Talbot alone (3.2.102–7). Talbot, for whom honour and courage are essential, also debunks his enemies by calling them ‘these dastard Frenchmen’ (1.4.110), thus echoing the duke of Bedford’s reference to Talbot’s ‘dastard foemen’ (1.1.144) and Charles’s words when he curses his men who have been ‘beaten back by the English, with great loss’ (SD , 1.2.21) and calls them ‘Dogs, cowards, dastards!’ (1.2.23). In 2H6, Cade uses the word to characterize the fickle multitude: Cade:

[. . .] you are all recreants and dastards, and delight to live in slavery to the nobility. Let them break your backs with burdens, take your houses over your heads, ravish your wives and daughters before your faces. For me, I will make shift for one, and so, God’s curse light upon you all! 143

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All:

We’ll follow Cade! We’ll follow Cade! [They run to Cade again.] (4.8.27–33)

The insult here is the expression of Cade’s anger and despair, but it is also part of a martial strategy aiming to motivate the people, as appears in the following line, which shows the effect of Cade’s words on the common people. When Cade flees a few lines later, his monologue aims to show that he himself is not a ‘dastard’: ‘And heavens and honour be witness that no want of resolution in me, but only my followers’ base and ignominious treasons, makes me betake me to my heels’ (4.8.61–4). In 3H6, Richard redundantly calls Clifford ‘a dastard and a treacherous coward’ (2.2.114) for having killed his father and his brother Rutland. These words are part of an exchange of insults of which Clifford says that it cannot cure ‘the wound that bred this meeting here’ (2.2.121–2). The word again resounds at the beginning of R2 when Bolingbroke challenges Mowbray and appears reluctant to obey the king’s order (‘throw up your gage’, 1.1.186): Shall I seem crest-fallen in my father’s sight? Or with pale beggar-fear impeach my height Before this outdared dastard? Ere my tongue Shall wound my honour with such feeble wrong Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear The slavish motive of recanting fear, And spit it bleeding, in his high disgrace, Where Shame doth harbour, even in Mowbray’s face. (1.1.188–95) This speech has two addressees: Mowbray and the King. It constitutes an insult to the two of them. By refusing to submit to the King’s command, Bolingbroke insults him, aiming to show that he is not a coward. Accusing Mowbray of being an ‘outdared dastard’ (1.1.190), Bolingbroke wants to stick to the challenge and the duel that should follow it. When he introduces himself to Aufidius, Coriolanus alludes to the ‘dastard nobles’ (Cor 4.5.77) who have allowed the people to banish him from Rome. As Holland notes (Cor, 338): ‘Coriolanus’ attitude to his “friends of noble touch” (4.1.49) has swung a long way during his journey to Antium.’ (C) See craven, coward, recreant. deformity/deformed (A) Misshapen, marred in appearance, distorted. Thomas has ‘Dĕformis, & Deformior. Deformed, foule, vnhonest, vncomelie, disfigured, ill fauoured.’ The word implies both physical and moral monstrosity. It derives from French deforme (difforme in modern French) or from Latin dēformis, deformed, misshapen, ugly, disgraceful (OED). (B) The term is several times applied to Richard Gloucester, who himself gives the other characters the very means to insult him. In 3H6, Richard delivers a long selfportrait in which he anatomizes his own deformity: 144

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[. . .] Why, Love forswore me in my mother’s womb, And, for I should not deal in her soft laws, She did corrupt frail Nature with some bribe To shrink mine arm up like a withered shrub; To make an envious mountain on my back, Where sits deformity to mock my body; To shape my legs of an unequal size; To disproportion me in every part, Like to a chaos or an unlicked bear whelp, That carries no impression like the dam. And am I then a man to be beloved? O monstrous fault to harbour such a thought! [. . .] (3.2.153–63) The passage alludes to the proverbial image of the she-bear licking its cub into shape that can be found in Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (15.416–19): ‘The Bearwhelp . . . like an evil-favoured lump of flesh alive doth lie. / The dam by licking shapeth out his members orderly’ (quoted by Cox and Rasmussen, 3H6, 278). At the end of the play, Henry recycles this description into an insulting speech: [. . .] Thy mother felt more than a mother’s pain, And yet brought forth less than a mother’s hope: To wit, an indigested and deformed lump, Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree. Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born To signify thou cam’st to bite the world. And if the rest be true, which I have heard, Thou cam’st – Richard of Gloucester: I’ll hear no more! Die, prophet, in thy speech, Stabs him. (3H6 5.6.49–57) King Henry:

Henry’s last words rewrite the story of Richard’s physical monstrosity and announce the evil that will derive from it. Richard’s stabbing him seems to be an answer to these words of abuse (‘I’ll hear no more’). Richard’s portrait is completed by the monologue that opens R3: Richard:

[. . .] I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, 145

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And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them – Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to see my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity. [. . .] (1.1.18–27) When, during the wooing scene, Lady Anne exclaims ‘Blush, Blush, thou lump of foul deformity’ (1.2.57), the insult is pregnant with all the description provided by Richard himself. Richard being himself the herald of his own deformity, Lady Anne’s offensive words cannot have any effect on him, in a scene where he strives to transform their confrontation into a pseudo battle of wits by saying ‘Sweet saint, for charity, be not so curst’ (1.2.49) and by referring to their dialogue as ‘this keen encounter of our wits’ (1.2.118). In KL , Albany, horrified by Goneril’s monstrous acts, tells her: See thyself, devil: Proper deformity shows not in the fiend So horrid as in woman. (4.2.60–2) Deformity is even more horrid in a woman than in the devil and Albany here refers both to moral and physical deformity, evident in ‘Be-monster not thy features’ (4.2.64). (C) About Richard III ’s deformity, see Hall, The vnion of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre [and] Yorke (1548, Iix): As he was small and litle of stature so was he of body greately deformed, the one shoulder higher then the other, his face small but his countenaunce was cruel, and such, that a man at the first aspect would iudge it to sauor and smel of malice, fraude, and deceite: when he stode musyng he woulde byte and chaw besely his nether lippe, as who sayd, that hys fyerce nature in his cruell bodye alwaies chaffed, sturred and was euer vnquiete See Knowles, 2H6, 351. On the she-bear licking its cub into shape, see Guillaume de la Perrière’s emblem Le Théâtre des bons engins (1544): www.emblems.arts.gla. ac.uk/french/emblem.php?id= FLP a098 See crookback, lump, monster. devil (A) Derived from Greek διάβολος, meaning ‘accuser, calumniator, slanderer, traducer’ (from διαβάλλειν, to slander, traduce). In Christian and Jewish use, ‘the Devil’ is the supreme spirit of evil and is also called Satan. A devil is an evil spirit, a demon, a fiend. The word applies metaphorically to evil and malignant creatures. Devils were represented as black creatures. 146

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(B) In MW , Ford, outraged because he has just been called a cuckold, offers a comment on what he calls ‘devil’s additions’: [. . .] Terms, names! Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer, well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils’ additions, the names of fiends. But cuckold? Wittol? Cuckold! The devil himself hath not such a name! (MW 2.2.281–4) Ford puts devils’ names on a scale of insults and in the category of insults that sound well. The passage ironically draws a parallel between cuckolds and devils and confirms one of Williams’s suggestions that the word ‘devil’ can sometimes be allusive of cuckoldry, as both cuckold and devils wear horns on their heads. Williams does not quote MW but mentions MA where Beatrice imagines herself at Hell’s ‘gate, and there will the devil meet me like an old cuckold with horns on his head’ (2.1.37–8). Thus ironically, even the devilish insults imagined by Ford are evocative of cuckoldry. The image of the devil can be used in comedies but it is particularly recurrent in the darker plays. In Tit, Aaron is several times called ‘devil’; the blackness of his skin is related to the darkness of hell. Devils were traditionally portrayed as black. The nurse refers to Aaron’s child as ‘a devil’ (4.2.66) while Demetrius accuses Aaron of having undone his mother Tamora by engendering such a ‘tadpole’ (4.2.87): And therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone her. Woe to her chance and damned her loathed choice, Accursed the offspring of so foul a fiend. (4.2.79–81) Then Lucius prolongs the insult, once Aaron has been caught by a Goth: O worthy Goth, this is the incarnate devil That robbed Andronicus of his good hand; (5.1.40–1) and continues with: Say, wall-eyed slave, whither wouldst thou convey This growing image of thy fiend-like face? (5.1.44–5) When Lucius commands: ‘Bring down the devil’ (5.1.145), Aaron reacts to what could be an insult by taking the word ‘devil’ literally so that its derogatory meaning disappears, the word becoming, for Aaron, a source of glory and triumph: If there be devils, would I were a devil, To live and burn in everlasting fire, So I might have your company in hell But to torment you with my bitter tongue. (5.1.147–50) 147

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When Lucius calls Aaron ‘this accursed devil’ (5.3.5), he again defuses the insult by gladly endorsing it and returning it against its enunciator: Some devil whisper curses in my ear, And prompt me that my tongue may utter forth The venomous malice of my swelling heart. (5.3.11–13) By playing on the metaphorical and the literal meanings of the word, Shakespeare here suggests that words are insufficient to describe such a devilish character and are unable to articulate the reality of his evil nature. In R3, Richard is regularly presented as a devil. When she sees ‘this fiend’ (1.2.34), Anne refers to him as ‘the devil’ (1.2.45), trying to reject him by exclaiming: ‘Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell! (1.2.46). She addresses him as ‘Foul devil’ (1.2.50) and ironically declares: ‘O wonderful, when devils tell the truth!’ (1.2.73). The phrase is reminiscent of the etymological meaning of the word that associates the devil with lying. She calls him ‘devilish slave’ (1.2.91) and alludes to his ‘hell-governed arm’ (1.2.67). In the following scene, Margaret, in an aside, exclaims ‘Out, devil!’ (1.3.117) and ‘thou cacodemon’ (1.3.143). Then she says out loud: Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog, Thou that wast sealed in thy nativity The slave of nature and the son of hell; Thou slander of thy heavy mother’s womb, [. . .] (1.3.227–9) Richard becomes slander itself, which, again, relates him to the Greek word διάβολος (slanderer). Margaret continues the imagery when she warns Buckingham: Sin, death and hell have set their marks on him, And all their ministers attend on him. (1.3.292–3) and when she reproaches Buckingham with supporting Richard: What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel, And soothe the devil that I warn thee from? (1.3.296–7) The insult becomes a leitmotif as Margaret calls Richard ‘a hell-hound’ (4.4.48), ‘That foul defacer of God’s handiwork’ (4.4.53) and ‘hell’s black intelligencer″ (4.4.71), while Elizabeth, in the second wooing scene, asks ‘Shall I be tempted of the devil thus?’ (4.4.418). The figure of the devil also appears in MV , a play that is full of religious matter, where the Clown comically concludes that the Jew is the ‘very devil incarnation’: 148

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To be ruled by my conscience, I should stay with the Jew my master, who, God bless the mark, is a kind of devil; and, to run away from the Jew, I should be ruled by the fiend, who, saving your reverence, is the devil himself. Certainly the Jew is the very devil incarnation, (2.2.19–24) The Clown’s monologue is a comic version of what is found in an aside delivered by Antonio: Antonio:

Mark you this, Bassanio, The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, A goodly apple, rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! (1.3.93–8)

The idea that the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose was proverbial (Dent, D230). During the trial scene Shylock is called ‘this cruel devil’ (4.1.213) and ‘this devil’ (4.1.283). In Oth, the devil is incarnated into several figures before the final discovery of Iago’s villainy. Cassio introduces the image by applying it to the alcohol that has caused his dishonour: ‘O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil! (2.3.277–8)? Then he blames the ‘devil drunkenness’ (2.3.291) and adds that ‘the ingredience is a devil’ (2.3.302–3). The irony is that Cassio’s description of this ‘devil’ corresponds to the devilish Iago. When we hear Cassio’s lament, ‘O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths, to steal away their brains!’ (2.3.285–7), his words sound like a description of Iago and of what the ensign does both to Cassio and to Othello. Iago is the ‘invisible spirit’ (2.3.277) of the play. Then Desdemona, whose name contains the word ‘demon’, is oxymoronically called ‘the fair devil’ (3.3.481). Although she is absent, it seems that Othello addresses her with the exclamation ‘O devil!’ before falling into a trance (4.1.43), while, ironically again, the true devil is next to him. Iago creates another devil in Othello’s mind, Desdemona, whom the Moor calls ‘Devil!’ (4.1.239) while striking her. Then he repeats the word ‘O devil, devil!’ (4.1.243) and goes on with ‘Heaven truly knows thou art as false as hell’ (4.2.40). With the word ‘false’, Othello draws a link between the figure of the devil and the figure of the whore. Then it is Othello who becomes the devil: Othello: Emilia: Othello: Emilia:

She’s like a liar gone to burning hell: ’Twas I that kill’d her. O, the more angel she, And you the blacker devil! She turned to folly, and she was a whore Thou dost belie her, and thou art a devil. (5.2.127–31) 149

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The figure of the devil is here related to the darkness of hell and Othello becomes a perfect embodiment of the ‘foul collier’ (TN 3.4.114), another horned figure. Finally, it is Iago that becomes the devil, once his villainy is revealed: I look down towards his feet, but that’s a fable. If that thou be’st a devil, I cannot kill thee. (5.2.283–4) The text here refers to the fable that the devil has a cloven foot (Tilley, D252). The figure is used again when, refusing to address the devil himself, Othello asks: Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil Why he hath thus ensnar’d my soul and body? (5.2.298–9) Thus the figure of the devil travels from one character to another in this play, leaving traces on all of them. Desdemona’s name rings with devilish undertones, Othello’s obsession with cuckoldry makes a devil of him, and Iago is the original diabolos, the slanderer, the traducer par excellence. The offensive comments on Macbeth are also pregnant with devilish images. Macduff declares: Not in the legions Of horrid Hell can come a devil more damn’d In evils, to top Macbeth. (Mac 4.3.55–7) He then refers to ‘this fiend of Scotland’ (4.3.233), while Malcolm calls him ‘Devilish Macbeth’ (4.3.117). When Macduff learns about his family’s death, he exclaims: ‘O Hellkite!’ (4.3.217). Although Macbeth is not on stage, he is the target, and in their final confrontation Macduff finally calls him ‘Hell-hound’ (5.8.3). This time the word is a direct insult that is pregnant with all the previous comments on Macbeth. In the heroic flyting scene between Macbeth and Young Siward, Macbeth is again transformed into a devil: Young Siward: Macbeth: Young Siward: Macbeth: Young Siward: Macbeth:

What is thy name? Thou’lt be afraid to hear it. No; though thou call’st thyself a hotter name Than any is in hell. My name’s Macbeth. The devil himself could not pronounce a title More hateful to mine ear. No, nor more fearful. (5.7.5–9)

This dialogue is emblematic of the devilish world that the play dramatizes, a world in which words are never sufficient to express reality. 150

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In Tem, Caliban is presented as the devil, compared with the wondrous Miranda, that Prospero first calls an angel, ‘a cherubin’ (1.2.152). Prospero violently addresses Caliban: Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself Upon thy wicked dam; come forth! (1.2.320–1) Later Prospero exclaims: ‘A devil, a born devil, on whose nature / Nurture can never stick’ (4.1.188–9) and then calls him ‘this demi-devil / (For he’s a bastard one)’ (5.1.272– 3). Like Iago, Caliban is a ‘demi-devil’, a phrase that may refer to their being partly human, but that may also suggest that ‘these things of darkness’, evil as they are, cannot but be ‘acknowledged’ as humans (Tem, 5.1.275–6). (C) See Rider; Wilson (1612). Hassel distinguishes six meanings in Shakespeare’s corpus (95–7). See Hughes (2006), 118–20. On ‘Devil’, see Gibson and Esra, 59–65. On ‘thinking with demons’ in Early Modern Europe, see Clark. See cacodemon, fiend, liar, Lucifer, Ruffian, witch. diminutive (A) From French diminutif and Latin diminuere (to lessen), the word, as a noun, refers to a shortened term or word or to a small, insignificant thing or person. (B) In TC , the satirist Thersites insults Patroclus: Thersites:

No? Why art thou then exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal’s purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such waterflies, diminutives of nature! (5.1.29–33)

The expression ‘diminutives of nature’ concludes a long string of abuse that is based on elaborate sartorial images. All the preceding insults point to Patroclus’ insignificance. Considering the potential sexual meaning of the ‘tassel’ which refers to a dangling ornament and considering that the image of the silk and the sarcenet are evocative of Patroclus’ effeminacy, with, perhaps, the idea that Patroclus is an idle Penelope, the word ‘diminutive’ may take on a sexual meaning and refer to one who is deprived of the ‘thing’. The term is prolonged when Thersites calls Patroclus ‘fing egg’ (5.1.35), another diminutive, tiny thing. The word ‘diminutive’ is used by Troilus when he blames his brother Hector for measuring ‘infinite’ worth ‘With spans and inches so diminutive / As fears and reasons’ (2.2.29–32). The word is emblematic of a world where ‘degree is lost’, a world where human worth and value are constantly questioned and where grand heroes are systematically debunked. In TC , the art of insult is a diminutive art. In AC , Antony curses Cleopatra: ‘most monster-like be shown / For poor’st diminutives, for dolts’ (4.12.36–7). The meaning of the word is here much debated as editors wonder whether ‘dolts’ should be read ‘doits’ (small coins) which would invite to read ‘diminutives’ as referring to small pieces of money while there is no known example of this use. Be that as it may, the word ‘diminutive’ here contrasts with Cleopatra’s grand stature and is part of Antony’s wish to have her ‘vanish’ (4.12.32). 151

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dirt (A) Ordure, filth, excrements, mire, mud. (B) In TC , Nestor describes Achilles as ‘setting’ Thersites, ‘A slave whose gall coins slander like a mint –/ To match us in comparisons with dirt’ (1.3.191–3). Thersites indeed plays with such words as ‘Ajax’ and ‘stool’ and with their scatological meaning to abuse the other characters. Pandarus tells Cressida that Paris is ‘dirt to’ Troilus (1.2.230), while Thersites calls for ‘dirt-rotten livers’ (5.1.20) when cursing Patroclus. Yet Shakespeare rarely explicitly uses comparisons with dirt in his art of insult, which renders the few cases all the more remarkable. In 2H6, the Lieutenant who is about to kill Suffolk plays on his family name ‘de la Pole’ Pool! Sir Pool! Lord! Ay, kennel, puddle, sink, whose filth and dirt Troubles the silver spring where England drinks; (4.1.70–2) As Knowles suggests (2H6,136–9; 290), Suffolk is here compared to a cesspool. In Oth, Emilia insults Othello when she realizes that he has killed Desdemona: ‘O gull, O dolt, / As ignorant as dirt!’ (5.2.159–60). Honigmann rightly notes that this is another ‘racist jibe at Othello’s colour’ (Oth, 318). The comparison is in keeping with Emilia’s previous exclamation when she says that Desdemona ‘was too fond of her most filthy bargain!’ (5.2.153). The term ‘filthy’ contains another racist allusion to Othello’s black skin. Ironically, it is Othello himself who provides the ‘comparison with dirt’ when he declares that Iago ‘hates the slime / That sticks on filthy deeds’ (5.2.144–5). When abusing Desdemona, he had described adultery as a dirty stinking thing: ‘Heaven stops the nose at it’ (4.2.78), and once he has killed her, he concludes ‘O, she was foul’. (5.2.198). By declaring that Othello is ‘as ignorant as dirt’, Emilia is calling him a ‘fool’ and conveys the figure of the ‘blackfaced fool’ described by Hornback in The English Clown Tradition (2009, 55). In TS , Grumio’s narration of Petruccio and Katherina’s travel suggests that one of the physical insults that Kate has to bear is to be dipped into dirt, ‘Out of their saddles into the dirt’ (4.1.50): But hadst thou not crossed me, thou shouldst have heard how her horse fell, and she under her horse; thou shouldst have heard in how miry a place, how she was bemoiled, how he left her with the horse upon her, how he beat me because her horse stumbled, how she waded through the dirt to pluck him off me, [. . .] (4.1.64–70) The image of Kate being thrown into dirt is reminiscent of the ducking/cucking stool punishment, a shaming ritual that was inflicted upon scolds, as Boose showed (1991). (C) See Smith (2012); Hornback, chap. ‘Folly as proto-racism’, 24–62. On the ducking ritual of punishment, see Boose. For a general view of ‘dirt’, see Laporte, Histoire de la Merde (2003); Stockton, Playing Dirty (2011). See Ajax, coxcomb, filth, Pole, stool. 152

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disease (A) Dis-ease, discomfort, disturbance; a malady, a sickness, physical disorder. Disease imagery plays a great part in the language of Shakespeare’s insults. We only consider here the word ‘disease’ itself. (B) Lear compares his daughter Goneril to a disease: But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter, Or rather a disease that’s in my flesh, Which I must needs call mine. Thou art a boil, A plague sore, or embossed carbuncle In my corrupted blood. [. . .] (KL 2.2.410–14) Lear’s words are not satirical as Thersites’ curses can be in TC but are pregnant with ambivalence and express a mixture of love and hate. The disease that is described is a source of suffering and woe. Lear’s words are reminiscent of Kent’s ironical words at the beginning of the play, when Lear banished his faithful servant: ‘Do, kill thy physician, and thy fee bestow / Upon the foul disease’ (1.1.164–5). When one remembers that Cordelia, ironically too, called her sisters ‘The jewels of our father’ (1.1.270), the word ‘carbuncle’ (2.2.413) takes on a double meaning, both referring to a filthy boil and to a precious stone. One finds the same ambivalence in Cor where Martius is compared to a ‘carbuncle entire’ (1.4.59), but is then called a ‘disease that must be cut away’ (3.1.296). In Tim, Flaminius calls Lucullus, who has just left the stage, ‘thou disease of a friend’ (3.1.51). As Oliver suggests (Tim, 56), one may find here the original meaning of the word, ‘dis-ease’, ‘discomfort’ or ‘cause of discomfort’. Diseases of all sorts are at the heart of many curses, with such offensive expressions as ‘a pox on’, and ‘a plague on’. In Tem, Caliban, alone on stage, curses Prospero, wishing that he become a disease: All the infections that the sun sucks up From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him By inchmeal a disease! (2.2.1–3) (C) See Iyengar; Hughes (2006), 132–5. See Benedick, botch, canker, French, gall, infection, scab. dog (A) One of the ‘complex words’ studied by Empson (1951). The figure of the dog is regularly used in insulting speeches as a symbol of inferiority and of savagery. It is mainly associated with baseness, fawning, fierceness and lack of humanity. Freud explains why the dog is so often used as an insult: ‘the dog incurs his contempt through two of its characteristics: as an animal that relies on smell it does not shun excrement, and it is not ashamed of its sexual functions’ (Civilization and its discontent, ed. Strachey, 55n). Garber shows that the ‘society of dogs could be seen as a model for the society of humans in the Renaissance’, as appears in John Caius’ treatise Of English 153

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Dogges, published in Latin in 1570 and translated in 1576, a text that describes various species of dogs, showing that ‘All dogs [. . .] are not alike’ (Garber, Profiling, 184). (B) ‘Dog’ is one of the most recurrent Shakespearean insults and the word takes on various meanings depending on the context. 1. The word refers to social and/or moral baseness and fawning. In the catalogue of creatures drawn by Shakespeare, the dog is one of the basest. This appears in Rom, where Mercutio exclaims before dying ‘Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death!’ (3.1.102–3) and Romeo laments that ‘every cat and dog / And little mouse, every unworthy thing, / [. . .] may look on her, / But Romeo may not (3.3.30–3). In KL Lear, seeing Cordelia dead, exclaims: ‘Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?’ (5.3.305–6) The dog is often described as an unworthy thing. In AYL , Shakespeare plays on the metaphorical and literal meanings of the word: Oliver: Get you with him, you old dog. Adam: Is ‘old dog’ my reward? Most true, I have lost my teeth in your service. God be with my old master, he would never have spoke such a word. (1.1.77–80) Adam’s reaction shows the impact of the word; at the same time the literalization of the metaphor has a comic effect on stage. Cleopatra insults her servant Seleucus for having betrayed her, calling him ‘Slave! Soulless villain! Dog! / O rarely base!’ (AC 5.2.156–7). In MM , Lucio uses the canine evocation without using the word ‘dog’ when he tells Pompey to be off to prison: ‘Go to kennel, Pompey, go’ (3.2.82). Lever (MM , 86), suggests that there may be a word-play on ‘Pompey’ and ‘puppy’ and notes that ‘Johnson’s comment that Pompey was then a common name for a dog is unconfirmed.’ The image is all the more reviling since the word ‘kennel’ may refer both to a dog kennel and to a sink. In Cym, Cloten who is obsessed with rank, expostulates against an absent ‘whoreson jackanapes’ (2.1.3): Cloten: When a gentleman is dispos’d to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths. Ha? 2 Lord: No, my lord; [aside] nor crop the ears of them. Cloten: Whoreson dog! I gave him satisfaction! Would he had been one of my rank! 2 Lord: [aside] To have smelt like a fool. (2.1.11–16) The word ‘curtail’, associated with cropping the tail or ears of a dog, and the term ‘ears’ pave the way for the insult ‘dog’ that is followed by the evocation of a ‘rank’ smell. The insult is based on a network of puns. One of the plays in which the word ‘dog’ is the most recurrent is Tim, which is not surprising considering the ‘cynical’ dimension of a play where Timon is represented as 154

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‘digging’ in 4.3 (SD , 24 and 176). In Tim, the word refers both to cynicism and to base fawning. When Painter tells Apemantus ‘You’re a dog!’ (1.1.203), the word suggests both baseness and cynicism. The insult that the Second Lord hurls at Apemantus can be read in the same way: ‘Away, unpeacable dog, or I’ll spurn thee hence’ (1.1.278). The expression ‘unpeacable dog’ may convey the image of a quarrelling dog whose bark is worse than his bite but it can also have a social meaning, relegating Apemantus to the lower scale of society. The Page too compares Apemantus to a dog: ‘Thou wast whelpt a dog and thou shalt famish a dog’s death’ (2.2.86–7), a phrase which, again, seems to combine several meanings: moral and social baseness as well as cynicism. As Yoder (41) notes, ‘Apemantus the cynic is the chief “satiric commentator”, and the traditional Cynic dog motif is never lost sight of in his characterization.’ In the same play, the dog figure on the other hand conveys base fawning and flattery. Timon’s Steward, Flavius, gives the key to this image illustrating the world of hypocrisy that surrounds Timon: Why then preferred you not your sums and bills When your false masters ate of my lord’s meat? Then they could smile and fawn upon his debts, And take down th’interest into their gluttonous maws. (3.4.47–50) The words ‘fawn’ and ‘maws’ draw a link between the image of the dog and flattery and pave the way for Timon’s cynical and offensive exclamation ‘Uncover, dogs, and lap!’ (3.7.84) when he spectacularly serves his unfaithful friends a banquet of lukewarm water, literally making ‘their mouths water’. The image is followed by the figure of the ‘affable wolves’ (3.7.94) when Timon curses them all. When he later calls Apemantus ‘thou issue of a mangy dog!’ (4.3.365), the disease imagery prevails over the canine metaphor as the expression concludes a series of terms related to infection such as ‘plague’, ‘leprosy’, ‘infect’ and ‘rot’ (4.3.359–64). Dawson and Minton (299) note that ‘mangy’ means ‘infected with a skin disease common to animals, characterized by itching, inflammation and hair loss’. According to Bentley (173), ‘the word was also used metaphorically to refer to syphilitic prostitutes’ (quoted by Dawson and Minton, 299). Thus the expression is not far from ‘son of a bitch’. 2. ‘Dog’ is also evocative of cruelty and inhumanity. As Garber writes, ‘If Shakespeare’s dogs are the markers of humanity, they are also – as Macbeth and Lear both suggest – indexes of inhumanity’ (Profiling, 191). In Tit, Aaron is called ‘hellish dog’ (4.2.79) by Tamora’s son, Demetrius. Later, Lucius rejects him as an ‘inhuman dog, unhallowed slave!’ (5.3.14). In R3, it is Richard who is regularly compared to a cruel dog. When Richard, addressing one of the gentlemen who carry the corpse of Henry VI , calls him ‘unmannered dog’ (1.2.39), he debases him, both socially and morally in a passage that Rubinstein (79) interprets sexually. The word has a different meaning when Margaret says to Richard ‘Stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me’ (1.3.215), giving him a new name that deprives him of any humanity. ‘Dog’ is evocative of cruelty when Margaret warns Buckingham against Richard: 155

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O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog. Look when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites, His venom tooth will rankle to the death. (R3 1.3.288–90) Margaret makes the insult specific and later goes on insulting Richard through his mother when, addressing the Duchess, she expatiates on Richard’s monstrous nature: From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death: That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes, To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood; [. . .] (4.4.47–50) Richard is presented as a fierce dog that threatens to bite the whole world and the passage echoes Richard’s self-portrait in 3H6 in which he refers to his own birth: The midwife wondered and the women cried, ‘O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!’ And so I was, which plainly signified That I should snarl, and bite and play the dog. (3H6 5.6.74–7) The image of the creature that was born with teeth is an invitation to read the figure of the dog literally. Richard was born a dog, to ‘play the dog’ and to die a dog’s death. At the end of the play, when Richmond announces that ‘the bloody dog is dead’ (R3 5.5.2), his words are the fulfilment of Margaret’s curse when she wishes she may live to say: ‘The dog is dead’ (4.4.78). In Oth, Roderigo, before dying, calls Iago ‘O inhuman dog!’ (5.1.62). A more specific image is used by Lodovico when he exclaims: ‘O Spartan dog, / More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea’ (5.2.359–60). The Spartan dog was a kind of bloodhound, used in hunting, and thus, as Honigmann (Oth, 343) notes, applied to Iago, it means that the character is a blood-hunter. Honigmann also emphasizes that envy, which characterizes Iago, was sometimes represented as a snarling dog. This association of the dog with envy appears in Della Porta’s De Humane Physiognomonia (264) in a section entitled ‘Invidi ad canes’. Honigmann also suggests that the word ‘Spartan’ may mean ‘impassive’ and thus ‘inhumanely determined’, ‘like the Spartan boy who carried a fox under his tunic, was bitten, and gave no sign of pain’ (Oth, 343). Indeed, the word ‘Spartan’ is uttered once Iago says ‘From this time forth I never will speak word’ (5.2.301). There is something ‘Spartan’ in Iago’s endurance, in his preferring to suffer all ‘torments’ (5.2.302) rather than be found out, as in the classical story of the Spartan boy and the fox. The ‘Spartan dog’ opens the final speech of the play in which Lodovico leaves to the governor ‘the censure of this hellish villain, / The time, the place, the 156

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torture’ (5.2.366–7). Ironically, the word ‘Spartan’ suggests that no torment will manage to ‘ope his lips’ (5.2.302). Sanders (Oth, 196) notes that Spartan dogs were described as ‘eager of prey’ in Studley’s 1581 translation of Seneca’s Hippolytus (56v). MV can be read as the story of a man who has been continually insulted and cannot forget the trauma but paradoxically endeavours to respond to the insults he has to bear by becoming a blood-hunting dog. Shylock underlines that Antonio calls him ‘cutthroat[,] dog’ (1.3.107) and that he ‘foots’ him as ‘you spurn a stranger cur’ (1.2.114). Garber notes that the image of the dog as a ‘homeless mongrel stray’ resonates ‘with the equally typical period accounts of Jews as homeless and stateless, of “mongrel” race and “cut-throat” tendency’ (Profiling, 192–3). Shylock’s response to the insult consists in taking it literally: Jew:

Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause, But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs. (3.3.6–7)

Thomas Hill, in A pleasant History: Declaring the whole Art of Physiognomy (1613) tells about ‘the end of the nose sharp, to be of a fierce ire: applied to the dog’ and he refers to ‘The upper lip bearing out that the gums be seen: to be a wrangler, and spiteful, applied to the dog’ (Hill, 118–21). The dog is the one who shows his teeth. Here Shylock switches from ‘thou call’st me dog’ to ‘I am a dog’. Thus Graziano’s outraged exclamation: ‘O, be thou damned, inexecrable dog’ (4.1.128) should be associated with a cruelty that is found in the image of the wolf (4.1.133–7) which is part of the representation of the usurer and also an emblem of envy. As Yoder notes (34–5), Shylock is associated with the image of the werewolf, with the soul of a wolf but the form of a man. By asking for a pound of flesh, Shylock seeks to literalize the image of the blood-hunter that is attached to him. The association of the Jew and the dog is found in The Jew of Malta (2.3.20–1): ‘We Jews can fawn like spaniels when we please, / And when we grin we bite.’ Expressions such as ‘the dog Jew’ (2.8.14), or ‘this currish Jew’(4.1.288) become almost redundant. In H5, Pistol hurls at Nym an exotic insult: ‘Pish for thee, Iceland dog, thou prickeared cur of Iceland! (2.1.42). The specificity of the insult is incongruous and one feels it has become somewhat undecipherable. The Iceland dog is ‘a small breed of sheepdog of spitz type, used in Iceland as a working dog’ (OED ). Caius describes Iceland dogs as ‘curled and rough all over’, which ‘by reason of the length of their hair, make show, neither of face nor of body’ (transl. Fleming, 1576, 37. Quoted by Taylor, H5, 124). Harrison, in A Description of England (1577), mentions ‘their sauciness and quarrelling’, adding that ‘they bite very sore and love candles exceedingly as do men and women of their country’ (book 3, chap. VII , 346). Walter (H5, 32) notes that ‘Iceland dogs were very hairy and inclined to be snappish, in both presumably an apt description of Nym’. Taylor (H5, 124) suggests that the insult may be referring to the white clothes that Nym would wear on stage, reminiscent of the Iceland dog’s white fur. Taylor also mentions the word ‘Nimfadóro, Nimfodóro’, defined by Florio (1598) as ‘an effeminate, wanton, milke-sop, perfumed ladies-courting courtier’ and thus may inspire the comparison with 157

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the lap-dog. One should also note that the image of the dog is to be related to the ‘Pish’ that may evoke a dog’s ‘piss’. The image of the ‘prick-eared’ dog may derive from Harrison’s description: ‘The last sort of dogs consisteth of the currish kind meet for many toys, of which the whippet or prick-eared cur is one’ (346). It may also contain a bawdy allusion, the word ‘prick’ being sexually charged, or it may refer to the horns of a cuckold. Pistol goes on using dog images by calling Nym ‘egregious dog’ (2.1.47) and then ‘hound of Crete’ (2.1.74), another exotic phrase that is typical of Pistol’s idiolect. Macbeth insults the murderers by putting them in a catalogue of dogs, thus summarizing their inhumanity: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men; As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are clept All by the name of dogs: (3.1.91–4) (C) See Empson, chap. 7 and 8; Garber, ‘Shakespeare’s dogs’, in Profiling Shakespeare (2008), chap. 9, 182–94. Garber especially studies the dogs in KL and MV . On the dog/cur Crab in TGV , see Boehrer (2002), ‘The Dog Is Himself’, 156–68. On ‘Dogs, War, and Loyalty in Shakespeare’, see Poole, 89–109. On dogs in curses in general, see Hughes (2006), 137–8 and Rawson, 119–23. On the sexual meanings of the image, see Williams, 1, 400–3. Rubinstein (79) suggests there is a link between the dog and the castrated man, circumcision being a euphemistic version of castration. See brach, cur, hound, mongrel, rascal. dolt (A) A fool, a stupid fellow. The word is apparently related to the adjectives ‘dull’ and ‘dold’, meaning stupid, deprived of intellect. Baret has ‘a dolt or a blockish dull head’. (B) The word only appears twice in Shakespeare’s corpus. Emilia insults Othello when she discovers he has been deceived by Iago: ‘O gull, O dolt, / As ignorant as dirt’ (Oth 5.2.159–60). Linked with ‘dull’ which can mean obscure and dim, ‘dolt’, like the reference to dirt, may contain a racist allusion to Othello’s black skin. In TC , Pandarus, while advertising Troilus to Cressida, calls the soldiers that cannot compare with him ‘Asses, fools, dolts’ (TC 1.2.233), a series of insulting words that is reminiscent of those that can be found in early modern dictionaries. For example Florio (1598) has ‘Nescio, a foole, an idiot, a natural, a dolt. One that knowes nothing, ignorant.’ Cotgrave has ‘Badault: m. A foole, dolt, sot, fop, asse, coxcombe; gaping hoydon.’ Words of insult often come in series that look like lexicon entries. dotard (A) A fool, one who dotes, who is crazy, who loves to excess, one who is weakminded because of old age. Florio (1598) has ‘Vegliardo, an aged elderly man. Also a foolish old doting fellow, a dotrell, a dotard’. The term is linked to French radoter, which means to repeat things several times because one forgets them. 158

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(B) In TS , Vincentio, Lucentio’s father, complains he is ‘haled and abused’ (5.1.98–9) by Baptista, who has just ordered: ‘Away with the dotard; to the jail with him’ (5.1.97). The insult is the result of a comic quid pro quo that leads the characters to think that the old man is crazy. Tranio too says, referring to Vincentio: ‘Carry this mad knave to the jail’ (5.1.84). After the ‘crackhemp’ (5.1.41, one who breaks the hangman’s rope) Biondello has called for help: ‘Help, help, help! Here’s a madman will murder me!’ (5.1.52–3), Baptista exclaims ‘What, is the man lunatic?’ (5.1.64) and the Merchant ‘Away, away, mad ass’ (5.1.76). Thus the ‘dotard’ that concludes the sequence derives from a knavery and a case of mistaken identity that has spread the word that Vincentio was mad. In CE , the word also appears in a context of mistaken identity leading to general madness, when Antipholus of Ephesus says to Pinch: ‘Peace, doting wizard, peace; I am not mad’ (4.4.60). In MA , old Antonio, feeling insulted by young Claudio, ironically applies to himself the derogatory image of the dotard, in order to negate it: ‘Tush, tush, man, never fleer and jest at me! / I speak not like a dotard nor a fool’ (5.1.58–9). The word comes naturally in a scene that dramatizes the battle of old age and youth. In KL , the insulting image of the dotard is omnipresent. Lear feels insulted when Regan takes Goneril by the hand, thus showing that they are of the same nature: Lear: O, Regan, will you take her by the hand? Goneril: Why not by the hand, sir? How have I offended? All’s not offence that indiscretion finds And dotage terms so. Lear: O sides, you are too tough! Will you yet hold? [. . .] (2.2.383–7) The series of outrages that Lear has to bear in the play have a physical impact on him as the image of the sides that are about to crack shows. After referring to dotage twice when Lear is not on stage (1.4.285 and 319), Goneril is here calling her father a dotard to his face and the abuse both reflects and leads to Lear’s folly. The doting motif in the play is to be related to the obsessive presence of madness and to the idea that Lear does not love ‘wisely’ when he banishes Cordelia, preferring his two ‘pelican daughters’ (3.4.74). The image of the dotard is already present in Goneril’s instructions to Oswald: Now, by my life, Old fools are babes again, and must be used With checks as flatteries, when they are seen abused. Remember what I have said. (1.3.19–22) Oswald follows these instructions precisely in the next scene when he ignores Lear (1.4.45) and then insultingly calls him ‘my lady’s father’ (1.4.77) thus denying Lear his royal identity. 159

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In WT , Leontes hurls the word at Antigonus: Will you not push her [Paulina] out? [To Antigonus] Give her the bastard, Thou dotard; thou art woman-tired, unroosted By thy Dame Partlet here. Take up the bastard, Take’t up, I say; give’t to thy crone. (2.3.72–5) Paulina and Antigonus are turned into the ‘dotard’ and his ‘crone’, the ‘dotard’ here being acoustically linked with the ‘bastard’, an echo that makes the baby and the old man inseparable, until Antigonus exits ‘pursued by a bear’ (3.3.57). In Tim, Alcibiades rejects the senators as dotards when they banish his friend and fellow soldier and then himself: Banish me? Banish your dotage, banish usury That makes the senate ugly. (3.6.97–9) He thus transforms the senate into an assembly of old fools. drab (A) A dirty woman, a slut hence a strumpet, a quean, a whore. The word is connected with Irish ‘drabog’ and Gaelic ‘drabag’, meaning ‘dirty female’, ‘slattern’. Connection with Low German drabbe, meaning ‘dirt’, ‘mire’, has been suggested (OED ). Verstegan has: Drabbe. In the old Teutonic language, the lees filth or dregges remayning in the bottome of vessels, which in Latin beareth the name of fæx, is called drabbe: and in regard of the lothsomnes or filthynes thereof, it became metaphorically to bee applyde vnto some foule or filthy woman. (334) According to Partridge, the word refers to a prostitute, ‘especially one plying her trade in poverty’. (B) In 1H6, the shepherd who claims to be Joan the Puzel’s father exclaims: Dost thou deny thy father, cursed drab? O burn her, burn her, hanging is too good. (5.3.32–3) The word may have a sexual meaning as Joan is regularly called ‘whore’ in the play but ‘drab’ is here the answer to the insult ‘peasant’ (5.3.21) that Joan has just hurled at the shepherd. The word more specifically refers to dirt and is then contradicted by Joan who draws a self-portrait where she appears under the name of Joan of Aire (5.3.49), one of the variants of Joan’s name that suggests that she is pure as air, and where she presents herself as ‘chaste and immaculate’ (5.3.51), one that is not ‘dirty’, no ‘drab’. In 2H6, 160

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Gloucester concludes the fake miracle sequence orchestrated by Simon Simpson and his wife with: ‘Follow the knave, and take this drab away’ (2.1.148). The wife’s answer, ‘Alas, sir, we did it for pure need’ may be a pun aimed at contradicting the ‘dirt’ that is associated with the word ‘drab’. In MM , Pompey the bawd describes prostitution as a world of ‘drabs and [. . .] knaves’ (ie their clients) without whom there would be no need of bawds (2.1.230–1). Hamlet curses himself for his lack of courage: Why, what an ass am I: this is most brave, That I, [. . .] Must like a whore unpack my heart with words And fall a-cursing like a very drab, A stallion [A scalion in Q1; A scullion in F]! Fie upon’t, foh! (2.2.517–22) Although Thompson and Taylor prefer ‘stallion’ (male prostitute), the word ‘scullion’ (kitchen servant) related to French souillon, which means ‘dirty woman’, makes perfect sense as it is in keeping with ‘drab’. One finds this reference to dirt in Q1 where Hamlet exclaims ‘what a dunghill idiot slave am I!’ (Q1, Thompson and Taylor, 7.404). Ironically, the word ‘drab’ uttered by Hamlet as a self curse, echoes Polonius’ enumeration of the companions to ‘youth and liberty’ (2.1.23): ‘drinking, fencing, swearing, / Quarrelling, drabbing’ (2.1.25–6). Thersites uses the word ‘drab’ several times when he is soliloquizing to express his cynical view of the lecherous world of TC . ‘A Trojan drab’ (5.1.94), ‘a commodious drab’ (5.2.201), ‘the dissembling luxurious drab’ (5.4.7–8): through these expressions, Thersites makes Cressida ‘the very crown of’ whoredom (4.2.101). The use of the word ‘drab’ is in keeping with the idea that Thersites matches the world of TC in ‘comparisons with dirt’ (1.3.194), in a play that is full of scatological allusions. (C) See Williams, 1, 412–13 who quotes the proverbial ‘Dicing, drabbing and drinking are the three D’s to destruction’ (Tilley, D324); Findlay (2010), 116. drone (A) The non-working male of a honey bee, hence a sluggard, an idle fellow, a parasite. (B) In CE Luciana asks Dromio of Syracuse: Why prat’st thou to thy self and answer’st not? Dromio, thou drone [thou Dromio in F], thou snail, thou slug, thou sot. (2.2.192–3) The word ‘drone’ is Theobald’s emendation of F’s ‘Dromio’. While the repetition of ‘Dromio’ (in F) is acceptable, transforming the name into an insult meaning a lazy servant, Theobald’s emendation also makes perfect sense. The assonance between ‘Dromio’ and ‘drone’ makes the insult acoustically memorable. The insult leads to Dromio’s question ‘I am transformed, master, am I not?’ (2.2.194), which underlines the magical power of insulting words based on metaphors that translate and trans-shape. If 161

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one retains Theobald’s emendation, the drone obviously refers to a sluggard and is in keeping with the snail and the slug that follow. In 2H6, Suffolk insults the Lieutenant Pirate who has caught him, by using an aphorism: ‘Drones suck not eagles’ blood, but rob beehives’ (4.1.109). The origin of the image is to be found in Pliny’s Natural History (11.57): ‘video [. . .] aliquos existimare, sicut furibus, grandissimis inter illos [. . .] ita apellatis quia furtim devorant mella’ (quoted by Cairncross, 2H6, 106). Suffolk’s intent is to insult the pirate by comparing him to a drone, a parasite that stands in sharp contrast with the noble eagle. Knowles notes that the image of the lazy drone consuming the honey that others have made was a commonplace while the fable of the drone and the eagle seems to have been ‘an addition by Renaissance mythographers’ (2H6, 370). In H5, the Archbishop of Canterbury mentions ‘The lazy yawning drone’ (1.2.204). In Per the third fisherman refers to ‘these drones that rob the bee of her honey’ (2.1.45–6), which echoes Gower’s referring to one who would ‘eat honey like a drone / From others’ labours’ (2.0.18–19). Gossett (Per, 227) refers to the description of the bee-hive in Virgil’s Georgics (4.158–69). In MV , Shylock says about Lancelet, the Clown, once he has left the stage: The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder, Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day More than the wildcat. Drones hive not with me, Therefore I part with him [. . .]. (2.5.44–7) The ‘drone’ is thus the lazy servant, a parasite who lives at his master’s expense and spends his time sleeping. These elements support Theobald’s emendation in CE . (C) For the sexual meaning of the word, see Williams, 1, 417–18; on the musical meaning of the word (only used once, in 1H4, 1.2.73), see Wilson and Calore, 145. Burnett (1997) shows that ‘drone’ is one of the terms used ‘to vilify servants’ (5). The Riverside Shakespeare edition (122) has ‘drumble’ instead of ‘drone’ (CE 2.2.193). drudge (A) A labourer, a slave, one employed in mean tasks. Elyot (1538) has: ‘Mediastinus, a drudge or lubber, which doth in the howse all maner of vyle seruice, as swepe or clense the house, carie wodde to the kytchen, and other like drudgery.’ Huloet defines ‘Drudge, or drugge, or vile seruaunt in a house whych doth all the vyle seruice.’ (B) In TS , Petruccio calls his servant Grumio ‘You peasant swain, you whoreson malthorse drudge’ (4.1.115) in a scene where all the insults that he utters are in fact used to impress Katherina. Petruccio compares Grumio to a ‘heavy horse used to power a mill for grinding malt’ (Hodgdon, 246). In 2H6, Suffolk inveighs against the ‘pirates’ that have caught him: ‘O that I were a god, to shoot forth thunder / Upon these paltry, servile, abject drudges!’ (4.1.104–5), a redundant string of insults in which all the terms refer to base servile work. Later it is Stafford who, addressing the people, exclaims about Cade: ‘And will you credit this base drudge’s words, / That speaks he knows not what?’ (4.2.141–2). The word summarizes and targets Cade’s base origins. It 162

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expresses the ‘class struggle’ in the play. In MV , Bassanio, having to choose between the three caskets, reviles the silver one, saying: ‘Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge / ’Tween man and man’ (3.2.103–4). Silver is thus associated with servile human labour. In Cym, when Iachimo is vanquished by Posthumus, who has appeared in the guise of a poor soldier, he concludes that his guilt ‘takes off his manhood’, otherwise he would not have been beaten by ‘this carl’ (ie churl), ‘a very drudge of nature’s’ (5.2.4–5). The insult is emblematic of a world in which work and service are denigrated. drunkard (A) A heavy drinker, one who drinks in excess. (B) Although there are memorable figures of drunkards in Shakespeare’s plays, such as Falstaff in H4 and MW or Sir Toby Belch in TN , the word is rarely used as a direct insult. In CE , Antipholus of Ephesus calls Dromio of Ephesus ‘Thou drunkard’ (3.1.10) in a context of mistaken identity that has led him to think that Dromio was drunk. The master uses the image of the drunkard to suggest that his servant is crazy and no longer knows what he says and what he does. That is why Dromio answers: ‘Say what you will, sir, but I know what I know’ (3.1.11), meaning ‘I am not drunk’. This is in keeping with the more elaborate image of alcohol that can be found in Oth where Cassio laments that men should put ‘an enemy in their mouths, to steal away their brains’ (Oth 2.3.286–7) and be transformed into ‘beasts’ (Oth 2.3.288; 301). In the comic context of mistaken identity that characterizes CE , masters and servants seem to put enemies in their mouths and thus appear to literally lose their brains and be ‘drunk’ and Dromio is soon called an ‘ass’. In the tragic context of Oth, the drunkard is the one who puts the devil Iago in his mouth. Cassio imagines the dishonour he will have to bear when Othello ‘shall tell me I am a drunkard’ (2.3.298–9) and describes the metamorphosis that goes with drinking: ‘To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast!’ (2.3.300–1). The passage echoes the proverbial phrase ‘A drunken man is a beast’ (Dent, B152.1). In MW , Mistress Page inveighs against Falstaff while reading his letter and calls him, in absentia, ‘this Flemish drunkard’ (2.1.19). As Melchiori notes (164), Flemings were known for heavy drinking and eating a lot of fatty food. Hamlet laments that Denmark should be insulted by other nations because ‘The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse’ (1.4.8): Hamlet: This heavy-headed revel east and west Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations: They clepe [call] us drunkards and with swinish phrase Soil our addition, [. . .] (Ham 1.4.17–20) As Thompson and Taylor (204) note, ‘As drunk as a swine’ was proverbial (Dent, S1042). (C) On drink and drunkenness, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 132–41. See A Homily against Gluttony and drunkenness (1563, Second tome of Homelyes, 103 et seq). Drinking is often related to swearing and quarrelling and thus to insults. As Emmison remarks, ‘[. . .] slander or abuse was so often the concomitant of drunkenness that the courts 163

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dealt with them as joined charges’ (Church, 69). In the Church courts of justice, the accused was often charged with being ‘a common drunkard, blasphemer and swearer’, ‘a common blasphemer of the name of God, a drunkard and a ribald’, ‘a drunkard and a railer of his neighbours in his drunkenness’, ‘a common drunkard and a railer and chider, to the great grief of the ungodly and great danger of his soul’ (Emmison, Church, 69). ‘Often associated with drunkenness, slander or scolding was the common tendency to swearing’ (Emmison, Church, 71). In H4 and TN , Shakespeare mirrors the taverns of his time, which were raucous and unruly places. dull (A) Slow of understanding, not sharp-witted, blockish. In reference to physical qualities, as colour or luminosity, sound or taste, the word means ‘not clear, bright, vivid, or intense’; ‘obscure, dim’; ‘indistinct, muffled’; ‘flat, insipid’ (OED ). It may be etymologically linked with ‘dolt’. (B) In LLL , the constable’s name is ‘Anthony Dull’. Constables were proverbially stupid as appears in the phrase ‘You might be a constable of your wit’ (Dent, C616) and from this derogatory association derives a name-insult. One can imagine the comic effect that comes from this insulting name when Dull proudly identifies himself as the ‘man of good repute, carriage, bearing and estimation’ described in Armado’s letter (1.1.256–7), saying: ‘Me, an’t shall please you. I am Anthony Dull’ (1.1.258). Holofernes and Nathaniel put content in this little name when they abundantly abuse Dull. Holofernes pedantically describes ‘his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather, unlettered, or ratherest, unconfirmed fashion’ (4.2.16–18) and inveighs against his ‘Twice-sod simplicity’ and exclaims ‘O, thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!’ (4.2.23). Nathaniel also glosses the word ‘dull’ at length when he describes the constable’s lack of wit in his presence: Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book. He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink. His intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts. [. . .] (4.2.24–7) Hearing two such ridiculous characters politely and pedantically abuse the constable for his lack of wit has a great ironic impact, since it asks the question: who is the real fool among them? Holofernes calls the constable ‘goodman Dull’ (4.2.36–7; 5.1.140), which is another way of debasing him, as ‘goodman’ is a title given to those that are not of noble birth, such as farmers and yeomen. When Holofernes notes that Dull has ‘spoken no word all this while’, he answers ‘Nor understood none neither, sir’ (5.1.142) which comically confirms his ‘dull’ spirit. Holofernes addresses him as ‘Most Dull, honest Dull!’ (5.1.146), which blurs the name and its meaning, in a tone that blends praise and dispraise. There is comic admiration in this superlative ‘Most Dull, honest Dull’. In MA , during the masked ball scene, Beatrice addresses Benedick as if he were not Benedick and ‘devises slanders’ about him, saying that ‘he is the prince’s jester, a very 164

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dull fool’ (2.1.125–6). The situation of enunciation makes the insult highly comical but Benedick then, like a child, reports the insult to Don Pedro: She told me, not thinking I had been myself, that I was the prince’s jester, that I was duller than a great thaw, huddling jest upon jest with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs. (2.1.222–7) Benedict’s report shows the insulting impact that Beatrice’s words have on him and also ironically confirms that he is ‘dull’, slow of spirit, or at least not quick enough to match her in a ‘skirmish of wit’ (1.1.59), as he stands ‘like a man at a mark’ while Beatrice’s words are like poniards. Benedick rewrites Beatrice’s insult, thus compounding it, by using the comparison ‘duller than the great thaw’ (2.1.223–4) which McEachern (192) explains as ‘more boring than the spring rainy season (when roads were impassable and visiting impossible)’. By calling Benedick both ‘jester’ and ‘dull fool’ Beatrice blends the two figures of the ‘natural’ and professional fools. One finds the same overlapping in AYL where Rosalind calls Touchstone ‘dull fool’ (3.2.112), an expression that reveals his hybrid nature as both artificial fool and ‘natural’ clown (1.2.48), as a ‘clownish fool’ (1.3.127). In context, the word ‘dull’, meaning ‘slow’, is also an answer to Touchstone’s reference to the ‘very false gallop of verses’ (3.2.110) and Rosalind here suggests that he is slow to understand that she found Orlando’s verses on a tree. The expression is oxymoronic if one considers that a court fool is supposed to be witty. It echoes Celia’s earlier noting that Fortune has sent ‘this natural [ie Touchstone] for our whetstone; for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits’ (1.2.52–4). Hamlet, inveighing against himself, calls himself ‘A dull and muddy-mettled rascal’, a ‘John-a-dreams’ (2.2.502–3), which expresses the slowness and passivity that are so often associated with the character who is known for what he calls his ‘dull revenge’ (4.4.32). Emilia calls Othello ‘dull Moor’ (5.2.223) when she becomes aware that he has killed Desdemona and when she understands Iago’s villainy. All the insults that Emilia hurls at Othello at the end of the play (‘gull’, ‘dolt’, 5.2.159; ‘coxcomb’, 5.2.231) denounce his foolishness and stupidity. The word ‘dull’ probably contains a racist allusion to Othello’s skin that is as ‘dull’, as dim, as his spirit and is related to the figure of the black-face clown described by Hornback (2009, chap. 1, ‘Folly as protoracism’). Cleopatra debases her rival Octavia in absentia by describing her as ‘dull of tongue and dwarfish’ (3.3.16) and calling her ‘dull Octavia’ (5.2.54). The word stands in sharp contrast to all the vibrant colours that characterize Cleopatra as she is described by Enobarbus in 2.2.201–55. While Cleopatra ‘beggared all description’ (2.2.208) and is known for her ‘infinite variety’ (2.2.246), Octavia is portrayed in the most basic terms as insipid, showing ‘a body rather than a life’ (3.3.20). Debasing Octavia, Cleopatra enhances her own sublime features. 165

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In Tem, Prospero, addressing Ariel, shows his annoyance at being interrupted in his narration: ‘Dull thing, I say so – he, that Caliban, / Whom now I keep in service’ (1.2.285–6). The ‘Dull thing’ may be both an insult to Ariel and a derogatory allusion to Caliban. This ambiguity is emblematic of the seemingly paradoxical twinning of the two characters that share the same father figure. dunghill (A) A heap of dung, of refuse, of filth, of decayed matter, of excrement. Related to Old High German tunga, manuring, modern German dung and dünger, manure, the word is applied opprobriously to one of evil life or of base status. To insult people sometimes means to reduce them to the state of excrement, as Gaignebet suggests by playing on the words ‘execrate’ and ‘excrete’ (‘L’homme et l’excretum’, 857). (B) In 1H6, when the Duke of Gloucester, Protector of the realm, is denied access to the Tower by two warders, he exclaims: ‘Shall I be flouted thus by dunghill grooms?’ (1.3.14). Burns (142) notes that the expression means that the warders are the meanest servants that can be, ‘those who clear the stable-yard of horse dung’. By defiling these warders, Gloucester enhances his high status as Lord Protector. His insult in words is the response to the warders’ insult in deed. In 2H6, York uses the same word against Peter Thump, an apprentice, who accuses his master Horner of high treason: ‘Base dunghill villain and mechanical, / I’ll have thy head for this thy traitor’s speech!’ (1.3.194–5). The insult blurs the limit between master and servant, as we do not know which of the two says the truth and is the traitor. The image of the dunghill villain derives from Peter’s reference to ‘scouring my Lord of York’s armour’ (1.3.192–3). Knowles (2H6, 187) rightly notes that the term implies a lack of courage, as the image of the ‘dunghill cock’, as opposed to the fighting game-cock, was emblematic of cowardice. Cotgrave has, for ‘chien’, ‘A dog (we say, a cocke) is valiant on his owne dung-hill’ and, for ‘coqueter’, ‘to swagger, or strowt it, like a cocke on his owne dung-hill’. In the same play, after killing Cade, Iden defiles him by addressing his corpse: ‘Hence will I drag thee headlong by the heels / Unto a dunghill, which shall be thy grave’ (2H6 4.10.79– 80). This announces the literalization of the dunghill metaphor: you were a dunghill villain, ergo a dunghill shall be thy grave. In KL , Gloucester undergoes the same abusive treatment when, adding insult to injury, the Duke of Cornwall orders his servants to ‘Turn out that eyeless villain. Throw this slave / Upon the dunghill’ (3.7.94–5). Gloucester is thus turned into refuse, excrement, in a play where the characters, like Lear’s hand, smell ‘of mortality’ (4.6.129). In the same way, Oswald, the villainous servant, relegates Edgar (Poor Tom) to the state of filth when, drawing his sword to fight him, he utters: ‘Out, dunghill’ (4.6.239). Thus both father and son are transformed into a filth that paradoxically reconstitutes the blood tie, the filiation between them. One finds the same defiling process in KJ where Lord Bigot, earl of Norfolk, addressing Hubert, a citizen of Angers, exclaims: ‘Out, dunghill! dar’st thou brave a nobleman?’ (4.3.87). In MW , Pistol indirectly abuses Falstaff when the fat lecherous man tells about his supposed conquests: 166

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Falstaff: I have writ me here a letter to her; and here another to Page’s wife, who even now gave me good eyes too, examined my parts with most judicious oeillades. Sometimes the beam of her view gilded my foot, sometimes my portly belly. Pistol: Then did the sun on dunghill shine. (1.3.55–60) With a reference to the proverb ‘The sun is never so worse for shining on a dunghill’ (Dent, S982), Pistol is comparing Falstaff to a ‘dunghill’, which he will be in reality when he is evacuated in a buck basket (3.3). The word ‘buck’ refers both to the horned beast and to dirty linen: both terms are evocative of evil smell, in a play that teems with scatological allusions. In 2H4, Pistol wants to announce, in a grand poetic way, that ‘Harry the Fifth’s the man’ (5.3.118), that is to say that Harry is the new king, and he rejects the baseness of expression displayed by Falstaff, Silence and Shallow: ‘Shall dunghill curs confront the Helicons? / And shall good news be baffled?’ (5.3.104–5) Pistol opposes dung to poetry, the Helicons referring to the Muses and thus to his being a poet. (C) In modern French the very common words of abuse fumier, enfoiré, emmerdeur, ordure, salaud are all related to excrement, confirming Gaignebet’s link between execrating and excreting (‘L’homme et l’excretum’). On dirt in general, see Laporte; Smith (2012); Mohr, esp. 22–4; 103–5, 159–60. In LLL , Costard corrupts the Latin expression ‘ad unguem’ (‘to the fingernail’) into ‘ad dunghill’, an expression which, Armado says, ‘smell[s] false Latin’ (5.1.70–3). On dirt in MW , see Vienne-Guerrin (2008); On ‘The evacuations of Falstaff’, see Hall (1998). See dirt. dwarf(ish) (A) A human being below the ordinary stature, one of small size, a diminutive. The language of insults often has a belittling effect. (B) In 1H6, the Countess of Auvergne comments on Talbot’s stature, once she thinks she has caught him: ‘Is this the scourge of France? [. . .] / Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf’ (2.3.14; 21). Talbot answers ‘You are deceived, my substance is not here; / For what you see is but the smallest part / And least proportion of humanity’ and he soon reveals ‘the whole frame’ that is of a ‘spacious lofty pitch’ (2.3.51–4). Talbot is referring to his army that transforms the dwarf into a giant. Answering to the Countess’s insult in terms of size, his speech contains some obvious sexual overtones: I am a bigger, more powerful, more potent and better ‘shaped’ than you think. In MND , Lysander, ‘this lacklove, this kill-courtesy’ (2.2.76) violently insults Hermia: Get you gone, you dwarf; You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; You bead, you acorn. (3.2.328–30)

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The word refers to Hermia’s small stature that the text keeps alluding to. Hermia laments that the other characters regularly describe her as ‘nothing but “low” and “little” ’ (3.2.326) when she hears Helena say about her ‘And though she be but little, she is fierce’ (3.2.325). She retorts to belittling words such as ‘dwarf’ or ‘puppet’ (3.2.288–9) by calling Helena ‘thou painted maypole’ (3.2.296), in a scene that dramatizes the battle of the little and the tall. Cleopatra summarizes Octavia’s features in a few words: ‘dull of tongue, and dwarfish’ (AC 3.3.16). She needs to belittle her rival verbally to appear even more majestic and grandiose.

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E earth (A) The material out of which the ground is made; worthless matter. Bright (1588) has for ‘earth’: ‘Chalke Claye Clodde Duste Grauell Ground Lande Lime Lome Morter Moulde Sande Turfe’. It is often opposed to water and air and often associated and contrasted with heaven. The word also refers to the material of the human body, considered as derived from the ground, as is evoked in the 1549’s Book of Common Prayer (Buriall f. xxiiii*v): ‘Earth to earth, asshes to asshes, dust to dust’. (B) Romeo deprecates himself when he realizes that he should go back to find Juliet, his ‘heart’: Can I go forward when my heart is here? Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out. (2.1.1–2) The expression ‘as dull as earth’ was proverbial (Dent, E27.2; see TGV , 4.2.51). Romeo’s words describe him as a material body whose centre, whose heart is Juliet, and Juliet echoes his words when she thinks Romeo is dead and exclaims: ‘Vile earth to earth resign, end motion here, / And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier!’ (3.2.59–60). When they are separated, Romeo is ‘dull earth’ and Juliet ‘vile earth’. Ironically, the image is echoed later when Romeo refers to Juliet as ‘the dearest morsel of the earth’ (5.3.46). In R2, the Queen, addressing the gardener, who tells about the king’s ‘black tidings’ (3.4.71), uses the word in a derogatory way: ‘thou little better thing than earth’ (3.4.78). The insult debases the gardener, who is then called a ‘wretch’, but also contains an allusion to his work as a gardener, which is related to the ground, the soil. It also relegates the gardener to the status of filth, of dung. Shaheen (724) notes that the expression ‘dungy earth’ may derive from ‘dongue [dung] for the earth’ in Psalms 83:10 (quoted by Pitcher, WT , 198). Timon, congratulating thieves, declares that ‘the earth’s a thief, / That feeds and breeds by a composture stol’n / From general excrement’ (4.3.435–7). In Tem, Prospero calls for Caliban, saying ‘Thou earth, thou: speak!’ (1.2.314), thus clearly emphasizing his earthiness, in contrast to Ariel’s airiness. Prospero reduces Caliban to the state of worthless matter, of ‘dungy earth’ (AC 1.1.36; WT 2.1.157): ‘I have used thee / (Filth as thou art), with human care [. . .]’ (1.2.346–7), he later says to Caliban. ‘Earth’ is associated with filth but it also suggests that Caliban is a sort of essential clay that Prospero does not manage to shape, to mould. In Julie Taymor’s film 169

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The Tempest (2010), the word is put into action as Caliban’s muddy body appears as a figure of the earth, delineating several continents. Beyond the debasing insult, one may find the image of the ‘thing of darkness’ (Tem 5.1.275) whose earthiness also constitutes his humanity. As Prospero uses the term to call Caliban who is late answering him, there may be a suggestion that he is as ‘dull’, that is as slow (of wit), as earth, which would be in keeping with the image of the tortoise (1.2.317) that Prospero uses two lines later. When Enobarbus, cursing himself, says ‘I am alone the villain of the earth’ (AC 4.6.31), the reference to the earth goes together with the foul ‘earthy’ end he orchestrates for himself: ‘I will go seek / Some ditch wherein to die; the foul’st best fits / My latter part of life’ (4.6.38–40). At the end of Cym, Posthumus utters the self-deprecatory words: ‘it is I / That all th’ abhorred things o’th’ earth amend / By being worse than they’ (5.5.215–17). Immediately followed by ‘I am Posthumus’, the reference to the earth seems to reveal the foul humus in the ‘Post-humus’. eel(-skin) (A) The eel is a long thin fish, resembling a snake. Often used as a type for slippery things (Tilley, E60, ‘As slippery as an eel’), its ‘body is moved with crooked winding’ (Topsell, 1608, 126). The conger is a large species of eel. Due to their snakelike shape, the eels were viewed as phallic symbols. (B) In 1H4, ‘eel-skin’ appears in one of the strings of abuse Falstaff hurls at Hal in one of the tavern scenes: ’Sblood, you starveling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stock-fish! O, for breath to utter what is like thee! You tailor’s yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck – (2.4.238–41) As Scott Kastan notes (220), ‘eel-skin’ is Hanmer’s emendation of Q1 and Q2’s ‘elsskin’, of Q3 to Q5’s ‘elfskin’ and of F’s ‘Elfe-skin’. It fits well with the other words referring to thin objects, with the ‘stockfish’ that follows as well as with Falstaff’s use of the word in 2H4 where the old knight says that Justice Shallow is so thin that ‘you might have thrust him and all his apparel into an eelskin’ (3.2.319–21). The image is used to refer to Hal’s slender figure, contrasted with Falstaff’s ‘huge hill of flesh’ (1H4 2.4.237) but it can also have sexual overtones. The eel itself can be suggestive of the penis, as appears in Per when Bolt, servant to Pander and Bawd, says: ‘thunder shall not awake the beds of eels as my giving out her beauty stirs up the lewdly inclined’ (Per 4.2.134–6). Yet the ‘eel-skin’, together with the ‘stockfish’ (dried cod), is evocative of dryness and thus of a lack of sexual vigour rather than of phallic potency. Compared with Falstaff, the ‘muddy conger’ (2H4 2.4.51), Hal is presented as a thin impotent fellow. In KJ , the Bastard draws a derogatory portrait of his brother Robert Faulconbridge as a ridiculously thin man, calling him ‘three-farthings’ (1.1.143), referring to his legs as ‘riding rods’ (1.1.140) and to his arms as ‘eel-skins stuff’d’ (1.1.144). (C) On the eel as food, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 144–5. On the sexual meaning of ‘eel’, see Partridge, 98 and Williams, 1, 431. 170

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egg (A) Something small and worthless. ‘Not worth an egg(shell)’ is proverbial (Tilley, E95, see Cor 4.4.21: ‘Some trick not worth an egg’). The egg is ‘Shakespeare’s frequent measure of insignificance’ (Holland, Cor, 332). (B) In LLL , Costard calls Armado’s little Page Moth (or Mote) ‘thou pigeon-egg of discretion’ (LLL 5.1.68), using the ‘pigeon-egg’ as an example of something very small. This is in keeping with Holofernes saying that Moth ‘disputes like an infant’ (5.1.61) and with Costard previously calling Moth in absentia ‘that handful of wit’, ‘a most pathetical nit’ (4.1.146–7), since a ‘nit’ may be the egg of an insect. Uttered by the clown Costard, who is insultingly described as ‘that base minnow of thy mirth’, as ‘that unlettered small-knowing soul’ (1.1.240; 242), the insult is ironical. The expression suggests both that Moth is little and that he has little judgement. In TC , Thersites calls Patroclus ‘Finch egg!’ (5.1.35), thus conveying ‘diminutive size and inconsequentiality’ (Bevington, TC , 308), like the preceding insults, ‘waterflies, diminutives of nature’ (TC 5.1.33). The word ‘egg’ is heard at the beginning of the play as a measure of worthlessness when Pandarus says to Cressida that Troilus ‘esteems her [Helen] no more than I esteem an addle egg’ (1.2.126–7), that is a ‘rotten egg’. In Mac, when Macduff’s son tells the murderer ‘Thou liest, thou ‘shag-hair’d villain!’ (F), the murderer retorts ‘What, you egg! / [Stabbing him] Young fry of treachery!’ (4.2.84–5). ‘Egg’, like the word ‘fry’ (newly hatched offspring, often about fish), suggests the boy’s insignificance but is also emblematic of Macbeth’s fear of all kinds of descendants. There is some irony when we hear Macduff then lament that all his ‘pretty chickens’ (4.3.218) have been killed. In AYL , Touchstone says to Corin: ‘Truly, thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side’ (3.2.35–6) because the shepherd has not been to court. (C) On eggs as food, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 146–9. egregious (A) Remarkable, in a bad sense. ‘Egregious is neuer vsed in english but in the extreame ill part’ (Nashe, Strange Newes, 1592, J4v, quoted in OED ). The word derives from Latin ex-grex, greg-is (‘out of the flock’), which originally meant ‘great’, ‘notable’, ‘excellent’ (see Minsheu, ‘one exempt from the rout, menie, or rabble’). It subsequently took on a negative meaning from ironical use. For example Cotgrave has ‘Fol à 25 carats (dont les 24 font le tout.) An egregious foole, a foole beyond all proportion; (the finest gold being but of 24 Carrats)’. (B) In H5, Pistol calls Nym ‘egregious dog’ (2.1.47), using ‘egregious’ as an intensifier that is in keeping with his characteristic bombastic rhetoric. He uses the word again at 4.4.11. In Cym, Posthumus calls himself ‘Egregious murderer’ (5.5.211) in an hyperbolic speech where he describes himself as being beyond all other villains: ‘it is I / That all th’ abhorred things o’th’ earth amend / By being worse than they’ (5.5.215–17). These lines illustrate the idea that Posthumus is not common in his villainy, that he is ‘out of the flock’. elbow (A) The expression ‘to be out at elbow’ means to be worn out, ragged, poor, in bad condition (Tilley, E102). 171

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(B) In MM , Pompey ironically plays with the constable’s name, Elbow: Angelo: Pompey:

[. . .] Elbow is your name? Why dost thou not speak, Elbow? He cannot, sir; he’s out at elbow. (2.1.58–60)

Pompey here reveals all the insulting content in the constable’s name by playing on the word ‘out’, which means Elbow is speechless, at a loss what to say, and on the expression ‘out at elbow’, which means ‘impoverished in dress (and intelligence)’ (Gibbons, 111). In TC , Thersites uses the image when he says to Ajax: ‘Thou sodden-witted lord, thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows’ (2.1.42–3). (C) Tilley, E102 quotes Nashe’s An Almond for a Parrot (1589): ‘your witte wilbe welny worn thredbare, and your banquerout inuention cleane out at the elbowes’ (Works, 3, 356). elephant (A) ‘The greatest of all foure footed beastes’ (Baret). Florio (1598) reads: ‘Barrire, to bray, as an Asse or Elephant’. (B) The word is not frequent in Shakespeare’s plays. It only appears in TN , where it is the name of an inn, and in TC , where the image is applied to Ajax by Thersites, in one of his ‘spiteful execretions’ (2.3.6–7): ‘Shall the elephant Ajax carry it thus?’ (2.3.2–3). Thersites, as is often the case, curses his enemy in absentia, here meaning that Ajax is ‘thick skinned and clumsy’ (Bevington, 203), that he is one of those who have ‘little, little, less than little wit’ (2.3.12). The association of Ajax and the elephant derives from the story told by Philostratus, according to which Alexander the Great had, in honour of the renowned Trojan war hero, given the name of Ajax to one of the elephants that had fought with Porus against him. Calling an elephant ‘Ajax’ is praise but calling Ajax an elephant is abuse. This reversal is emblematic of the way in which the play debunks the world of the Homeric heroes. Thersites echoes Alexander’s eminently paradoxical portrait of Ajax (1.2.19–30). In the rich bestiary of the play, Ajax is, among other things, described as ‘slow as the elephant’ (1.2.21), referring to his slow-wit. Ulysses applies the image not to Ajax but to Achilles, about whom he says: ‘The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; / His legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure’ (2.3.103–4), which reflects an early modern commonplace about elephants. (C) See Holt, 78. See Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 2.12. Bednarz sees the image as one of the insults that Shakespeare addresses to Ben Jonson/Ajax (36–42). About the elephant and Ajax, see Topsell (1607), 192. elm (A) An elm tree is a big tree that is dangerous when it is rotten or dry. It traditionally supported the vine and was used to make coffins, thus being associated with death and the underworld. (B) In 2H4, Poins calls Falstaff ‘thou dead elm’ (2.4.331), in the ‘no abuse’ scene (2.4.313–19), when Falstaff says that he dispraised Hal ‘before the wicked’ (2.4.319), that is before the Hostess. By slandering them, Falstaff shows poor support of his friends, Hal, the Hostess, his boy and ‘honest Bardolph’ (2.4.329), in the same way as a 172

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‘dead elm’ would show poor support for the vine. Humphreys glosses ‘rotten support (for your friends)’ (2H4, 84). Melchiori (135) mentions three possible meanings: there might be an allusion to Falstaff’s being a big drinker, now too old to be a good support of vineyards; an allusion to Falstaff’s being a womanizer, now too old to content women, an evocation of the Old Knight’s being already dead. The image probably has a sexual meaning, suggesting that Falstaff has lost his sap. This contrasts with Adriana’s speech in CE where the elm appears as a symbol of manly potency: Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine; Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine, Whose weakness married to thy stronger state, Makes me with thy strength to communicate [. . .] (2.2.172–5) In MND , the elm is again an image of virility, comically applied to Bottom: So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist; the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. (4.1.41–3) The comparison with a ‘dead elm’ denies Falstaff any kind of virile potency and suggests that he is no longer what he used to be. The image needs to be placed in the context of Hal’s aside to Poins, when he refers to Falstaff as a ‘withered elder’ (2H4 2.4.258), which may mean both ‘decrepit old man’ and ‘sapless elder-tree’ (Humphreys, 2H4, 81) and which prolongs the derogatory comparison of Falstaff with shrivelled ‘apple-johns’ (1H4 3.3.4; 2H4 2.4.1–11). The figure also conveys the motif of friendship that is so essential in H4. The image of the vine clinging to the dead elm was emblematic of eternal friendship and has a resonance when we consider the end of the play. Ironically, Hal will not be the vine that should stick to the ‘dead elm’ even after death but, by severing the bond with the ‘old man’ (2H4 5.5.47), King Henry will show that their friendship was in no way perfect or eternal. (C) On the elm as support for vine, see Virgil, Georgics 1.2–3: ‘ulmisque adiungere vites’ (quoted by Humphreys, 2H4, 84). The tree is described by Maplet: The Elme is a tree whose wood or timber is yelow, verie sinowie & strong. It is called of some all heart. It is vsed and occupied principally about magnificall or beautifull gates. It is then best of all riuen, clouen and cut in sunder when it is moyst and greene, and wyth more difficultie being once drie. Theophrast sayth, that it is in his kinde verie barraine. It only beareth a certaine Grape, but nothing else. It is one of those kinds that putrifie and breede wormes. (41) The ‘dead elm’ appears in an emblem on eternal friendship by Boissard (1588), ‘Parfaite est l’amitié qui vit après la mort’ (perfect is the friendship that lives after death, ‘amicitiae immortali’): www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/facsimile.php?id=sm415-i1r 173

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Quoted in Saunders (1988), 257–8. The same symbolism is to be found in Alciato’s Livret des Emblèmes (1536): www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/emblem.php?id= FAL a012 (‘Amicitia etiam post mortem durans’). enchantress/enchanting/enchantment (A) A witch, a sorceress. Derived from French enchanteresse, from Latin incantare (to utter or sing magic formulas, incantations), the word conveys the verbal dimension of the witch’s power. (B) In 1H6, it is one of the numerous insults that describe Joan as a witch, when York exclaims: ‘Fell banning hag! Enchantress, hold thy tongue’ (5.2.63). After ‘witch’ (1.5.6; 1.5.21; 2.1.18; 3.2.37), ‘Circe’ (5.2.56) and ‘hag’ (3.2.51), the word is a variation on the witch motif and it stresses the oral dimension of the witch’s art. No wonder the insult is followed by the command ‘hold thy tongue’ and by Joan’s request: ‘I prithee, give me leave to curse awhile’ (5.2.64). The word also echoes King Charles’s ‘Speak, Puzel, and enchant him with thy words’ (3.3.40). Burns notes (1H6, 216) that the use of the word suggests, more than mere rhetorical skill, magical power. In Tit, Tamora says: ‘I will enchant the old Andronicus’ (4.4.88), the phrase suggesting that she is a witch figure who can do things with words. In Oth, Brabantio suggests that Othello is a wizard, when he violently accuses him: ‘Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her [Desdemona]’ (1.2.63). In AC , Antony calls Cleopatra ‘this enchanting queen’ (1.2.135). In WT , Polixenes uses the word as praise and abuse at the same time when he addresses Perdita as ‘you, enchantment’ (4.4.439) because he thinks she has bewitched his son Florizel. He also calls her ‘fresh piece / Of excellent witchcraft’ (4.4.427), which sounds oxymoronic. Pitcher (WT , 286) notes that this is only a metaphor, contrary to what appears in Oth or Per but one can feel hostility in Polixenes’ words that are both insulting and full of wonder. envy (A) Spite, malice, from Latin invidia. Thomas has ‘Invĭdia, æ, f.g. Envie, hatred, ill will, spite, grudging, ill opinion that the people haue of one: malice, procuring of one displeasure by worde or deed: great displeasure against one.’ Wilson (1612) reads: ‘Enuie. sig: That affection which makes men grieue & fret at the good and prosperity of others. Galat. 5, 21. Rom. 13, 13.’ Envy is the source of slander, of railing and of the poisonous tongue in general. The symbol of envy is the dog, especially because of his teeth. (B) In TC , Achilles calls Thersites ‘thou core of envy’ (5.1.4, ‘Core’ in F, ‘curre’ in Q) while Patroclus addresses him as ‘thou damnable box of envy’ (5.1.24). Both Achilles and Patroclus throw into relief Thersites’ evil tongue by referring to him as an embodiment of envy, a container of ‘gall’ (5.1.34), a railing and slanderous tongue (Ulysses alludes to ‘envious and calumniating time’ 3.3.175). The motif of envy is in keeping with the canine insults that are addressed to the cynic Thersites in the play. Patroclus and Achilles convey an image that Thersites himself emphasizes when he concludes one of his execrating speeches with ‘I have said my prayers, and devil Envy say “Amen’ ” (2.3.19–20). Thersites accuses Ajax of being full of envy at Achilles’ ‘greatness’ (2.1.31): 174

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Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles, and thou art as full of envy at his greatness as Cerberus is at Proserpine’s beauty, ay, that thou bark’st at him. (2.1.30–3) Cerberus is the many-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades. Snarling dogs were emblematic of envy and railing, an idea that is found in 1H6 where Basset mentions ‘The envious barking of your saucy tongue’ (3.4.33) and an ‘envious carping tongue’ (4.1.90). Bevington (TC , 184) refers to Conti’s Mythologiae (204) where one finds the idea that all who wished to marry Proserpina, Queen of Hades, had to fight with Cerberus, ‘who, perhaps out of envy, tore them apart’. (C) See Alciato’s and Whitney’s emblems on invidia: www.mun.ca/alciato/fr-w071. html. In 2H6, one finds a description of ‘lean-faced envy’: Could curses kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan, I would invent as bitter searching terms, As curst, as harsh and horrible to hear, Delivered strongly through my fixed teeth, With full as many signs of deadly hate, As lean-faced Envy in her loathsome cave. My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words, Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint, My hair be fixed on end, as one distract; Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban. (3.2.310–19) The passage echoes the lines from Ovid’s Metamorphoses 2.949–77 to which the emblems are also related. On envy, see Meskill. On the dog as a symbol of envy, see Della Porta, 264, (‘Invidi ad canes’) and Yoder, 29. epileptic (A) Suffering from epilepsy, also known as the ‘falling sickness’, a disease of the nervous system, characterized by violent fits, in which the person falls to the ground and is plunged into a state of unconsciousness, with general spasms of the muscles and a foaming mouth. Cotgrave has ‘Epilepsie. The falling sicknesse, or foule euill.’ Bullokar has ‘Epilepsie. The falling sicknesse, whereto most commonly children and yong folk are subiect. This disease is caused by some humor or vapor, suddenly stopping the passage of spirits in the braine, which the brain striuing to expel, causeth the patient to fall downe, and commonly fome at the mouth.’ (B) In KL , Kent curses Oswald: ‘A plague upon your epileptic visage’ (2.2.79). One can feel that the word is derogatory but it is hard to know what is exactly behind it. Foakes’s explanation (KL , 230) is that Oswald’s nervousness gives his visage some twitches that betray his cowardice. Iyengar (121) writes that Kent equates ‘his repeated sarcastic smile[s] with the involuntary, tooth-baring grimace of grand mal.’ Betts and Betts suggest that the word should rather be understood in the context of the following lines that allude to another disease: syphilis. 175

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A plague upon your epileptic visage. Smile you my speeches as I were a fool? Goose, if I had you upon Sarum Plain, I’d drive ye cackling home to Camelot. (2.2.79–82) They note that ‘goose’ or ‘Winchester goose’ ‘meant either a prostitute, or someone infected with venereal disease, with the characteristic rash of secondary syphilis (the pokkes, from which we derive the modern word pox and pock-marked) or the syphilitic sore itself’ (408). They conclude that ‘It is almost certain that Shakespeare meant by this phrase “your pock-marked face” and, by implication, “you syphilitic wreck” and is not referring to epilepsy. To call a man syphilitic in Elizabethan England was a powerful insult and, if false, was punished by the Ecclesiastical courts’ (409). Considering that the expression ‘falling sickness’ was sometimes ‘jocularly transferred to copulation’ (Williams, 1, 462–3), Betts’s reading is plausible. (C) See Williams, 1, 462–3 (‘falling sickness’); Iyengar, 119–22. On epilepsy and syphilis, see Betts and Betts, (1998). On syphilis in Shakespeare’s world, see Fabricius; Bentley. See goose. Ethiop(e) (A) Ethiopian, black, one of swarthy complexion, traditionally contrasted with beauty and fairness. The word derives from Latin Æthiops, genitive Æthiop-is, and Greek Αἰθίοψ, Αἰθίοπος, ‘Ethiopian’, commonly believed to be based on αἴθ-ειν to burn and ὄψ face, meaning primarily ‘burnt-face’ (OED ). The phrase ‘to wash an Ethiop white’ is proverbial, meaning ‘to attempt the impossible’ (Tilley, E186, Jeremiah 13:23). (B) In MND , Lysander rejects Hermia, saying ‘Away, you Ethiope!’ (3.2.257). Referring to Hermia’s dark hair and skin, the word shows that the woman Lysander used to love is now an object of loathing and disgust and that what was fair is now ugly. He again refers to Hermia’s dark colouring when he exclaims ‘Out, tawny Tartar, out!’ (3.2.263), thus prolonging the image of the black ominous raven he used in 2.2: ‘Who will not change a raven for a dove?’ (2.2.113). He now prefers fair Helena to dark Hermia, a change that Theseus theorizes when he describes the ‘frantic’ lover who sees ‘Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt’ (5.1.11). As Schlueter notes, ‘Ethiop’ conveys the ‘conventional antitype to the ideal white-skinned, blue-eyed, fair haired woman’ (TGV , 102). In TGV , Proteus contrasts fairness and blackness when he says ‘And Silvia – witness heaven that made her fair – / Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope’ (2.6.25–6). ‘Swarthy’ is related to German Schwartz (black). In MA , ‘Ethiope’ is again synonymous with ugliness when Claudio says that he will marry any woman Leonato presents to him: ‘I’ll hold my mind were she an Ethiope’ (5.4.38). The phrase recalls Beatrice’s ironic self-disparaging words when she describes herself as ‘sunburnt’ (2.1.293) and thus unfit for marriage. Romeo underlines the contrast between fairness and blackness by using the image of the Ethiope when he amorously describes Juliet: 176

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O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright. It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear. (Rom 1.5.43–5) In LLL , Dumaine says about the one he loves: ‘Thou for whom Jove would swear / Juno but an Ethiop were’ (4.3.114–15), in a play that dramatizes a debate on beauty. When the King tells Biron ‘By heaven, thy love is black as ebony!’ (4.3.243), the lover defends blackness, saying ‘No face is fair that is not full so black’ (4.3.249), then adding ‘And therefore is she born to make black fair’ (4.3.257). But the debate conveys all the negative connotations associated with blackness: O paradox! Black is the badge of hell, The hue of dungeons, and the school of night; And beauty’s crest becomes the heavens well. (LLL 4.3.250–2) The King expresses the common early modern association of blackness with foulness and considers it comical and paradoxical that a dark complexion may be attractive. It is nonsensical for him to try and show that black is fair as the two words are oxymoronic. Thus clearly, Lysander’s calling Hermia ‘Ethiope’ constitutes an insult to her beauty. In TC , the same kind of insult appears when Aeneas comes to deliver Hector’s challenge to the Greeks: If any come, Hector shall honour him; If none, he’ll say in Troy when he retires, The Grecian dames are sunburnt, and not worth The splinter of a lance. (1.3.280–3) It would be an insult to the Greeks to proclaim that their wives are ‘sunburnt’, in other words, that they are ugly. Bevington (TC , 175) notes that ‘Sun-darkened complexion was reckoned unbeautiful by Elizabethan standards’ and mentions the ‘Elizabethan preference for pale complexion in women’ (TC , 135). In AYL , Rosalind insultingly anatomizes Phoebe and ‘sauce[s] her with bitter words’ (3.5.70). She refers to her ‘inky brows’, ‘black silk hair’, ‘bugle eyeballs’ (3.5.47–8), thus emphasizing that she hath ‘no beauty’ (3.5.38) and is ‘not for all markets’ (3.5.61). On the market of Elizabethan beauty, darkness is hard to sell. (C) See Whitney’s emblem ‘Aethiopem lavare’ (1586): www.mun.ca/alciato/whit/w057.html See Hall, Things of Darkness, 22–4 and chap. 2, 62–122; Korhonen.

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F face (A) Visage, countenance. From classical Latin faciēs, from facere (to make). Insults often have a de-facing effect and disfigure, defame, destroy or undo their targets. Florio (1598) integrates the word ‘deface’ in several entries that have to do with insult: ‘Negrare, to darken, to blacke, to obscure, to deface, to blemish, to disable, to disparage ones credit’, ‘Sformare, to disfigure, to deface, to deforme, to mis-shape’ and ‘Vituperare, to shame, to reproue, to blame, to rebuke, to defame, to discredit, to discommend, to reproche, to deface, to disgrace, to wrong, to disparage, to accuse’. Cotgrave defines: ‘Defigurer’ as ‘to disfigure, deforme, deface, disgrace; to spoyle the fashion, marre the figure of.’ (B) The face is the object of several lampooning descriptions that constitute counterblazons and purple patches of insult. At the end of LLL , Holofernes is the object of collective verbal assault: Holofernes: Berowne: Holofernes: Boyet: Dumaine: Berowne: Longaville: Boyet: Dumaine: Berowne: Dumaine: Berowne:

I will not be put out of countenance. Because thou hast no face. What is this? A cittern-head. The head of a bodkin. A death’s face in a ring. The face of an old Roman coin, scarce seen. The pommel of Caesar’s falchion. The carved-bone face on a flask. Saint George’s half-cheek in a brooch. Ay, and in a brooch of lead. Ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth-drawer. And now forward, for we have put thee in countenance. Holofernes: You have put me out of countenance. Berowne: False! We have given thee faces. Holfernes: But you have outfaced them all. (5.2.601–17) Holofernes is thus ‘defaced’ by the means of insults, becoming a reified grotesque figure. When Berowne summarizes the sequence by saying ‘we have given thee faces’, Holofernes shows the damage caused by words by answering: ‘But you have outfaced them all.’ Woudhuysen (LLL , 278) notes that ‘Brooches worn in caps showed the 179

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wearer’s profession: the tooth-drawer’s or dentist’s low status is indicated by his badge being made out of lead.’ In KJ , the Bastard insultingly targets his brother’s face for its thinness: Because he hath a half-face, like my father! With half that face would he have all my land: A half-fac’d groat five hundred pound a year! (1.1.92–4) ‘Half-faced’ may mean ‘thin-faced’ but can also refer to the profile (the queen’s profile) that is found on coins. ‘Half-faced’ means ‘unfinished, imperfect’, as is the case in Hotspur’s exclamation ‘But out upon this half-faced fellowship!’ (1H4 1.3.207) and when Falstaff refers to ‘this same half-faced fellow Shadow’ (2H4 3.2.262–3). Later on, the Bastard tells the Queen, in presence of his brother Robert Faulconbridge, that he would not have his face ‘so thin’ That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose Lest men should say ‘Look, where three-farthings goes!’ [. . .] I would give it every foot to have this face: It would not be Sir Knob in any case. (KJ 1.1.142–7) The Bastard transforms Robert into a grotesque figure by accumulating reifying debasing metaphors. The reference to the coin known as ‘three farthings’ comes from the fact that a rose appeared on coins, carved behind the ear of the queen’s effigy, to avoid confusion with other coins. The Bastard ends his string of insults by playing on the name of his brother Robert of Faulconbridge which becomes ‘Sir Nob’ or ‘Sir Knob’, depending on editorial choice, a term that refers to the head. Bardolph’s red-nosed face is the object of several insulting descriptions in 1H4, 2H4 and H5, which suggests that his face constitutes an insult to the others, as is emphasized by Falstaff’s description: Falstaff: Do thou amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life. Thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop, but ’tis in the nose of thee. Thou art the Knight of the Burning Lamp. Bardoll: Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm. Falstaff: No, I’ll be sworn, I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death’s head, or a memento mori. I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire and Dives that lived in purple: for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy face; my oath should be ‘By this fire that is God’s angel.’ But thou art altogether given over and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou rann’st up Gad’s Hill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis 180

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fatuus, or a ball of wildfire, there’s no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern, but the sack that thou hast drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest chandler’s in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two-and-thirty years, God reward me for it. Bardoll: ’Sblood, I would my face were in your belly! Falstaff: God-a-mercy! So should I be sure to be heart-burned. (1H4 3.3.24–50) This portrait which sounds like a mock encomium, between praise and abuse, is echoed in 2H4 where Falstaff says that ‘The fiend hath pricked down Bardolph irrecoverable, and his face is Lucifer’s privy-kitchen, where he doth nothing but roast malt-worms’ (2H4 2.4.332–4). The portrait is completed in H5 when the boy describes Bardolph as ‘white-livered and red-faced’ (3.2.32) and when Fluellen introduces him to Henry: ‘His face is all bubuncles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o’ fire, and his lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue [blue] and sometimes red; but his nose is executed, and his fire’s out’ (3.6.101–5). From 1H4 where the insult-portrait is a source of comedy, to the final description, which Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 film version of Henry V made particularly heart-rending, Bardolph’s face becomes a metaphor of life that is evocative of Macbeth’s ‘brief candle’, whose fire has gone out. Beyond these portraits, the face is the book in which characters may read various vices. In KL , Kent, who wants to teach the world ‘differences’ (1.4.88), is a great reader of faces and countenances. After having expressed his appreciation of Lear’s face by telling him ‘you have that in your countenance which I would fain call master’ (1.4.27–8), he anatomizes Oswald’s face by exclaiming ‘What a brazen-faced varlet art thou to deny thou knowest me! (2.2.27–8), meaning Oswald is a shameless rogue, as the expression means ‘made of brass’ and thus figuratively ‘hardened in effrontery’. ‘He has a brazen face’ was proverbial from 1563 (Dent, F8; Tilley, F8). In MW , Ford applies the expression to his wife, calling her ‘brazen-face’ (4.2.127), meaning she is an impudent woman. In LLL , Berowne, finally capitulating, exclaims: ‘Can any face of brass hold longer out?’ (5.2.395). In KL , Kent goes on focusing on the face when he answers Cornwall’s question about Oswald: Cornwall: Kent: Cornwall: Kent:

Why dost thou call him knave? What is his fault? His countenance likes me not. No more perchance does mine, nor his, nor hers. Sir, ’tis my occupation to be plain: I have seen better faces in my time Than stands on any shoulder that I see Before me at this instant. (2.2.87–93) 181

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Euphemism is the way to insult here and Kent’s offensive words will cause him to be put ‘i’th’ stocks’ (2.2.123ff). A white face is the sign of a coward, as appears when Macbeth furiously addresses the messenger of ominous news, exclaiming: The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon! Where gott’st thou that goose look?’ (Mac 5.3.11–12) He then prolongs the milky metaphor of cowardice by calling him ‘whey-face’ (5.3.17), whey being the serum or watery part of milk that remains after the separation of the curd by coagulation. When Macbeth dismisses him by ordering ‘Take thy face hence’ (Mac 5.3.19), he reveals that the messenger’s face is an insult for him and his violent reaction ironically betrays Macbeth’s own fear. In Rom, Capulet blames Juliet for her paleness, calling her ‘You tallow-face!’ (3.5.157), a paleness that ironically announces she is nearly dead. Sir Toby calls Sir Andrew Aguecheek ‘a thin-faced knave’ (TN 5.1.203), probably referring to the lean cheeks that are associated with his name. Doll Tearsheet calls the thin Beadle ‘thou damned tripe-visaged rascal’ (2H4 5.4.9) and ‘thou paper-faced villain’ (2H4 5.4.11): the two insults refer to the Beadle’s sallow face. Insult is based on face-to-face confrontation. In 1H6, the Duke of Gloucester exclaims: ‘What? Am I dared, and bearded to my face?’ (1.3.45); in 3H6, a messenger tells about the tortures York had to endure from Margaret and Clifford, who ‘Laughed in his face’ (2.1.60). Hamlet imagines a fellow who ‘Plucks off [his] beard and blows it in [his] face’ (2.2.508); Pistol exclaims: ‘The solus in thy most marvailous face’ (H5 2.1.48); Othello reproaches Desdemona with weeping for Cassio: ‘Out, strumpet, weep’st thou for him to my face?’ (5.2.76). The word ‘to face’ itself becomes synonymous with ‘to insult’ in TS when Grumio parodies the rhetoric of duelling at the expense of the tailor: Grumio: Tailor: Grumio:

Thou hast faced many things. I have. Face not me. Thou hast braved many men; brave not me. I will neither be faced nor braved. I say unto thee, I bid thy master cut out the gown, but I did not bid him cut it to pieces. Ergo, thou liest. (4.3.124–9)

Like Petruccio, Grumio turns the tailor’s jargon against him: ‘to face’ means to ‘show an opposing front’ but also ‘to cover a breadth or part of a garment with another material, to trim, to adorn’; ‘to brave’ means to ‘defy’ but also ‘to dress splendidly, to adorn’. Margaret calls Richard ‘That foul defacer of God’s handiwork’ (R3 4.4.53), meaning he disfigures God’s work, while Buckingham says about this ‘noble isle’ that ‘Her face [is] defaced with scars of infamy’ (3.7.125). 182

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fellow (A) Colleague, partner, friend, man, guy. The word is used as a title of address to a servant or more generally to people of humble status (OED 10a). (B) The word appears extensively in Shakespeare’s plays and sometimes has derogatory overtones. It can be accompanied by such adjectives as ‘strange’, ‘worthy’, ‘good’, ‘brave’, but also ‘saucy’, ‘scurvy’. In TS , the word triggers off an exchange of abuse between Grumio and Curtis: Grumio: Curtis:

[. . .] winter tames man, woman and beast, for it hath tamed my old master, and my new mistress, and myself, fellow Curtis. Away, you three-inch fool, I am no beast. (4.1.20–3)

Curtis receives the address ‘fellow Curtis’ as an insult, meaning that he is of the same species as Grumio, that is a ‘beast’. Grumio adapts the proverbial ‘winter and wedlock tame both men and beast’ (Tilley, A64) to his master and mistress and then identifies himself with the beast. Thus, when he calls Curtis ‘fellow Curtis’, he inscribes him in the category of beasts. fiddler (A) Usually one who plays on the fiddle or any bowed stringed instrument, a musician who was not paid high fees for his services (Wilson and Calore, 170). Cotgrave has: ‘Vielleur: m. One that vsually playes on, or gets a rascallie liuing by playing on, a Vielle; and thence, any base, or beggarlie Fidler’ and ‘Menestrandier: m. A Minstrell, or Fidler.’ Although the word ‘fiddle’ is a problem, as it does not always refer to the same kind of instruments, the constant attribute of the fiddler is poor professionalism (Holman, 140). (B) In TS , Hortensio (disguised as Licio, supposed to be a ‘fine musician’, 1.2.172) complains, after Kate the curst has broken the lute on his head: And there I stood amazed for a while, As on a pillory, looking through the lute, While she did call me ‘rascal’, ‘fiddler’, And ‘twangling Jack’, with twenty such vile terms, As had she studied to misuse me so. (2.1.154–8) Wilson and Calore (172) note that Kate’s reported abuse shows that Hortensio’s ‘disguise is not as successful as he wishes it to be – nobody seems to believe that he is a lutenist’. Hortensio/Licio is indeed a base ‘fiddler’, a ‘twangling Jack’, one who plays foolishly upon an instrument. Florio (1598) has ‘Stempellare, to twangle or play foolishlie vpon any instrument, to fumble vpon a Lute.’ As ‘fiddler’ is reported as an insult, the word again rings with abusive overtones when Lucentio addresses Hortensio: Fiddler, forbear – you grow too forward, sir; Have you so soon forgot the entertainment Her sister Katherine welcomed you withal? (3.1.1–3) 183

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Lucentio (as Cambio) uses Kate’s reported insult to attain Hortensio/Licio and deter him from wooing Bianca. He then goes on abusing the ‘fiddler’ Hortensio, providing a sort of definition of the word when he says: ‘Preposterous ass, that never read so far / To know the cause why music was ordained!’ (3.1.9–10). Williams (1, 480), without mentioning any Shakespearean example, notes that ‘fiddler’ may mean ‘sexual partner’, while the ‘fiddle’ may mean ‘vagina’, ‘penis’, ‘whore’, ‘wencher’ or be a ‘coital’ verb. Applied to Hortensio, the word may bawdily and ironically mean that he is trying to satisfy, to ‘entertain’ women with his ‘instrument’, in vain. Parker (Margins, 288 n29) notes that “ ‘fiddler” [. . .] was also among the contemporary English terms for the Latin cinaedus, the passive or penetrated partner in a homosexual coupling’ and relates the term to the sexual meaning of the insult ‘preposterous ass’ (Margins, 33–4). One finds another bawdy innuendo in Rom where Mercutio reacts to Tybalt’s musical insult: Tybalt: Mercutio, thou consortest with Romeo. Mercutio: ‘Consort’? What, dost thou make us minstrels? An thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discords. Here’s my fiddlestick, here’s that shall make you dance. Zounds, ‘consort’! (3.1.44–8) With the word ‘fiddlestick’, the image of the base fiddler looms behind the insulting ‘minstrel’. The word refers to Mercutio’s rapier but also bears bawdy connotations, ‘fiddle’ being used as a euphemism for penis. In TC , Thersites mentions ‘the fiddler Apollo’ (3.3.304–5), which contributes to debunking the high status of the god that is often associated with music. This is characteristic of Thersites’ satirical rhetoric. (C) See Wilson and Calore, 169–73; Holman, 140–1. On the bawdy meanings of ‘fiddle’ and ‘fiddler’, see Williams, 1, 478–80. fiend (A) Devil, demon, evil spirit. (B) In TS , Gremio calls Kate the shrew, ‘this fiend of hell’ (1.1.88). In 1H6, Joan, after being called ‘Devil, or devil’s dam’ (1.5.5) by Talbot, is called ‘vile fiend’ (3.2.44) by Burgundy while Talbot again abuses her: Foul fiend of France and hag of all despite, Encompassed with thy lustful paramours, [. . .] (3.2.52–3) The term ‘fiend’ participates in the general dehumanisation and demonization of the character. In R3, Lady Anne exclaims, when she first sees Richard: What black magician conjures up this fiend To stop devoted charitable deeds? (1.2.34–5) ‘Fiend’ is one variation of the image of the devil to which Richard is regularly associated. She calls him ‘devil’ (1.2.45; 73), ‘thou dreadful minister of hell’ (1.2.46), ‘foul devil’ 184

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(1.2.50), ‘devilish slave’ (1.2.91) and mentions his ‘hell-governed arm’ (1.2.67). Ironically Richard answers Anne by calling her ‘sweet saint’ (1.2.49). Margaret too calls him ‘devil’ (1.3.117; 1.3.297), ‘Thou cacodemon’ (1.3.143) and associates him with hell (1.3.229; 292). In Tit, when Demetrius, Tamora’s son, understands that Aaron has engendered a ‘tadpole’ (4.2.87), he exclaims: ‘Accursed the offspring of so foul a fiend’ (4.2.81). Then Lucius asks Aaron: Say, wall-eyed slave, whither wouldst thou convey This growing image of thy fiendlike face? (5.1.44–5) Bate (Tit, 246) notes that devils were portrayed as black. In Rom, angels and demons are united when Juliet oxymoronically calls Romeo ‘fiend angelical’ (3.2.75) and ‘damned saint’ (3.2.79). She pursues the image in an interrogation: O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh? (3.2.80–2) Insult merges with words of love, which shows Juliet is torn between opposite feelings. She later calls the nurse ‘O most wicked fiend’ (3.5.236). Macbeth is also associated with hell (Mac 4.3.56; 5.7.5–9), called ‘Hell-kite’ (4.3.217) and ‘Hell-hound’ (5.8.3) and then ‘this fiend of Scotland’ (4.3.233). Lady Macbeth is compared to a demon at the end of the play when Malcolm mentions ‘his fiend-like Queen’ (5.9.35), which retrospectively relates her to the witches that Macbeth finally calls ‘these juggling fiends’ (5.8.19). The fiend is both male and female. In KL , where Edgar/Poor Tom is obsessed with the ‘foul fiend’, Albany underlines his wife Goneril’s demonic nature: Albany:

See thyself, devil: Proper deformity shows not in the fiend So horrid as in woman. Goneril: O vain fool! Albany: Thou changed and self-covered thing, for shame Be-monster not thy feature. Were’t my fitness To let these hands obey my blood, They are apt enough to dislocate and tear Thy flesh and bones. Howe’er thou art a fiend, A woman’s shape doth shield thee. (4.2.60–8) Albany’s speech describes his wife as a monster, half-woman, half-fiend. Goneril is the embodiment of ingratitude which Lear addresses as ‘Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend’ (1.4.251). (C) See Gibson and Esra, 90–2. 185

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fig/fico (A) A provocative expletive with sexual connotations accompanied by an offensive gesture of the fingers, often supposed to be related to biting the thumb. The gesture is mentioned in sixteenth century dictionaries. In Florio (1598), the word ‘Chicchera’ is translated as ‘a flurt or fig with ones fingers in derision or contempt’ and ‘Fica’ is defined as ‘a figge. Also a womans conie or quaint. Also a flurt with ones fingers giuen in disgrace, fare le fica, to bid a figge for one.’ The expression ‘Fare le fica’ is glossed: ‘to bid a fig, a flurt or a turde for one’. The word ‘fico’ also refers to a disease: ‘Fico, a fig tree. Also a fig, a disease in a horse foote called the fig. Also a fish like a breame called in latin Hepar. Also a whiting mop. Also a kinde of scab growing about a man where haire is, namely in the head or fundament’ (see also Perceval, ‘Hígo’). Cotgrave uses the expression ‘bid a fig’ to translate ‘faire la nique’: ‘To mocke, by nodding of the head, or lifting vp of the chin; or, to bid a fig for &c. as in Nique.’ Thus the gesture has sexual connotations and conveys the image of a disease but it is not precisely described in Renaissance dictionaries. The fig is defined by the OED as ‘a contemptuous gesture which consisted of thrusting the thumb between two of the closed fingers or into the mouth’. (B) Shakespeare dramatises this multilingual, international fig insult in the multilingual H5. Pistol: Fluellen: Pistol: Fluellen:

Die and be damned, and fico for thy friendship! It is well The fig of Spain! Exit Very good. (3.6.56–9)

[Pistol:

I say the fig Within thy bowels and thy dirty maw.] (Q, Oxf, 3.6.60–1)

‘Fig of Spain’, ‘Fico’ (which has variants in ‘Figo’, ‘Figa’) and ‘the fig’ are three translations of the same insulting gesture: ‘the hand is closed so that the tip of the thumb protrudes from between the first and second fingers’ (Morris, Gestures, 148). Fitzpatrick (2007) stresses the idea that the fig was known for its laxative properties (39), which explains the reference to the bowels in Q. The gesture and the exclamation that accompanies it characterise Pistol’s exotic and bombastic idiolect. The gesture also appears in 2H6 where Horner exclaims ‘a fig for Peter!’ (2.3.66–7). It can be considered as a ‘pistolism’, since Pistol uses the same gesture in MW : ‘a fico for the phrase!’ (1.3.27) and in 2H4 where it is described as the worst insult a liar could have to bear: Pistol:

[. . .] I speak the truth. When Pistol lies, do this, and fig me, like The bragging Spaniard. (2H4 5.3.118–20)

In Spanish, ‘give the fig’ is said ‘higos dar’. Taylor (H5, 189) notes that Pistol’s verbal ejaculation ‘is comparable in tone to modern “up yours” or “fuck off’ ”. He also reverses 186

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the symbolism by explaining the obscene dimension of the gesture and noting that ‘the shape of the fig provokes comparison with a) a turd b) the pudendum’. In Gestures (1979), Morris elucidates this other insulting symbolism of the fig: ‘there is the obscene insult, in which, by thrusting symbolic female genitals at a male victim one is saying that he is less than a man’ (149). Taylor relates this fig gesture and the thumb biting by noting that Q1 of H5 has ‘The fig of Spain within thy jaw’ (see Gurr, Q1H5, 9.44). For Taylor, this suggests that at least one early actor preferred the gesture by which the thumb was thrust into the mouth (rather than between fingers). This gesture, according to him, is probably ‘related to the insult of biting one’s thumb at someone, which provokes the quarrel in Romeo 1.1’ (Taylor, H5, 189). Foreign words are typical of Pistol’s style; he also uses his tongue as a pistol, uttering numerous expostulations such as ‘A foutre for the world and worldlings base!’ (2H4 5.3.99) and ‘A foutre for thine office!’ (2H4 5.3.116), or ‘puff i’ thy teeth’ (2H4 5.3.92). The character is all words and no matter. Fluellen’s indifference to Pistol’s offensive gesture feeds more insults. Pistol’s words have no effect on Fluellen who ironically comments on them by saying ‘it is well’, ‘it is good’. Pistol’s ‘fig’ is followed by Gower’s comment: ‘Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal, I remember him now – a bawd, a cutpurse’ (H5 3.6.60–1), while Doll Tearsheet calls him ‘you cutpurse rascal, you filthy bung, away!’ (2H4 2.4.126). Thus, there might be an allusion here to the ‘figging law’, one of the ‘eight lawes of villanie, leading the high waie to infamie’, which in Greene’s terminology refers to the art of ‘cutting of purses and picking of pockets’ (A notable discouery of coosenage, 1592, C1v-C2r). Pistol is both literally and metaphorically a ‘figging’ man. (C) See Florio (1611): ‘Fáre le fíca. to bid a fig or a flurt for one.’; ‘Fica. a figge. Also a flurt with ones fingers giuen or shewen in disgrace, fáre le fíca, to bid a fig for one. Also vsed for a womans quaint, and women in Italie vse it as an othe to sweare by as our Englishwomen say by my apron strings, &c.’; ‘Fíco. a fig tree. Also a fig. Also a disease in a horses foote called the fig. [. . .] Also a kind of scab namely in the head or fundament of a man. Also a tuft or locke of haire or wooll or flaxe.’ Morris (Gestures) enumerates eight interpretations for this gesture, among which the Barbarossa insult which refers to a story told by Rabelais in Pantagruel, IV, 45. See Rabelais (Œuvres, II , chap. 45, 171–2, where Jourda notes that ‘faire la figue à quelqu’un, c’est montrer à quelqu’un le bout du pouce en le mettant entre l’index et le médius. Symbole obscène d’origine italienne, dont le sens atténué marque une moquerie gaillarde’ (Rabelais, Oeuvres, II , 171). Even if the origin of the word and gesture is anterior to the Barbarossa insult, Rabelais’s story may at least have fed the use of this insult. One finds a trace of the ‘Barbarossa insult’ in Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist: Face: Sirrah, I’ll strip you – Subtle: What to do? lick figs Out at my – (The Alchemist, 1.1.3–4) On the Barbarossa anecdote, see Colman, 193. See Brand, 2, 182–3 (‘Cornutes’). See Fitzpatrick (2007), 37–44 (‘Henry 5: Figs and Leeks’) and Fitzpatrick (2011), 167–9. 187

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On the ‘figging law’, see Greene, The second part of conny-catching (1591) D2v; Dekker, The Belman of London (1608), H2v–H4v. filth(y) (A) Foul matter, dirt, hence moral and sexual vileness. Foul, dirty. The term, etymologically related to ‘foul’, can mean ‘whore’, as in Huloet: ‘Filth or sluttish queane. Spurca.’ One finds the same link in the French word salope, related to the adjective ‘sale’, which Cotgrave translates as ‘A slouen, or slut’. The French word putain is also related to stinking, rotten matter (putere), the root fu being linked with pu (as in Latin pūs, meaning purulent matter). (B) In 2H6, when the Captain plays on Suffolk’s family name ‘de la Pole’, he compares him to a stinking cesspool: ‘Pool! Sir Pool! Lord! / Ay, kennel, puddle, sink, whose filth and dirt / Troubles the silver spring where England drinks’ (4.1.70–2). Stafford addresses Cade and his followers as ‘Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent’ (4.2.113) while Cade uses the same word when he addresses Lord Saye: Cade: [. . .] I am the besom that must sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art. Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school; [. . .] (4.7.27–30) There is irony in the fact that characters successively consider the other as ‘filth’, everyone being each other’s ‘refuse’. Cade’s words, which transform education into pollution, sound all the more ironical since he ends on a ‘dunghill’ (4.10.80). In Oth, Iago wants to silence his wife Emilia by saying: ‘Filth, thou liest!’ (5.2.229), after calling her ‘Villainous whore!’ (5.2.227), as if ‘the slime / That sticks on filthy deeds’ (5.2.144–5) applied both to Desdemona and to her and to women in general. Then Emilia refers to Othello as Desdemona’s ‘most filthy bargain’ (5.2.153), alluding to the blackness of his skin. In KL , Albany, whose name conveys whiteness and purity (Latin albus, ‘white’), uses the term in an aphorism when he tells his wife Goneril that ‘Filths savour but themselves’ (4.2.40), meaning that ‘vile creatures sense, or relish, only their own vileness and stink’ (Foakes, KL , 313). The preceding sequence having shown Goneril telling Edmund ‘To thee a woman’s services are due; / A fool [ie Albany] usurps my bed’ (4.2.27–8), the word ‘filth’ may well take on the sexual meaning of ‘whore’. In Tem, after calling him ‘Thou earth’ (Tem 1.2.315), Prospero tells Caliban ‘I have used thee / (Filth as thou art) with humane care’ (1.2.346–7), reducing him to the status of excremental matter, an image which comes up again when Ariel reports to Prospero that he left Caliban and his new friends, Stephano and Trinculo, in the ‘filthy-mantled pool beyond your cell, / There dancing up to th’ chins, that the foul lake / O’erstunk their feet’ (4.1.182–4). In TS , Petruccio criticizes the cap that the haberdasher has made for Kate, saying ‘Fie, fie, ’tis lewd and filthy’ (4.3.67). Hodgdon (TS , 264) notes that it may mean that the cap does not cover the head enough and thus signals the woman as being sexually 188

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available. The reference to the ‘velvet dish’ (4.3.67) that precedes is in keeping with this sexual reading as the term ‘velvet’ is often used in pox references and may also be allusive of cuckoldry (Williams, 3, 1469–70). By criticizing the cap, Petruccio in fact sexually humiliates the shrew. In 2H4, Doll Tearsheet calls Pistol ‘you filthy bung’ (2.4.126), which is in keeping with a character who haunts brothels and taverns while the word seems to be a more general insult when she calls the beadle ‘you filthy famish’d correctioner’ (5.4.21). In AW , Parolles, ironically later described by Mariana as a ‘filthy officer’ (3.5.16–17), a pander, calls Lafew ‘scurvy, old, filthy, scurvy lord’ (2.3.235), once the latter has left the stage. In KL , Kent applies the term ‘filthy’ (2.2.16) to Oswald. The word is lost in a long string of abuse before being given more materiality when Kent declares: ‘I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar and daub the wall of a jakes with him’ (2.2.63–5). When Regan calls Gloucester ‘filthy traitor’ (3.7.32), the word may both allude to Gloucester ‘smelling’ of a ‘fault’ (1.1.15) because he has engendered a bastard son and announce the degrading process that will associate him with his son Edgar whose face is grimed ‘with filth’ (2.2.180). Cornwall orders that the ‘filthy traitor’ be thrown ‘Upon the dunghill’ (3.7.96). Macbeth calls the weird sisters ‘filthy hags’ (Mac 4.1.115), perhaps in an echo to their opening words: ‘Hover through the fog and filthy air’ (1.1.12). In TC , when Thersites meets Hector, he uses self-degradation as a paradoxical means of survival, denigrating himself: Hector:

What art thou, Greek? Art thou for Hector’s match? Art thou of blood and honour? Thersites: No, no, I am a rascal, a scurvy railing knave, a very filthy rogue. Hector: I do believe thee. Live [Exit.] (5.4.25–9) Hector’s answer adds insult to Thersites’ self-abuse. In Tim, when Timon asks Apemantus ‘wrought he not well that painted it’ [ie the picture], he provokingly answers ‘He wrought better that made the painter, and yet he’s but a filthy piece of work’ (1.1.200–2). He then returns the 1 Lady’s words against her when she says to Timon ‘My lord, you take us even at the best’ and Apemantus comments ‘Faith, for the worst is filthy and would not hold taking, I doubt me’ (1.2.151–3). The word ‘filthy’ together with the word ‘take’ suggests that the ladies are sexually diseased and thus that it would be dangerous to ‘take them’ (Dawson and Minton, 194). Apemantus, like Timon later, converts everything and everyone to ‘general filths’ (4.1.6). (C) On the sexual meaning, see Williams, 1, 483–4. See Ajax, dirt, dunghill. fish(-monger) (A) A sexual emblem, a symbol of fecundity (Williams, 1, 491). Fish was a slang word for a whore. (B) In Tem, Trinculo calls Caliban ‘thou deboshed fish’ (3.2.25). Cotgrave has ‘Desbauché: m. ée: f. Deboshed, lewd, incontinent, vngracious, dissolute, naught; vnthriftie, riotous, vnrulie, disordered; also, depraued, misled, ill-aduised, or led by ill 189

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aduice.’ Trinculo refers to Caliban as being corrupted from virtue and from his duty to his master Prospero but the expression may also refer to his lewdness that Prospero describes when he narrates how Caliban tried to ‘violate the honour’ (1.2.348–9) of his child, Miranda. When the word ‘fish’ is uttered here, it has already been applied numerous times to Caliban, who is described as a monstrous being, half man, half fish (2.2.24–31). Once Caliban’s nature is formulated ‘this is no fish, but an islander’ (2.2.34–5), the word ‘fish’ may become an insult, as is the case here. In Ham, when Polonius asks Hamlet ‘Do you know me, my lord?’, Hamlet answers ‘Excellent well, you are a fishmonger’ (2.2.170–1). Ophelia’s father does not understand the insult, which inevitably has a comic effect on stage. For Partridge, the word means ‘a procurer, a pimp’ and for Williams (1, 496), it means ‘wencher’ and ‘bawd’. Polonius is described as a fleshmonger, a Pandar offering, ‘loosing’ (2.2.159) his daughter to Hamlet. (C) See Jenkins, Ham, longer note, 464–6 and ‘Hamlet and the Fishmonger’ (1975). On all the sexual meanings of ‘fish’, see Williams, 1, 491–7. On fish and fishmonger, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 169–72. On fish as ‘whore’, see Findlay (2010), 141. See conger, eel, otter, stockfish. fitchew. See polecat. flap-dragon (A) A small fruit, usually a raisin or a plum, that was used in the drinking game known as the ‘snapdragon’: the raisin was put in brandy and then set alight, hence the ‘dragon’ in the name. The players ‘snapped’ at the raisin and then extinguished the flame by closing their mouths. (B) In LLL , Costard and Moth comment on Armado and Holofernes’ use of words: Moth [to Costard]: They have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps. Costard [to Moth]: O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words! I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus. Thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon. (5.1.35–41) Costard here uses the word as a diminutive to refer to Moth’s little stature and insignificance. He also puns on his name ‘Moth’, which may be pronounced like mot (word) in French. Moth is indeed going to be swallowed by Holofernes who calls him ‘thou consonant’ (5.1.49) a few lines later. (C) Fitzpatrick (2011), 172–3. flea (A) A small insect, known for its biting and its agility in leaping. It feeds on the blood of man. (B) In TS , Petruccio, wishing to impress Kate, abuses the tailor who has brought her a gown, calling him ‘Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket, thou!’ (4.3.111). Petruccio 190

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thus exaggerates the small size of the tailor, probably played by a boy actor or by the clown John Sincklo who was known for his little stature. His aim is to belittle the tailor, to make him as insignificant as possible by practising the art of diminution. There may be a link with the phrase ‘Nine tailors make a man’ (Tilley, T23) (see Hodgdon, TS , 267). The use of these diminutive names of insects comically contrasts with the bombastic tone adopted by Petruccio. In H5, the boy remembers one of late Falstaff’s witty quips against Bardolph: ‘Do you remember ’a [Falstaff] saw a flea stick upon Bardolph’s nose and ’a said it was a black soul burning in hell-fire?’ (2.3.38–40). The image of the flea as a ‘black soul’ is used to target Bardolph’s red nose that was the object of a mock-blazon in 1H4 (3.3.29– 47). The memory of the quip is a way for the boy to go on provoking Bardolph. Still in H5, the English are insultingly indirectly compared to fleas in an exchange between Rambures and Orleans in a sequence of English bashing: Rambures: That island of England breeds very valiant creatures: their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage. Orleans: Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear and have their heads crushed like rotten apples. You may as well say that’s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion. (3.7.140–5) The English are compared to mastiffs and then to the base curs in bear baiting shows, before becoming the fleas that will be swallowed by the French lions. The insult is not heard by the English, but is part of a ritual that precedes the fight and allows the French to debase their adversaries to better fight them. Ironically, the English ‘fleas’ will vanquish the French ‘lions’. (C) On the flea as a symbol of sexual intimacy (although there is no example in the Shakespearean corpus), see Williams, 1, 503–4. Flemish (A) Of Flanders, belonging to a Fleming, of the Low Countries. The Flemings, like the Dutch, were considered as heavy drinkers and as eaters of fatty food. (B) In MW , Mistress Page expostulates against Falstaff, in absentia, calling him ‘this Flemish drunkard’ (2.1.19), thus targeting the double intemperance of his belly. Ford uses the same national cliché when he soliloquizes and expresses his distrust for his wife: ‘I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter [. . .] than my wife with herself’ (2.2.286–9). Mistress Page’s image takes on all its meaning when Falstaff remembers how he was evacuated in the buck-basket, ‘more than half stewed in grease, like a Dutch dish’ (3.5.109–10). The insult is typical of a play that, although it is Shakespeare’s only English comedy, dramatizes an extremely multilingual world and a ‘gallimaufry’ (MW 2.1.104) of tongues. (C) On the Dutch, see Cumberland, 249–53. On heavy drinking and the Flemish nation, see Bullein, 22r. On Flemish ‘carousing and quaffing’ see Smythe (1590), AvA2r. See the allusion to the ‘swag-bellied Hollander’ in Oth 2.3.74. On the Dutch’s love of butter, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 63–5, who quotes Boorde’s 1547 Dyetary: ‘dutche men 191

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dothe eate it all tymes in the day’ (E2v). Boorde also defines beer as ‘a naturall drynke for a dutche man’ that ‘doth make a man fat, & doth inflate the bely, as it doth appere by the dutche mens faces & belyes’ (D2v). fleshmonger (A) A butcher, a seller of flesh, hence of sexual food, a pander, a bawd, a lecher. (B) In MM , Lucio reports the slanderous words that he unwittingly applied to the Duke when the latter was disguised as a Friar and he ironically attributes these insulting words to the Friar/Duke himself: Lucio: Duke: Lucio: Duke:

[. . .] And do you remember what you said of the Duke? Most notedly, sir. Do you so, sir? And was the Duke a fleshmonger, a fool, and a coward, as you then reported him to be? You must, sir, change persons with me, ere you make that my report. [. . .] (5.1.328–34)

‘Fleshmonger’ is a summary of the ‘treasonble abuses’ (5.1.340) that Lucio hurls at the Duke/Friar in the comic slanderous sequence in 3.2: ‘The Duke [. . .] would eat mutton on Fridays [. . .] he would mouth with a beggar though she smelt brown bread and garlic’ (3.2.173–7). ‘Mutton’ means ‘prostitute’ (Williams, 2, 926–8) and thus paves the way for the image of the ‘fleshmonger’, which has a particular resonance in a play where the Bawd Pompey Bum is given a substantial part and where Angelo appears as an eminently bawdy character, trying to negotiate with Isabella to get her ‘flesh’. Beyond the comic situation of quid pro quo in which the word is uttered, one must note that Vincentio too has indeed played the ‘fleshmonger’ by offering Mariana to Angelo instead of Isabella. He has been the bawd who has put Mariana in Angelo’s bed. Thus Lucio’s words are not as slanderous as they may seem to be but they ironically reflect the part played by the old Duke up to the very end of the play since he offers a whore to Lucio as his penalty for the ‘treasonable abuses’, the scandalum magnatum he has committed. (C) See Williams, 1, 511 (‘fleshmonger’) and 2, 926–8 (‘mutton’). fly (A) Any winged insect. Emblematic of insignificance. (B) In TC , Thersites denounces Patroclus’ superficial, futile, trivial nature: [. . .] thou idle immaterial skein of sleave-silk, [. . .]. Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such waterflies, diminutives of nature! (5.1.29–33) In keeping with the insult ‘Finch egg!’ (5.1.35) that follows, the image of the waterfly aims to reduce Patroclus to a state of near nothingness. Waterflies are flying insects that frequent water, hence ‘tiny, annoying, buzzing creatures that live on decaying flesh like the waterflies that Cleopatra imagines causing her corpse to swell abhorringly with 192

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maggots (AC 5.2.58–9), or the vapidly obsequious courtier Osric in Ham (5.2.83)’ (Bevington, TC , 308). Palmer (TC , 265), notes that ‘the image was obviously suggested by “sleave-silk” since that was the material from which an angler made his flies.’ Thus an insult calls for another one and they constitute a ‘skein’ of abusive meanings. For Onions, the word means ‘vain or busily idle person’. He follows Johnson’s reading (1765): ‘A waterfly skips up and down upon the surface of the water, without any apparent purpose or reason, and is hence the proper emblem of a busy trifler’ (Quoted by Jenkins, Ham, 558). Next to the other insults ‘thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal’s purse’ (TC 5.1.30–1), the waterfly appears as another emblem of insignificance, futility, vanity and superficiality. The same meaning can be found when Hamlet asks Horatio, in an aside, about the courtier Osric: ‘Dost know this waterfly?’ (5.2.68–9). Editors note that there may also be an allusion to the gaudy garments worn by the character. In Rom, Mercutio denounces men like Tybalt as one of ‘these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these “pardon-me’s” ’ (2.4.32–3), thus conveying effeminacy as well as the fact that he is a parasite. Timon calls his false friends ‘time’s flies’ (3.7.95) after addressing them as ‘Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites’ (3.7.93). The image suggests that Timon’s friends were feeding on him: now that his fortune has changed, they disappear. These ‘trencherfriends’ (3.7.95) are only there during prosperous times. (C) See Pugliatti, chap. 5, ‘Parasitism and Language’ (118–21). fool(ish) (A) A sot, an idiot. A professional jester or clown, one who counterfeits folly. Derived from old French fol, from Latin follem, follis, meaning ‘bellows’, employed in the sense of ‘windbag’, hence ‘empty-headed person’ (OED ). (B) The word is extremely recurrent in Shakespeare’s plays, which constitute a ‘great stage of fools’ (KL 4.6.179) and we will only focus here on a few particularly significant occurrences to show how Shakespeare inventively works on and with such a banal term of abuse. The word is so common that it sometimes goes unnoticed. In TS , for example, when Curtis tells Grumio ‘Away, you three-inch fool’, Grumio reacts to the ‘three-inch’ rather than the ‘fool’: ‘Am I but three inches? Why, thy horn is a foot, and so long am I at the least’ (4.1.23–5), thus privileging the insulting sexual innuendo (the ‘horn’ referring to the erect penis and the ‘foot’ containing a pun on foutre) to the banality of the word ‘fool’. The official fools often manipulate the word to suggest that the world is a stage of fools in which they are the wise men. In AYL , Jaques dramatizes the ‘Ducdame’ mysterious ritual to better call all the Lords/foresters ‘fools’. With the ‘ducdame’ enigma, he leads the other characters to fish for insult: Amiens: What’s that ‘ducdame’? Jaques: ’Tis a Greek invocation to call fools into a circle. (2.5.51–2) The suspense is built on ‘Ducdame’ and then makes the identification of the lords as fools all the more conspicuous. In TN , the word is integrated in the comic eavesdropping 193

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scene of Malvolio’s gulling. When Malvolio reads Maria’s fake letter, he mentions Sir Andrew Aguecheek who comically recognizes himself as a fool: Malvolio: Sir Andrew: Malvolio: Sir Andrew:

‘Besides, you waste the treasure of your time with a foolish knight’ – That’s me, I warrant you. ‘One Sir Andrew.’ I knew ’twas I, for many do call me fool. (2.5.75–9)

This moment of self-recognition and thus of self-abuse is eminently comic and echoes Maria calling Sir Andrew a ‘dry’ fool in 1.3.62–71. In TC , Thersites ‘declines’ the word in many ways: Ajax: Thersites: Ajax: Thersites:

Toadstool, learn me the proclamation. Dost thou think I have no sense, thou strik’st me thus? The proclamation! Thou art proclaimed a fool, I think. (2.1.19–23)

Playing on the double meaning of the word ‘sense’, Thersites uses Ajax’s words and gestures to better call him ‘fool’. After regularly denouncing Ajax’s lack of wit, Thersites, the ‘allowed fool’ (TN 1.5.90), the ‘privileged man’ (TC 2.3.55), applies the name of fool to the whole Greek ‘faction’ (2.1.116): Thersites: Patroclus: Thersites: Achilles: Thersites: Achilles: Thersites:

Patroclus: Thersites:

I’ll decline the whole question. Agamemnon commands Achilles, Achilles is my lord, I am Patroclus’ knower, and Patroclus is a fool. You rascal! Peace, fool, I have not done. He is a privileged man. – Proceed, Thersites. Agamemnon is a fool, Achilles is a fool, Thersites is a fool, and, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool. Derive this. Come. Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles, Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon, Thersites is a fool to serve such a fool, and Patroclus is a fool positive. Why am I a fool? Make that demand of the creator; it suffices me thou art. (2.3.50–65)

This passage can be read as a parody of Ulysses’ speech on ‘degree’ (1.3.75–137) in which one finds ‘the pattern of degree inverted’ (Palmer, TC , 79). Achilles asks Thersites to explain why he calls them ‘fools’, trying to find the specificity of the word, that is to say to what extent the word applies to the person who is abused. He tries to put meaning

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in a word that is so banal that it seems to be empty, void of any precise meaning. Thersites gives the word ‘fool’ a precise content, applying each occurrence to something specific but when Patroclus asks ‘Why am I a fool?’, Thersites distinguishes between particular sorts of folly and a form of folly that is ‘positive’, that cannot be qualified. The word ‘fool’ here is emptied of any specific meaning, as the word ‘positive’, deriving from the Latin verb ponere, meaning ‘to place, to put, lay down’ (OED ), refers to something that cannot be questioned or explained, something that is absolute, and paradoxically, for a fool, something perfect. Some characters are called ‘fools’ for a precise reason; for others, the word seems to be self-sufficient and the insult cannot be explained. For Thersites, Patroclus is a fool per se (1.2.15). In Act 5, Shakespeare plays on the double meaning of the word ‘fool’ in an exchange based on food imagery: Thersites: Achilles: Thersites:

Why, thou picture of what thou seemest and idol of idiotworshippers, here’s a letter for thee. From whence, fragment? Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy. (TC 5.1.6–9)

Rebounding on Achilles’ insult ‘fragment’, Thersites refers to a ‘full dish’ and plays on the word ‘fool’ that both means ‘foolishness’ and refers to a dessert of clotted cream and custard, also called a ‘trifle’. In Cym, Cloten comically asks for certainty when Imogen declares that ‘Fools are not mad folks’: ‘Do you call me fool?’, he asks, ironically calling for more insult: ‘As I am mad I do’ (2.3.102–3). Cloten’s hesitation in the interpretation of Imogen’s words amplifies the insult. The image of the fool also appears in tragic contexts. In Rom, Capulet calls the nurse ‘mumbling [ie prattling] fool’ (3.5.173) before calling Juliet ‘a wretched puling [ie whining] fool’ (3.5.184), thus drawing a link between the old fool and the ‘whining mammet’ (3.5.185) who are both presented as deprived of reason. When he becomes aware that Desdemona was innocent, Othello exclaims ‘O fool, fool, fool!’ (Oth 5.2.321), in a moment of self-cursing that is all the more ironic since he had accused Desdemona of lewdness in terms of ‘folly’: ‘She turned to folly, and she was a whore’ (5.2.130), he says, while earlier Iago had uttered two rhyming aphorisms: ‘She never yet was foolish that was fair, / For even her folly helped her to an heir’ (2.1.136–7) and ‘There’s none so foul, and foolish thereunto, / But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do’ (2.1.141–2). The Fool in KL plays with the word ‘fool’ in one of his dialogues with Lear: Fool:

Lear: Fool:

That lord that counselled thee to give away thy land, Come place him here by me; do thou for him stand. The sweet and bitter fool will presently appear, The one in motley here, the other found out there. Dost thou call me fool, boy? All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.

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Kent: This is not altogether fool, my lord. Fool: No, faith, lords and great men will not let me; if I had a monopoly out, they would have part on’t; and ladies too, they will not let me have all the fool to myself, they’ll be snatching. (1.4.137–48) This passage from Q KL is emblematic of a play in which the boundaries of folly and madness are blurred. The Fool calls Lear ‘fool’ both in provocation and sympathy and he plays on the double meaning of the word to suggest that foolishness is something that is shared, like a dish of fool. Williams (Glossary, 130) notes that ‘the fool declares that he has no monopoly on folly’ and alludes to the sexually oriented proverb: ‘Fools’ baubles are ladies’ playfellows’ (Tilley, F528). Shakespeare’s plays often dramatize the world as a world of general folly in which professional fools denounce the other characters’ foolishness and often invert wisdom and folly, so that you can ask with Caphis in Tim: ‘Where’s the fool now?’ (Tim, 2.2.59). Shakespeare again abundantly plays on the word ‘fool’ in Tim where Apemantus the satirist sees fools everywhere and uses their words against them, as is the case in the following exchange: 2 Lord: Apemantus: 2 Lord: Apemantus: 2 Lord:

Fare thee well, fare thee well. Thou art a fool to bid me farewell twice. Why, Apemantus? Shouldst have kept one to thyself, for I mean to give thee none. Hang thyself! (1.1.270–5)

Again, Shakespeare gives a specific meaning to a word that otherwise seems to be empty. Thanks to the device of the enigmatic insult, the word is given a new comic life. By asking ‘why?’, the second lord ironically fishes for more insult and allows Apemantus to vent his satirical mood. The insult is suspended to better reach its target. The second lord is trapped by Apemantus’ words. The same strategy appears in the exchange between Apemantus and the Fool and Varro and Isidore’s servants, accompanied by Caphis: Caphis:

[. . .] here comes the fool with Apemantus; let’s ha’ some sport with ’em. 1 Varro Servant: Hang him, he’ll abuse us. Isidore Servant: A plague upon him – dog! 1 Varrro Servant: How dost, Fool? Apemantus: Dost dialogue with thy shadow? 1 Varro Servant: I speak not to thee. Apemantus: No, ’tis to thyself. [to Fool] Come away. Isidore Servant: [to 1 Varro Servant] There’s the fool hangs on your back already. Apemantus: No, thou stand’st single, thou’rt not on him yet. 196

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Caphis: Apemantus:

Where’s the fool now? He last asked the question [. . .]. (Tim 2.2.47–60)

This is emblematic of how Apemantus turns the other characters’ words against them. The exchange of abuse is so confusing that one can wonder where the fool is indeed. (C) On fool as a dish, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 178–9. See Empson, chap. 5 and 6 (‘The praise of folly’ and ‘Fool in Lear’). On Fools and clowns, professional and natural fools, see Wiles, esp. 66. On the sexual meaning of ‘folly’ (as lewdness), see Williams, Glossary and Williams, 1, 523–4. On the social aspect, see Innes, 237–9. See barren, bedlam, clodpole, coxcomb, dolt, dotard, dull, gull, head, idiot, mome, muddy, ninny, noddy, patch, sot, wit, woodcock. football player (A) Football was considered as a lower-class game in Shakespeare’s days. In The Governor (1531), Elyot describes ‘foote balle’ as one of the games ‘to be utterly abjected of al noble men’, because it is of ‘beastly furie and extreme violence: wherof procedeth hurte and consequently rancour and malice do remaine with them that be wounded, wherfore it is to be put in perpetuall silence’ (99v). In Elyot’s The Castle of Health (1539) football appears as an example of ‘vehement exercise’ (50v). In The Anatomie of Abuses (1583), Stubbes presents football as a ‘devilish pastime’ (L2v), ‘a bloody and murthering practis’ rather than ‘a felowly sporte or pastime’ (P6r). In Positions, a treatise on education (1581), Mulcaster presents football as a potentially healthy exercise but also mentions its abuses: though as it is now commonly used, with thronging of a rude multitude, with bursting of shinnes, & breaking of legges, it be neither civil, neither worthy the name of any traine to health. Wherin any man may evidently see the use of the trayning maister. (104–5) (B) The only occurrence is found in KL , where Kent insults Oswald for being rude and arrogant with King Lear: Lear: Oswald: Kent:

Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal? [Strikes him.] I’ll not be strucken, my lord. [Trips him.] Nor tripped neither, you base football player. (KL 1.4.82–5)

From the word ‘bandy’, which suggests tennis, Kent switches to another less noble sport: football. The irony lies in the fact that by kicking Oswald, by tripping up his heels, Kent puts himself at the level of a foot-ball player. Colón Semenza (38) notes that ‘Just as the gentleman’s skill in riding demonstrates his nobility, so a person’s participation in a rural sport like football marks him as ignoble’. (C) On football as a violent game, see Stubbes (1583), P6r and Stubbes, ed. Kidnie, 251–2. On the contrast between tennis, the noble game of kings and football, the game of base slaves, see Hopkins (2000); Longhurst (1988); Colón Semenza, esp. 37–8; Innes, 239. 197

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foul (A) Derived, like ‘filth’, from Old English fúl, related to Latin pūs (from pūtēre, to stink), the word means ‘dirty’ as well as ‘detestable’ and ‘wicked’ or ‘ugly’ (traditionally opposed to ‘fair’). As Berowne suggests in LLL (‘Defile, a foul word’ 4.3.3), the word ‘defile’ (‘defoul’) is related to the word ‘foul’ and connected to the Old French defouler ‘to trample down, oppress, outrage, violate’ (OED ). Insults are often ‘defiling’, ‘defouling’ words. (B) In AYL , Shakespeare comically and bawdily uses the word in a dialogue between Audrey and Touchstone: Audrey: Well, I am not fair, and therefore I pray the gods make me honest. Touchstone: Truly; and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut were to put good meat into an unclean dish. Audrey: I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul. Touchstone: Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness: sluttishness may come hereafter. (3.3.30–7) For Audrey, ‘foul’ means ‘ugly’, ‘plain’, not ‘fair’, while Touchstone transforms it into a bawdy word meaning ‘sluttish’, sexually ‘dirty’. The sequence is emblematic of the ambiguity of the word and of its overlapping meanings. The sexual meaning is present when Tamora says she has been called ‘foul adulteress’ (Tit 2.2.109) or when Antony calls Cleopatra, in absentia, ‘This foul Egyptian’ (AC 4.12.10). The word denotes both ugliness and wickedness when it is applied to Richard, who is called ‘foul indigested lump’ (2H6 5.1.157) by Old Clifford, ‘foul stigmatic’ (2H6 5.1.215) by Young Clifford, ‘foul misshapen stigmatic’ (3H6 2.2.136) by Margaret, ‘Foul devil’ (R3 1.2.50) and ‘thou lump of foul deformity’ (R3 1.2.57) by Lady Anne, who then describes him as ‘Fouler than heart can think thee’ (1.2.83) and calls him the ‘foul[est] toad’ (1.2.150) in a scene that feeds on the recurrent contrast between fair and foul. Elizabeth calls him ‘that foul bunch-backed toad’ (R3 4.4.81) and Richmond, addressing his army, refers to him as ‘this foul swine’ (5.2.10), an expression that alludes to Richard’s connection with the boar, which is defined as ‘foul’ in VA (1030, 1105). With the recurrent use of ‘foul’, the text clearly shows that Richard is the queen’s ‘abject’ indeed (1.1.106), involved in constant foul play. In Oth, the first words that Brabantio addresses to the Moor are ‘O thou foul thief’ (1.2.62). Honigmann (Oth, 132) notes that ‘foul’ means ‘loathesome; wicked; ugly’ (OED , 1, 7, 11) but the term may also be read as a racist allusion to the blackness of Othello’s skin, evident in ‘the sooty bosom / Of such a thing as thou’ (1.2.70–1). Emilia at the end tells Othello he is ‘As ignorant as dirt’ (5.2.160), while he ironically maintains that Desdemona ‘was foul’ (5.2.198) (ie sexually sinful). Words and mouths are denounced as ‘foul’ on several occasions, providing metalinguistic comments on insults and obscene language. In LLL , Maria responds to Costard, who has spoken bawdily, with ‘Come, come, you talk greasily, your lips grow foul’ (4.1.136). In 1H4, Hostess Quickly says to the Prince that Falstaff ‘speaks most vilely of you, like a foul man as he is’ (3.3.106–7). In 2H4, Doll Tearsheet calls Pistol 198

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‘the foul-mouth’dst rogue in England’ (2.4.70–1) while Pistol asks ‘shall we fall foul for toys?’ (2.4.167), meaning ‘shall we quarrel over trifles?’. In AW , when the countess asks the Clown ‘Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouth’d and calumnious knave?’ (1.3.56–7), he replies ‘A Prophet I, madam’ (1.3.58), suggesting that what she denounces as foul is in fact the language of truth. In MA , Beatrice compares ‘foul words’ to ‘foul wind’ when Benedick announces that he has exchanged words with Claudio: Benedick: Only foul words – and thereupon I will kiss thee. Beatrice: Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome, therefore I will depart unkissed. (5.2.47–51) Beatrice plays on the literal meaning of the metaphoric ‘foul’ and thus rebukes Benedick by ‘fright[ing] the word out of his right sense’ (5.2.52–3). (C) On ‘foul language’, see Hughes (2006), 182–3; Mohr, 90, 108–12, 143–8. foutre (A) ‘A foutre for’ is an offensive interjection, deriving from the French verb foutre, to ‘leacher’ (Cotgrave), from Latin futuere, to have sex, to copulate. It is a ruder version of ‘a fig for’. As a noun, the French word means ‘sperm’, ‘semen’. The expression is to be related to the contemporary French expression va te faire foutre, the equivalent of ‘fuck off’ or ‘screw you’. (B) The word is part of Pistol’s offensive expostulations. In 2H4, he first exclaims ‘A foutre for the world and worldlings base! / I speak of Africa and golden joys’ (5.3.99–100) and then, addressing Shallow, ‘A foutre for thine office!’ (5.3.116). These imprecations paradoxically express Pistol’s joyful excitement at the festive instant when he announces ‘Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is King’ (5.3.117). They are also characteristic of Pistol’s exotic and excessive rhetoric and in keeping with this name, which has strong sexual overtones of ejaculation. Pistol expresses the climactic pleasure he is feeling when he is relishing the news that only he knows. He is insulting, in the sense of the etymological meaning of the term (insultare), that is exulting, triumphing. (C) See Mohr, 89, 151, 281. See Partridge, Williams (Glossary). One finds a pun on foutre and ‘foot’ in H5 3.4.45–54. On ‘foot’, see Williams, 1, 524–5. fox/she-fox (A) Animal of the genus vulpes, known for its cunning (Dent, F629; Tilley, F645) and its smell (Dent, F652.1). Verstegan has ‘Fixen. This is the name of a shee-fox, otherwise & more anciently foxin. It is in reproche applyed to a woman whose nature and condition is thereby compared to the shee-fox’ (335). ‘The fox is a stinking beast and corrupt’ (Batman vppon Bartholome, Book 18, chap. 114). (B) In 1H4, Falstaff tells the Hostess: ‘There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune, nor no more truth in thee than in a drawn fox’ (3.3.112). The ‘drawn fox’ is the lure drawn over the ground to attract a fox. The expression conveys deception but ‘fox’ may also be pregnant with sexual overtones (Williams, 1, 538). In KL Q1, during the imaginary trial scene, Lear calls his daughters ‘you she-foxes’ (3.6.22–3), which underlines their 199

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crafty cruelty. The word, together with the recurrent references to dogs, transforms the trial sequence into a kind of hunting scene that ends with the imaginary anatomizing of Regan (3.6.73). Lear echoes one of the Fool’s songs ‘A fox when one has caught her, / And such a daughter, / Should sure to the slaughter’ (1.4.310–12). The image is also evocative of evil smell and corruption. The fox as an evil smelling hunting prey can be found in MW when Ford exclaims ‘we’ll unkennel the fox’ (3.3.149–50), the fox being Falstaff, who becomes a stinking creature once he is plunged in the buck-basket. In TN , one finds the expression ‘as rank as a fox’ (2.5.121–2). Lear’s words may even perhaps suggest whoredom, as Williams notes that ‘bitch-fox’ may in some cases mean ‘whore’ (1, 538). Although Williams does not mention any Shakespearean example, the two evil daughters’ promiscuity with Edmund constitutes a sexual background that allows for such a reading. Ironically, Regan later calls Gloucester ‘Ingrateful fox’ (3.7.28), meaning that he is a traitor because he has craftily betrayed Cornwall and behaved like a fox in secretly writing to Cordelia. Still ironically, Lear will compare himself and Cordelia with foxes that hunters will have to ‘fire hence’ (5.3.23) if they want to part them. In Cor, Volumnia compares Sicinius to a fox: [. . .] Hadst thou foxship To banish him that struck more blows for Rome Than thou hast spoken words? (4.2.18–20) The image of the fox is an answer to Sicinius’ insulting question ‘Are you mankind?’ (4.2.16), which denies Volumnia any feminine or human feature. By referring to Sicinius’ ‘foxship’, Volumnia both refers to his fierce ingratitude and his low cunning and denies him any humanity. In MND , Helena says about Hermia in her presence: O, when she is angry, she is keen and shrewd; She was a vixen when she went to school, And though she be but little, she is fierce. (3.2.323–5). ‘Vixen’, derived from the Old English ‘fyxen’, is equivalent to ‘she-fox’ and refers to a shrew, a quarrelsome woman. Ironically, for Hermia the word ‘little’ is more insulting than the word ‘vixen’, as her reaction shows: ‘ “Little” again? Nothing but “low” and “little”?’ (3.2.326). (C) Florio (1598): ‘Volpone, an old fox, an old reinard, an old craftie, slie, subtle companion, sneaking lurking wily deceiuer.’ For a description of the fox, see Batman vppon Bartholome, Book 18, chap. 114; Gascoigne (1575), 187–9; Topsell (1607), 221–7, esp. 221. On ‘fox’ meaning ‘whore’, see Williams, 1, 538. fragment (A) A piece of any broken thing, a scrap, a lump, a remainder, left-over food. Derived from the French fragment and the Latin fragmentum (from frangĕre, to break). 200

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(B) In Cor, Martius, addressing the citizens, exclaims: ‘Go get you home, you fragments’ (1.1.217). Holland notes that the word means ‘scraps’ and ‘probably bits of left over food, given Shakespeare’s alignment of “fragment” and “ort” in Tim: “some poor fragment, some slender ort” (4.3.402)’. He also suggests that the term is in keeping with the ‘frequent dismemberment of the citizens in his language’ (Cor, 168). The term is also part of a network of food images that pervade the first scene and strikingly contrast with the ‘surfeit’ (1.1.14), ‘abundance’ (1.1.19) and ‘surplus’ (1.1.41) that characterize the patricians as they are described by the famished citizens. With the word ‘fragments’, Martius achieves the dismemberment he imagines when he would ‘make a quarry / With thousands of these quartered slaves’ (1.1.193–4). The insult is also associated with food in TC where Achilles calls Thersites ‘fragment’ (5.1.8), the word meaning that Thersites is an ‘unappetizing leftover from a meal’ and ‘an unfinished creature; something detached and broken off’ (Bevington, TC , 306). Thersites answers the ‘fragment’ by calling Achilles ‘thou full dish of fool’ (5.1.9). Achilles earlier calls Thersites ‘my cheese, my digestion’ (2.3.39), in a play that is obsessed with food. In AC , Antony provokingly tells Cleopatra: I found you as a morsel, cold upon Dead Caesar’s trencher – nay, you were a fragment Of Gnaeus Pompey’s [. . .] (3.13.121–3) Cleopatra, who proudly describes herself as ‘a morsel for a monarch’, whom Enobarbus considers as Anthony’s ‘Egyptian dish’ (2.6.128) is here relegated to the base status of a leftover, a remainder of ‘hot’, ‘luxurious’ (3.13.123–5), lustful hours. The term here has a sexual meaning and presents Cleopatra as an object of sexual consumption (Williams, Glossary). French (pox)/France (A) France was strongly associated with syphilis, commonly known as the French disease, which Pistol calls the ‘malady of France’ (H5 5.1.83). The ‘French crown’ is the visible sign of the pox on the head (Williams, 1, 546–7). (B) In MM , a play where sexual vices reign supreme, the image of the French pox is at the heart of an exchange of insults between Lucio and the first gentleman: Lucio: [. . .] thou thyself art a wicked villain, despite of all grace. 1 Gentleman: Well, there went but a pair of shears between us. Lucio: I grant: as there may between the lists and the velvet. Thou art the list. 1 Gentleman: And thou the velvet; thou art good velvet; thou’rt a three-piled piece, I warrant thee: I had as lief be a list of an English kersey, as be piled, as thou art pilled, for a French velvet. Do I speak feelingly now? 201

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Lucio:

1 Gentleman:

I think thou dost: and indeed, with most painful feeling of thy speech. I will, out of thine own confession, learn to begin thy health; but whilst I live, forget to drink after thee. I think I have done myself wrong, have I not? (1.2.36–41)

The image of the French pox derives from the sartorial allusion to the velvet, a term that was associated with venereal disease. Williams notes that ‘pox-references often involve play on two- or three-piled, material with a nap of several thicknesses’ (3, 1470). The velvet is connected to the French disease through a pun on ‘piled’ and ‘pilled’ (related to Latin pilus, hair) or ‘peeled’, the later alluding to the loss of hair that was one of the symptoms of syphilis, hence the insulting and slanderous term ‘bald-pate’ (MM 5.1.324–5; 349) that Lucio applies to the Old Duke/Friar. Another link between French pox and velvet comes from the fact that velvet patches were used to cover the scars and disfigurements coming from the pox. Hence by applying the velvet metaphor to Lucio and by associating it with the word ‘French’, the gentleman is insulting him and underlining his lustful, corrupted behaviour. Lucio retaliates by turning the word ‘feelingly’ against his adversary. Another symptom of syphilis was painful gums, which explains Lucio’s provocative and felicitous answer. The exchange of insults is full of irony as the gentleman gives Lucio the very ‘shears’, the verbal weapons that are going to hurt him. (C) On the French pox, see Iyengar, 275–7 (‘pox’); on the sexual vices associated with France, see Williams, 1, 539–40, 542–51. Rawson (154) summarizes the link between the English and the French pox. See also Hughes (2006), 184–5. On ‘morbus gallicus’, see Clowes (1579), Paracelsus’ treatise on the ‘French Pockes’ (1590). See Mohr, 159, 165; Fouassier (2008), Fabricius (1994). Accusations related to the French pox were ‘actionable’, as is noted by Baker, An Introduction (1990), 500. See bald-pate. fustian (A) Bombastic, ranting, pretentious, of obscure language, nonsensical. From the Old French fustaigne, a coarse and thick cloth made of cotton and flax (OED ), hence bombastic, gibberish. Florio (1598) has ‘Cianfrogna, gibrish, pedlars french, roguish language, fustian toong, prittle prattle.’ Cotgrave has ‘Barragoüin. Pedlars French, fustian language; any rude gibble-gabble, or barbarous speech; (tis compounded of two Brittish words, barra, bread; and goüin, wine.)’ and ‘Barragoüiner. To speake fustian; to vse a language that no bodie vnderstands.’ (B) There are only four occurrences in Shakespeare’s plays, one of which is an insult when Doll Tearsheet rejects Pistol: ‘For God’s sake thrust him downstairs, I cannot endure such a fustian rascal’ (2H4 2.4.186–7). Doll refers to Pistol’s bombastic and obscure language. His words are for her as inflated and dark as the ‘fustian riddle’, M. O. A. I. in TN (2.5.107). In Oth, Cassio relates the fustian discourse to drinking: ‘Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with one’s

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own shadow? O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!’ (Oth 2.3.275–9). fustilarian (A) A nonce word that may be connected with ‘fustilugs’, a fat, frowzy woman (OED ). For the word coche (related to the French cochon, cochonne, pig, sow) Cotgrave has: ‘[. . .] a young Sow, or Sow-pig; also, a fustilugs; a woman growne fat by ease, and lazinesse’. (B) In 2H4, the Page exclaims against Hostess Quickly: ‘Away, you scullion! you rampallian! you fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe! (2.1.59–60). The series of words strikes by its assonances as ‘fustilarian’ seems to echo the last syllable of ‘scullion’ and ‘rampallian’. The term ‘fusty’ is related to the French fût (barrel) and thus is in keeping with Hostess Quickly’s character as a woman of the tavern who is probably ‘fusty’, ‘has lost its freshness, stale-smelling, musty’ (OED ). The image of a tiny page trying to rescue his master Falstaff and becoming as bombastic and ‘fustian’ (2.4.187) as Pistol is highly comical. The expression ‘I’ll tickle your catastrophe’ (make your backside smart) may be reminiscent of 1H4 where Falstaff calls Hostess Quickly ‘good pint-pot; good tickle-brain’ (2.4.387). The word is emblematic of insult as poesy, as an art of invention. (C) Sherry (1550) has ‘Antiphrasis. Dictio contrarium significans, when the mock is in a worde by a contrarye sence, as when we call a fustilugges, a minion.’

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G gall (A) Secretion of the liver, bile, the bitterest substance in the body (Iyengar, 146), often used like Latin fel (fiel in French), hence bitterness of spirit or spirit of resentment. ‘As bitter as gall’ is proverbial (Tilley, G11). Palsgrave has ‘Bytter as gall or suche lyke’; Thomas has ‘Fellēus, a, um, Plin. Of gall, as bitter as gall’ and Hollyband writes: ‘Fielleux, or felleux, as bitter as gall.’ The word also refers to a swelling or blister, a sore produced by rubbing or chafing and it is probably related to Old French galler, galer (to rub, scratch) and to French la gale (itch, scurf, scab). Hollyband has ‘Galler, to gall, to chafe, to scratch when it itcheth.’ (B) ‘Out, gall!’ (5.1.35), says Patroclus to Thersites in TC . The insult is perfectly in keeping with a character who keeps railing and cursing throughout the play. It follows on Nestor’s description of Thersites as ‘A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint’ (1.3.193). Patroclus’ insult means that Thersites is a core of bitterness but also suggests that he is a boil, a blister that infects the world and makes the other characters itch, an image that is emphasized when he tells Ajax: ‘I would thou didst itch from head to foot. An I had the scratching of thee, I would make thee the loathsomest scab in Greece’ (2.1.25–7). Thersites literally ‘galls’ the other characters. In TN , Toby Belch gives Sir Andrew some advice on the way he should write a challenging letter to Cesario: ‘Let there be gall enough in thy ink – though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter’ (3.2.46–8). Alluding to the ‘oak-gall used as dye in the manufacture of ink’ (Elam, TN , 266), he advises the coward (goose) Sir Andrew to be bitter, offensive and insulting in his letter, which goes against the rules concerning the writing of cartels. Lear exclaims ‘A pestilent gall to me’ (1.4.112) when the Fool refers to ‘the Lady Brach’, probably meaning Regan or Goneril. Foakes asks: ‘Is Lear referring to the Fool or Cordelia, or both?’ (KL , 198). The difficulty in spotting precisely who the ‘pestilent gall’ is shows that the sources of Lear’s suffering are multiple and that he is ‘galled’, wounded, irritated on all sides. If Lear addresses the Fool, his words are insulting. (C) See Iyengar, 146–8. See liver. garlick-eaters (A) Garlic was associated with workers and with stinking breath. (B) In Cor, Menenius denounces the Tribunes who have banished Coriolanus, causing him to join the Volscians: You have made good work, You and your apron-men, you that stood so much 205

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Upon the voice of occupation and The breath of garlic-eaters! (4.6.96–9) This ironic speech constitutes an insult in absentia to the citizens, whose breath is described as foul. Menenius uses the word ‘breath’ to refer to the apron-men’s voices or votes, but the reference to garlic clearly shows that he associates the citizens with an evil smell. In MND , when Bottom asks his fellow-actors to ‘eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath; and I do not doubt but to hear them say, it is a sweet comedy’ (4.2.40–2), his words suggest that they should not offend the courtly spectators with their mechanicals’ breath, that they should not insult them. This request issued from Bottom is ironical as Quince opens the play with a Prologue in which ‘sweet’ words turn foul through mispunctuation: ‘If we offend, it is with our good will’ (5.1.108). (C) See Fitzpatrick (2011), 186–8. garment (A) Clothing, attire. Sartorial words constitute one of the privileged fields which refer to characters’ social status. (B) In Cym, when Cloten calls his rival, Posthumus Leonatus, in absentia, ‘squire’s cloth’ (2.3.123), throwing into relief his low social status, Imogen, defending her lover, answers as follows: Imogen:

[. . .] His mean’st garment, That ever hath clipp’d his body, is dearer In my respect, than all the hairs above thee, Were they all made such men. (2.3.134–7)

King (2005) notices the puzzling effect of this insult: ‘The euphemism is here meant to puzzle’, she writes, ‘– which garment does she mean? And how mean can a garment get? The Elizabethans did not wear underpants. But the meaning of the sound of the phrase is clear: it almost necessitates curling the lip and spitting out the consonants’ (26). By using the word ‘meanest’, Imogen creates a boomerang effect as she borrows Cloten’s words when he refers to ‘meaner parties’ (2.3.117) and exclaims ‘Yet who than he more mean?’ (2.3.118). For Cloten, appearances are essential and your clothing should reflect who you are. Imogen reverses this into a cuculus not fecit monacum principle by saying that Cloten’s royal attributes cannot compete with Posthumus’ noble baseness. Imogen’s insulting words completely reverse social order and values by transforming what is supposed to be mean into something ‘dear’, and thus transforming what should be ‘dear’ into something ‘mean’. The abuse addressed to a queen’s son, Cloten, is highly subversive. The derogatory parallel drawn between Cloten and Posthumus’ meanest garment haunts Cloten throughout the next scenes. One finds in Cym the motif of the insult that cannot be swallowed and that shapes a major part of the action. During the dialogue

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between Pisanio and Imogen, Cloten repeats the words, as if they were stuck in his throat: ‘ “His garments”?’ (2.3.138), ‘ “His garment?” ’ (2.3.140) and once Pisanio has left the stage, he addresses Imogen: Cloten:

You have abus’d me: ‘His mean’st garment!’ Imogen: Ay, I said so, sir: If you will make’t an action, call witness to’t. Cloten: I will inform your father. Imogen: Your mother too: She’s my good lady; and will conceive, I hope, But the worst of me. So I leave you, sir, To th’ worst of discontent. Exit. Cloten: I’ll be revenged. ‘His mean’st garment!’ Well. Exit. (2.3.150–7) Mocking Cloten’s reaction as infantile, Imogen refers to a possible law case (‘action’) that could be one of the defamation cases that were numerous in Shakespeare’s days. The insult comes back a few scenes later when Cloten wants to use Imogen’s words against her, literally wishing to make the insult an ‘action’, that is to put it into action. After asking Pisanio to go and fetch some of his master’s clothes, he soliloquizes as follows: Cloten:

[. . .] I would these [ie Posthumus’] garments were come. She said upon a time (the bitterness of it I now belch from my heart) that she held the very garment of Posthumus in more respect than my noble and natural person; together with the adornment of my qualities. With that suit upon my back, will I ravish her: [. . .] He on the ground, my speech of insultment ended on his dead body, and when my lust hath dined (which, as I say, to vex her I will execute in the clothes that she so prais’d) to the court I’ll knock her back, foot her home again. She hath despis’d me rejoicingly, and I’ll be merry in my revenge. (3.5.133–47)

Imogen’s insulting comparison is like a trauma for Cloten, for which he wants to get his revenge. The motif of the clothes is also present in his soliloquy (4.1.1–25) where he plans to cut Posthumus’ garments ‘to pieces’ (4.1.17–18); then it ironically crops up again in his dialogue with Guiderius, when he asks him ‘Know’st me not by my clothes?’ (4.2.81). When he is beheaded by Guiderius (4.2.113), the garments that he wears are indeed ‘cut to pieces’. Thus the action of the play hinges around this insult, whose meaning goes beyond a mere social feature to have a truly structural and symbolic impact.

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(C) About clothing in Cym, see King, chap. 1. On clothing in Renaissance England, see Jones and Stallybrass (2000), esp. 200–1; Stallybrass, ‘Worn worlds, clothes and identity on the Renaissance Stage’ (1996), 309–10. Innes, 255–6. giglot/giglet (A) A lewd, wanton woman. Rider has: ‘A Giglet, v. wanton’. Of obscure origin, the word may be a source for the modern ‘gigolo’ which DHLF relates to the English ‘giglet’ but also to the French gigue (leg), giguer (to dance, to frolick), gigot (mutton’s leg). Gigot as leg of mutton already appears in Nicot and Cotgrave. DHLF notes that the expression remuer le gigot (ie shake the leg) meant ‘to copulate’ from 1650 but the bawdy connection probably appears earlier since Cotgrave has ‘Gadrouillette: f. A minx, gigle, flirt, callet, Gixie; (a fained word, applyable to any such cattell)’. OED relates the word to ‘gig’ (flighty, giddy girl) and ‘giggle’ but there might also be a link with the jig (dance) and the jigg (short comedy acted at the end of a play), the latter being associated with the obscene according to Wilson and Calore (234). Williams (2, 596) defines ‘gig’ as ‘wanton las’. He mentions Churchyard’s Challenge (1593), which reads ‘Away wild giggs, that bounceth like a topp’ (250) and relates ‘gig’ to ‘gixie’ that appears in Florio (1598) and Cotgrave. Cawdrey has ‘giglot, strumpet, a fliering wench.’ (B) In 1H6, Joan narrates her encounter with Young Talbot (who has just died) as a sequence of insult: Once I encountered him, and thus I said: ‘Thou maiden youth, be vanquished by a maid’. But with a proud majestical high scorn He answered thus: ‘Young Talbot was not born To be the pillage of a giglot wench’. So, rushing in the bowels of the French, He left me proudly, as unworthy fight. (4.4.149–55) Burns explains ‘giglot wench’ as ‘light-hearted girl (with the implication of lower social class, and dubious sexual morality)’ (1H6, 250). ‘Giglot’ is one of the numerous terms of abuse that transform the Puzel, the ‘maid’ into a whore but what is striking here is that Young Talbot’s insult to Joan is recorded as evidence of his heroic stature, the insult being ironically part of a eulogic sequence and proof that young Talbot ‘would have made a noble knight’ (4.4.156). Insult becomes a martial feat. In MM , a play that is obsessed with lust, whoredom and brothels, Escalus orders: ‘Away with those giglets too’ (5.1.344). Ironically the ‘giglets’ here are the two virtuous women in the play Mariana and Isabella. In Cym, the Queen exclaims ‘O giglot fortune!’ (3.1.32), meaning ‘fickle, whorish fortune’, as in Jonson’s Sejanus (5.206). Butler (Cym, 144) notes that Shakespeare played in Sejanus (1603), which may explain the choice of this word here. (C) Williams, 2, 596–7; Findlay (2010), 155. gipsy (A) A derogatory diminutive of ‘Egyptian’. The word refers to dark-skinned people and is associated with counterfeiting and cunning. It is also a contemptuous term for a loose 208

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woman. Perceval has ‘Gitáno, m. a counterfeit rogue called a gypson or Egypsian’. Harman (1567) refers to the ‘wyly wandering vagabonds calling and naming them selues Egiptians, depely dissembling and long hyding and couering their depe decetfull practises’ (Aiiiv). (B) Philo opens AC with a description of the dotage of his general upon a ‘tawny front’ (1.1.6), lamenting that Antony has ‘become the bellows and the fan / To cool a gipsy’s lust’ (1.1.9–10). The ‘gipsy’ is Cleopatra, who comes on stage just after the spectators have heard ‘gipsy’s lust’, which gives the impression that the play starts with an insult to the great Queen of Egypt, who is then called ‘strumpet’ (1.1.13). Although the words are not directly addressed to Antony and Cleopatra, they have an insulting effect and contribute to both enhancing and debunking the mythical couple. Antony himself will later refer to Cleopatra as ‘This foul Egyptian’ (4.12.10), who ‘Like a right gipsy hath at fast and loose / Beguiled me to the very heart of loss’ (4.12.28–9). The expression ‘at fast and loose’ refers to a cheating game that was supposed to be played by gipsies, and thus presents Cleopatra as cunning, but it is also one of the numerous words that associate Cleopatra with the figure of the ‘loose’ woman. In Rom, Mercutio mentions ‘Cleopatra a gypsy’ (2.4.41), as if the association of the two words were proverbial. globe (A) A spherical, rounded body. From classical Latin globus, a compact mass of spherical shape. Hollyband has ‘Forme spherique, round like a globe or sphere.’ Thomas has ‘Glŏbus, bi, m.g. A bowle or other thing verie round, a globe: a multitude of men or beasts gathered togeather, a troupe, a clotte. Lanæ globus, Horat. A pack or lock of woll.’ Florio (1598) has ‘Glóbo, a globe. Also a type of the whole world.’ Cawdrey has ‘globe, any thing, very round.’ (B) In 2H4, Hal calls Falstaff ‘thou globe of sinful continents’ (2H4 2.4.285) when he discovers him with his ‘whore’ (2.4.257), slandering him and Poins. The insult conveys Falstaff’s fatness and round shape. He has just been described as this ‘nave of a wheel’ (see knave) (2.4.255) and he is known for being ‘out of all compass’ (1H4 3.3.19–23). Given that he is obscenely flirting with Doll Tearsheet, one may infer that Hal may have the globe’s ‘prick’ in mind. The image of the globe appears in CE when Dromio of Syracuse describes the extraordinary ‘Nell’, saying that ‘she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her’ (3.2.114–15), before enumerating the countries he finds in the different parts of her body. The globe may also be an allusion to the Globe Theatre, Falstaff being the embodiment of theatricality and spectacle. (C) Tapp (1602) reads: A Spheare or Globe, is a round figure, made by the turning of halfe a Circle, till it end where it beganne to be mooued, or a massie body inclosed with one platforme or surface: in the middle wherof is a pricke, from which all lynes drawne to the surface are equall. goat (A) A figure of lust, the goat(-buck) is known for its beard, its horns and its rank smell. Topsell (1607) declines the ‘epithets of Goats’: ‘He hath many attributes among 209

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the learned, as left-sided, aged, greedy, bearded, swift, long legged, horne-bearer, captaine of the flocke, heauy, rough, hoarse-voiced, rugged, vnarmed, vncleane, strongsmelling, lecherous, bristler, wanderer, vile, wanton, sharpe, stinking, two-horned, and such like: whereby his nature and qualities are so deciphered as it needeth no long treatise of explication’ (231), before opening the next section with: ‘There is no beast that is more prone and giuen to lust then is a Goate [. . .]’ (231). Wales was known as a mountainous country that was full of goats. (B) In MW , the Welsh are associated with goats when Falstaff exclaims about Evans: ‘Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too?’ (5.5.136). The derogatory expression probably refers to Evans’s disguise. Melchiori (MW , 275 and 286) notes that in classical mythology Satyrs were ‘goat-footed demi gods with small horns’ and that ‘Evans’s satyr mask must have resembled a goat’s head’, a horned head. Calling Evans a goat is also part of the clichés about Wales, whose mountainous nature was derisively known for the abundance of its goats, instead of sheep. ‘To separate the sheep from the goats’ means ‘to distinguish the good from the evil’ and this negative connotation is found in Matthew 25:31–46 where the goats are the sinners (Ferber, 85). The insult is all the more ironical since, when he utters these words, Falstaff is wearing ‘buck’s horns on his head’ (SD , 5.5.1), after having been heavily associated with the lustful (goat-)buck, especially through the pun on ‘buck’ (the animal, possibly a deer but also to be connected with the French bouc, hegoat) and the ‘buck-basket’. When Ford exclaims ‘Buck, buck, buck! Ay, buck!’ (3.3.145), it sounds like an insult to Falstaff who is hidden in the ‘buck basket’ and is thus turned into a foul smelling ‘buck’. In H5, Pistol calls the French soldier he meets on the battlefield ‘Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat’ (4.4.19). The insult is ‘Pistolian’ as at 5.1.36, Pistol is said to have called Fluellen ‘mountain-squire’ and in MW , he calls Sir Hugh Evans, the Welshman, ‘thou mountain-foreigner!’ (1.1.148). The word ‘goat’ applied to this French soldier is also in keeping with the sexual clichés attached to the French, who were associated with the ‘foul disease’ (Williams, 1, 534–5) that Pistol calls ‘the malady of France’ (H5 5.1.83), the syphilis, the painful effect of lecherous habits. Pistol’s insult may also be a reaction to the French soldier’s words ‘Est-il impossible d’échapper ā la force de ton bras?’ (‘Is it impossible to escape the strength of your arm?’). ‘Brass, cur?’ . . . ‘Offer’st me brass?’ (4.4.16–20): the ‘brass’ that Pistol harps upon may be heard as ‘money’ but also as an invitation to some ‘embrace’ which would explain the sexual figure of the goat. Pistol’s sexual language goes on when he transforms the soldier’s name ‘Monsieur le Fer’ (4.4.26) into a source of bawdy puns: ‘I’ll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him’ (4.4.28–9), ‘firking’ (with a ‘fuck’ innuendo) and ‘ferreting’ both carrying ‘coital suggestions’ (Williams, Glossary, 125). Pistol again uses the image of the goat against Fluellen when he refuses to eat the leek, saying: ‘Not for Cadwallader and all his goats’ (5.1.28). Fluellen’s violent reaction, as he strikes Pistol, saying ‘There is one goat for you’ (5.1.29–30) shows that the association of the Welsh with goats is insulting. When Coriolanus tells Sicinius, ‘Hence, old goat’ (Cor 3.1.177), the insult is a cliché, as age was one of the characteristics associated with goats (see Topsell) but he may also refer to the wagging of his beard or to a foul smell that he shares with the stinking ‘garlick210

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eaters’ (4.6.99) he supports. Coriolanus prolongs the insult by exclaiming: ‘Hence, rotten thing, or I shall shake thy bones / Out of thy garments’ (3.1.179–80). Obsessed with the images of lust that Iago has insinuated in him (‘as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys’, 3.3.406–7) Othello violently swears by ‘Goats and monkeys!’ (4.1.263). Although the imprecation is not addressed to Desdemona, it amounts to accusing Desdemona of being a strumpet. When he looks down towards Iago’s feet to see whether the fable of the devil with cloven feet is true (5.2.283), the image of the devilish goat is not far. (C) On the sexual meaning, see Williams, 2, 606–8. On the goat in general, see Topsell (1607), 230–47; on the goatbuck’s lascivious nature, see Maplet, 87v–88r. goose/geese (A) The image of the goose connotes stupidity and cowardice, two characteristics that are associated with geese. The expression ‘Winchester goose’ or ‘goose of Winchester’ refers to prostitutes who worked in the public stews of Southwark, which were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, and to a bubo in the genitals that was one of the symptoms of syphilis. Cotgrave has ‘Clapoir: m. A botch in the Groyne, or yard; a Winchester Goose.’ (B) In 1H6, Gloucester plays on the name of the Bishop of Winchester: ‘Winchester goose, I cry, a rope, a rope’ (1.3.53). Winchester here becomes the venereal sore that originated from the brothels that were under his authority. Gloucester turns the name of Winchester against him and calls for punishment (a rope!). This bawdy pun puts into question the morality of a bishop whom Gloucester has just accused of giving ‘whores indulgences to sin’ (1.3.35) and whom he has just called ‘peeled priest’ (1.3.30), alluding to the tonsure of a monk but also to one of the symptoms of syphilis, the loss of hair. In TC , Pandarus expresses his fear that: ‘Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss’ (5.11.54) and concludes the play with: ‘Till then I’ll sweat and seek about for eases, / And at that time bequeath you all my diseases’ (5.11.55–6). What is striking here is that Pandarus, as a character, is insulting the audience of the play by referring to the brothels of Southwark, where the Globe and other theatres stood. Pandarus is afraid he might be insulted (hissed) for his sarcasms and thus prefers to go on insulting his audience by bequeathing them his diseases. The reference to the ‘sweat’ is an allusion to the treatment based on heat traditionally used to cure venereal disease. Thus the final words of the play suggest that Pandarus is himself part of this ‘Winchester goose’ world, but also include the whole audience in Pandarus’ bawdy life. In MND , when Demetrius, Lysander and Theseus, attending ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’, comment on the Lion, they target his lack of wit by using the image of the goose: Lysander: This lion is a very fox for his valour. Theseus: True; and a goose for his discretion. (5.1.227–8) In 1H4, Lady Percy calls Hotspur ‘ye giddy goose’ (3.1.225), which sounds like a goodnatured alliterative insult that playfully stresses his lack of discretion. Yet, considering the lines that precede: ‘Come, Kate; thou art perfect in lying down. / Come, quick, 211

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quick, that I may lay my head in thy lap’ (3.1.223–4), the sexual connotations may not be far. The image connotes cowardice when the mechanicals who flee at the sight of Bottom’s appearance are compared by Puck to ‘wild geese that the creeping fowler eye’ (MND 3.2.20) or when Falstaff swears he will have all the future king’s subjects flee ‘like a flock of wild geese’ (1H4 2.4.132). In Cor, Martius compares the citizens he abhors to geese: [. . .] He that trusts to you, Where he should find you lions finds you hares, Where foxes, geese you are [. . .] (1.1.165–7) Holland (Cor, 164) suggests that one may hear ‘fox’ both as the animal and as a sword (OED 6), which adds to an insult that denounces the citizen’s lack of martial courage. Martius uses the same image later when he curses the Roman army: [. . .] You souls of geese That bear the shapes of men, how have you run From slaves that apes would beat! (1.4.35–7) This hatred for those who flee explains Coriolanus’ words at the end of the play when, trying to resist his mother, he declares: [. . .] I’ll never Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand As if a man were author of himself And knew no other kin. (5.3.34–7) Ironically, by eventually yielding to his mother, he himself becomes the baby goose (‘gosling’) he precisely did not want to be. Macbeth uses the image when he inveighs against the fearful messenger who brings bad news: Macbeth: Servant: Macbeth: Servant:

The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon! Where gott’st thou that goose look? There is ten thousand – Geese, villain? Soldiers, Sir. (Mac 5.3.11–13)

Ironically, Macbeth’s insulting exclamations convey his fear as much as those felt by the servant. The image of the goose here is related to the whiteness of the messenger’s face, ‘those linen cheeks of thine’ (5.3.16), his ‘whey-face’ (5.3.17). In KL , Kent copiously exclaims against Oswald: 212

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Goose, if I had you upon Sarum plain, I’d drive ye cackling home to Camelot. (2.2.81–2) This occurrence seems to combine the three basic meanings of the goose figure. It may refer to Oswald smiling like an idiot and to his cowardice. Among the other insults that Kent hurls at him, one finds the words ‘lily-livered’ (2.2.16), ‘coward’ (2.2.21) and ‘you cowardly rascal’ (2.2.52–3) which point to the meaning of cowardice. Yet, Oswald is also called ‘bawd’ and ‘pander’ (2.2.19; 21) and there may be an allusion to the ‘Winchester goose’, which is either a prostitute or a venereal disease, as Camelot was identified as Winchester by Thomas Malory in his Le Morte D’arthur (chap. xix). Betts and Betts read these lines as evidence that the ‘epileptic’ that precedes (‘A plague upon your epileptic visage’, 2.2.79) means ‘syphilitic’. In Rom (2.4.70–96) and LLL (3.1.67–124), Shakespeare extensively puns on the word and its several layers of meaning and connotation. LLL plays on ‘l’envoy’ and the French word for ‘goose’, une oie (LLL 3.1.96). In Rom, the image is the basis of a battle of wit between Mercutio and Romeo which relates folly and sexuality. In TN , Sir Toby wittily calls Sir Andrew a coward when he tells him that he paradoxically writes his letter of challenge ‘with a goose-pen’ (3.2.47). Behind the goose-feather quill lies the goose as a symbol of cowardice. (C) On the sexual meaning, Williams, 2, 611–12; Iyengar, 149; Harris, 488 n21. See also Fitzpatrick (2011), 195–7; Rawson, 178. Booth (1983) argues that ‘goose’ was slang for ‘buttocks’ (71–3). On the ‘bishop’s brothels’, see Burford. See saucy. gorbellied (A) With a protuberant, a big belly. Based on the Old English gor, dung, dirt. Thomas reads ‘Ventriōsus, vel Ventrōsus, a, um, Plaut. That hath a great panch, gorbellied.’ Florio (1598) has: ‘Panciuto, that hath a bigge paunch or bellie, gorbellied’ and Cotgrave reads: ‘Ventru: m. uë: f. Paunchie, great bellied, gorbellied, full-bellied, all-guts, all-bellie.’ (B) The only occurrence appears in 1H4, when Falstaff, addressing the travellers he is robbing, exclaims: ‘Hang ye, gorbellied knaves, are ye undone? No, ye fat chuffs; I would your store were here. On, bacons, on!’ (2.2.86–8). Hearing ‘Sir John Paunch’ (2.2.64), the ‘gormandizing’ Falstaff (2H4 5.5.53), abuse the travellers for being fat is ironic and has an inevitable comic effect on stage. green-sickness (A) An anaemic disease that affects girls soon after the age of puberty, characterized by a green coloration of the skin and a disturbance of appetite. Also known as ‘chlorosis’ from post-classical Latin clorosis or the virgins’ sickness. It produces an unhealthy pallor and is considered to be a form of love sickness. (B) In Rom, Capulet violently insults Juliet ‘Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage, / You tallow-face’ (3.5.156–7). Capulet targets the extreme pallor of his daughter, which ironically announces her imminent death, thus already transforming her into a corpse, a ‘carrion’. In his fury, Capulet’s insult ironically echoes Romeo’s description of the 213

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‘envious moon’ who is ‘sick and pale with grief’ and whose ‘vestal livery is but sick and green’ (2.2.4–8). The father ironically underlines Juliet’s waning and suggests that she is no longer ‘the sun’ (2.2.3) she used to be. Juliet’s mother reacts to Capulet’s words: ‘Fie, fie, what, are you mad?’ (3.5.157), thus revealing and denouncing the fierceness of his language. Polonius calls Ophelia a ‘green girl’ (1.3.100), meaning ‘inexperienced’, but the word is probably an allusion to the green sickness which suggests that she is pale and love-sick. (C) See Williams, 2, 624; Findlay (2010), 167–8; King, The Disease of Virgins (2003); Iyengar, 152–4. groat (A) The name of a coin which was recognized from the thirteenth century in various countries of Europe (medieval Latin grossus, French gros, Italian grosso, Middle Dutch groot). It was worth four pence and taken as the type of a very small sum, hence refers to something worthless. (B) In KJ , Philip the Bastard insultingly uses the figure of the ‘groat’ to underline that Robert Faulconbridge, his half-brother, is both physically (he is thin) and economically insignificant. Philip explains that his brother wants his land Because he hath a half-face, like my father! With half that face would he have all my land: A half-fac’d groat five hundred pound a year! (1.1.92–4) The Bastard plays on ‘groat’ and ‘pound’ as well as on the ambivalence of the word ‘face’, which can signify ‘impudence’. How could one who is no bigger than a little coin claim to earn five hundred pounds a year! ‘Half-faced’ may mean ‘thin-faced’ and refer to the queen’s profile that appeared on coins but it may also mean ‘unfinished, imperfect’ (Braunmuller, KJ , 125). Philip the Bastard, addressing the Queen, prolongs the insult by comparing his brother Robert to another coin: Madam, and if my brother had my shape, And I had his, Sir Robert’s his like him; And if my legs were two such riding-rods, My arms such eel-skins stuff’d, my face so thin That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose Lest men should say ‘Look, where three-farthings goes!’ And, to his shape, were heir to all this land, Would I might never stir from off this place, I would give it every foot to have this face: It would not be Sir Knob in any case. (KJ 1.1.138–47) He accumulates debasing reifying metaphors to transform his brother into a gro(a)tesque figure. The imagined insult, ‘three-farthings’, refers to another coin which bore a Tudor rose ‘more or less behind the Queen’s ear to distinguish it from coins of similar size and weight’ (Braunmuller, KJ , 128). 214

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In H5, Fluellen insultingly offers Pistol a ‘groat’: Fluellen: Ay, leeks is good. Hold you, there is a groat to heal your pate. Pistol: Me a groat? Fluellen: Yes, verily and in truth, you shall take it, or I have another leek in my pocket which you shall eat. Pistol: I take thy groat in earnest of revenge. Fluellen: If I owe you anything, I will pay you in cudgels: you shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing of me but cudgels. God bye you, and keep you, and heal your pate. Exit. Pistol: All hell shall stir for this. (5.1.59–69) By giving him a groat, that is an insignificant sum of money compared with the 200 crowns that the French soldier offered him (4.4.42–3), Fluellen adds insult to injury and implies that Pistol is worthless. Pistol’s call for revenge shows the insulting effect that the whole leek sequence has on him. Coriolanus reports that his mother was wont to call the people ‘woollen vassals, things created / To buy and sell with groats’ (Cor 3.2.10–11), meaning that ‘people who trade with such small sums are insignificant’ (Holland, Cor, 296). groom (A) A man of inferior position, a servant, a varlet, a knave. One of the many words used to ‘brand’ someone ‘with baseness’ (KL 1.2.10). (B) In TS , Petruccio complains about his ‘knaves’ (4.1.106): ‘You logger-headed and unpolished grooms’ (4.1.111). ‘Groom’ is one of the many insults through which Petruccio wants to show Katherina who the ‘master’ is. Although he is not addressing Kate, she is his target and this sequence of insults to the grooms is part of his taming strategy. In 1H6, Gloucester exclaims ‘Shall I be flouted thus by dunghill grooms?’ (1.3.14) when the warders refuse to let Gloucester, the Lord Protector, come in. He debases the others so as to better claim his authority and yet, doing so, he reveals his lack of authority. In 2H6, The Duke of Gloucester ironically expresses his contempt to Cardinal Beaufort, Duke of Winchester: And, vanquished as I am, I yield to thee Or to the meanest groom. (2.1.175–6) Before dying under the hands of ‘pirates’ (4.1.140), the earl of Suffolk expresses his contempt for the Lieutenant who has caught him and precisely describes what a ‘groom’ is: Suffolk:

Obscure and lowly swain, King Henry’s blood, The honourable blood of Lancaster, Must not be shed by such a jaded groom. Hast thou not kissed thy hand and held my stirrup?

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And bare-headed plodded by my foot-cloth mule, And thought thee happy when I shook my head? How often hast thou waited at my cup, Fed from my trencher, kneeled down at the board When I have feasted with Queen Margaret? Remember it, and let it make thee crestfallen, Ay, and allay this thy abortive pride. How in our voiding lobby hast thou stood And duly waited for my coming forth? This hand of mine hath writ in thy behalf And therefore shall it charm thy riotous tongue. Whitmore: Speak, captain, shall I stab the forlorn swain? Lieutenant: First let my words stab him, as he hath me. Suffolk: Base slave, thy words are blunt, and so art thou. (4.1.50–67) Suffolk, who wears rags and who has just compared himself to a Jove in disguise (4.1.48), seems to see in the Lieutenant the epitome of baseness and thus provides an anatomy of the ‘groom service’. He then goes on to say that he prefers to ‘dance upon a bloody pole’ (with a macabre pun on his name, William de la Pole) ‘Than stand uncovered to the vulgar groom’ (4.1.129–30). ‘Groom’ is just one among many words that are used to debase: Suffolk also calls his vanquishers ‘these paltry, servile, abject drudges’, ‘base men’, ‘this villain here’, ‘such a lowly vassal’ (4.1.104–12), ‘vile bezonians’ (4.1.136). Stafford then calls Cade ‘this groom’ (2H6 4.2.115) when addressing his followers, the ‘rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent’ (4.2.113). The use of the word is emblematic of the play’s obsession with social struggle, in which when Cade declares he is ‘rightful heir unto the crown’, Stafford reminds him of his base origins: ‘Villain, thy father was a plasterer, / And thou thyself a shearman, art thou not?’ (4.2.123–4). Lear calls Oswald ‘this detested groom’ (KL 2.2.406), echoing the insulting epithet that Kent applies to the ‘knave’: ‘super-serviceable’ (2.2.17–18). In Cym, Imogen insults Cloten by comparing him to Posthumus: Profane fellow, Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more But what thou art besides, thou wert too base To be his groom: [. . .] (2.3.125–8) Being called ‘groom’ is all the more odious to Cloten since he keeps harping on the importance of his own nobility. (C) See Innes, 276–7. See beggar, caitiff, coistrel, drudge, jack, knave, lozel, mountaineer, ostler, pantler, peasant, rascal, rogue, ruffian, scoundrel, scullion, sirrah, slave, swain, varlet, villain, wretch. 216

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gull (A) A credulous person, a fool, a dupe, an idiot, one who is deceived or gulled, a geck (fool, simpleton). ‘To gull’ means ‘to deceive’. (B) In TN , Sir Toby calls Sir Andrew ‘An ass-head and a coxcomb and a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull’ (5.1.202–3) in what reads like a lexicon entry for the word ‘fool’. The connection between Sir Andrew Aguecheek (‘thin-faced’) and Sir Toby ends on this string of abuse, which draws a parallel between Sir Andrew and Malvolio and suggests that everyone may be everyone else’s dupe. As a matter of fact, Maria aims to ‘gull’ Malvolio ‘into a nayword’ (2.3.131) and talks of ‘Yon gull Malvolio’ (3.2.65) when he arrives on stage with his ridiculous yellow stockings because he has believed ‘such impossible passages of grossness’ (3.2.68). At the end Malvolio complains about what he describes as ‘the most notorious geck and gull / That e’er invention played on’ (5.1.337–8) and receives no answer to the question he asks Olivia about the motive of this gull. In Oth, Emilia calls the Moor ‘O gull, O dolt / As ignorant as dirt’ (Oth 5.2.159–60) when she understands that he has foolishly believed her husband Iago. She thus transforms the whole play into a tragic, ‘most notorious geck and gull’ (TN 5.1.336) story. When Othello, like Malvolio, asks the question ‘why?’ (Oth 5.2.299), he does not get any answer either. (C) See fool. gut(s) (A) Bowels, entrails, hence, by metonymy, a gluttonous, fat person. A glutton (French glouton, goulu) is also called a ‘gulligut’ (Hollyband) or a ‘greedie gut’ as in Perceval, under the words Comedór, or Comilón, Glotón and Gargantón or in Cotgrave, under goulard or glouton. (B) Falstaff is regularly called ‘guts’. In the endless strings of abuse that Hal hurls at him, he is transformed into ‘clay-brained [ie dull-witted] guts’ (1H4 2.4.219–20), ‘that stuffed cloak-bag [ie suitcase] of guts’ (1H4 2.4.439–40). Hal imagines that Falstaff’s wish ‘I pray God my girdle break’ is fulfilled: ‘O, if it should, how would thy guts fall about thy knees! But, sirrah, there’s no room for faith, truth nor honesty in this bosom of thine; it is all filled up with guts and midriff’ (3.3.150–3). In MW , Pistol curses Falstaff ‘Let vultures gripe thy guts!’ (1.3.82) and Mistress Page swears she will get her revenge on him, ‘as sure as his guts are made of puddings’ (2.1.25–6), which echoes Hal calling Sir John ‘that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly’ (1H4 2.4.440–1). These insults transform Sir John into a witless paunch but also contribute to presenting him as food itself, ‘equating the intestines inside his body to a black-pudding or blood-sausage’ (Iyengar, 155). Page describes Falstaff as ‘Old, cold, withered and of intolerable entrails’ (MW 5.5.153). In TC , Thersites describes to Achilles ‘Ajax, who wears his wit in his belly and his guts in his head’ (2.1.70–1). (C) Iyengar, 154–5; on ‘Visceral Knowledge. Shakespeare, Skepticism, and the Interior of the Early Modern Body’, see Hillman (1997). On the physical abuse to Falstaff, see Vienne-Guerrin (1996). On obesity, see Vigarello (2010).

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H hag(-seed) (A) A hag is an evil spirit, a demon in female form. The word is applied to the Furies and Harpies of Graeco-Latin mythology. A witch, an infernal woman who is supposed to have dealings with Satan, an ugly, repulsive old woman. Huloet describes ‘Hegges or nyght furyes, or wytches like vnto olde women, as Lucan and Sere do suppose, which do sucke the bloude of children in the nyght.’ A hag-seed is the seed (ie the offspring) of a hag. (B) The insult expresses disgust and fear of women on the part of male characters and associates women both with lust and scolding. Like the witch, the hag appears as a whore and/or a scold. In 1H6, Joan Puzel is presented as a ‘hag of all despite / Encompassed with thy lustful paramours’ (3.2.51–2), which connects the figure to extreme malice (despite) and lust. The image follows Joan from beginning to end as she is also called ‘Devil, or devil’s dam’ (1.5.5) and finally ‘Thou foul accursed minister of hell’ (5.3.93) when she is about to be ‘consumed to ashes’ (5.3.92). Talbot tells her ‘thou art a witch’ (1.5.6), before saying that ‘A witch by fear, not force, like Hannibal, / Drives back our troops and conquers as she lists’ (1.5.21–2) and calling her ‘that railing Hecate’ (3.2.63). York compares her to Circe (5.2.56) and, annoyed by her curses, he tells her ‘Fell banning hag, enchantress, hold thy tongue’ (5.2.63). In R3, the devil Richard ironically calls Margaret ‘Foul wrinkled witch’ (1.3.163) and orders her to stop cursing: ‘Have done thy charm, thou hateful withered hag’ (1.3.214). Behind the image of the hag, one finds an evil tongue. Macbeth addresses the weird sisters as ‘you secret, black, and midnight hags!’ (Mac 4.1.48) and ‘fithy hags’ (4.1.115). Lear calls his daughters ‘you unnatural hags’ (2.2.467) and then ironically seems to turn into a banning hag himself by swearing he will have revenges that shall be ‘The terrors of the earth!’ (2.2.471). In WT , Leontes calls Paulina ‘A gross hag’, blaming her husband Antigonus ‘That wilt not stay her tongue’ (2.3.106; 108). Pitcher (WT , 213) glosses ‘rude and repulsive old woman’ but the text also suggests that she is a witch when Leontes threatens her: ‘I’ll ha’ thee burnt’ (2.3.112). Ironically, the tongue that Leontes wants to stop is a good tongue, which strives to convince Leontes that Hermione’s baby is ‘the whole matter / And copy of the father’ (2.3.97–8). In Tem, Prospero, drawing the genealogy of Caliban, describes him as the son of the ‘foul witch Sycorax’ (1.2.258), ‘This blue-eyed hag’ (1.2.269) that ‘did litter’ on the island, ‘a freckled whelp, hag-born’ (1.2.282–3). He then addresses him as ‘hag-seed’ (1.2.366) and ‘malice’ (1.2.368), as if the two words were synonymous. 219

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In MW , Ford comically inveighs against the ‘old woman’ (4.2.158) of Brentford: A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean! Have I not forbid her my house? She comes of errands, does she? We are simple men, we do not know what’s brought to pass under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by charms, by spells, by the figure, and such daubery as this is, beyond our element: we know nothing. – Come down, you witch, you hag, you! Come down, I say! (4.2.162–9) This sounds like a portrait of the ‘hag’ as a typically female figure whose world is inaccessible to men, the irony coming from the fact that the hag is in fact Falstaff here, which confirms Ford’s statement that men indeed ‘know nothing’. When he expels him/ her from his house, exclaiming ‘Out of my door, you witch, you rag (hag in Q3 and F3), you baggage, you polecat, you runnion, out, out! I’ll conjure you, I’ll fortune-tell you!’ (4.2.174–6), he ironically and comically turns into a male cursing hag himself. (C) See Findlay (2010), 169; Gibson and Esra, 108. See Circe, crone, fury, Hecate, witch. Hannibal (A) The Carthaginian general known as an invincible leader. He conquered Italy and was finally defeated by Scipio Africanus. (B) In MM Elbow calls the bawd Pompey ‘thou wicked Hannibal’ twice: O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked Hannibal! I respected with her, before I was married to her? If ever I was respected with her, or she with me, let not your worship think me the poor Duke’s officer. Prove this, thou wicked Hannibal, or I’ll have mine action of battery on thee. (2.1.170–5) Two interpretations have been offered by editors who consider that there is either a comic confusion between the names of two foreign warriors, Pompey and Hannibal or a blunder for ‘cannibal’. The word is part of the malapropisms that are characteristic of Elbow’s language and convey a burlesque association of Pompey Bum with a frightening and awe-inspiring warrior. Pistol, in 2H4, uses the word ‘Cannibals’ instead of ‘Hannibals’ in a mangled quotation from Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (4.3.1–2): [. . .] Shall pack-horses, And hollow pamper’d jades of Asia, Which cannot go but thirty miles a day, Compare with Caesars and with Cannibals, And Troyant Greeks? (2H4 2.4.161–5) This suggests that the confusion between Cannibal and Hannibal is common. One finds the same association in Jonson’s Everyman in his Humour, where Cob, the water-bearer, inveighs against fasting days, and plays on his name ‘Cob’ which is also the name of a fish: 220

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and your maids too know this, and yet would have me turn Hannibal, and eat my own fish, and blood! [Pulls out a red-herring and addresses it] My princely coz, fear nothing. I have not the heart to devour you [. . .]. (3.1.162–5) In the context of MM , Pompey being known as ‘Pompey Bum’ and a pimp, his being allusively called a ‘cannibal’ makes perfect sense, as he is a flesh-monger and feeds as it were on human flesh. (C) One finds his short biography in Cooper’s Dictionarium Historicum (1565), I3v. hare (A) Hares were known for being melancholy animals but also for their cowardice and lust. Topsell (1607) notes, among many other things, that their only defence can be flight: It is a simple creature, having no defence but to run away, yet it is subtile, as may apear by changing of her forme, and by scraping out her footsteps when shee leapeth into her forme, that so she may deceive her hunters, [. . .]. To be defended against her enemies, the Eagle, the Hawke, [. . .] she rather trusteth the scratching brambles, the solitarie woods, the ditches and corners of rockes or hedges, the bodies of hollow trees, and such like places, then a dissembling peace with her adversaries. (267) Topsell also notes that hares ‘are verie exceedingly given to sleepe, because they never winke perfectly’ (266) and that ‘The eating of hares procureth sleepe, and thus much for the flesh and parts’ (272). He enumerates the epithets expressing the hare’s nature: ‘Eared, trusting their feet, feareful, careful, fruitefull, flying, raging, unhorned, little, crafty, tender, sharp-smelling, swift, whining, and wandering, beside many other Greeke names’ (272). (B) In KJ , Bastard says to Austria You are the hare of whom the proverb goes, Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard. (2.1.137–8) The insult is based on a proverbial expression ‘So hares may pull dead lions by the beard’ (Tilley, H165), a proverb that can be found in Erasmus’ Adagia, 1118A: ‘Mortuo leoni et lepores insultant’. With this obvious image of cowardice, the bastard insults Austria, who shows himself wearing a lion’s skin taken from Richard Lionheart. To understand the series of insults that Philip the Bastard hurls at Austria, one must remember that the Bastard is Richard Coeur de Lion’s illegitimate son and that Austria killed Richard. Thus the bastard’s insults are an answer to Austria’s provocatively and triumphantly, and thus insultingly wearing Richard’s attributes. This insult is prolonged in 3.1 when Constance exclaims ‘Thou wear a lion’s hide! doff it for shame, / And hang a calve’s skin on those recreant limbs’ (KJ 3.1.54–5), a line which is provocatively repeated several times by the Bastard. In 1H4, the word is used by Hal in a dialogue with Falstaff: 221

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Falstaff: Prince: Falstaff: Prince: Falstaff:

[. . .] ’Sblood, I am as melancholy as a gib cat or a lugged bear. Or an old lion or a lover’s lute. Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe. What sayst thou to a hare, or the melancholy of Moorditch? Thou hast the most unsavoury similes and art indeed the most comparative, rascalliest, sweet young prince. (1.2.70–8)

Bevington notes that ‘Hare’s flesh was thought to engender melancholy in those who ate it (Dent, H151)’ (1H4, 137) and the comparison refers to the melancholy nature shared by Falstaff and the hare. Yet, knowing Falstaff and considering his reaction to Hal’s ‘unsavoury’ image, it would not be far-fetched to consider that what Falstaff finds insulting in the word ‘hare’ is a possible allusion to his being a coward, a theme that will be recurrent in the play and find its physical expression in Falstaff’s running away in the Gad’s Hill episode (2.2). There may also be an allusion to Falstaff’s lecherous behaviour. The image of the hare comes back later in one of Falstaff’s innumerable conditional oaths: ‘If thou dost it [ie depose me] half so gravely, so majestically, both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a rabbit-sucker or a poulter’s hare’ (1H4 2.4.423–5). (C) On the melancholy hare, see Gascoigne (1575), 160–79, esp. 160, and esp. the sad song of ‘The Hare to the hunter’, (176–9); Topsell (1607), ‘Hare’, 264–77. On the sexual meaning of ‘hare’ as whore or lecher, see Williams, 2, 643–4. On the offensive pun on hare/hoar/whore in Rom (2.4.132–3), see bawd. See whore. harlot (A) Deriving from Old French herlot, harlot, arlot (fripon, coquin, ribaud, see Godefroy), meaning a young fellow, base fellow, knave, vagabond, and from Italian arlotto (‘the name of a merie priest, a lack-latine, or hedge priest’, Florio, 1598), the word originally applies to both sexes and refers to a vagabond, beggar, rogue, rascal, villain, low fellow, knave (OED ) and then (sixteenth to seventeenth centuries) sometimes to a man of loose life, a fornicator. It may refer to an itinerant jester, buffoon, or juggler or to a menial servant but, applied to a woman, it has come to be a term of execration, and means ‘female juggler’ (OED 5b) and ‘prostitute’, ‘whore’. (B) Shakespeare’s text shows traces of the original meaning when Hostess Quickly admiringly exclaims about the way Falstaff impersonates Hal’s kingly father: ‘O Jesu, he doth it as like one of these harlotry players as ever I see!’ (1H4 2.4.385–6). The expression is emblematic of the carnival world of the tavern that blurs the limits between insults and words of praise. It also has a great comic metadramatic ring on stage, ‘the joke for the audience of Shakespeare’s play lying in part in the fact that all of this is enacted by such harlotry players’ (Scott Kastan, 1H4, 229). The expression also associates Falstaff with the world of harlotry, which is in keeping with the bawdy life that characterizes the character. In WT , Leontes calls Polixenes ‘the harlot king’ (2.3.4): the word means that Polixenes is a lecher, but may also wink at the original sense of vagabond as the King of Bohemia has just fled, becoming a wandering king that cannot 222

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be ‘hooked’ (2.3.7). Yet, the word is most often applied to women. In R3, Richard mentions ‘that harlot, strumpet Shore’ (3.4.70). In CE , the word is part of a stichomythic exchange between Antipholus of Ephesus and his wife: Adriana [to Dromio of Ephesus]: Dissembling villain, thou speak’st false in both. Antipholus of Ephesus: Dissembling harlot, thou art false in all; And art confederate with a damned pack To make a loathsome abject scorn of me; (4.4.102–5) He later calls her ‘O most unhappy strumpet!’, echoing her ‘O most unhappy day!’ (4.4.125–6). One can feel a sexual accusation behind the ‘scorned’ husband’s words that suggest that Adriana is cuckolding him. The word comes back when he complains that his wife ‘shut the door upon me / While she with harlots feasted in my house’ (5.1.204–5). The husband declares that he has been the object of a ‘shameful sport’ (4.4.107) and that his wife ‘hath abused and dishonour’d me, / Even in the strength and height of injury’ (5.1.199–200): these words show that shutting him ‘out of doors’ constitutes a sexual insult, transforming Adriana into a whore. Timon calls the prostitutes Phrynia and Timandra ‘a brace of harlots’ (Tim 4.3.80), before referring to them as ‘beagles’ (Tim 4.3.174), the words ‘brace’ (pair, usually applied to dogs) and ‘beagle’ being emblematic of Timon’s cynical view of the world. (C) See Williams, 2, 646–7; Findlay (2010), 174–6, notes that the word frequently denotes deception and relates it to the 1563 ‘Homily against Peril of Idolatry’ where the Catholic church is condemned ‘not only as a harlot, but also a foule, fylthye, olde withered harlot’ (176). Innes, 279. harpy (A) A cruel, vicious woman. From Greek ἁρπάζειν, to snatch away, to seize. In classical mythology, the harpy is a fabulous rapacious monster with the head and body of a woman and the wings and talons of an eagle. Harpies were known as ministers of divine vengeance. Cotgrave has: Harpye: f. An Harpie; one of those monstrous, and rauenous birds which Poets faine to haue had womens faces, hands armed with talons, and bellies full of an ordure wherwith they infected all the meat they touched; and hereof are the monstrous brood (Moles, or Moonecalues) of some women so tearmed. Harpye de cuisine. A most rauenous, and filthie deuourer. (B) In MA , Benedick calls Beatrice a ‘harpy’, after an eloquent tirade that gives the term a climactic spectacular effect. Addressing Don Pedro, in the presence of Beatrice, he delivers an endless enumeration that underlines the unbearable monstrosity of the one he also calls my ‘Lady Tongue’ (2.1.252): I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on. I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the furthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John’s foot; fetch you a hair off the Great Cham’s beard; do you 223

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any embassage to the Pygmies, rather than hold three words conference with this harpy. (2.1.242–8) The whole tirade leads to the word ‘harpy’, which suggests that Beatrice is a rapacious creature whose words are like ordure that can ‘infect to the North Star’ (2.1.229). As Findlay remarks, ‘The joke will have more impact in performance if Beatrice wears a beaked mask when she derides Benedick in the masked ball’ (177). Gossett (Per, 340) notes that ‘Dent treats the phrase, “Harpies have virgins’ faces and vulture’s talons” as straddling the line between the proverbial and the frequently borrowed (Dent, D176.1)’, an expression which is echoed in Per, where Cleon tells Dionyza: ‘Thou art like the harpy, / Which to betray dost use thine angel’s face / To seize with thine eagle’s talons’ (4.3.45–7). The ambivalence of the angelically monstrous creature suits Beatrice, who can be seen as an attractive shrew, an object of both repulsion and fascination. (C) Findlay (2010), 176–7. head (A) The seat of intelligence. A person’s mind or brain. The head is also ‘an area of sensitivity or vulnerability in the cuckold’ (Williams, 2, 651) and the term may have a sexual meaning. Florio (1598) has ‘Capocchia, the foreskin or prepuce of a mans priuie member’ and Cotgrave reads ‘Prepuce: m. The foreskin, or skin that couereth the head of the yard.’ (B) In MV , the Prince of Arragon receives as an insult the fool’s head that he discovers in the casket he chooses. It is a mirror image of himself: What’s here? The portrait of a blinking idiot Presenting me a schedule. [. . .] Did I deserve no more than a fool’s head? Is that my prize? Are my deserts no better? What is here? [. . .] [Reads] [. . .] There be fools alive iwis Silvered o’er, and so was this. Take what wife you will to bed, I will ever be your head. So be gone: you are sped. Still more fool I shall appear By the time I linger here. With one fool’s head I came to woo, But I go away with two. [. . .] (2.9.53–75) The passage is reminiscent of the ‘picture of we three’ alluded to by Feste (TN 2.3.15– 16), that is a painting or an inn sign which represented two asses or loggerheads, the 224

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caption ‘we three’ implicating the spectator, thus calling him a fool. Here the caption could be ‘we two’, including the prosthetic head and Arragon’s. Russell-Brown (MV , 67) and Drakakis (MV , 277) note that it is a bawdy gloss on the Geneva Bible (1562), Ephesians 5:23: ‘For the housband is the wiues head, euen as Christ is the head of the Church, & the same is the sauiour of his bodie’. Drakakis also suggests that there is a pun on ‘head’, meaning both maidenhead and prepuce. In KJ , the Bastard insults Austria: [. . .] Sirrah, were I at home, At your den, sirrah, with your lioness, I would set an ox-head to your lion’s hide, And make a monster of you. (2.1.290–3). Honigmann (KJ , 37) notes that there is a double insult here: apart from the horn-joke present in the ‘ox-head’, the Bastard, ‘converts heraldry to insult’ (Williams, 2, 818–19) by suggesting that Austria’s wife is a lioness, a slang word for ‘whore’. Othello receives Iago’s question ‘How is it, general? have you not hurt your head?’ as an insulting mockery. For him, the reference to the head is evocative of cuckoldry and that is why he answers Iago: ‘Dost thou mock me?’ (Oth 4.1.59–60). ‘Head’ is part of a number of compound words of insult that are evocative of stupidity. In TS , Petruccio calls his servants ‘You logger-headed and unpolished grooms’ (4.1.111), meaning that they are as stupid as a log or a bulky mass of wood. He then calls one of them ‘A whoreson beetle-headed, flap-eared knave!’ (4.1.142). A beetle is a wooden mallet with a big heavy head. ‘To have a beetle-head’ or ‘to be beetle-headed’ was proverbial (Dent, BB 5), as well as ‘dull as a beetle’ (ODEP ). Rider has ‘A beetle-headed fellowe. 1 Tudito, tuditanus, m. vide Blockhead, and dull head.’ Still in TS , Petruccio again targets his servants’ lack of wit when he hurls at them: ‘You heedless jolt-heads and unmannered slaves’ (TS 4.1.155), again meaning they are thick-headed, and stupid. According to OED , ‘jolt-head’ is known in 1533 while ‘jolt-headed’ (in the form ‘cholt-headed’) is known in 1552 and ‘jolting pate’, in the sense of ‘jolt-head’ in 1579. Yet the simple verb and noun ‘jolt’ are not known till 1599. OED suggests that ‘jolt-head’ is related to ‘jowl’, meaning both a bump on the head and the head. Huloet has ‘Cholt headed felow, who[se] heade is as greate as a betle or mall. Tuditanus.’ Hollyband has ‘Tabuter vne personne, to push, to iolt to but.’ Florio (1598) has ‘Baióne, a gull, a nodie, a ninnie, a foole, a iolt head, a mocker, a iester’. Florio (1611) reads: ‘Capitúto a logger-head, a iolt-head. Also any thing hauing a bighead.’ The term already appears in TGV where Lance exclaims against Speed: ‘Fie on thee, jolt-head, thou canst not read’ (3.1.284). In LLL , Berowne insults Costard in an aside ‘Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born to do me shame’ (4.3.200), while Boyet calls Holofernes a ‘cittern-head’ (5.2.604), referring to the instrument that was distinguished by the often grotesque ornamental face or figure that was carved at the top of its ‘fretted neck’ (Wilson and Calore, 101). Coriolanus says to one of the citizens that his wit is ‘strongly wedged up in a blockhead’ (2.3.26–7). 225

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In TN , Sir Toby calls Sir Andrew an ‘ass-head’ (5.1.202), thus differentiating himself from his former friend. In 1H4, Hotspur’s wife calls him ‘you mad-headed ape!’ (2.3.74), which seems to be the counterpoint to Hal’s being called a ‘mad wag’ (1.2.42) and a ‘madcap’ (1.2.135 and 4.1.94). The head is also evocative of mortality when Falstaff compares Bardolph’s face to ‘a death’s-head, or a memento mori’ (1H4 3.3.30), which is an allusion to the mourning rings that were commonly offered, as appears in LLL when Berowne compares Holofernes’ face to ‘A death’s face in a ring’ (5.2.606). In Tem, Trinculo refers to Caliban, in his presence, as ‘this puppy-headed monster’ (2.2.151–2). Vaughan and Vaughan (Tem, 216) note that this has led John Mortimer to represent Caliban with floppy ears in a 1775 engraving, but that no other element confirms this and that the expression probably just means that Caliban is foolish. Yet no element confirms the latter interpretation either. Lindley (Tem, 172), referring to Brown (2000) and Klarer (1999), alludes to a legend that associates cannibals and dogs (canis), which could justify the image of a dog-headed Caliban but Lindley notes that the tone of the scene does not support this interpretation. I would tend to think that the word associates Caliban with a ‘lapdog’, a puppy dog that is seen greedily ‘lapping’ the drink that Trinculo and Stephano offer him. (C) On the ‘cittern-head’, see Wilson and Calore, 101–3. On all the compounds based on ‘head’, see Rawson, 46–51. See face. hedgehog (A) A hog is a boar or swine. The hedgehog, or urchin, is named from its frequenting hedgerows and from its pig-like snout. Florio (1598) has: ‘Istrice, a porpuntine, or porkepine, a beast like a hedgehog, whose pricks are dangerous, an vrchin.’ Cotgrave has ‘Herisson: m. An Vrchin, a Hedgehog. [. . .] Parez l’herisson il semblera Baron: Prov. Good clothes hide much deformitie; or, a clowne well cloathed seemes a Gentleman.’ Tospsell (1607) has: ‘It is about the biggnesse of a Cony, but more like to a Hogge, being beset and compassed all ouer with sharpe thorney haires [. . .]. The inward disposition of this beast, appeareth to bee very crafty and full of suttlety, by this, because (Licophron saith) that Nauplius had a cunning crooked wit, and was called by him a Hedghog’ (178). (B) The two words are symbolically connected in the insults that are hurled at Richard in R3 which play on Richard’s heraldic emblem (the boar). Lady Anne calls Richard ‘hedgehog’ (1.2.104) while Margaret calls him ‘Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog’ (1.3.227), in which the word ‘rooting’ is connected with the metaphors of lineage in the play. As Siemon notes, ‘hedgehog’ refers to the ‘hump-backed animal, bristled like the boar’ (R3, 156). One can already hear the ‘swine’ in this hedgehog, Richard being later called by Richmond ‘this foul swine’ (5.2.10) and ‘the wretched, bloody and usurping boar’ (5.2.7). (C) For a description of the hedgehog, see Maplet, 88v–89r and Topsell (1607), 277– 80. On hog (or swine), see Topsell (1607), 661–705: the image of the wild boar (694) reveals similarities with the image of the hedgehog (277), both having bristled hair and pricks on their backs. 226

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hell (A) Hell is where the devil is (Palsgrave), the infernal regions that are the dwelling place of devils and condemned spirits; the place of punishment of the wicked after death. Hell is associated with depth (the pit of hell), fire (the burning pit), darkness (‘As black as hell’ was proverbial, Tilley, H397 and Sonnet 147.14), torture and cunning. Florio (1598) defines inferno as ‘Deep pit of hell’. In classical mythology, Pluto is the god of hell and Cerberus, the three-headed dog, is its porter. (B) In R3, Lady Anne exclaims against Richard who approaches the corpse of King Henry the Sixth: – Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell! Thou hadst but power over his mortal body; His soul thou canst not have. Therefore be gone. (1.2.46–8) Siemon (R3, 152) notes that Shakespeare draws here on the Christian distinction in Matthew 10:28: ‘And feare ye not them, which kil the bodie, but are not able to kil the soule: but rather feare him, which is able to destroye both soule and bodie in hel’. Anne goes on associating Richard with hell: Foul devil, for God’s sake, hence, and trouble us not, For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell, Filled it with cursing cries and deep exclaims. (1.2.50–2) Anne’s imprecations not only suggest that Richard is ‘unfit for any place but hell’ (1.2.111) but that he has transformed the whole earth into hell, as his mother, the Duchess of York, also tells him: ‘Thou cam’st on earth to make the earth my hell’ (4.4.167). Margaret abundantly curses him, wishing that ‘The slave of nature, and the son of hell’ (1.3.229) be tormented by the ‘worm of conscience’ and ‘a hell of ugly devils’ (1.3.221; 226). She literally sends Richard to hell in a sequence that announces Richard’s dreams (5.3.118–206), the ‘worm of conscience’ being a pain of hell (Isaiah 66:24). She warns Buckingham against him: ‘Sin, death and hell have set their marks on him, / And all their ministers attend on him’ (1.3.292–3). Richard is also called in absentia ‘A hellhound that doth hunt us all to death’ (4.4.48) and ‘hell’s black intelligencer’ (4.4.71). The play makes the couple ‘hell and Richard’ inseparable (4.4.354), mainly through invective. ‘Black is the badge of hell’ (LLL 4.3.250): this motto seems to apply to Othello, the title of which is evocative of hell (Ot-hell-o) and in which hell means cunning. Yet it is Desdemona who is associated with hell: Othello: Desdemona: Othello:

Heaven truly knows thou art false as hell. To whom, my lord? with whom? how am I false? Ah, Desdemon, away, away, away! (4.2.40–2) 227

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It is not fortuitous that the F text should have preferred Desdemon to Desdemona here. After the evocation of hell, the spectators will better hear the ‘demon’ in the name. Desdemona does not understand the insult and questions the term ‘false’ that comes back later when Othello says ‘she was false as water’ (5.2.132), a proverbial phrase from Genesis 49:4 (Dent, W86.1) and when Othello concludes ‘She’s like a liar gone to burning hell’ (5.2.127). By comparing his wife to hell, Othello blackens the character and ironically echoes Brabantio who referred to ‘practices of cunning hell’ (1.3.103). The expression ‘as false as hell’, which refers to the deception made possible by darkness, also suggests that, for Othello, Desdemona has opened the gate of hell by becoming ‘false’ (ie by becoming an adulteress). Williams (2, 660) notes that hell can sometimes mean ‘vagina’ as when Lear describes his daughters as centaurs: ‘beneath is all the fiend’s: there’s hell, there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption!’ (4.6.123–5). The same type of image can be found when Othello associates Desdemona with a filthy pond, ‘a cistern for foul toads / To knot and gender in’ (4.2.62–3) before concluding that she is ‘grim as hell’ (4.2.65). After calling Desdemona ‘whore’, Othello addresses Emilia as if she were a bawd by using the image of the Gates of hell: [. . .] You! Mistress! Enter Emilia That have the office opposite to Saint Peter And keep the gates of hell – you, you, ay you! We have done our course, there’s money for your pains, I pray you turn the key and keep our counsel. Exit. (4.2.92–6) The words clearly suggest that Emilia keeps the door of Desdemona’s whorish ‘gate’ or vagina, letting people ‘in and out’, like Bolt in Per. They thus constitute an insult both to Desdemona and Emilia. Finally Iago is called ‘this hellish villain’ (5.2.366), Lodovico restoring values that the play had kept reversing. Macduff calls Macbeth ‘Hell-hound’ (Mac 5.8.3) before their final combat, thus echoing the words he had uttered against the tyrant in his debate with Malcolm: ‘Not in the legions / Of horrid Hell can come a devil more damn’d / In evils, to top Macbeth’ (4.3.55–7). The association of Macbeth with hell also appears in his exchange with Young Seyward: Young Siward: Macbeth: Young Siward: Macbeth:

What is thy name? Thou’lt be afraid to hear it. No; though thou call’st thyself a hotter name Than any is in hell. My name’s Macbeth. (5.7.5–7)

Macduff calls him ‘hell-kite’, in absentia, when he learns that Macbeth has killed his wife and children, all his ‘pretty chickens, and their dam, / At one fell swoop’ (4.3.216–18), transforming him into a fierce and hellish bird of prey. 228

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(C) See Gettings, 131–4; Rawson, 190–101; Hughes (2006), 224–7; Gibson and Esra, 111–112. On the sexual meaning of hell, see Williams, 2, 660. See devil, fiend. hen (A) A female of the common domestic fowl, the male of which is the cock. It is known for laying eggs, protecting its chickens and cackling or clocking. Harman’s A Caveat for Common Cursitors (1567) reads ‘a margerye prater: a Hen.’ ‘Dame Partlet’ (spelt ‘Pertelot’, ‘Pertlot’ ‘Partelot’) is a traditional name for a hen. In Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale, one finds ‘faire damoyselle Pertelote’ (xcv) and Caxton’s Reynart the foxe (1481) reads: ‘Chantecler the cock, pertelot wyth alle theyr children, alle thise made grete rumour and noyse’ (capitulo XIII ). The name perhaps derives from the feathers round the neck of some hens that look like a ‘partlet’, an item of clothing worn by women over the neck and upper part of the chest (OED ). Although the origin remains obscure one can note that one hears French parler (talk) in ‘partlet’ and that it is graphically not far from ‘prater’, ‘prattler’. (B) In 1H4, Falstaff greets Hostess Quickly with ‘How now, Dame Partlet the hen, have you inquired yet who picked my pocket?’ (3.3.51–2). This sounds like a festive nickname, typical of the language of the tavern. After ‘good pint-pot’, ‘good tickle-brain’ (2.4.387), ‘Dame Partlet’ almost goes unnoticed and is a playful address, meaning that she is a fussy cackling ‘woman’ (3.3.60). In WT , Leontes, furious about Antigonus’ wife, exclaims: Thou dotard; thou art woman-tired, unroosted By thy Dame Partlet here. (2.3.73–4) The words are as insulting to Antigonus as to his wife, Paulina. According to Leontes, Antigonus is ‘henpecked’ (‘woman-tired’, from ‘tire’ which is a falconry term meaning ‘to tear flesh with a beak’) and his authority baffled (‘unroosted’) by a cackling, talkative, shrewish wife: ‘He dreads his wife’ (2.3.78), he will not ‘stay her tongue’ (2.3.108). By calling Paulina ‘Dame Partlet’, Leontes rejects her as a vain prattler, an unruly, ‘tittletattling’ (4.4.246) tongue that he wants to bridle as he wants to stop rumour. The image of the hen also suggests that Paulina is with the baby Perdita, that Leontes puts in danger, like a hen with her chickens, cackling herself hoarse to protect them, an image that one finds in Mac when Macduff mourns all his ‘pretty chickens, and their dam’ (4.3.218). Leontes then calls Paulina ‘Lady Margery’ (2.3.158), which is evocative of the underworld slang name for ‘hen’ (a ‘margery prater’) and is also a common name among midwives, confirming the figure of the unruly, noisy woman but also suggesting that, like the hen, she wants to protect Hermione’s chick, to save the ‘brat’ Perdita’s life (2.3.161). Thus, behind the insult, one paradoxically finds the evocation of Paulina as a protective mother. In Oth, Iago contemptuously refers to the ‘love of a guinea-hen’ (1.3.316), meaning the love of a woman, and indirectly, of Desdemona. Partridge glosses ‘guinea-hen’: ‘A woman, a wanton; a whore, especially a courtezan’, 229

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pointing towards the sexual meaning of the word (see Williams, 2, 661–2), a meaning that one also finds in Falstaff’s allusion to the ‘Barbary hen’ (prostitute) in 2H4 (2.4.97). In AW , Lafew compares Parolles to a hen: ‘Do not plunge thyself too far in anger, lest thou hasten thy trial; which if – Lord have mercy on thee for a hen!’ (2.3.211–13). In that case, the image denotes cowardice, as the hen is opposed to the ‘cock’ (ie lacking in masculine courage). (C) On the hen’s cackling, see Heywood (1550), ‘The cocke and the hen’ (LIIII ). For a description of the hen, see Batman vppon Bartholome, Book 12, chap. 18 (‘Of an Henne’). On the hen as associated with God, see Wither, An A.B.C. for layemen (1585), 68. On the sexual meaning of the word, see Williams, 2, 661–2. herring (A) A sea fish that was ‘often served pickled or salted’ (Fitzpatrick, 2011). ‘As dead as a herring’ was proverbial (Dent, H446; see MW 2.3.11). Cotgrave has (Harenc): ‘As leane as a rake; as lanke as a shotten Herring.’ Fitzpatrick notes that ‘herring was a remarkably ambivalent foodstuff: at once sign of wealth and poverty, gluttony and abstinence; it was “an icon of Lent and Lenten fare” as well as the subject of denouncements by medical writers’ (124, quoting Appelbaum, 201–38). (B) In Rom, Mercutio plays on Romeo’s name to compare him to a dried herring: Benvolio: Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo! Mercutio: Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! (2.4.36–8) One can sense a bawdy insulting message behind the pun. ‘Roe’ may refer to a ‘(roe) deer’, meaning that Romeo is alone, without his ‘dear’. It may also be a diminutive for ‘Rosalind’ and refer to the fish eggs that are removed to dry the herring, like the ‘shotten herring’ ironically mentioned by Falstaff (1H4 2.4.124) or to the ‘soft roe’, that is ‘the milt or sperm of a male fish’ (OED ). It thus conveys the idea that Romeo is ‘thin and emasculated by love’ (Blakemore Evans, Rom, 121). The image of the herring is prolonged by the word ‘fishified’. Gibbons (Rom, 144) notes that the word means: ‘turned into a herring’, ‘become obsessed with sex’, ‘gone pale and bloodless’. Blakemore Evans glosses ‘fishified’ as ‘turned cold-blooded (without sexual drive)’ (Rom, 121). Laroque (1991) sees in this exchange an episode in the battle of Carnival and Lent: ‘these lines suggest that, having spent a night in Juliet’s arms, Romeo has literally betrayed his own fraternity, deserting the ranks of Carnival led by the merry Mercutio to join a fish-like female regiment bearing the banner of Lent. The lover is likened to a Lenten figure, devoid of appetite, whose sexual exhaustion rules him out of warfare and duelling’ (210). Fish and flesh were already opposed in the first scene of the play: Sampson:

230

Me they shall feel while I am able to stand, and ’tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.

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Gregory:

’Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor john. Draw thy tool, here comes of the house of Montagues. (Rom 1.1.27–31)

Gregory insultingly compares Sampson to ‘poor john’ which is far from being a ‘pretty piece of flesh’ but is another kind of dried fish usually eaten during Lent: ‘A name for hake (or other fish) salted and dried for food; often a type of poor fare’ (OED ). As Weis notes (Rom, 126), the fish lacks ‘the sap and juice of Samson’s self-professed sexual prowess and hardly likely to stand’. In TC , the ‘herring without a roe’ (5.1.60) is among the least valuable creatures which Thersites would prefer to be rather than Menelaus: To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus! I would conspire against destiny. (TC 5.1.58–62) The dried herring is opposed to the ‘white herring’ (unsmoked) for which Poor Tom’s belly cried for in KL (3.6.31). In 2H6, Dick the butcher debunks the name of Jack Cade: Cade: Butcher:

We, John Cade, so termed of our supposed father – [Aside] Or rather of stealing a cade of herrings. (4.2.29–30)

The word ‘cade’ refers to a barrel of herrings and the aside is offensive to Cade who strives to show that he is ‘of an honourable house’ (4.2.45). In TN , Toby Belch’s ‘A plague o’ these pickle herring!’ (1.5.116–17) may just allude to the pickled herring that he has eaten which, with the accompanying wine, has caused his belching. But Elam (TN , 192), following OED , mentions another meaning of the word ‘pickle-herring’, which is attractive. His note suggests that in the context of this scene the word may mean ‘clown’, ‘buffoon’ (OED 2). OED mentions the ‘comic character Pickelhering [that] quickly became a stock figure in German farce’ and that ‘German Pickelhering had acquired the generic sense “clown” by the mid 17th cent’. OED quotes Harvey’s Pierces Supererogation, fol. Ff4v: ‘Sith Destiny allottes no wiser choyce, Pastime appose the Pickle-herring clarke’, noting that the meaning ‘buffoon’ is uncertain before 1656. In Harvey’s text, one finds an allusion to the ‘sory Iestes of the Counsell-table Asse, Richard Clarke’ (156), which confirms a link between ‘pickle herring’ and the buffoon figure. It is tempting to consider that this could be an early use of the word, all the more so since Toby addresses Feste immediately after having cursed the pickle-herring: ‘How now, sot?’ (1.5.117). Shakespeare seems to combine the two meanings here and Toby curses both food and fool. The link between the herring and the fool appears later in the play when the clown Feste answers Viola: Viola: Feste:

Art not thou the Lady Olivia’s Fool? No indeed, sir, the Lady Olivia has no folly. She will keep no fool, sir, till she be married, and fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to 231

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herrings – the husband’s the bigger. I am indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words. (TN 3.1.31–5) Pilchards and herrings belong to the same family of fish but herrings are larger. The metaphor is used to compare husbands and fools and declare that husbands are the bigger fools. (C) Fitzpatrick (2011), 213–14; Appelbaum, 201–38; on ‘pickle-herring’, see Wiles, 52; 196 and Schrickx. About the passage in Rom, see Laroque (1991), 209–10. hilding (A) A worthless beast or person, a good-for-nothing. Of obscure etymology. OED suggests it derives from ‘hyld’, meaning to bend downwards, to fall, to sink, to decline. Cotgrave has ‘Chiche: com. Miserable, niggardlie, niggish, neere, pinching, sparing, hard, strait-handed. Vn chiche. A wretch, pinch-pennie, pennie-father, couetous hilding; one that would not part with the paring of his nayles.’ Applied to a woman, it means a whore, a baggage. (B) In TS Baptista Minola inveighs against his daughter Kate the shrew when he discovers that she has bound her sister Bianca: Baptista:

For shame, thou hilding of a devilish spirit, Why dost thou wrong her that did ne’er wrong thee? When did she cross thee with a bitter word? Katherina: Her silence flouts me, and I’ll be revenged. Flies after Bianca. (2.1.26–9) Hodgdon glosses ‘baggage, good-for-nothing’ (TS , 193). ‘Thou hilding of a devilish spirit’ is emblematic of the conflation, in the shrew, of the figures of the witch and the whore, who have mouth and privy parts wide open, contrary to Bianca who seems to be characterized by silence and thus chastity and purity. Paradoxically, the ‘hilding’ is the one who refuses to get married. In Rom, Capulet, addressing his wife, exclaims about Juliet: ‘Out on her, hilding!’ (3.5.168), after having violently assaulted his daughter by calling her ‘baggage’ (3.5.160) and telling his wife that this child was ‘one too much, / And that we have a curse in having her’ (3.5.166–7). The word means that Juliet is worthless, literally a good for nothing but Mercutio already uses the word when, playing on alliteration, he alludes to Helen and Hero as ‘hildings and harlots’ (2.4.42). Thus when we hear the word later, applied to Juliet, it is given sexual connotations through its association with Helen of Troy and harlots. In Cym, Cloten, addressing Imogen, refers to Posthumus in absentia as ‘a hilding for a livery’ (2.3.124), meaning a good-for-nothing that is ‘only fit for a livery (i.e. only fit to be a servant, wearing the distinctive livery of his master’s employees)’ (Warren, Cym, 139). Imogen’s insult to Cloten when she says that Posthumus’ ‘mean’st garment’ is more precious to her than anything Cloten can represent (2.3.134–7) is a sartorial answer to the insulting social hierarchy that Cloten delineates, through sartorial imagery, to debase his rival. The term is used as an adjective, meaning ‘worthless’, ‘contemptible’, 232

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in 2H4 when Lord Bardolph mentions ‘some hilding fellow’ (1.1.57) or in H5 where the Constable of France alludes to ‘such a hilding foe’ (4.2.28). (C) On the sexual meaning, see Williams, 2, 665. Hiren (A) Whore. A corruption of the female name Irene, the word means ‘harlot’ in reference to the story of Irene and Mahomet II . She was a Greek captive who seduced the Great Turk. He killed her to show that he could bridle his affections and remain dedicated to his people. The story is told in Knolles’s Generall Historie of the Turkes (1603). (B) In 2H4, Pistol, brandishing his sword bombastically and referring to Doll Tearsheet, asks twice: ‘Have we not Hiren here?’ (2H4 2.4.156–7 and 172–3). The word is part of the grandiloquent and incomprehensible language he cultivates and that Doll denounces as ‘fustian’ (2.4.187). Uttering these words, he creates a verbal-visual pun, as ‘iron’ (sword) would probably be pronounced in the same way as ‘Hiren’ in Elizabethan English. Editors (Humphreys and Weis) have identified the word as a reference to a lost play by Peele entitled The Turkish Mahamet and Hyrin [Irene] the Fair Greek (c. 1594). Pistol’s words target Doll as a harlot and also suggest that, like Mahomet, he wants to kill her. (C) In The generall historie of the Turkes (1603), Knolles describes Irene’s power of seduction (350) and her death (353). See Merrie conceited iests of George Peele (1607), which refers to ‘the famous Play of the Turkish Mahamet. And Hyrin the faire Greeke, in Italian called a Curtezan, in Spaine, a Margerite; in French, un Curtain; in England, among the barbarous, a Whore; but among the Gentle, their vsuall associates, a Puncke’ (20). For other examples of the use of the name to mean ‘harlot’, see Humphreys, 2H4, 73; Williams, 2, 666–7. hobby-horse (A) Applied to a man, a fool or a lustful person; applied to a woman, it means a whore, a loose woman, a prostitute, a female ridden for pleasure. The word refers to the morris-dance where the figure of a horse, made of wickerwork, furnished with a deep housing, and fastened about the waist of one of the performers, executed antics in imitation of the movements of a skittish horse (OED ). The word also refers to the name of this performer in a morris-dance. Williams (2, 669) notes that when the word means ‘whore’, ‘the riding metaphor combines with that of the morris, notorious for licentious behaviour under the mask of May-gaming.’ (B) In Oth, Bianca tells Cassio, about the handkerchief, ‘There, give it your hobbyhorse’ (4.1.153), which sounds ironical since Bianca is herself called a ‘fitchew’ (4.1.145) (ie a whore), a few lines earlier. In WT , Leontes tells Camillo: My wife’s a hobby-horse, deserves a name As rank as any flax-wench that puts Before her troth-plight. (1.2.274–6) These two examples clearly show the insulting content of the word that is also found in LLL : 233

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Armado: Moth: Armado: Moth:

But O – but O – ‘The hobby-horse is forgot.’ Call’st thou my love ‘hobby horse’? No, master. The hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love perhaps a hackney. (3.1.26–30)

Moth interprets Armado’s sigh, ‘But O – but O –’ as a line from a well-known song that Hamlet also alludes to (3.2.127–8). Armado interprets the word as an insult to his love. Laroque (1991) explains that the figure was one of the Puritans’ targets: ‘Attacks rained down on the unfortunate Hobby-horse from all sides, and he was also a major target for the Puritans, in their campaigns against the Elizabethan festivals’ (129). The word has taken on negative connotations and has come to be associated with vices of all sorts. Partridge (121) explains the switch from the literal to the figurative meaning: ‘A hobbyhorse is a rocking horse: the sexual innuendo and pun are clear: horse because it is ridden [. . .]; the ‘rocking’ element refers to female movement in coitu.’ Although Moth denies any insulting intent by answering ‘No, master’, he goes on using insulting horse images with the terms ‘colt’ (meaning a young inexperienced fellow and a wanton) and ‘hackney’, which refers to a horse kept for hire but also to a whore (ie a woman that hires her person) (OED 4). Moth thus, instead of apologizing, adds a second layer of insult. Applied to a man, ‘hobby-horse’ means ‘a person who plays ridiculous antics; a frivolous or foolish fellow, jester, buffoon’ (OED , 3a). In MA, Benedick takes Leonato aside, saying: ‘Old signor, walk aside with me. I have studied eight or nine wise words to speak to you which these hobby-horses [Claudio and Don Pedro] must not hear’ (3.2.64–6). The word expresses the festive humour embodied by Claudio and Don Pedro, opposed to the ‘kill-joy’ Benedick, who is too amorous to be able to laugh. Love kills joy in the play. The ‘hobby-horse’ contains the festive world of buffoonery and immorality and the insult rests on a Puritan perception of this carnivalesque figure. The transformation of the figure into an insult constitutes a victory of anti-festive values. (C) See Brand, 1, 267; Laroque (1991), 120–30; Williams, 2, 369–70. On ‘hackney’ meaning prostitute, see Williams, 2, 635–6; on colt as ‘one of a lusty disposition’, see Williams, 1, 274–5; Findlay (2010), 190–1. hogshead (A) A large barrel, a big vessel, containing liquids, usually wine or beer, a wine cask. Hollyband has ‘Tonneau, a tunne or fatte: m.’ Dekker, in Lanthorne and Candle-light (1608) has ‘To Couch a Hogshead, to lye downe a sleepe.’ (B) In 2H4, Doll Tearsheet refers to Falstaff as ‘a huge full hogshead’ (2.4.60–1) to reply to Hostess Quickly’s cliché on men and women: Hostess: [. . .] one must bear, [to Doll] and that must be you – you are the weaker vessel, as they say, the emptier vessel. Doll: Can a weak empty vessel bear such a huge full hogshead? There’s a whole merchant’s venture of Bordeaux stuff in him; you have not seen a hulk better stuffed in the hold. Come, I’ll be friends with thee, Jack, [. . .] (2.4.57–64) 234

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The word is in fact half praise, half abuse and sounds like a paradoxical encomium. It derives from Hostess Quickly’s reference to the ‘weaker vessel’ in a context that is full of sexual connotations, with such words as ‘bear’, ‘vessel’, and ‘stuff(ed)’. The use of the word is emblematic of the way Falstaff is transformed into a container. In 1H4, Hal, impersonating his father in a play performed ‘extempore’ (2.4.271), abundantly insults Falstaff: [. . .] a tun of man is thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts [. . .] (2.4.436–40) These images of container relate Falstaff to the carnival world of food and drink. In 1H4, Hal plays on the ‘head’ in ‘hogshead’ when he relates he was ‘With three or four loggerheads, amongst three or four score hogsheads’ before concluding that he can ‘drink with any tinker in his own language’ (2.4.4–5; 17–18). One can also hear the ‘hog’ in the ‘hogshead’ if one remembers that Doll also calls Falstaff ‘Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig’ (2H4 2.4.230) and that he is constantly described as greasy and fat. The word ‘hogshead’ suggests he is a ‘fat’ (ie a vessel). (C) Cowell reads: ‘Hoggeshead, is a measure of wine or oyle containing the fourth parte of a tanne [tunne], that is 63. gallons. anno. i. R. 3. ca. 13.’ homicide (A) One who kills a human being, a murderer. Derived from French homicide (twelfth century), from Latin homicīda, based on homo, hominis (man) and caedĕre, -cīdĕre (to kill). (B) Shakespeare uses the word rarely, and in his early plays. In 1H6, the term is used by Joan Puzel when she announces, trying to save her life: ‘I am with child, ye bloody homicides: / Murder not then the fruit within my womb’ (5.3.62–3). In R3, Lady Anne calls Richard ‘homicide’ (1.2.128), an insult which is echoed by the earl of Oxford at the end of the play, who refers to Richard as ‘this guilty homicide’ (5.2.18), and Richmond who calls him ‘A bloody tyrant and a homicide’ in his oration to his army (5.3.246). Hostess Quickly, who is well known for her malapropisms, comically and incongruously disfigures the word. When Falstaff threatens to cut off officer Fang’s head and to ‘throw the quean in the channel’, she exclaims: Throw me in the channel? I’ll throw thee in the channel. Wilt thou, wilt thou, thou bastardly rogue? Murder! Murder! Ah, thou honeysuckle villain, wilt thou kill God’s officers and the King’s? Ah, thou honeyseed rogue! thou art a honeyseed, a man queller and a woman queller. (2H4 2.1.48–53) She mispronounces the obviously too difficult ‘homicide’ three times and transforms it into words that paradoxically sound like terms of endearment, ‘honeysuckle’ (OED 6b) and ‘honeyseed’, illustrating the proximity and even overlapping of words of praise and 235

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words of abuse in the Bakhtinian carnival world of H4 as well as her ambivalent relationship with Falstaff. She finally exclaims ‘Do, thou hempseed’ (2H4 2.1.58), which is another variation on ‘homicide’, thus suggesting that Falstaff would deserve to be hanged, hemp being used to make rope for hanging. horn (A) The cuckold’s mythic adornment (Williams, 2, 680). The proverbial symbol of cuckoldry (Tilley, H622–H626). At first the symbol of virile potency, the horn has then been derisively considered as the imaginary attribute of the deceived husband. It seems that this image is originally based on an ironic meaning. Cotgrave suggests a possible link between ‘horn’ and ‘scorn’ through the French escorner: ‘Escorner. To vnhorne, dishorne, or depriue of hornes [. . .] to ruine, deface, disgrace any thing. Se laisser escorner. To suffer himselfe to be ridden, made a foole, vsed like a Gull.’ OED notes the similarity of form and sense with Italian scornare (literally to deprive of the horns excornāre, from Latin cornū, horn), hence to disgrace, slander, deride and scorno (verbal noun) dishonour, insult, contempt. (B) In Shakespeare’s plays, the motif of the horns can be found in numerous more or less bawdy jokes or innuendoes. Even if the word sometimes conveys the figure of a musical instrument, of the cornucopia or of the moon (the ‘horned moon’), most of the time it refers to the cuckold’s horns, as is the case in the long punning dialogue between Moth, Holofernes and Armado in LLL (5.1.44–64). CE shows how the word is essentially related to cuckoldry and may have a spectacular insulting effect: Dromio of Ephesus: Why, mistress, sure my master is horn-mad. Adriana: Horn-mad, thou villain? Dromio of Ephesus: I mean not cuckold-mad, But sure he is stark-mad. (2.1.58–60) ‘Horn-mad’, which is proverbial (Tilley, H628), means ‘furious’ in reference to the bull’s attack with its horns when enraged, but Adriana interprets it as an allusion to cuckold’s horns and thus as an insult to her as a potential adulteress. Mentioning the ‘horns’ allows the speaker to avoid uttering the fatal word, the worst of words for a husband (MW 2.2.283–4), the worst insult ever: ‘cuckold’. In MW , when Pistol alludes to Actaeon (2.1.106), the word ‘horn’ is commented upon: Pistol: O, odious is the name! Ford: What name, sir? Pistol: The horn, I say. Farewell. Take heed, have open eye, for thieves do foot by night. Take heed, ere summer comes, or cuckoo-birds do sing. (MW 2.1.108–12) It is hard to utter the word ‘cuckold’ but its more gentle substitutes, the horns or cuckoos, are odious too (see AYL 3.3.47–8). At the end of MW , Falstaff, who intended to cuckold 236

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Ford and Page throughout the play, appears on stage disguised as ‘Herne the hunter’ (4.4.26), ‘with great ragg’d horns’ (4.4.29), ‘with huge horns on his head’ (4.4.41). The motif of cuckoldry is thus made concretely present on stage through the horns that are an emblem of naivety, presenting Falstaff as a poor gull. Shakespeare chooses this emblem instead of a donkey’s ears, for example, to throw into relief the ironic inversion that characterizes the final situation. The one who wanted to gull the two husbands becomes a gull, a cornard (cornuto) in his turn. The dupe and the cuckold become one and the same figure. The emblem of the horns takes on a larger meaning. The cuckold becomes the epitome of the gull. Ford expatiates on the image of the horns: Mistress Ford: [. . .] I will always count you my deer. Falstaff: I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass. Ford: Ay, and an ox too: both the proofs are extant. (5.5.118–20) The word ‘ox’ usually conjures up the image of a fool. Yet here the meaning of the word is more precise as it is connected with the emblem of the horns, the ‘extant proofs’ of his being both fool and cuckold (ie deceived). Ford insists on Falstaff’s horns to make the comic reversal more obvious to the audience. Falstaff becomes the typical example of the character whose trick has backfired on him. ‘My horns I bequeath your husbands’ (5.5.26–7), he had said provokingly. Ford here returns the insult back to its sender. The horns are also the emblems of the Devil. ‘No man means evil but the devil, and we shall know him by his horns’ (MW 5.2.12–13), says Page, thus echoing the proverb ‘The devil is known by his horns’ (Tilley, D252). The horn seems to be an essentially comic emblem, but the song in AYL suggests that ‘The horn, the horn, the lusty horn / Is not a thing to laugh to scorn!’ (4.2.14–19). In Oth, where the cuckold is presented as a monster, the insulting image of the horns surfaces when Iago asks the Moor, who has just fallen into an epilepsy, if he has not hurt his head: Iago: How is it, general? have you not hurt your head? Othello: Dost thou mock me? Iago: I mock you? no, by heaven! Would you would bear your fortune like a man! Othello: A horned man’s a monster, and a beast. (4.1.59–62) Interpreting Iago’s question as an insult, the head being the seat of the horns, Othello ironically makes explicit what remained implicit, saying out loud what Iago only insinuated. (C) Rawson (199) explains the origin of the emblem as follows: ‘Horns are an ancient symbol of fertility and power, often identified with the crescent moon, the sexually potent bull, the rutting stag, the lickerish goat, and various gods and demons’. The word ‘horn’ has a gestural equivalent. Morris uses the expression ‘vertical horn-sign’ to describe the gesture which conjures up the image of the cuckold. Even if no stage 237

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direction in Shakespeare’s plays indicates this gesture, one is tempted to believe that the frequent verbal references to the horns could be accompanied by body movements: ‘The hand forms the shape of a horned head by keeping the forefinger and little finger erect, while the thumb holds down the other two fingers’ (Morris, Bodytalk, 111). Morris emphasizes the obscure origin of this sign and the meaning it conveys. He makes a list of no fewer than fourteen theories which could help us to interpret it and develops the four most convincing hypotheses: (1) Irony. The sign says, sarcastically, ‘what a great bull you are’, meaning the exact opposite. (2) Castration. Many bulls had to be castrated in ancient times to make them docile. The sign says ‘you have been symbolically castrated by your wife.’ (3) Rage. The suggestion here is that the horn-sign signifies the rage of a mad bull, which is how the husband will behave when he discovers his wife’s infidelity. (4) Upstaging. The horns are seen as representing the virility of the wife’s lover and their display by the gesturer is a reminder to the victim that his rival has been behaving like a great rutting bull with his wife. (Morris, Bodytalk, 111) Whatever its origin, it is clear that this insulting gesture could lead to death. In MW, Ford’s reaction to Falstaff’s insults, which were possibly accompanied by shaming gestures, only traduces in a comic mode, the offence such a sign could cause. The body has its own insulting language in which the hands play a crucial part. In 1644, in his book Chirologia, Bulwer evokes how efficient gestures can be if one wants to insult someone. On stage, the language of the body can become as subtle and efficient as the verbal language. On the hands, see Neill (2000), chap. 7, 167–203. On the figure of Actaeon, see Lafont, ‘Actaeon’ (2013). On horns, see Williams, 2, 678–90. See cornuto, cuckold, wittol. horse (A) Applied to men, the word connotes stupidity; applied to women, it connotes lustful disposition, one who is easily ‘ridden’. (B) In 1H4, Falstaff tells Hal: ‘I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse’ (2.4.186–7). The same kind of formula is used in TN where Sir Toby tells Sir Andrew: ‘If thou hast her not i’ th’ end, call me cut’ (2.3.181–2). ‘Cut’ refers to a cart-horse or to a short-tailed or gelded horse. These two examples suggest that ‘horse’ is the typical insult. In popular language ‘call me cut’ means, ‘insult me’ (see Tilley, C940). Ironically, Sir Toby does not keep his word to Sir Andrew and Falstaff begets lies that are as big as himself: thus they both deserve to be called ‘horse’ and ‘cut’. When Hal hurls at the fat man a string of abuse, he only abides by the rule that Falstaff has himself formulated: Prince Henry: These lies are like their father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene, greasy tallow-catch – (1H4 2.4.218–21) 238

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In the two cases above, the image of the horse is thus semantically empty and could be replaced by ‘call me names’. Beyond these proverbial formulas, the horse conveys multiple meanings. When a man is compared to his horse, it is often his intellect that is targeted. In TC , Ajax is several times compared to his horse: Ajax: [. . .] I will beat thee into handsomeness! Thersites: I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness; but I think thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? A red murrain o’thy jade’s tricks! (2.1.13–18) The expression ‘jade’s tricks’ was proverbial (Dent, J29.1) and refers to the tricks of an ill-tempered worthless horse or woman. The insulting comparison is then prolonged by Ulysses in an ambivalent way, when he exclaims ‘what a man is there! / A very horse, that has he knows not what’ (3.3.126–7). The image may suggest that he is strong as a horse but may also ironically carry the negative connotations that are present in Thersites’ words: Achilles: Come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight. Thersites: Let me carry another to his horse, for that’s the more capable creature. (3.3.306–8) The equine comparison is in keeping with the metaphor of the ass that is also applied to Ajax. Nestor too uses the comparison of man to horse in another way, in relation to Achilles, when he tells Ulysses that ‘if we grant the argument that mere instruments of war outvalue the military planners’ (Bevington, TC , 170), then ‘Achilles’ horse / Makes many Thesis’ sons’ (1.3.210–11). In MA , Beatrice uses the comparison of man to horse to attack Benedick in absentia: In our last conflict, four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one, so that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse, for it is all the wealth that he hath left to be known a reasonable creature. (1.1.61–7) ‘Lady Disdain’ here alludes to the little difference there is between Benedick’s intellect and his horse’s. She concludes their skirmish of wit by telling Benedick ‘You always end with a jade’s trick’ (1.1.138). The same insulting association is found in TN when Sir Toby, ironically using Sir Andrew’s reference to a horse, says in an aside about him: ‘Marry, I’ll ride your horse as well as I ride you’ (3.4.282–3), where the word ‘ride’ means ‘make a fool of’. The horse is synonymous with slowness and heaviness, two characteristics of beasts of burden, illustrated by Hotspur’s ‘he is as tedious as a tired horse’ (1H4 3.1.155–6). In CE , the word ‘malthorse’ (3.1.32) crops up in a string of abuse delivered by Dromio of Syracuse in an echo to Dromio of Ephesus’ string of names: 239

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Dromio of Ephesus: Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cicely, Gillian, Ginn! Dromio of Syracuse: [Within] Mome, malthorse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch (3.1.31–2) ‘Malthorse’ refers to the heavy brewer’s horse, hence to a drudge. Brewers recovered horses that were too old to be used for noble tasks. Dromio of Ephesus is thus called a drudge, which is in keeping with his status as a servant, a beast of burden, an ass. In Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour (1598), the image also conveys a lack of wit: ‘he has no more judgement than a malt-horse’ (1.3.132–3). All the other words referring to idiocy, it is very likely that malthorse has the same intellectual meaning. In TS , Petruccio insults his servant Grumio, calling him ‘you whoreson malthorse drudge’ (4.1.115). Oliver (TS , 182) notes that the malthorse was ‘considered the embodiment of slowness and stupidity because it plods its way on the treadmill, grinding malt’. In this play, the insulting analogy between man and horse reappears in a skirmish of wit between Kate and Petruccio: Petruccio: Women are made to bear, and so are you. Katherina: No such jade as you, if me you mean. Petruccio: Alas, good Kate, I will not burden thee, [. . .] (2.1.201–3) ‘Jade’ is a contemptuous name for a horse, a horse of inferior kind, as appears in H5 where the Dauphin says about his horse that ‘He is indeed a horse, and all other jades you may call beasts’ (3.7.23–4). A jade is a worn-out horse, which gives Kate’s words a potential sexual meaning. She questions Petruccio’s sexual vigour. When the word is applied to women, it usually has a sexual meaning. In H5, the analogy between horse and woman appears when the Dauphin praises his horse (3.7.41ff): ‘my horse is my mistress’ (3.7.44). The same terms can apply to horse and mistress such as ‘bear’, ‘bridle’ or ‘ride’ and the pun on ‘whore’ and ‘horse’ contributes to blurring the distinction between the two. In AC , Scarus insultingly calls Cleopatra, in absentia, ‘Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt’ (AC 3.10.10). The woman is presented as a horse that is probably ridden by several men. The image of the nag transforms Cleopatra into a whore and the terms ‘ribanded’ (decked out with ribbons like a horse at fair) or ‘ribaudred’ (wanton, perhaps ‘ribald-rid’) only reinforce the image. One finds the same word in 2H4 during the quarrel opposing Doll Tearsheet and Pistol, who exclaims: ‘Know we not Galloway nags?’ (2H4 1.4.188–9). Through this question Pistol suggests that Doll is a ‘Galloway nag’ and that any one can mount her. ‘Galway Nagges [are] a certaine race of little Horses in Scotland [which] indure the chase with good courage’ (Markham, Cavelarice, 1607, Book III , chap. i, 7, quoted by Humphreys, 2H4, 75–6). (C) On the horse, see Topsell (1607), 281–435. See Innes, 300–4. On jade as ‘overused whore’, see Williams, 2, 728. See hobby-horse, jade, nag.

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hound (A) A dog in general but also, more specifically, a dog kept for the chase. Related to the German hund, the word is often made more precise by prefixes or suffixes. (B) In 2H4, Doll calls the beadle who has come to arrest her ‘you starved bloodhound’ (5.4.27), a comic image that combines an allusion to the beadle’s thinness (the part was probably played by the clown Sincklo, known for his thinness, see Anatomy) and a thirst for blood (Caius mentions the Latin sanguinarius, 5) that hardly suits the character and the scene. In H5, Pistol calls Nym ‘O hound of Crete!’ (2.1.74) in an exclamation that is emblematic of Pistol’s bombastic rhetoric. Taylor (H5, 126) recapitulates the various interpretations that can be found of this expression, especially its possible Ovidian origins (Ovid, Metamorphoses, transl. Golding 3.247; 3.267), before expressing his preference for a proverbial reading: Perhaps more relevant is the ancient proverb ‘all Cretans are liars’, quoted by St. Paul (Titus I:12) referred to in several Elizabethan plays [. . .], and leading to the formation of words like creticism and cretize (OED ). If, as Johnson and Steevens (1778) note, ‘Pistol on the present, as on many other occasions, makes use of words to which he had no determinate meaning’, it is emblematic of an art of insults in which words do not need to mean something precise to act as insults. They can have an insulting effect without having a specific or at least identifiable insulting content. Another hypothesis is that Pistol is referring to Nym’s hair. Richard III (4.4.48) and Macbeth (5.8.3) are both called ‘hell-hound’, a word which is part of the devilish features of the two characters that ‘hunt us all to death’, as Margaret says in R3 (4.4.48). Macbeth is thus part of the catalogue of hounds in which he himself insultingly puts the murderers: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men; As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are clept All by the name of dogs: (3.1.91–4) Coriolanus calls Aufidius ‘false hound’ (5.6.113) to answer his insulting ‘boy of tears’ (5.6.103). He then ‘writes’ Aufidius’ ‘annals true’ by reminding him how he vanquished him in Corioles (‘I / Fluttered you Volscian in Corioles’, 5.6.115–16). (C) On Crete, see Sugden, 137 (quoted by Taylor, H5, 126). See Caius, Of Englishe Dogges (1576), which constitutes a catalogue of dogs and presents their main characteristics. See brach, cur, dog, mongrel, sheep-biter, tike. humidity (A) Moistness, dampness. From French humidité, derived from Latin ūmēre, to be moist. (B) In MW , preparing a trap for Falstaff, Mistress Ford tells Mistress Page: ‘Go to, then. We’ll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watery pumpion’ (3.3.35–6), meaning ‘we’ll treat him as he deserves’. When Falstaff arrives on stage, just after these 241

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words, the spectators still have this ‘unwholesome humidity’ in mind, which enhances the comedy of his entrance. Mistress Ford alludes to Falstaff’s fat body that produces sweat. Yet the abusive image also announces what follows, as Sir John will soon become some unwholesome humidity by being put into a buck basket and then carried to the ‘laundress’ (3.3.141) and thrown into the Thames. The play puts these insulting words ‘unwholesome humidity’ in action, as appears in Falstaff’s outraged speech: Have I lived to be carried in a basket like a barrow of butcher’s offal, and to be thrown in the Thames? [. . .] ’Sblood, the rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse as they would have drowned a blind bitch’s puppies, fifteen i’the litter; and you may know by my size that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking: if the bottom were as deep as hell, I should down. [. . .] (3.5.4–13) This passage tells the story of how Falstaff becomes an unwholesome humidity, showing how Mistress Ford’s insulting words are turned into an insult in action. Falstaff goes on harping on the abuse he has suffered when he then narrates his comic though traumatic experience to Ford/Master Brook. He tells him how they ‘Rammed [him] in with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins, that, [. . .], there was the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril’ (3.5.82–6) and then seems to gloss the expression ‘unwholesome humidity’ when he explains how he, ‘a man of continual dissolution and thaw’ was ‘crammed in the basket’, and carried ‘in the name of foul clothes to Datchet-lane’, ‘like a strong distillation, with stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease’. ‘More than half stewed in grease, like a Dutch dish’, Falstaff is ‘thrown into the Thames’ (3.5.88–113), thus literally becoming ‘unwholesome humidity’. (C) On pumpkin as a particularly ‘humid’, watery fruit, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 346–7. Hungarian (A) From Hungary. Hollyband has ‘Hongre, an Hungarian, a gelded horse, sometime a gelded man: m.’ Cotgrave reads ‘Hongre: m. An Hungarian; also, a guelded man, or horse; an Eunuch, a Guelding.’ (B) In MW , Pistol exclaims, probably just before or just after Bardolph leaves the stage, saying that he would ‘thrive’ (1.3.18) as a tapster: ‘O base Hungarian wight, wilt thou the spigot wield?’ (1.3.19). The term is ‘gongarian’ in Q, which remains unexplained. ‘Hungarian’ is part of Pistol’s exotic and out-dated art of insult and means ‘beggarly’, with a pun on ‘Hungary’ and ‘hungry’. Oliver (MW , 22) notes that ‘ “Hungarian” seems to have been a term of general abuse. Tilley quotes a proverb (from the seventeenth century) “He is hidebound, he is an Hungarian” (H810) and cites from Ray’s Collection of English Proverbs (1670), “To be hide bound, an Hungarian, a Curmudgeon”.’ He adds that Hart (MW ) ‘gives evidence for associating the word with the needy discarded soldiers returned from wars in Hungary’. No editor mentions the possible multilingual pun on Hungarian and the French hongre (gelded horse), yet it would make perfect sense in context as Pistol blames Bardolph for now using the ‘spigot’ (ie the tap of a 242

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barrel) as his only weapon. Leaving the sword for the spigot may well seem to Pistol to be a sort of ‘gelding’. Moreover Nym’s immediate comment ‘He was gotten in drink’ (1.3.20) [ie he was begotten while his parents were drunk], feeds this sexual reading as the proverb went that ‘Who goes drunk to bed begets but a girl’ (Tilley, B195). Q’s ‘His mind is not heroic’ also suggests that, for Pistol, Bardolph is no longer a man. Hydra (A) The poisonous many-headed, monstrous serpent of Greek mythology whose heads multiplied more quickly than they could be cut off and that was finally killed by Hercules. Elyot (1538) has ‘Hydra, a water serpent. It was also a monster, with whom Hercules faught: and as soone as he had stryken of one heed [head] of the monster, immediately sprange vp an other.’ The story of Hydra is told by Ovid in Metamorphoses 9.75–87. (B) Coriolanus violently reacts to Sicinius’ ‘absolute “shall” ’ (3.1.91). After calling him ‘this Triton of the minnows’ (3.1.90), he continues with the water metaphor: ‘Shall’? O good but most unwise patricians, why, You grave but reckless senators, have you thus Given Hydra here to choose an officer That with his peremptory ‘shall’, being but The horn and noise o’th’ monster’s, wants not spirit To say he’ll turn your current in a ditch And make your channel his? (Cor 3.1.92–8) The allusion to Hydra shows that Coriolanus sees the people as a ‘many-headed multitude’ (2.3.15–16) and ‘The beast / With many heads’ (4.1.1–2), a proverbial image (Tilley, M1029 and Dent, M1308) that recalls Horace’s Epistles, 1.1.76: ‘Bellua multorum es capitum’ (you are a monster of many heads) and illustrates ‘the play’s fascination with the image of the organic interconnection of the people into a single monstrous being’ (Holland, Cor, 251). The image of Hydra is in keeping with Coriolanus’ insult to Sicinius ‘this Triton of the minnows’ (herald of the small fry), which suggests that Sicinius only seems great because the people around him are insignificant. Triton is ‘a god of the seas, and trumpettour of Neptune’ (Palingenio Stellato, The Zodiake of Life, 1561) usually represented with a shell-trumpet, hence the reference to the ‘horn and noise’. The image of Hydra, a poisonous beast, may ironically be related to the ‘poison’ to which Sicinius compares Coriolanus’ mind. (C) See Hunter, ‘Shakespeare’s Hydra’ (1953); Patrides, ‘ “The beast with many heads”: Renaissance views on the multitude’ (1965). The image also appears in Oth, 2.3.299–300 and 2H4, 4.2.38. hypocrite (A) Derived from Old French ypo-, ipocrite (modern French hypocrite), from ecclesiastical Latin hypocrita and from Greek ὑποκριτής, an actor on the stage, pretender, 243

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dissembler. One who assumes a false appearance of virtue or goodness. Hemmingsen reads: ‘Hypocrite, is suche a one as in outwarde apparel, countenance, or behauioure, pretendeth too bee another man than hee is in deed, suche a one as counterfetteth himselfe too bee holy or rightuous, and is not.’ Cawdrey has ‘hipocrite, (g) such a one as in his outward apparrell, countenaunce, & behauiour, pretendeth to be another man, then he is indeede, or a deceiuer.’ (B) In 1H6, Gloucester, addressing Winchester, exclaims: Thee I’ll chase hence, thou wolf in sheep’s array. Out, tawny coats – out, scarlet hypocrite! (1.3.55–6) Both ‘tawny’ and ‘scarlet’ refer to the colour of an ecclesiastical livery. Burns (1H6, 146) notes that Winchester’s men’s tawny livery might suggest that his followers are wearing leather jerkins and as the word ‘tawny’ is often used negatively by Shakespeare, the expression is no doubt insulting. The reference to the cardinal’s ‘scarlet’ robe relates him to the world of prostitution and theatre that characterizes Winchester’s jurisdiction (see goose). Burns relates ‘scarlet’ to Revelation 17:3–5, which describes ‘a woman sit upon a skarlat coloured beast, full of names of blasphemie [. . .]. And the woman was araied in purple & skarlat’. In Geneva Bible, one finds the marginal note: ‘The beast signifieth the ancient Rome: the woman that sitteth thereon, the newe Rome which is the Papistrie, whose crueltie and blood sheding is declared by skarlat’ (quoted by Burns, 1H6, 146). Thus the insult answers Winchester’s threat ‘Gloucester, thou wilt answer this before the Pope’ (1H6 1.3.52). In MM , Isabella delivers a tirade in which she calls Angelo an hypocrite: Angelo: Isabella:

And she will speak most bitterly and strange. Most strange: but yet most truly will I speak. That Angelo’s forsworn, is it not strange? That Angelo’s a murderer, is’t not strange? That Angelo is an adulterous thief, An hypocrite, a virgin-violator, Is it not strange, and strange? (5.1.38–44)

The rhetorical, anaphoric aspect of the tirade makes each word sonorous and memorable. The accusation of hypocrisy is all the more ‘strange’ since the new Duke’s name, Angelo, suggests that he should be a paragon of virtue rather than of vice. Here insult and accusation overlap and sound all the more ironical since Duke Vincentio, to whom Isabella is complaining, is another arch-hypocrite in the play, the player-duke. (C) Wilson’s A Christian Dictionary (1612) relates hypocrisy to play-acting (see ‘Hipocrite’).

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I Iceland. See dog. idiot (A) A natural fool, an ignorant, foolish, stupid person. Cotgrave has ‘Idiot: m. An ideot, or naturall foole; a sot, fop, doult, ninnie, sillie cokes; also, an idle, or vnprofitable person; one that hath no charge, no function in a Commonwealth.’ (B) In Tit, Aaron the Atheist compares Lucius and, through him, all Christians to ‘An idiot [who] holds his bauble for a god’ (5.1.79). In CE , ‘idiot’ is one of the words that Dromio of Syracuse hurls at Dromio of Ephesus: ‘Mome, malthorse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch’ (3.1.32), all of which target a lack of wit. King John relates idiocy to folly and laughter when he alludes to ‘that idiot, laughter’ (3.2.55), that keeps ‘men’s eyes / And strain[s] their cheeks to idle merriment, / A passion hateful to my purposes’ (KJ 3.2.55–7). In MV , when the Prince of Arragon discovers ‘the portrait of a blinking idiot’ (2.9.53) in one of the caskets, the ‘idiot’ reflects his own folly and the image of the idiot, accompanied by the text, constitutes an insult to the fool who has not been able to choose the right casket: ‘Who chooses me shall have as much as he deserves!’ Did I deserve no more than a fool’s head? Is that my prize? Are my deserts no better? (2.9.57–9) Arragon feels insulted by the portrait of the idiot and thus ironically comes to the wise conclusion: ‘With one fool’s head I came to woo, / But I go away with two’ (2.9.74–5). In TC , Thersites calls Ajax ‘Mars his idiot’, that is ‘Mars’ idiot’ (2.1.52) and calls Achilles ‘thou picture of what thou seemest and idol of idiot-worshippers’ (5.1.6–7), thus debunking the figures of Ajax and Achilles as martial heroes, as appears again when he calls Achilles, in absentia ‘such a valiant ignorance’ (3.3.313). One may hear ‘Mars his idiot’, as ‘Mars is idiot’, which then becomes an insult to the martial world that characterizes TC . In TN , Maria predicts her letter will transform Malvolio into a ‘contemplative idiot’ (2.5.17) The most famous ‘idiot’ in Shakespeare’s canon is the one who tells a ‘tale’, ‘full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing’ (Mac 5.5.26–8). (C) Rastell explains what it precisely means to be an ‘idiot’: Ideot. Ideot is he that is a foole naturally from his byrth, and knoweth not how to accompt or number xx. pence, nor cannot name hys father or mother, nor of what 245

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age himselfe is, or such like easie & common matters: so that it appeareth hee hath no maner of vnderstanding of reason, nor gouernement of him selfe, what is for his profit or disprofite &c. But if he haue so much knowledge that he can read, or learn to read by instruction & information of others or can measure an Ell of cloth, or name the dayes in the weeke, or begette a chylde, sonne or daughter, or suche lyke, whereby it may appeare that hee hath some lyght of reason: then such a one is no Ideot naturally. inexecrable (A) Deserving in the extreme to be cursed, detestable. From Latin execrāri, to curse, based on ex and sacrāre (to devote religiously). Cotgrave has: ‘An execration, cursing, horrible banning, or blasphemie, a wishing at the diuell.’ Someone ‘inexecrable’ deserves all this. If one considers that the in- in the word is negative rather than an intensifier, then the word could mean ‘too bad to curse’. In Tim, Apemantus tells Timon: ‘A plague on thee, thou art too bad to curse’ (4.3.359), which reveals the contradiction of both deserving to be cursed and being too bad to curse. (B) The term is only used once, in MV , where Gratiano, addressing the Jew, exclaims: ‘O, be thou damned, inexecrable dog’ (4.1.127). It is emended to ‘inexorable’ (incapable of being persuaded) in F3 and seems to be an intensifier of ‘execrable’. The word is in keeping with the religious issues that are at the heart of MV and the tirade that follows is an illustration of the art of execration practised by Gratiano against Shylock: Thou almost mak’st me waver in my faith, To hold opinion with Pythagoras That souls of animals infuse themselves Into the trunks of men. Thy currish spirit Governed a wolf, who, hanged for human slaughter, Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, And whilst thou layest in thy unhallowed dam, Infused itself in thee; for thy desires Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous. (4.1.129–37) Shylock’s reaction to these insults shows the essential inefficacy of execration, as he answers: Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond Thou but offend’st thy lungs to speak so loud. (4.1.138–9) infect(ion) (A) Contagion, corrupting, disease that spreads and contaminates other people. Derived from classical Latin inficere (from in-facere, put, make) to dye, to stain, to impregnate, to imbue, to taint, to poison, to affect with disease, to corrupt. (B) When a messenger announces to Cleopatra that Antony is ‘married to Octavia’, she exclaims: ‘The most infectious pestilence upon thee!’ (AC 2.5.60–1) and strikes him. Infection is part of the rhetoric of cursing, which often amounts to calling infection 246

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to fall on someone (‘a plague on’, ‘a pox on’). Shakespeare also sometimes uses the word ‘infection’ as an insult. In R3, Lady Anne calls Richard ‘diffused infection of a man’ (1.2.78) to answer Richard’s seemingly amorous address to her as ‘divine perfection of a woman’ (1.2.75) in a sequence that is full of stichomythia. Lady Anne associates Richard with poisonous infection and transforms him into a source of pestilence. After spitting at him, wishing that her saliva could be poisonous, she continues: Anne:

Never hung poison on a fouler toad. Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes. Richard: Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine. Anne: Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead. (1.2.150–3) Spitting was esteemed a charm against all sorts of fascination. Richard ironically plays with the poetic commonplace that the eyes of the beloved infect the lover with love and he thus transforms words of hate into words of love. Siemon (R3, 159) notes that ‘proverbially, a person with an eye disease could impart it to a sound person by looking at him or her’ and refers to the proverb ‘The sore eye infects the sound’ (Dent and Tilley, E246). In MA , Benedick compares, in absentia, Beatrice’s breath to a source of infection: ‘If her breath were as terrible as her terminations there were no living near her, she would infect to the North Star’ (2.1.227–9). The image ironically answers Beatrice’s previous attack against Benedick: O Lord, he will hang upon him [Claudio] like a disease! He is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! If he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand pound ere ’a be cured. (1.1.81–5) The motif of infection appears again when Beatrice sarcastically comments on Benedick’s words to Claudio: Benedick: Only foul words – and thereupon I will kiss thee. Beatrice: Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome, therefore I will depart unkissed. (5.2.47–51) Both Beatrice and Benedick are presented as potential sources of infection through their foul breaths. In Cor, Menenius leaves Brutus and Sicinius, telling them, in a tone that one can imagine courteous: ‘Good e’en to your worships. More of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians’ (2.1.90–2). The image is to be related to the people seen as ‘garlick-eaters’ (4.6.99) and it is also reminiscent of Martius comparing the dissentious citizens to ‘scabs’ (1.1.161) and of the curse he hurls at them: 247

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All the contagion of the south light on you, You shames of Rome! You herd of – boils and plagues Plaster you o’er, that you may be abhorred Farther than seen, and one infect another Against the wind a mile! (1.4.31–5) Menenius’ insulting words also contrast with the patricians’ own view: for them Coriolanus is ‘a disease that must be cut away’ (3.1.296). The image appears in Tim in a flyting scene between Timon and Apemantus: Apemantus: Timon:

There is no leprosy but what thou speak’st. If I name thee. I’ll beat thee, but I should infect my hands. Apemantus: I would my tongue could rot them off! Timon: Away, thou issue of a mangy dog! (4.3.361–5) In this battle of insults, the disease imagery prevails and suggests that the whole world is subjected to infection. (C) On infection, see Iyengar, 176–80. On spitting, see Brand, 3, 259–63. See garlick-eaters. infidel (A) Unfaithful. Huloet has ‘Infydele. Atheos’. Cawdrey reads ‘miscreants, infidels, mis-beleeuers’. Hassel defines ‘infidels’ as ‘Non-Christians in both belief and behaviour’ (173). Turks, Tartars and Jews were known as Infidels. Proverbially (Dent, T609) ‘to turn Turk’ (Ham 3.2.268 and MA 3.4.51–2) means to betray, like a Christian renouncing his faith to become a Muslim, thus becoming an in-fidel. This association of Jews and Turks with ‘infidels’ appears in the third collect for Good Friday of the Book of Common Prayer: ‘Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels and Hereticks’ (quoted by Hammond, R3, 240). (B) In 1H4, Hotspur who inveighs against characters who are not on stage, exclaims about one who refuses to join his noble enterprise: ‘What a pagan rascal is this! An infidel!’ (1H4 2.3.27). Hotspur means that the ‘frosty-spirited rogue’ (2.3.18), the coward who has sent him the letter he is reading has no faith because he does not believe in the plan he is preparing. In MV , the word has a more religious meaning when Shylock is called ‘infidel’ (4.1.330) by Gratiano who, ironically appropriating Shylock’s previous reference (4.1.219), contrasts the Jew with Daniel, the old Testament prophet, noted for his wisdom (Ezechiel 28:3) and ‘held in great reputation in the sight of the people’ (Susannah 64). (C) Hassel, 173–4; Wilson (1612). See Jew, Turk. inhuman (A) Not having the qualities proper to human beings, inhumane. Cotgrave reads: ‘Inhumain: m. aine: f. Inhumane, vngentle, discourteous, vnciuill; beastlie, cruell, rude; barbarous.’ 248

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(B) In 3H6, York denounces Queen Margaret’s lack of humanity, at the thought of the cruel queen dipping her napkin in young Rutland’s blood: That face of his [ie Rutland’s face] the hungry cannibals Would not have touched, would not have stained with blood; But you are more inhuman, more inexorable, O, ten times more than tigers of Hyrcania. (1.4.152–5) The cannibals and tigers of Hyrcania are two embodiments of extreme cruelty. In Aeneid, 4.366–67, Dido accuses Aeneas of cruelty by claiming that tigresses of Hyrcania nursed him (Cox and Rasmussen, 3H6, 219). The presence of Northumberland on stage, who is moved by York’s speech, allows for a contrast between his humanity and Queen Margaret’s inhumane, ‘abominable’ (1.4.133) nature. Titus calls Chiron and Demetrius, who have raped his daughter and cut her tongue and hands, ‘inhuman traitors’ (5.2.177), in a sequence that ironically displays Titus’ own loss of humanity. The term is also applied to Aaron: ‘Away, inhuman dog, unhallowed slave!’ (Tit 5.3.14). In H5, King Henry calls Lord Scroop ‘thou cruel, / Ingrateful, savage and inhuman creature’ (2.2.94–5), a string of synonymous words that seems to be taken out of a lexicon. After a very long tirade, in which he describes Scroop’s treason, he concludes: [. . .] I will weep for thee; For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like Another fall of man. (2.2.140–2) Referring to the act of disobedience of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3), the ‘fall of man’ also expresses Scroop’s loss of humanity in treason. In MV , Shylock is described by the Duke, in absentia, as ‘A stony adversary, an inhumane wretch, / Uncapable of pity, void and empty / From any dram of mercy’ (4.1.3–5), a description that Bassanio echoes when he calls Shylock ‘thou unfeeling man’ (4.1.62) and that is illustrated by the recurrence of the dog and wolf images applied to the Jew. In Oth, just before dying, Roderigo exclaims: ‘O damned Iago! O inhuman dog!’ (5.1.62). Iniquity (A) The name of a comic character or buffoon in the old morality plays, also called Vice. The word is related to Latin inīquitās, from inīquus, in-aequus, uneven, unequal, unjust, wrong, wicked. Hollyband has ‘Iniquité & injustice, iniquitie, iniustice, wickednesse: f.’ (B) In 1H4, Hal, impersonating his kingly father, indirectly insults the old Knight, calling him ‘that reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity, that father Ruffian, that Vanity in years’ (2.4.441–2). As Scott Kastan notes (1H4, 232), the Vice of the medieval morality play, of which we find four figures here, ‘sought to corrupt the innocent hero’: this perfectly suits the relationships between Hal and Falstaff, the former being led to sin and corrupted by the latter, the embodiment of all vices also called ‘thou globe of sinful 249

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continents’ (2H4 2.4.285). In R3, Richard comments on his double use of the tongue by comparing himself to the same Vice: ‘Thus, like the formal Vice, Iniquity, / I moralize two meanings in one word’ (3.1.82–3). Siemon remarks that ‘Vices often equivocate and invite audience appreciation for “dexterity in deceit” ’ (R3, 251, quoting Spivack, Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil, 1958, 394–5). (C) See Spivack (1958); see Potter (1975), 129–38, where 1H4 is read as a political Morality play.

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J Jack/jackanapes/jack-an-ape (A) Jack is a pet-name or by-name, used as a familiar equivalent of ‘John’. The name being very common, a Jack is a man of the common people, hence a man of low status, a knave, an idea that one finds in the proverbial ‘Jack would be a gentleman’ (Dent and Tilley, J3). The word also refers to the figure of a man that strikes the bell on the outside of a clock and to a vessel for liquor. Jack can be a name for ‘penis’ (Williams, 1, 480), but also signifies a ‘small piece of wood into which a quill or leather plectrum is inserted so that when raised it plucks a metal string on a harpsichord [. . .] or virginal to make it sound’ (Wilson and Calore, 228). It can also refer to a quilted leather jacket. Thus the polysemy of the word allows for many puns and combinations. Jackanapes is a name for a tame monkey that plays tricks and it means ‘a coxcomb’, a ‘ridiculous upstart’. OED notes that ‘So far as yet found, the word appears first as an opprobrious nickname of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk (murdered 1450), whose badge was a clog and chain, such as was attached to a tame ape.’ (B) In TS , Hortensio, disguised as Licio, a music teacher, enters ‘with his head broke’ and complains that Kate has broken the lute on his head and called him ‘ “rascal”, “fiddler”, / And “twangling Jack”, with twenty such vile terms, / As had she studied to misuse me so’ (2.1.156–8). In the musical context of the scene and associated with the term ‘twang’ (which means ‘to play [. . .] in a petty or trifling manner’, OED ), ‘jack’ can be heard as a general term of abuse but also takes on a ‘musical flavour’ (Wilson and Calore, 228), revealing that Kate unwittingly sees through Hortensio’s disguise. In R3, Richard accuses ‘silken, sly, insinuating jacks’ (1.3.53) of filling the king’s ears with ‘dissentious rumours’ (1.3.46) in a sequence that smells of irony as Richard himself is this ‘sly, insinuating jack’. Richard goes on with insulting innuendoes when he delivers the aphorism: ‘Since every Jack became a gentleman, /There’s many a gentle person made a jack’ (1.3.71–2). He later uses the image of the jack to rebuke Buckingham, who appears reluctant to follow him in his murdering craze and reminds Richard of his promise: Buckingham: K. Richard: Buckingham: K. Richard: Buckingham:

I am thus bold to put your Grace in mind Of what you promised me. Well, but what’s o’clock? Upon the stroke of ten. Well, let it strike. Why let it strike? 251

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K. Richard: Because that, like a jack, thou keep’st the stroke Betwixt thy begging and my meditation. I am not in the giving vein today. (R3 Q 4.2.108–14) Buckingham is transformed into a jack of the clock but also into a knave that bothers Richard and keeps interrupting his meditation, a man of the common people, an illmannered fellow. Timon calls his ‘mouth-friends’ (3.7.88) ‘Cap-and-knee slaves, vapours and minute-jacks!’ (Tim 3.7.96), thus suggesting that his friends are unfaithful, fickle, or, as is noted by Oliver (Tim, 82) ‘contemptible villains who adjust their feelings by the clock, adapt their alleged friendship to the circumstances’. In 1H4, ‘Jack’, Sir John’s nickname, is emblematic of the ambivalence of a carnival world in which insults flirt with terms of endearment, in which praise and abuse overlap. Falstaff is called ‘Sir John Sack and Sugar, Jack’ (1.2.108), a combination of words that refers to Falstaff’s taste in drink and associates him with sweet wine. In the language of the tavern, nicknaming prevails, which blurs the limit between proper and common nouns (Bakhtin, Rabelais, 458–63). The word ‘jack’ epitomizes this mechanism as, in 1H4, it is both a proper noun, a by-name for John and a common noun signifying ‘knave’ (as in AC 3.13.98), but also refers to a drinking vessel or tankard, or to a quilted leather jacket (‘blown jack’, 1H4 4.2.48). Thus when Falstaff declares that ‘the prince is a jack’ (1H4 3.3.85), the phrase can be understood as ‘the Prince is a knave’ but it also suggests the proximity between the two characters: adopting Falstaff’s rhetoric of excess, Hal becomes another ‘blown Jack’ (4.2.48) in the play. ‘The prince is a jack’ may be read ‘the prince is a Jack Falstaff’, Lent linguistically becoming as big as Carnival. In MW , Caius, the French doctor, is a great user of the word ‘Jack’, which is part of his idiolect. He transforms John Rugby into ‘Jack’ Rugby to show he is addressing an inferior, a servant, a knave: ‘You are John Rugby, and you are Jack Rugby’ (MW 1.4.53), he declares, thus displaying a form of address he will maintain. The figure of the ‘jack’ reappears when he addresses Simple: You, Jack’nape: give-a this letter to Sir Hugh. By gar, it is a shallenge: I will cut his troat in de Park, and I will teach a scurvy jackanape priest to meddle or make. – You may be gone, it is not good you tarry here. – By gar, I will cut all his two stones. By gar, he shall not have a stone to throw at his dog. (1.4.100–5) The jackanapes was a tame monkey entertaining people at fairs with its tricks. Caius applies the word to Sir Hugh Evans, then swearing ‘By gar, I vill kill de Jack-priest’ (1.4.108–9), and calling him ‘de coward Jack-priest of de vorld’ (2.3.28), ‘Scurvy Jackdog priest’ (2.3.57). Then Caius insults him to his face: ‘By gar, you are de coward, de Jack-dog, John ape’ (3.1.75), playing on variations of ‘jackanape’. Ironically, Evans accepts to endorse the role of the jackanape at the end of the play, when he orchestrates Falstaff’s pelting: ‘I will teach the children their behaviours, and I will be like a jackanapes also, to burn the knight with my taber [ie taper]’ (4.4.65–7). 252

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In MA , Antonio calls Don Pedro and Claudio ‘Boys, apes, braggarts, jacks, milksops!’ (5.1.91), meaning that they are no men. The term appears in an extremely ironical situation in H5 when Fluellen, referring to the man (Harry le Roy) whom Williams challenged in 4.1, declares: If he be perjured, see you now, his reputation is as arrant a villain and a jack-sauce as ever his black shoe trod upon God’s ground and his earth’ (4.7.138–40). Fluellen utters these words in the king’s presence, ignorant (in contrast to the audience) that the one he calls a ‘jack-sauce’, meaning a saucy, impudent rascal, is the King himself. In AW , Parolles is described by Diana as ‘That jackanapes with scarfs’ (3.5.85). In Cym, Cloten expostulates against ‘a whoreson jackanapes’ who takes him up ‘for swearing’ (2.1.3–4), thus showing his characteristic obsession with rank and also showing his cowardice, as he insults the man in absentia. In R2, Richard compares himself to a ‘jack o’ the clock’ (5.5.60), counting the hours in prison, thus showing some self-contempt by the use of the word. (C) For the origin of the derogatory meaning of ‘Jackanapes’, possibly related to William de la Pole’s badge, see OED . On jackanapes, see also Wiles, 169. On the musical meaning of the word, see Wilson and Calore, 228–9; on the sexual meaning, see Williams, 2, 727–8. On jack as puppet, see Shershow, 76–81. See ape. Jack-a-Lent (A) A puppet, dummy figure or scarecrow that was decorated with the emblems of Lent and that was the target in a pelting game; a butt for everyone to throw at. A current figurative expression since 1555 (Dent and Tilley, J9). (B) In MW , Mistress Page affectionately calls Robin ‘this pretty weathercock’ (3.2.16), ‘my eyas-musket’ (young sparrow-hawk 3.3.19), and ‘You little Jack-a-Lent’ (3.3.23). The image refers to Robin’s small size but also probably (see Jonassen, 47) to his ragged clothes, as is suggested by Mistress Ford when she tells him ‘This secrecy of thine shall be a tailor to thee, and shall make thee a new doublet and hose’ (3.3.29–31). The word comes back when Falstaff becomes the scapegoat, the butt of everyone’s insults: ‘See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent when ’tis put upon ill employment’ (5.5.126–7). Jack Falstaff, the carnival figure, paradoxically becomes a Jack-a-Lent at the end of the play, a butt for every one to throw at, an object of collective abuse. The figure is part of the metalinguistic comments on insults. In 1H6, Talbot narrates how he was ill-treated and refers to the public abuse he has had to bear: ‘Here’, said they, ‘is the terror of the French, The scarecrow that affrights our children so.’ (1H6 1.4.41–2) Even if the word is not uttered, this description suggests that Talbot was abused, like ‘Jack-a-Lent’. 253

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(C) Nashe writes of Gabriel Harvey ‘For his stature, he is such another pretty Jack a Lent as boys throw at in the street’ (Have with You to Saffron Walden, 1596, Works, 3, 94). See Laroque (1991), 103–4. For a thorough analysis of the figure in relation to Falstaff, see Jonassen who relates the Jack-a-Lent to the cruel tradition of throwing at cocks, a blood sport for which a rooster was tied to a post and people threw sticks at the bird until it died. On this tradition, see Brand, 1, 72–82. On ‘Jack’, see also Shershow, esp. 76–81. jade. See horse. jester/jesting (A) A fool, buffoon; a professed maker of amusement, especially one maintained in a prince’s court or nobleman’s household. The word derives from Old French geste, jeste (feminine), action, exploit, romance, from Latin gesta (actions, exploits) and gerĕre, to carry on (war, etc.), perform. A scoffer. (B) The pejorative connotations of the word appear in 1H4 where King Henry compares Hal to Richard II , ‘The skipping king’ who ‘ambled up and down / With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits’ (1H4 3.2.60–1). When Hal repudiates Falstaff in 2H4, he significantly uses the same word, telling the ‘old man’ (5.5.47) ‘How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!’ (5.5.48) and commanding him not to reply ‘with a fool-born jest’ (5.5.55). In MA , Beatrice, in disguise, pretends she does not recognize Benedick to better taunt him and tell him to his face that ‘he is the prince’s jester, a very dull fool’ (2.1.125). Benedick is no Yorick –, described by Hamlet as ‘A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy’ (5.1.174–5) –, but a ‘dull fool’. Benedick shows that her words have an insulting effect on him when he reports the scene to Don Pedro and Claudio: She told me, not thinking I had been myself, that I was the prince’s jester, that I was duller than a great thaw, huddling jest upon jest with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. (2.1.222–6) Benedick the jester uses the word ‘jest’ to refer to Beatrice’s railing art, which emphasizes the gap between Beatrice’s jests, her verbal exploits, her martial linguistic feats and Benedick’s being reduced to the lows status of a ‘Prince’s jester’, an expression that for him is a ‘poniard’ (2.1.227). The use of the word ‘jest’ is part of the semantic field of war that characterizes the characters’ ‘skirmish[es] of wit’ (1.1.59) and is in keeping with their ‘merry war’ (1.1.58). The word ‘jest’ constitutes an interesting metalinguistic comment on the battle of words waged by Beatrice and Benedick, who, after challenging Claudio tells him: ‘I will leave you now to your gossip-like humour. You break jests as braggarts do their blades, which, God be thanked, hurt not’ (5.1.180–3). This stands in sharp contrast with his comment on Beatrice’s wit. In TC , Thersites’ art of abuse is described by Ulysses as ‘break[ing] scurril jests’ (1.3.148). In Tem, Caliban, lost in Ariel’s confusing trick and believing Trinculo has just told him ‘Thou liest’ (3.2.43), exclaims ‘Thou liest, thou jesting monkey’ (3.2.43). He addresses Trinculo but, ironically, it is Ariel who is the ‘jesting monkey’, the jackanapes in the scene, as he has 254

Jew

taken Trinculo’s voice. In H5, King Henry comments on the French insulting present (the tennis balls): ‘And tell the Dauphin / His jest will savour but of shallow wit / When thousands weep more than did laugh at it’ (1.2.295–7). The jest here is both an insult and a ridiculous martial feat. (C) On jesting, see Holcomb; Innes, 336. See ape, buffoon, fool. Jew (A) A person whose religion is Judaism. The Jews constituted the religious other to Christianity and attitudes towards the Jews were very often negative. An extract from Boaistuau’s Certaine secrete wonders of nature (1569) shows the negative view of the Jews that circulated in early modern Europe: This wicked secte of the Iewes hath from time to time so much disquieted and molested our Christian publike weale, that the Historians of our time haue attainted them in their writing of sondrie misdemeanours and abuses in lyuing, that whosoeuer shall reade their cruell blasphemies & abhominable execrations which they continually publishe and set forth againste Iesus Christ the Sauiour of all the worlde, in a certaine booke (common in their Sinagoges) which they cal Talmud, will iudge the same a cause sufficient, to exile & abandon them out of all the Prouinces and places where Christe is to be honored. (26v–27r) The early modern period caricatured the Jews as rapacious usurers, lacking Christian charity, and infidels (from the Christian perspective). The term is regularly used as a term of opprobrium in sixteenth century England. (B) ‘A Jew would have wept to have seen our parting’ (2.3.10–11), says Lance in TGV : this tells a lot about the negative connotations associated with the figure of the Jew, which in this case is related to cruelty and hard heartedness. Lance is describing Crab his dog of whom he says ‘yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebblestone, and has no more pity in him than a dog’ (2.3.8–10), thus associating the Jew and the dog. Lance, addressing Speed, associates the Jew with a lack of charity: Lance: Speed: Lance:

[. . .] If thou wilt, go with me to the alehouse; if not, thou art an Hebrew, a Jew, and not worth the name of a Christian. Why? Because thou hast not so much charity in thee as to go to the ale with a Christian. (TGV 2.5.45–50)

Carroll notes that even if ‘ale’ may be an abbreviation of ‘alehouse’, ‘to go to the ale’ may also imply that ‘the drinking was to take place at a church ale, a recurrent church festivity (hence a place only for a Christian)’ (TGV , 195). As church ales were often organized ‘to raise money for church repair, the poor’ (OED ), one understands better why Lance refers to a lack of ‘charity’. 255

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Obviously it is in MV that the word ‘Jew’ is the most directly insulting. ‘Jew’, ‘devil’ and ‘dog’ constitute a cluster of abuse that in the early modern period conveyed cruelty, inhumanity and envy and leads, in the play, to the image of the werewolf. The word ‘Jew’, which replaces the name ‘Shylock’ (Drakakis uses ‘Jew’ as speech prefix instead of ‘Shylock’) is associated with such negative words that, when Lancelet calls Jessica a ‘most sweet Jew’ (2.3.11), the expression sounds oxymoronic. ‘Jew’, ‘dog’, ‘cur’ and ‘devil’: when one hears these words in Act 4, one feels that they have been in the air throughout the play, that they only echo words that have obsessively been present from the beginning, in the mouths of numerous characters, becoming a form of collective abuse. Shylock is called ‘the dog Jew’ (2.8.14), ‘this currish Jew’ (4.1.288); Lancelet declares that ‘the Jew is the very devil incarnation’ (a comic malapropism for ‘incarnate’, 2.2.24) and Solanio comments, when Shylock appears: ‘Let me say “amen” betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer, for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew’ (3.1.19–20; 70–1), as if he were saying ‘Talk of the devil and he will appear’ (in French, the expression is ‘quand on parle du loup . . .’, talk of the wolf . . .). Thus the word is pregnant with derogatory connotations, which appear when Lancelet says ‘for I am a Jew if I serve the Jew any longer’ (2.2.105). The Jew is proverbially considered as a villain, a rascal, a demon, a heartless fiend: ‘the most impenetrable cur’ (MV , 3.3.18), ‘A stony adversary, an inhumane wretch, / Uncapable of pity, void and empty / From any dram of mercy’ (4.1.3–5). Bassanio exclaims: ‘Thou unfeeling man’ (4.1.62) and Antonio continues: You may as well do anything most hard As seek to soften that, than which what’s harder – His Jewish heart! (4.1.77–9) The Jew is opposed to the Christian, which is why Graziano calls Shylock ‘infidel’ (4.1.330). The witches’ potion in Mac contains the liver of a ‘blaspheming Jew’ (Mac 4.1.26). ‘If I do not take pity of her I am a villain; if I do not love her I am a Jew’ (MA 2.3.252–4), says Benedick in MA , thus equating villain and Jew, a term that Humphreys (MA , 142) glosses ‘faithless rascal’ and which, according to McEachern (MA , 219), many modern productions delete or change into ‘villain’. In 1H4, Falstaff uses the image in one of his numerous oaths: ‘You rogue, they were bound, every man of them, or I am a Jew else, an ’Ebrew Jew’ (2.4.172–3), the redundant ‘I am an ’Ebrew Jew’ meaning ‘I am forsworn’, ‘not to be trusted’. Bevington notes that ‘Shakespeare’s characters sometimes use the opprobrious term “Jew” to connote ingratitude, lack of charity or tenderness, and blasphemy’ (1H4, 187), while Scott Kastan (1H4, 217) explains that the use of the word, together with the possibly economic ‘bound’, may here point to a more specific meaning and refer to the Jew as usurer. ‘Jew’ is so often used opprobriously that it is not surprising that Shylock should complain about the insults that the ‘Christian fools’ (2.5.33) address to him and his nation: ‘He hath disgraced me, [. . .] laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, [. . .]’ (MV 3.1.49–51). ‘He hates our sacred nation’ (1.3.44), Shylock tells the audience, in an 256

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aside. Here is the expression of a specific kind of insult that could be termed ‘racist insult’. Beyond Shylock, or through Shylock, it is a whole nation that is insulted. ‘Cursed be my tribe / If I forgive him’ (1.3.47–8) draws the link between the ‘I’ and the tribe. Racist abuse both hurts the personal and the collective, the ‘I’ and the tribe. By hurting the collective, it attains the personal and vice versa. Antonio, Shylock tells us, ‘rails, /Even there where merchants most do congregate, / On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrift, / Which he calls “interest” ’ (1.3.44–7). The abuse is all the more hurtful since it is proffered in public, ‘even there where merchants most do congregate’. [. . .] You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine, [. . .] (1.3.107–8) To this tirade, Antonio answers: ‘I am as like to call thee so again, / To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too’ (1.3.125–6). The automatic, mechanical repetition of the same words gives them an obsessive dimension and shows that they become a hateful reflex. A few lines later, Shylock declares that he is ready to ‘forget the shames that you have stained me with’ (1.3.135). Yet everything suggests that the abuse he suffers cannot be forgotten. In 3.1, he remembers that Antonio was ‘wont to call [him] usurer’ (3.1.42–3). MV may be read as the story of a trauma deriving from racist insult. In A Christian Dictionary (1612), Wilson relates usury to biting ‘because the gaine which is taken for Money or Wares, in respect of lending, doth gnaw, bite, and wring him that giueth it; especially if he be a poore man, and bringeth home a bit or morsell from the rich man’. The connection between usury and biting, for which Wilson gives an etymological reason (in the Hebrew tongue), is illuminating when one considers that Shylock wants to use his ‘fangs’ (3.3.7) and bite off a morsel of a Christian. The word ‘Jew’ is sometimes used as a term of endearment in Shakespeare’ plays: in LLL, Costard exclaims about Moth: ‘My sweet ounce of man’s flesh, my incony [delicate] jew!’ (3.1.132). In MND , Thisbe (Flute) comically addresses Pyramus (Bottom) as follows: ‘Most brisky juvenile, and eke most lovely Jew’ (3.1.89). In the two cases the word is a source of comedy. ‘Jew’ is in these two cases probably a diminutive of ‘juvenile’ or ‘jewel’. But it is precisely because of its incongruous use that it is a source of comedy. The fact that the term of endearment should be a malapropism shows that the insult remains at the heart of the word. In MV , Jessica is called a ‘most sweet Jew’ (2.3.11). It is perhaps only for Shylock that this Jew, the one he is losing, Jessica, is a jewel. Yet by having Shylock call for his stones and riches when he loses Jessica, Shakespeare feeds the discomfort one can feel in this seemingly endearing but most ambivalent association of the Jew and the jewel. (C) On the association between devils and Jews, see Trachtenberg (1993); on the representation of the Jew in Medieval art, see Strickland, Saracens, Demons, & Jews. Making Monsters in Medieval Art (2003); on Jew and dog, see Garber, Profiling (2008), chap. 9, ‘Shakespeare’s Dogs’, 182–94; on insults in MV , see Vienne-Guerrin (2013); 257

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on the Jews in Shakespeare’s plays, see Shapiro (1997). On the Jew in MV , see Kaplan, ed., MV (2002). On the social aspect, see Innes, 337–9. Jezebel (A) A loose or painted woman, a whore (Williams, 2, 736). Originally she was the widow of King Ahab in the Bible. She decked herself in order to seduce Jehu and was condemned by him to be killed and devoured by dogs. The story is told in 2 Kings 9:30–7. (B) In TN , Sir Andrew exclaims against Malvolio, in an aside: ‘Fie on him, Jezebel’ (2.5.38). The use of the name suggests that Malvolio is playing the whore when imagining he can seduce his Lady Olivia by quoting the example of ‘the Lady of the Strachy [who] married the yeoman of the wardrobe’ (2.5.36–7). The Puritan is paradoxically compared to a lascivious woman a few scenes earlier when Sir Toby declares that ‘Malvolio’s a Peg’-o’-Ramsey’ (2.3.75). As Elam notes (TN , 217–18), there are two ballads to tunes of this title: ‘A Merry Jest of John Tomson and Jakaman his wife whose Jealousie was justly the cause all their strife. To the tune of Pegge of Ramsey’ (1586, published in 1637), in which the husband repeatedly says, as a doleful refrain, ‘Give me my yellow hose again / Give me my yellow hose’, a phrase that has a specific resonance when one considers Malvolio’s arrival in ‘yellow stockings’ (3.2.68– 9). The second ballad, ‘Bonny Peggy Ramsey’, is a bawdy tale of ‘a lusty lass’ and thus in keeping with the vision of Malvolio as a wanton Jezebel. Shakespeare’s text also suggests that Malvolio is the bear attacked by a group of dogs (2.5.7–9), as in a bearbaiting spectacle, which may also explain the reference to Jezebel. (C) On Malvolio as a ‘Peg-o’-Ramsey’, see Ungerer (1979). On Jezebel meaning ‘whore’ and ‘bawd’, see Williams, 2, 736–7. See Wilson (1612), on ‘Iesabell’ as ‘Wife of Achab King of Israell, whom she drew on to most horrible Idolatry’ and ‘A certaine notorious euill Woman, (not named Iesabell) yet bearing her name for likenesse in qualities; being a Whoore, a Witch, and Idolatrous; faining herselfe to vtter doctrine from the holy Ghost (as a Prophetesse) yet shee had it from the Deuill himselfe. [. . .] some notable filthy Woman, which seduceth and poisoneth many.’ See sheep-biting. jolt-head. See head. Judas (A) Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ with a kiss and received thirty pieces of silver from the Roman authorities for his betrayal. The story is told in Matthew 27:3. Traditionally, Judas was supposed to have hanged himself on an elder tree and the kiss of Judas (a traitor’s kiss) was proverbial. Judas Maccabeus (also spelt ‘Maccabaeus’, died 161/160 bce) was a Jewish guerrilla leader who defended his country from invasion and preserved the Jewish religion. (B) Shakespeare plays on the confusion of the two figures in LLL , where Holofernes, playing the part of Judas Maccabaeus in the Pageant of the Nine Worthies, is the object of the spectators’ scorn: 258

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Holofernes: Dumaine: Holofernes: Dumaine: Biron: Holofernes: Dumaine: Holofernes: Boyet: Holofernes: Biron: Holofernes:

[. . .] Judas I am,– A Judas! Not Iscariot, sir. Judas I am, ycleped Maccabaeus. Judas Maccabaeus clipped is plain Judas. A kissing traitor. How, art thou proved Judas? Judas I am – The more shame for you, Judas. What mean you, sir? To make Judas hang himself. Begin, sir; you are my elder. Well followed: Judas was hanged on an elder. I will not be put out of countenance. [. . .] (5.2.589–601)

Holofernes the Pedant tries to resist insult by differentiating Judas the betrayer from the worthy Judas and by trying to keep to his script. Yet, the bashing goes on and the spectators manage to put Holofernes ‘out of countenance’ (5.2.615). They finally play on the ‘latter end of his name’ (5.2.621): Boyet:

Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go. And so adieu, sweet Jude. Nay, why dost thou stay? Dumaine: For the latter end of his name. Berowne: For the ass to the Jude? Give it him. Jud-as, away! Holofernes: This is not generous, not gentle, not humble. (5.2.619–23) The ungentle spectators use the name Jud-as to call him an ‘ass’ in a sequence of cruel comedy. The Princess concludes ‘Alas, poor Maccabaeus, how hath he been baited!’ (5.2.625–6), referring to the bear-baiting spectacles in which bears were attacked by dogs for sport and persecuted for fun. Holofernes here is the bear, and the courtiers are the dogs. In R2, Richard mistakenly and ironically exclaims against his executed friends, Bushy, Green and the Earl of Wiltshire, when Scroop confusingly announces that they have ‘made peace with Bolingbroke’ (3.2.127): ‘Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas!’ (3.2.132). Richard compares his betrayers to the betrayer of Jesus before Scroop asks him to ‘Again uncurse their souls’ (3.2.137), revealing that ‘Their peace is made / With heads, and not with hands’ (3.2.137–8), as they preferred to die on the block rather than submit to Bolingbroke. (B) See Shaheen, 374–5; Hassel, 183–4. juggler/juggling (A) One who entertains people by stories, songs, buffoonery, tricks; a jester, buffoon. From Old French nominative jog-, jug-, jouglere, accusative jogleor,

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jog-, jougelour, later jougleur, Italian giocolatore, derived from Latin joculātor, from the verb joculārī, to jest. Also a wizard, magician or conjurer and, more figuratively, one who deceives and cheats by trickery. The term is often used with contempt. According to Williams (2, 749), ‘juggling’ may refer to ‘copulation’. (B) In CE , Antipholus of Syracuse shows how juggling is related to deception when he declares that ‘They say this town is full of cozenage, / As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye’ (1.2.97–8). This anticipates Ephesus Antipholus’ exclamations against Doctor Pinch whom he calls a ‘thread-bare juggler and a fortune teller’ (5.1.240), a description that is thought to have suited the Clown John Sincklo who was very thin. In MND , Hermia insults Helena: You juggler! You canker-blossom! You thief of love! What, have you come by night And stol’n my love’s heart from him? (3.2.282–4) The term may contain several meanings: trickery, deception and lust and Hermia ironically attributes to Helena tricks that are in fact performed by Puck who is the true ‘juggler’, conjurer in the play. In 2H4, Doll calls Pistol ‘you basket-hilt stale juggler, you!’ (2.4.129). Weis (2H4, 176) offers a tentative explanation: ‘She may be taunting Pistol about his spurious martial appearance, and his basket-hilt sword (basket hilts protected the swordsman’s hand). He is as much of a fake as the tiresome jugglers at fairs.’ Yet Williams includes the phrase in a series of quotes that show that ‘juggling’ means ‘copulation’. The term, like ‘cutpurse’ and ‘bung’, relates Pistol to the world of cozening and general roguery but also to harlotry, which is confirmed when he threatens to ‘murder’ Doll’s ‘ruff’ for this (2.4.132–3). Weis notes that ‘prostitutes wore big ruffs and often had their garments shredded in brawls’ (2H4, 177). Macbeth refers to the witches as ‘these juggling fiends’ (5.8.19), thus relating juggling and witchcraft, as King John does when he alludes to ‘This juggling witchcraft’ (3.1.95). In TC , Thersites emphasizes the sexual meaning of the term when he satirically summarizes the story: ‘Here is such patchery, such juggling and such knavery! All the argument is a whore and a cuckold’ (2.3.68–70). Bevington (TC , 207) glosses ‘cheating, playing tricks. Jugglers, like “patches”, were entertaining buffoons associated with knavery.’ Yet the context of the word may feed a sexual reading, the term ‘patch’ also having a potential sexual meaning, as it may refer to the face decoration that covers the signs of venereal disease (Williams, 2, 1001–2). In a world dominated by ‘Nothing but lechery’ (5.1.95), one is tempted to give this ‘juggling’ a sexual meaning, all the more so since Thersites later alludes to Cressida’s ‘juggling trick: to be secretly open’ (5.2.26), an image which is definitely bawdy. (C) Williams, 2, 749. On ‘juggling’ on the early English stage, see P. Butterworth, esp. chap. 2 (‘Feats of activity: juggling, tumbling and dancing on the rope’, 26–48). See harlot, clown.

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K kite (A) A bird of prey, a carrion-eating hawk, a puttock, hence a person who preys upon others, a rapacious person. The kite is emblematic of cruelty and associated with death. Armstrong (1946, 12) shows that the references to the kite generally go together with allusions to the bed, to death, spirits, other birds and food. The kite is a common scavenger for carrion in Elizabethan London but Harting (1864, 44) notes that ‘When pressed by hunger [it] becomes more fearless; and instances have occurred in which a bird of this species has entered the farmyard and boldly carried off a chicken’ (quoted by Knowles, 2H6, 246). Traditionally considered as a bird of ill omen, the kite also belongs to the world of falconry in which it represents cowardice. Gascoigne, in his Book of Faulconrie (1575), describes kites as ‘base, bastardly, refuse hawks’ (quoted by Ridley, AC , 136). Despised for its poor performances in falconry, this symbol of cruelty and death is also an emblem of baseness and cowardice. (B) In 2H6, Warwick accuses Suffolk and Beaufort of having murdered ‘That good Duke Humphrey’ (3.2.123) and uses the kite metaphor: Who finds the partridge in the puttock’s nest But may imagine how the bird was dead, Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak? Even so suspicious is this tragedy. (3.2.191–4) The Queen reacts to the insulting innuendo, to defend Suffolk and Beaufort: Are you the butcher, Suffolk? Where’s your knife? Is Beaufort termed a kite? Where are his talons? (3.2.195–6) The Queen ironically literalizes the metaphor to debunk the insulting accusation. Macduff calls Macbeth ‘Hell-kite’, in absentia, when referring to the murderer of all his ‘pretty chickens, and their dam’ killed ‘At one fell swoop’ (4.3.217–19). The bird is known for preying on chickens as appears in Batman vppon Bartholome (1582) where one learns that the hen ‘defendeth [her chickens], that they be not taken with Hawke, nor with Kite’ (Of an hene, book 12, chap. 18, 184v). Coriolanus refers to the world as ‘the city of kites and crows’ (4.5.43), possibly alluding to the plebeians ruling Rome after his exile and showing his disgust for humanity in general, that he compares to a world of scavenger birds. Kites are associated with other carrion birds, ravens and crows, in 261

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2H6 5.2.11, JC 5.1.84–5 and WT 2.3.184. The image used by Coriolanus is an indirect insult to the Servingman he addresses, who is obviously part of this base rapacious world. Hamlet, soliloquizing, blames himself for not having ‘fatted all the region kites / With this slave’s [Claudius’] offal’ (Ham 2.2.514–15). In R3, Hastings contrasts base kites with noble eagles: ‘More pity that the eagles should be mewed, / Whiles kites and buzzards play at liberty’ (1.1.132–3). Lear, addressing his evil daughter Goneril, exclaims: ‘Detested kite, thou liest’ (1.4.254), suggesting that she is preying on him and expecting his death, but also that she is unkind and monstrous, as appears in Leviticus 11:14 where the kite is listed as an ‘abomination’. Antony exclaims: ‘Ah, you kite!’ (AC 3.13.94), when he sees Cleopatra giving ‘favours’ (3.13.90) to Thidias, offering him her hand for a kiss. The word may suggest that the Egyptian queen is untameable, like the kite, as is the case when Petruccio refers to ‘these kites / That bate, and beat, and will not be obedient’ (TS 4.1.184–5, with a possible pun on ‘kite’ and ‘Kate’). Yet, it may also take on a sexual meaning, referring to one who preys on others, hence a whore (Neill, AC , 255). The ‘Detested kite!’ that Lear addresses to Goneril may also be heard sexually if we consider that she commits adultery with Edmund. The same sexual meaning can be found in H5, when Pistol wants to ‘Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid’s kind, / Doll Tearsheet she by name, and her espouse’ (2.1.77–8). The loathsome infectious disease known as the ‘lazar’ or leper was confused with the syphilis (Iyengar, 189) and the expression ‘kite of Cressid’s kind’ was proverbial (Tilley, K116). Shakespeare may also play on variations of ‘kite’, such as ‘kit’, ‘Kate’ or ‘cat’. Kite could be spelt ‘kit’ and ‘cat’ can be synonymous with ‘whore’ while ‘cut’ may mean ‘vulva’, allowing for many possible bawdy puns. Thus, applied to men, the word conveys cruelty but also baseness and cowardice while it takes on more sexual connotations when it is applied to woman. (C) In Batman vppon Bartholome (1582), the kite is described as a ‘ravishing foule, and hardy among small birds, & a coward and fearefull among great birdes’. ‘The longer hee liveth the more hee sheweth that his owne kinde is unkinde’ (book 12, chap. 26, 186r). See Armstrong, 12; Harting, 44. knave (A) Related to German Knabe (young male), the term originally refers to a male child or boy. Designating a boy or lad employed as a servant, hence more generally a male servant, a menial, one of low condition, the term has taken on a negative moral connotation and become synonymous with ‘rogue’, ‘rascal’ or ‘villain’, a person of ignoble status and character. Verstegan (1605) reads: Knaue. Knaue cometh of our ancient woord cnapa otherwise in the lower moderne Teutonic written knaep and in the higher knabe it signifieth a boy, also an inferior seruant, and somtymes a beadle, and beeing the vsuall appellation of boyes lackeys or such lyke, of smalle accompt; it is growne thereby to become a name of contempt, & also (through a strayned sence) to signify a dishonest man. (335) 262

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(B) Although it is sometimes used with affection (Lear calls his fool ‘my pretty knave’, KL 1.4.95), ‘knave’ is one of the key words of Shakespearean insults, a term that is so often used that it seems to become a vague word of abuse and to lose its specificity. But Shakespeare often gives the word an inventive theatrical life by integrating it into comic or ironic contexts that throw the word into relief. In CE , Antipholus of Syracuse calls Dromio of Ephesus ‘sir knave’ (1.2.72 and 92) in a context of comic misunderstanding. The word, like ‘slave’ or ‘villain’, refers to Dromio’s status as a servant but it is also negatively connoted and the ‘sir’ does not attenuate the insult. Ironically, Adriana applies the same ‘sir knave’ to the master, Antipholus of Ephesus (3.1.64). Hamlet throws the word into relief when he enigmatically tells Horatio and Marcellus a tautological secret ‘There’s never a villain dwelling in all Denmark / But he’s an arrant knave’ (Ham 1.5.122–3), which sounds like an absurd insult to the villainous people of Denmark. In 1H4, Hostess Quickly calls Falstaff ‘knave’ three times in a few lines (3.3.120,123,129), thus showing her lack of words, contrary to Hal and Falstaff whose language of insult strikes by its creativity. In 2H4, Shakespeare refreshes the banal word ‘knave’ uttered by the hostess through a pun, when Hal, in an aside, calls Falstaff ‘this nave of a wheel’ (2.4.255), an expression which both conveys Falstaff’s rotundity and his knavery. In TN , the word is used for the sake of comedy when Feste, Sir Andrew and Sir Toby decide to indulge in what Maria describes as ‘caterwauling’ (2.3.71): Sir Andrew: Feste: Sir Andrew:

[. . .] Let our catch be ‘Thou knave’. ‘Hold thy peace, thou knave’, knight? I shall be constrained in’t to call thee knave, knight. ’Tis not the first time I have constrained one to call me knave. (2.3.62–7)

Playing on ‘knave’ and ‘knight’, Feste reveals the insulting potential of the catch and Sir Andrew’s answer comically implies both that he has often sung this song and that he is so quarrelsome that he has often been called a knave. In TC , the word is integrated into a particularly comic sequence when Thersites meets Hector on the battlefield: Hector:

What art thou, Greek? Art thou for Hector’s match? Art thou of blood and honour? Thersites: No, no, I am a rascal, a scurvy railing knave, a very filthy rogue. Hector: I do believe thee. Live. [Exit.] (5.4.25–9) The insult lies in Hector’s answer, which amounts to calling Thersites ‘rascal’, ‘knave’ and ‘rogue’ and which ironically reveals that in the world of TC villains may ‘live’ and thrive. 263

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In KL , Cornwall calls for a precise meaning, which Kent does not provide: Kent: Cornwall: Kent:

No contraries hold more antipathy Than I and such a knave [Oswald]. Why dost thou call him knave? What is his fault? His countenance likes me not. (KL 2.2.85–8)

This exchange suggests that ‘knave’ is a word you may use against anyone you do not like. Oswald is a ‘knave’ indeed, as he is a servant but here Kent uses the term vaguely to just say that ‘his countenance likes him not’. The specificity of the insult will usually come from the adjectives qualifying ‘knave’ more than from the term ‘knave’ itself. Kent’s short answer is a summary of the string of abuse he hurls at Oswald a few lines earlier when Oswald foolishly fishes for insults by asking the question: ‘What dost thou know me for?’ Kent’s answer is a series of variations on the word: A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited-hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, actiontaking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one trunk-inheriting slave, one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition. (KL 2.2.14–23) This tirade seems to give some content to the word and explain what lies behind ‘knave’. Slave, rogue and knave are often associated and are examples of what Lewis (21) calls ‘the moralisation of status words’. Ironically, Cornwall, in his turn, calls Kent himself ‘You stubborn, ancient knave’ (2.2.124) before putting him in the stocks. When Kent tells Regan ‘if I were your father’s dog / You should not use me so’, she ironically too replies, using the very term Kent applied to Oswald, ‘Sir, being his knave, I will’ (2.2.133–5). In MM , Lucio addresses the old Duke disguised as a Friar: Why, you bald-pated, lying rascal! – You must be hooded, must you? Show your knave’s visage, with a pox to you! Show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an hour! Will’t not off? (5.1.348–52) Lucio then pulls off the Friar’s hood and discovers the Duke who comments: ‘Thou art the first knave that e’er mad’st a duke’ (5.1.353). In AW , Lafew tells Parolles: ‘You are not worth another word, else I’d call you knave’ (2.3.262–3), a comic anti-climax after the strings of abuse he’s just hurled at him. After Lafew declares to him ‘I think thou wast created for men to breathe themselves

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upon thee’ (2.3.254–5), the simple word ‘knave’ sounds brief but the preterition that is used comically throws the word into relief by pretending to omit it. In AW , Shakespeare also plays on the common association of knave and fool: Parolles: Clown:

Away! Th’art a knave. You should have said, sir, ‘Before a knave th’art a knave’; that’s ‘Before me, th’art a knave’. This had been truth, sir. Go to, thou art a witty fool. (2.4.28–32)

Parolles:

The clown is again called ‘knave’ by Lafew: Lafew: Clown: Lafew: Clown: Lafew: Clown: Lafew:

Whether dost thou profess thyself – a knave or a fool? A fool, sir, at a woman’s service, and a knave at a man’s. Your distinction? I would cozen the man of his wife and do his service. So you were a knave at his service indeed. And I would give his wife my bauble, sir, to do her service. I will subscribe for thee; thou art both knave and fool. (4.5.21–32)

The dialogue plays on the literal and insulting metaphoric meanings of the words ‘knave’ and ‘fool’, a double layer of meaning that is summarized when the King of France concludes, echoing Parolles’s equivocating words, ‘thou art a knave and no knave’ (5.3.249). Timon comments on Apemantus’ insult to his presumed friends, the Painter, the Jeweller and the Merchant: Timon: Apemantus: Timon: Apemantus: Jeweller: Apemantus:

Why dost thou call them knaves? Thou knowst them not. Are they not Athenians? Yes. Then I repent not. You know me, Apemantus? Thou knowst I do, I called thee by thy name. (Tim 1.1.184–90)

Ironically the answer to the insult leads to a second layer of abuse. (C) See Rawson, 227; Hughes (2006), 282; Innes, 364–6. knight-errant (A) A knight of mediæval romance who wandered in search of adventures and opportunities for deeds of bravery and chivalry. (B) In 2H4, the beadle calls Doll Tearsheet ‘you she knight-errant’ (5.4.23, ‘sheknight errant’ Weis, 2H4, 166). ‘Knight’ and ‘night’ being homophonic, the audience understands that what the beadle means is that Doll Tearsheet is a prostitute, one who ‘errs at night’. The Beadle uses this image just after Doll threatens him with ‘If you be

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not swinged [thrashed] I’ll forwear half-kirtles’ (5.4.21–2), meaning ‘I’ll stop wearing skirts’, suggesting she would become a sort of Moll Cutpurse, a ‘roaring girl’ wearing pants. The evocation-negation of the ‘kirtles’ may explain the Beadle’s choice of word. The insult is like an answer to Mistress Quickly’s ‘thou arrant knave’ (5.4.1), which draws an ironic parallel between Doll and the beadle. Knob/Nob (A) Nob is a short name for Robert and may also refer to the head. A knob is a bump, a protuberance, a wart. (B) In KJ , Philip the Bastard says about Robert Faulconbridge, in his presence: ‘I would not be sir Knob in any case’ (1.1.147). Knob is spelt ‘Nob’ in the Oxford edition where Braunmuller notes that Sir Nob is a contemptuous title and a nickname (128) for Robert. As the Bastard has just mocked his brother’s face, ‘Sir (K)nob’ may also be a sarcastic allusion to his face, ‘nob’ being a slang term for head and ‘knob’ referring to a bump or a wart, as appears in H5, in the description of Bardolph’s face which is ‘all bubuncles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o’ fire’ (3.6.101–2). knot-grass (A) A common creeping weed, an infusion of which was supposed to stunt the growth of animals and children (OED ). The weed itself does not grow high but rather keeps close to the ground. Markham’s Cheap and Good Husbandry (1614) has: ‘Knot-grasse is a long running weede with little round smoth leaues, and the stalke very knotty and rough, winding and wreathing one seame into another very confusedly, and groweth for the most part in very moist places.’ (B) The word only appears once, in MND , when Lysander insults Hermia in vegetal terms: Get you gone, you dwarf; You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; You bead, you acorn. (3.2.328–30) After calling her ‘burr’ (3.2.260), Lysander goes on abusing Hermia by referring to her supposedly small height while she has just shown her indignation at being described by the ‘painted maypole’ (3.2.296) Helena as ‘Nothing but “low” and “little” ’ (3.2.326). The whole sequence sounds like the battle of the short and the tall. The ‘knot-grass’ may be hindering because it hinders ‘growth’ or because, as it creeps low, it hinders the walk. (C) Fitzpatrick (2011), 245.

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L Lady/Lord (A) Terms of address referring to high rank, hence putting the other at a respectful distance. ‘Lord’ and ‘Lady’ may be prefixed to the names of personifications and used in nicknames. In general use, the terms are polite but when used with irony, they can have an insulting or offensive purpose. (B) In Rom, Capulet ironically addresses the Nurse as ‘Lady Wisdom’ and ‘Good Prudence’ (3.5.170–1): ‘a modern version of these two would be meddlesome Madam Wiseacre’, Weis notes (Rom, 283). By using this offensive antiphrastic mode of address, Capulet is trying to rule the Nurse’s tongue, as he orders her to ‘smatter [prattle] with [her] gossips’ (3.5.171). This form of address is also ironically used in the battles of wit of MA : Benedick: What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living? Beatrice: Is it possible Disdain should die, while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signor Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to Disdain if you come in her presence. (1.1.112–17) ‘My dear Lady Disdain’ are the first words Benedick addresses to Beatrice in the whole play, which seems to be the counterpoint to Beatrice referring to him as ‘Signor Mountanto’ (1.1.28) in his absence, a satirical name that both contains an allusion to the art of fencing – a montanto or montant was an upward thrust – and a sexual innuendo (‘mount-onto’). McEachern (MA , 157) notes that Benedick refers to Beatrice ‘as if she were a personification in a morality play or an allegorical debate’, which Beatrice responds to by using the allegorical name ‘Courtesy’. The disdainful woman was a conventional figure, which Hero refers to in the eavesdropping scene, to taunt Beatrice when she declares that ‘Disdain and Scorn ride sparkling in her eyes’ (3.1.51). Beatrice shows the effect these words have on her when, alone on stage, she says: ‘Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much? / Contempt, farewell; and maiden pride, adieu’ (3.2.108–9). Before the love trap, and after comparing her to the ‘infernal Ate’ (2.1.234), the classical goddess of discord, Benedick declares of Beatrice, in her presence, ‘I cannot endure my Lady Tongue!’ (2.1.251–2). He thus transforms Beatrice into a shrewish figure, an evil tongue, just after she has bruised him with her ‘poniard’ words (2.1.227). ‘Lady’ seems to be part of Benedick’s idiolect as he also compares himself to ‘Lady Fame’ (2.1.195–6), that is Rumour, ‘painted full of tongues’ (2H4, Ind., SD ). It is not fortuitous that the figures of ‘Lady Tongue’ and ‘Lady Fame’ should appear in a play 267

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where words kill Hero (at least euphemistically). Benedick later calls Claudio ‘my Lord Lack-beard’ (5.1.187) to suggest that he lacks courage and manliness. The jests about Benedick’s beard in 3.2.40–5 thus turn sour in Act 5. In WT , Leontes addressing Antigonus, her husband, refers to Paulina as ‘thy Dame Partlet’ (2.3.74) and ‘Lady Margery, your midwife there’ (2.3.158), two names that are given to hens. The insult rests on the tension between the noble ‘Lady’ and the baseness of the animal image. Again, it is the ‘Lady Tongue’ that is targeted. (C) On ‘Lady’ and ‘Lord’ as markers of rank, see Innes, 370–3; 384–6; on Lady, see Findlay (2010), 226–30; on the sins of the tongue, see Vienne-Guerrin, The Unruly Tongue (2012). leaven (A) A substance which is added to dough to produce fermentation; a quantity of fermenting dough reserved from a previous batch to be used for this purpose. Stanbridge’s Vocabula (1510) has ‘sour dough or leuyn Fermentum’; Huloet also reads ‘Leuen or soure doughe. Fermentum.’ (B) ‘Speak, then, thou vinewed’st leaven, speak’ (TC 2.1.13), says Ajax to Thersites in one of the play’s flyting scenes. As Bevington notes (TC , 182), Ajax ‘accuses Thersites of spreading contamination’. Whatever the version one chooses for ‘vinewed’st’ (‘unsalted’ Q, ‘whinid’st’ F, ‘unwinnow’d’st’ Theobald, ‘windyest’ Warburton, ‘vinew’d’ Johnson, ‘unsifted’ Oxf), Ajax means that Thersites is the leaven that contaminates or corrupts the whole lump. The insult is in keeping with the imagery of food and disease that pervades the play. Editors relate it to the biblical formula ‘the leaven of maliciousness and wickedness’ (1 Corinthians 5:8) which seems to perfectly suit Thersites the satirist, whose corrupting nature is also conveyed when Ajax calls him ‘toadstool’ (2.1.19), a term which designates a poisonous mushroom. It is also coherent with the ‘loaf’ that one finds in the puzzling ‘Cobloaf!’ (2.1.36) that Ajax addresses to Thersites a few lines later. As ‘leaven’, Thersites is a sour source of infection. (C) On the biblical use of the word, see Wilson (1612) who describes leaven as ‘That which secretly and speedily sowereth the whole Lump of Dow, altering the Nature of it. Math. 13, 33.’ and shows that ‘leaven, being but little, yet spreadeth it selfe through the whole Lump.’ He mentions ‘Corrupt and vicious Liuers, which with their company (like Leauen) infect others. Corin. 5, 6. Know ye not, that a little Leauen Leaueneth the whole Lump. 1 Cor. 15, 33.’ See Fitzpatrick (2011), 251–2. leek (A) In Latin porrum (poireau in French), the leek is part of the onion family, known for being dangerous if eaten raw. See Hill’s The gardeners labyrinth (86): ‘The Leeke eaten raw causeth vomitting and is venemous, this also putteth away drunkennesse, being eaten raw’. The leek is the emblem of Wales. (B) Leek is used to insult in H5, where Pistol asks the King (who is masked) to tell Fluellen: ‘I’ll knock his leek about his pate / Upon Saint Davy’s day’ (4.1.55–6). Doing so, he also potentially offends the King who is a Welshman too (his ‘kinsman’, 4.1.60). 268

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Then Fluellen tells Gower how he has been insulted by Pistol who ‘bid me eat my leek’ (5.1.9–10), saying that ‘It was in a place where [he] could not breed no contention with him’ (5.1.10–11) and how he thus had to delay his response to the abuse that was done to him. Fluellen reacts to the insult later by turning it against Pistol himself and having him eat his leek (5.1.21–64). The ‘leek insult’ is an illustration of the tensions between nations and the war of tongues that characterize H5, which the Irish Captain Macmorris signals when he exclaims ‘What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation?’ (3.2.126). Fitzpatrick (2007) notes that Fluellen ‘is insulted by Pistol’s suggestion that he eat the leek because the object has been demoted from noble symbol of Welsh pride to a mere vegetable’ (41). After insulting Fluellen by referring to the Welsh leek in disgust (‘Hence! I am qualmish at the smell of leek’, 5.1.21), Pistol is literally forced to ‘eat’ his words. Verbal abuse is turned into physical abuse, in which one can find a suggestion of sexual humiliation, the leek being a potentially phallic symbol (Williams, 2, 795–6). As Fitzpatrick shows, the abuse is all the greater since eating leek raw was considered as bad, even dangerous for health. By calling for revenge, Pistol shows that the insult is hard to ‘digest’ and is going to be stuck in his throat. (C) Fitzpatrick (2007), 37–44, ‘Henry 5: Figs and Leeks’; Fitzpatrick (2011), 252–3. leprosy (A) A disease (now known as Hansen’s disease) characterized by skin lesions which was confused with the new disease of syphilis. Early modern doctors attributed it to sexual contact or immoral behaviour. (B) Tim is obsessed with disease imagery, as appears in one of the play’s flyting exchanges: Apemantus: There is no leprosy but what thou speak’st. Timon: If I name thee. I’ll beat thee, but I should infect my hands. Apemantus: I would my tongue could rot them off! Timon: Away, thou issue of a mangy dog! (4.3.361–5) Apemantus suggests that Timon infects the whole society with his tongue and his foul breath. He corrupts the world with his evil tongue, with the maledictions he hurls at everyone, especially when, alone on stage, he curses Athens: ‘Itches, blains, / Sow all th’Athenian bosoms, and their crop / Be general leprosy; breath, infect breath’ (4.1.28–30). By prolonging Apemantus’ sentence with ‘If I name thee’, Timon creates a verbal boomerang effect and transforms Apemantus in his turn into leprosy itself. The image is completed by the allusion to the ‘mange’ (‘mangy dog’), an itching skin disease (hence the word demangerie in Cotgrave, meaning to eat, to itch, as in the modern French verb démanger), one symptom of which was loss of hair, hence evocative of syphilis. The word was used metaphorically to refer to syphilitic prostitutes (Bentley, 173, quoted by Dawson and Minton, Tim, 299). This association of leprosy and syphilis appears in Timon’s allusion to the ‘hoar leprosy’ (4.3.36), which contains a pun 269

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on ‘whore’ and perhaps a multilingual pun on French or (meaning ‘gold’). The link also appears in AC where Scarus inveighs against Cleopatra, ‘Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt, –/ Whom leprosy o’ertake!’ (3.10.10–11). The Queen of Egypt being presented as a whore, the leprosy here no doubt refers to a venereal disease. (C) On leprosy and lazar, see Iyengar, 188–90. On leprosy as an ‘emblem of sexual depravity’ and the ‘disease of whoredom’, see Williams, 2, 802–4; on leprosy as confused with syphilis, see Fabricius, 257. lie/liar (A) Wilson has ‘Lyar [. . .] A vaine, deceitfull, dissembling, vnconstant person, speaking otherwise then he doth thinke, & doing otherwise then he speaks, apt to broach and receiue false opinions. Such an one is euery man naturally. Rom. 3, 4. Let God be true, and euery man a Lyer.’ Puttenham calls hyperbole ‘the loud lier, otherwise called the ouerreacher’ (202). The ‘lie’ plays an essential part in the codes of duelling and in the challenging process. (B) In AYL , to prove that he ‘hath been a courtier’ (5.4.42), Touchstone tells Jaques how he ‘had four quarrels and like to have fought one’ (5.4.46–7). He satirically describes the art of quarrelling as the art of avoiding duels (5.4. 69–81, see beard). Touchstone concludes that he ‘durst not go further than the lie circumstantial, nor he durst not give me the lie direct; and so we measured swords and parted’ (5.4.84–6). After this narration, Touchstone shows that he knows the theory, the art of the lie, nominating in order the seven degrees of the lie: O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book, as you have books for good manners. I will name you the degrees: the first, the retort courteous; the second, the quip modest; the third, the reply churlish; the fourth, the reproof valiant; the fifth, the counter-check quarrelsome; the sixth, the lie with circumstance; the seventh, the lie direct. All these you may avoid but the lie direct and you may avoid that too with an ‘if’. I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an ‘if’: as, ‘if you said so, then I said so’; and they shook hands and swore brothers. Your ‘if’ is the only peacemaker; much virtue in ‘if’. (5.4.89–101) Touchstone’s repetitive speech reflects the treatises of duelling that were in vogue in the 1590s, especially Vincentio Saviolo His Practice (1595). Fencing manuals show that the ‘lie direct’, such as ‘thou liest’ or, even worse, ‘thou liest in thy throat’, was considered as the worst insult and could trigger off a duelling process. All the other ‘lies’ mentioned by Touchstone constitute ways of escaping the duel. Saviolo makes a difference between ‘thou liest’ and such formulations as ‘this is not so’ or ‘the truth heereof I take to be otherwise’ with which one may avoid the challenge. Saviolo enumerates the various types of lie in chapters entitled: ‘Of the manner and diversitie of lies’, ‘lies certaine’, ‘conditional lies’, ‘the lie in general’, ‘the lie in particular’ and ‘foolish lies’, showing that Touchstone’s speech is hardly exaggerated. This sequence is the satire of a society where courtiers could quarrel for the cut of a beard. 270

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Touchstone’s lesson, considered with Saviolo’s treatise, allows the opening scene of Rom to be deciphered, where it is only when Abraham says ‘You lie’ (1.1.59) that Samson and Gregory draw their swords, showing that the servants have integrated the rule which gives the lie a key part in the duelling process. Romeo, on the other hand, knowing that Tybalt is Juliet’s cousin, tries to avoid the duel and thus strives to avoid ‘giving the lie’ to Tybalt. That is why, when Tybalt provokes Romeo by telling him ‘thou art a villain’ (3.1.60), Romeo only replies ‘Villain am I none’ (3.1.63), bearing Tybalt’s insult with what Mercutio calls ‘calm, dishonourable, vile submission’ (3.1.72). At the beginning of R2, the duelling process is initiated when Mowbray says about Bolingbroke ‘By all my hopes most falsely doth he lie’, which is what leads Bolingbroke to ‘throw his gage’ (1.1.68–9) in defiance. A few lines later Mowbray again refers to him as ‘so foul a liar’ (1.1.114) before repeating the accusation, in a gradation: ‘as low as to thy heart / Through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest’ (1.1.124–5). These insults are at the heart of an opening sequence which is based on the battle between two contradictory versions of a story and which leads the audience to wonder who the liar is. The ‘lie’ is an object of sophisticated puns in the later conflict between Fitzwater and Surrey: Fitzwater: Surrey:

Surrey, thou liest. Dishonourable boy! That lie shall lie so heavy on my sword That it shall render vengeance and revenge Till thou the lie-giver and that lie do lie In earth as quiet as thy father’s skull, (4.1.66–70)

The lie, which is uttered innumerable times in this scene, triggers off a series of puns and leads Surrey to ‘throw his gage’. Fitzwater, in a scene that verges on comic excess, repeats the lie again and again: I dare meet Surrey in a wilderness And spit upon him, whilst I say he lies, And lies, and lies. (4.1.75–7) In TN , Sir Andrew’s letter of challenge that is read aloud by Sir Toby, reveals that Aguecheek has a very superficial knowledge of duelling codes: ‘Thou com’st to the Lady Olivia, and in my sight she uses thee kindly. But thou liest in thy throat; that is not the matter I challenge thee for’ (3.4.150–2). In 1H4, Hal accuses Falstaff of lying: ‘These lies are like their father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable’ (2.4.218–19). This is reminiscent of Puttenham’s description of hyperbole as the ‘loud liar’ (202): Falstaff is the loud liar; he is as hyperbolic in his body as in his lies. Hal’s words are also evocative of the Devil, who is proverbially the father of lies (John 8:44 and Dent, D241.1). One finds the same idea in MW where Ford addresses Falstaff as ‘one that is as slanderous as Satan’ 271

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(5.5.153). Etymologically, the word ‘devil’, derived from Latin diabolus and Greek διάβολος, meaning ‘accuser, calumniator, slanderer, traducer’ (OED ), refers to calumny, evil lying. When Falstaff is called ‘that father Ruffian’ (1H4 2.4.441–2), the term may suggest that he is ‘a brutal, boisterous, mischievous fellow’ (Schmidt), but it also contains an allusion to Satan, as ‘ruffian’ could be a slang term for ‘fiend’ or ‘devil’ (see OED ‘ruffin’). Macbeth calls the messenger who brings him bad news ‘Liar, and slave!’ (Mac 5.5.35) before doubting the ‘equivocation of the fiend, / That lies like truth’ (5.5.43–4). In AW , Helena calls Parolles, in an aside, a ‘notorious liar’ (1.1.101) while the second lord describes him, in absentia, as an ‘infinite and endless liar’ (3.6.9–10). By making a character named Parolles an arch-liar, Shakespeare suggests that language itself, the tongue itself is a ‘common liar’ (AC 1.1.61), as if lying were inscribed in the very act of speaking. When Aufidius calls Coriolanus ‘thou boy of tears’ (Cor 5.6.103), the Roman soldier exclaims: ‘Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart / Too great for what contains it’ (5.6.104–5). He then asks the lords around him to give ‘this cur the lie’, to ‘thrust the lie unto him’ (5.6.108–11), in vain. In 5.2, the 1 Watchman had punned on ‘liar’ and ‘lier’, provocatively suggesting that Menenius is Coriolanus’ liar/lier (5.2.25–34), so that when we hear the word in Coriolanus’ mouth, it may carry some sexual overtones and suggest the ambivalent love/hate relationship that binds the two men. In WT , Leontes angrily exclaims: ‘You’re liars all!’ (2.3.144), which reveals his madness rather than his wisdom. TS offers a comic scene in which Grumio parodies the challenging codes and the lie, by quarrelling with the tailor on the futile question of the ‘bill’: Grumio:

Tailor: Petruccio: Grumio:

Face not me. Thou hast braved many men; brave not me. I will neither be faced nor braved. I say unto thee, I bid thy master cut out the gown, but I did not bid him cut it to pieces. Ergo, thou liest. Why, here is the note of the fashion to testify. Read it. The note lies in’s throat if he say I said so. (4.3.126–32)

The comic dimension of the scene comes from the discrepancy between the high-flown duelling vocabulary and the ridiculous object of the quarrel. (C) On duelling practices in Europe, see Billacois, esp. 78–80; Edelman (1992); Markku Peltonen, ‘ “Civilized with death”: Civility, Duelling and Honour in Elizabethan England’ in Early Modern Civil Discourses (2003); The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness and Honour (2003). On the lie in duelling codes, see Saviolo His Practice in two books (1595). In a chapter entitled ‘What the reason is, that the partie unto whom the lie is given ought to become Challenger: and of the nature of Lies’, Saviolo explains why the lie is essential (S). On insults and duelling codes, see VienneGuerrin (2000). See devil, Ruffian, Satan. 272

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little/low (A) Small in size, short in stature, hence contemptible. (B) In R3, Richard and his young nephew have a keen exchange of wit: Richard: York: Richard: York: Prince:

What, would you have my weapon, little lord? I would, that I might thank you as you call me. How? Little. My lord of York will still be cross in talk. (3.1.122–6)

York reveals the insulting potential of the word, which he interprets as meaning ‘paltry’, contemptible (OED I.9). In MND , ‘little’ is at the heart of the quarrel between Hermia and Helena, which offers a series of variations on the theme of small size: Helena: Hermia:

Fie, fie, you counterfeit! You puppet you! ‘Puppet’? Why, so? Ay, that way goes the game! Now I perceive that she hath made compare Between our statures; she hath urg’d her height; And with her personage, her tall personage, Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail’d with him. And are you grown so high in his esteem Because I am so dwarfish and so low? How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak: How low am I? I am not yet so low But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes. (3.2.288–98)

The carnivalesque battle between the tall and the short continues a few lines later: Helena: Hermia:

[. . .] though she be but little, she is fierce. ‘Little’ again? Nothing but ‘low’ and ‘little’? Why will you suffer her to flout me thus? Let me come to her! (3.2.325–8)

Hermia’s reaction shows how the words ‘low’ or ‘lower’ (3.2.305) have an insulting effect on her. Instead of helping her, Lysander continues to harp on her short stature when, in his turn, he calls her: ‘you dwarf; / You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; / You bead, you acorn’ (3.2.328–30). In MA , Don Pedro conveys the insulting potential of the word, when he narrates how Beatrice trans-shaped Benedick’s virtues: ‘I’ll tell thee how Beatrice praised thy wit the other day. I said thou hadst a fine wit. “True,” said she, “a fine little one” ’ (5.1.156–8). A ‘little’ can transform praise into abuse. In KJ , Constance plays on the word to insult Austria: ‘thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward! / Thou little valiant, great in villainy! [. . .]’ (KJ 3.1.41–2). 273

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‘Little’ is also used to transform insults into terms of endearment, as is the case when, in 2H4, Doll Tearsheet calls Falstaff ‘you whoreson little valiant villain, you’ (2.4.208), or ‘Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig’ (2.4.230). (C) One finds the same type of insult in Lyly’s Endymion in a quarrel scene between Favilla and Scintilla: Favilla:

Because your pantables be higher with cork, therefore your feet must needs be higher in the insteps. You will be mine elder because you stand upon a stool and I on the floor. [. . .] Scintilla: I am not angry but it spited me to see how short she was. (2.2.30 et seq.) liver (A) The bodily organ regarded as the seat of emotions, especially of courage. If it was pale, that is, if it lacked blood, it was a sign of cowardice. (B) The adjectives ‘lily-livered’, ‘milk-livered’, ‘white-livered’ and ‘pigeon-livered’ express cowardice. In TN , Sir Toby describes Sir Andrew Aguecheek as a coward: ‘For Andrew, if he were opened and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I’ll eat the rest of th’anatomy’ (3.2.58–60). As Elam notes (TN , 158), his very name, Aguecheek, suggests leanness, paleness and cowardice. This lack of courage is illustrated in the duelling scene in 3.4. Hamlet curses himself for being ‘pigeon-livered’ and lacking ‘gall’ (2.2.512). Pigeons were considered as mild and gentle and lacking gall, that is bile, choler. In KL , Kent calls Oswald ‘a lily-livered, action-taking knave’ (2.2.16–17) and Goneril calls her husband, Albany, ‘Milk-livered man’ (4.2.51). ‘Lily’ is applied to things of exceptional whiteness and ‘as white as a lily’ was proverbial (Tilley, L296). Milk is associated with effeminacy and Albany’s name is evocative of whiteness, albus meaning ‘white’ in classical Latin. In MV , Bassanio refers to ‘cowards [. . .] / Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk’ (3.2.83–6). Macbeth inveighs against his servant’s fearful face: Go, prick thy face, and over-red thy fear, Thou lily-liver’d boy. What soldiers, patch? Death of thy soul! those linen cheeks of thine Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face? (5.3.14–17) The whiteness of cowardice is also present in ‘milksop’ (R3 5.3.325, MA 5.1.91). Whiteness being associated with fear and cowardice, the insult ‘sanguine coward’ (1H4 2.4.235–6) that Hal addresses Falstaff sounds clearly oxymoronic. (C) Iyengar 190–1; 193–5; 261. See Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), I, 148 (‘Division of the Body, Humours, Spirits’). See coward, goose, milksop. loggerhead. See head. 274

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loon/lown (A) A worthless person, a rogue, a scamp. Of obscure origin. (B) Macbeth expostulates against his fearful servant ‘The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon!’ (Mac 5.3.11). Brooke (Mac, 198) explains that originally the word meant ‘rogue or idler’ but it was also used ‘for anyone of low condition (the opposite of kings) on social rank, or in intelligence, or in age: hence fool or clown, and boy or lad.’ There may also be a pun on ‘loon’ and French lune or Latin luna meaning ‘moon’ (hence ‘lunatic’), the whiteness of which is in keeping with the servant’s cream-face or ‘goose look’ (5.3.12), contrasted with the blackening devil conjured up by Macbeth. In Per, Bolt refers to ‘lord and loon’ (4.5.25), meaning men both high and low. Per Q’s spelling ‘Lowne’ may indicate the pronunciation. In Oth, ‘lown’ rhymes with ‘crown’ (2.3.88) when Iago sings how King Stephen’s breeches ‘cost him but a crown, / He held them sixpence too dear, / With that he called the tailor lown’ (2.3.86–8). lousy (A) Full of lice, hence dirty, filthy, vile. Florio (1598) has ‘Pediculare, the lousie disease, that is when the bodie is pestred and full of lice and nits.’ Cotgrave (coquin) associates the word with ‘vagabond that begs from door to door’. Phthiriasis is also called the ‘lowsie disease’ (see Baret, Lowse), or the lousy sickness or evil. (B) In H5 Fluellen uses the word several times, together with ‘scald’ and ‘scurvy’ when he humiliates Pistol by making him eat his leek. After calling him ‘the rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, pragging [bragging with a Welsh accent] knave Pistol’ in absentia (5.1.5–6), Fluellen addresses Pistol face to face as ‘you scurvy, lousy knave’ (5.1.17–18), ‘scurvy, lousy knave’ (5.1.22). The word is part of Fluellen’s idiolect as he also calls Williams ‘an arrant, rascally, beggarly, lousy knave’ (4.8.35–6). In the leek sequence, the insult sounds comic as Fluellen uses it together with very polite forms of address such as ‘God pless you’ and ‘I peseech you heartily’ (5.1.17–18; 22). The word is evocative of the army of beggars and vagabonds of which Pistol is part. In AW (4.3.190) the word is associated with a military ‘camp’, where, as Snyder notes, ‘literal lousiness is prevalent’ (AW , 182). As Iyengar (196) notes, ‘at close confines in an army camp, soldiers suffered notoriously from head lice and also crab lice from contact with prostitutes or campfollowers’. The louse is an emblem of baseness and vileness, as appears when Thersites declares: ‘I care not to be the louse of a lazar so I were not Melenaus’ (TC 5.1.63–4). A ‘lazar’ is a leper, in reference to the biblical story of Dives (the rich man) and Lazarus (the poor man), the latter character being thought to be a leper. (C) On louse, see Iyengar, 195–6. See nit. lout (A) An awkward ill-mannered fellow; a bumpkin, clown (OED ). Hollyband has ‘Lourdault, a loute, a lob, a groutnoll’. In Florio (1598) ‘lout’ is found in the definitions of brigante, cucchino, musorone, poltronaccio, ribaldo, and appears as synonymous with ‘varlet’, ‘knave’ and ‘rascal’. The term is probably connected with the verb ‘lout’ which means both ‘to bow in obedience’ and ‘to sneak’ or ‘lurk’ and thus is related to general baseness. The word is spelt ‘lowt’ in Cotgrave. 275

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(B) In WT , Leontes inveighs against Camillo: ‘you lie, you lie! / I say thou liest, Camillo, and I hate thee, / Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave’ (1.2.297–9). Pitcher glosses ‘stupid bumpkin’ (WT , 175), but the term may also be connected with the accusation of lying that precedes, suggesting that Camillo is a cheating, lurking fellow (OED ‘lout’ vb2). One finds the same idea when Proteus declares that ‘’tis no trusting to yond foolish lout’ (TGV 4.4.64). The word appears in Cym 5.2.9 and in KJ when the bastard says in an aside, of Lewis, that ‘this is pity’ that ‘there should be / In such a love so vile a lout as he’ (2.1.508–10). Later, the bastard uses the same term ironically to insult Austria: Austria: Do so, King Philip; hang no more in doubt. Bastard: Hang nothing but a calve’s-skin, most sweet lout. (KJ 3.1.145–6) Braunmuller rightly notes that the rhyme of ‘lout’ and ‘doubt’ ‘stiffens the insult’ (KJ , 181) that the bastard has been harping on with the repetition of ‘calve’s-skin’ (see ass and recreant). The expression ‘most sweet lout’ sounds paradoxical. lozel (A) Also spelt ‘losel’. Worthless fellow, good-for-nothing. Related to ‘lose’, the etymological sense is ‘one who is lost’, ‘a son of perdition’ (OED ). Verstegan (335) has ‘A Losel is one that hath lost neglected or cast his own good and welfare, and so is become lewd & carelesse of credit and honesty.’ (B) Just used once in Shakespeare’s plays. In WT , Leontes calls Antigonus ‘lozel’ (2.3.107) because he does not manage to rule his wife’s tongue. The term, through its connection with ‘lose’, is proleptic of the part that Antigonus plays with the babe Perdita. Antigonus is the character who abandons, ‘loses’ Perdita (‘counted lost for ever’, 3.3.32) and is thus a ‘lozel’ indeed, in the etymological sense of the word. (C) Compare ‘ye losel, lither and lazy’ (Gammer Gurton’s Needle, 5.2.232) and ‘Losels ye are, and thieves’, ‘Fie, losels and liars!’ (The Wakefield Pageant of Herod the Great, 154; 163–4, in Everyman and Medieval Miracle Plays, ed. A. C. Cawley, 109). lubber (A) Clumsy lout, stupid fellow, losel, jolthead. It possibly belongs to an adoption of Old French lobeor, swindler, parasite, and may be etymologically related to ‘lob’, related to Danish lobbes, meaning ‘clown, bumpkin’ (OED , ‘lob’). (B) In TGV , a dialogue between Lance and Speed leads to an unexpected insulting effect: Speed:

[. . .] But Lance, how sayst thou that my master is become a notable lover? Lance: I never knew him otherwise. Speed: Than how? Lance: A notable lubber, as thou reportest him to be.

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Speed: Lance:

Why, thou whoreson ass, thou mistak’st me. Why, fool, I meant not thee, I meant thy master. (2.5.36–42)

Lance, the clownish servant to Proteus, plays on ‘lover’ and ‘lubber’, suggesting that love means folly, in a sequence that reveals how insults rest on the reception of words as much as on their emission. In TN , Feste refers to ‘this great lubber the world’ (4.1.13), meaning a world of fools. In TC , Ulysses mentions the ‘lubber Ajax’ (3.3.139), which contributes to the portrait of Ajax as a fool. In KL , Kent insults Oswald, after tripping him: ‘Come, sir, arise, away, I’ll teach you differences. Away, away, if you will measure your lubber’s length again, tarry’ (1.4.88–90). Kent threatens to trip Oswald again, so that one could ‘measure his length’ on the floor. Lucifer (A) Satan, the Devil of Hell. The proud rebellious archangel who was expelled from heaven and was then called the Devil. From Latin lūcifer, light-bringing, the name means ‘light-bearer’ and is also used as proper name of the morning star (the planet Venus). (B) In MW , Ford includes the name in the list of insults that ‘sound well’ to his ears, together with the names of fiends, ‘Amaimon’ and ‘Barbason’. The noble insult ‘Lucifer’ is contrasted with such ignoble and ‘abominable terms’ (2.2.280) as ‘cuckold’ and ‘wittol’ (2.2.281–4). But the fact that Lucifer, Satan and other devils are traditionally represented with horns, like the cuckold, makes Ford’s preference ironical. Falstaff says that Bardolph’s face, with his fiery nose ‘is Lucifer’s privy-kitchen’ (2H4 2.4.333), which is in keeping with the paradoxical encomium that was delivered of his red nose described as an ‘everlasting bonfire-light’ (1H4 3.3.41). The ‘knight of the Burning Lamp’ (3.3.27) is a ‘Lucifer’ (light-bearer). In KJ , the Bastard tells Hubert: Thou’rt damn’d as black – nay, nothing is so black; Thou art more deep damn’d than Prince Lucifer: There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child. (4.3.121–4) Shaheen (404) explains that this is based on Isaiah 14:12 ‘How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer’ and that in the bible Nabuchadenezzar, king of Babylon, is the one addressed as ‘Lucifer’ (light-bearer), but that in Christian circles the text was often applied to Satan, perhaps due to a connection with Luke 10:18 which reads ‘I sawe Satan like lightening, fall downe from heaven’. (C) For the title ‘Prince Lucifer’ (prince of devils), see Matthew 9:34; 12:24 and Mark 3:22 (Shaheen, 403–4). See Hassel, 99; Gibson and Esra, 125. lump (A) A shapeless mass. Florio (1598) has: ‘Chaos, a chaos, a confused lump, a formelesse masse, a mishmash’ and ‘Massa, a masse, a heape, a store, a huddle, a pile, 277

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a wedge, a lump, a chaos of anie thing, a cub, a haie mowe or stacke’. Perceval reads: ‘Móle, a lump, a masse, a chaos, or confused heape of any thing.’ (B) Richard Gloucester is the ‘lump’ in Shakespeare’s canon. In 2H6, Old Clifford, addressing him, exclaims: ‘Hence, heap of wrath, foul indigested lump, / As crooked in thy manners as thy shape!’ (5.1.157–8). Editors quote Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1.7) which has ‘Chaos, rudis indigestaque moles’, translated by Arthur Golding (1567) as ‘chaos [. . .] a huge rude heap [. . .] a heavy lump’ (1.7–8). Old Clifford refers to Richard being a crookback and the allusion to his lack of shape may derive from the passage that precedes, which focuses on the figure of the bear and the bear-baiting shows that were common in the Elizabethan period (5.1.148–56). In 3H6, Richard describes himself as disproportioned ‘in every part, / Like to a chaos or an unlicked bear whelp, / That carries no impression like the dam’ (3.2.160–2). This is reminiscent of Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses which reads: ‘The bearwhelp [. . .] like an evil favoured lump of flesh alive doth lie. / The dam by licking shapeth out his members orderly’ (15.416–19). Richard has not been licked to shape. Cotgrave has ‘Mole: f. A Timpanie, or Moonecalfe; a shapelesse lump of flesh, or hard swelling, in the wombe, that makes a woman seeme with child’. In 3H6, King Henry refers to Richard’s birth: Thy mother felt more than a mother’s pain, And yet brought forth less than a mother’s hope: To wit, an undigested and deformed lump, Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree. (5.6.49–52) Richard is a shapeless lump of flesh and a monster, after having been a hard swelling in his mother’s womb. Lady Anne echoes King Henry’s words when she calls Richard ‘thou lump of foul deformity’ (R3 1.2.57). Margaret then relates Richard to his mother when she hurls at him: ‘Thou slander of thy heavy mother’s womb’ (R3 1.3.230), and she emphasizes his shapelessness by calling him ‘Thou rag of honour’ (1.3.232). Ironically, Richard himself feeds and cultivates this language of insult when he opens the play by ‘descant[ing] on his own deformity’ (1.1.27), which allows the audience to understand what being a ‘lump’ means (1.1.14–24). Richard’s opening self-portrait shows that he has integrated the insulting language that describes him as a monster. (C) On the bear whelp that is licked into shape by its mother, see Guillame de la Perrière, Le Theatre Des Bons Engins (1545): Permalink: http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/ 162-3-eth-b/start.htm See deformity.

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M Maid Marian (A) Wanton, whore. A female character in the May game or morris dance and the person (usually a man or boy) who plays this character, the butt of bawdy jokes in such festivities. In the later forms of the story of Robin Hood, she is the companion of the outlaw. Cotgrave has ‘Marion: f. Marian (a proper name for a woman.) Robin a trouvé Marion. Jacke hath met with Gill; a filthie knaue with a fulsome queane.’ (B) Falstaff compares the Hostess to this bawdy-festive figure: ‘for womanhood, Maid Marian may be the deputy’s wife of the ward to thee’ (1H4 3.3.114–15). Bevington explains what Maid Marian represented in Shakespeare’s time: ‘[. . .] a disreputable character from Morris dances and May games, usually played by a man, sometimes paired with Robin Hood, though not in the earliest tradition. She had become a byword for slatternly behaviour among Puritan-leaning audiences’ (1H4, 237). The name prolongs the bawdy allusion to the ‘stewed prune’ (bawd) and the ‘drawn fox’ (3.3.112–13), the word ‘fox’ possibly meaning ‘whore’. (C) See Findlay (2010), 253–4. On the May Day festival, that was ‘permeated with an atmosphere of erotic licence’ (112), see Laroque, 111–41, esp. 124–5. See hobby-horse. On the bawdy meaning of the name, see Williams, 2, 846. See Brand, 1, 253–8. Misogonus (c. 1570) has ‘This a smirking wench indeed, this a fair Maid Marion, she is none of these coy dames’ (2.4.75–6). mammet (A) Derived from Anglo-Norman maumet, reduced form of mauhoumet, Old French mahomet, mahommet, the word refers to a false image or idol but also may mean ‘doll’ or ‘puppet’ (OED 2). Palsgrave has ‘Maument, marmoset; poupee.’ It can also refer to a contemptible or hateful person; a weakling, a physically or mentally feeble person (OED 4). (B) In Rom, Capulet calls his daughter Juliet a ‘whining mammet’ (3.5.185), because she refuses to marry Paris. Weis, following OED , glosses ‘mere weakling’ (Rom, 284) but the figure of the puppet is more in keeping with Capulet’s calling Juliet a ‘wretched puling fool’ (3.5.184) and better suits the image of a daughter who is precisely not a weakling as she stubbornly rebels against her father’s wish. What Capulet here means is that his daughter is playing the headstrong child. Findlay (2010, 248) notes that Capulet ‘uses it to trivialize Juliet’s distress at the prospect of marrying Paris. He ventriloquizes her as a spoilt child’. She suggests that the word may ‘prefigure the OED ’s examples of “mammet” as a regional word meaning “child” ’. Ironically, for Romeo, Juliet is a ‘mammet’, an idol, indeed and the word is in keeping with the religious imagery of 279

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idolatry that pervades the play. For Shershow (28–9), ‘Juliet is a “mammet” both because she is resisting the father’s patriarchal right to give her in marriage to whomever he chooses, and because her father alleges her tears to be merely a deceptive and manipulative histrionic performance’. (C) See Findlay (2010), 248, who quotes occurrences from Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1600, sc. 9. 56) and Jonson’s The Alchemist (5.5.128). On a possible link with French môme (‘child’ in modern French) through mommerie (1440), see DHLF (momerie). On ‘mammet’ (‘maumet’) meaning ‘puppet’, see Shershow, Puppets and ‘Popular’ Culture (1995), 26–9. On the bawdy meaning, see Williams, Glossary. See puppet. mandrake (A) Mandragora. A plant with narcotic properties. Its forked root was thought to resemble the shape of a man (see Genesis 30:14’s marginal gloss in Geneva Bible), hence poets called it ‘Antropomoros’ (see Batman vppon Bartholome, Book XVII , chap. 104). The plant was thought to grow under gallows and from the seed of the hanged man. It was also fabled to utter a deadly shriek when plucked up from the ground. Turner’s Herbal (1568) denounces the foolish tales about the ‘mandrage’ (Book II , 46r): ‘The rootes whiche are counterfited & made like little puppettes & mammettes which come to be sold in England in boxes with heir [hair] and such forme as a man hath are nothyng elles but folishe feined trifles & not naturall. For they are so trymmed of crafty theves [thieves] to mocke the poore people with all & to rob them both of theyr wit and theyr money.’ (B) In 2H4, Falstaff compares the little Page to the mandrake: [. . .] Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap than to wait at my heels. I was never manned with an agate till now, but I will inset you, neither in gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your master for a jewel, – the juvenal the Prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledge. (1.2.14–20) Falstaff is referring to the Page’s small size and compares him to the little puppets sold by peddlers as they are described by Turner (see A above). Later, Falstaff uses the term again about Justice Shallow when he refers to the ‘wildness of his youth’ (3.2.301) and to the days when ‘the whores called him mandrake’ (3.2.310). The word conveys Shallow’s thin figure that is described at length by Falstaff. It also prolongs the image of the ‘forked radish’ to which Shallow is compared (3.2.306) and takes on a sexual meaning, the mandrake being popularly supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Thus, Shallow appears as a strange mixture of thinness and lust. This second occurrence may retrospectively give a sexual ring to the word as it is applied to the Page who may appear as a phallic object, a minion, an ‘agate’, a ‘jewel’, with which Falstaff is ‘manned’. (C) Fitzpatrick (2010), 264–6; Williams, 2, 849–50. On the ‘ridiculous tales brought up of this plant’ (280), see Gerard’s Herball (1597), Book II , chap. 60, 280–2. 280

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mangy. See leprosy. Manningtree (A) Also spelt ‘Maningtree’ or ‘Manytree’. A town in Essex that was famous for its fair and cattle market as well as for performances of morality plays. (B) In 1H4, Hal, impersonating his kingly father in the play he and Falstaff devise ‘extempore’ (2.4.271) in the tavern, calls the fat knight ‘that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly’ (2.4.440–1). The insult is emblematic of the carnivalesque world of the play and contributes to turning Falstaff into festive foodstuff (see ‘that stuffed cloak-bag of guts’, 2.4.439–40). The subsequent insults, ‘that reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity, that father Ruffian, that Vanity in years’ (2.4.441–2), are probably related to the reference to Manningtree which was known for its performances of morality plays. In 2H4, Falstaff is called ‘Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig’ (2.4.230) by Doll Tearsheet, which again transforms him into an object of feasting. The end of MW suggests that Falstaff is indeed ‘roasted’ by the tapers of the mock-fairies (5.5.89). (C) See Dekker’s reference to ‘the old morals at Manningtree’ (The Seven Deadly Sins of London, 1606, 40, quoted by Scott Kastan, 1H4, 232 and Bevington, 1H4, 202). See Nashe’s libertine poem, ‘The Choice of Valentines’ (Works, 3, 404), which tells of ‘a play of strange morality / Shown by bachelry of Manningtree’. On the fairs which offered dramatic performances and good fare, see Laroque (1991), who refers to ‘the traditional roasting of a whole ox stuffed with black pudding and sausage meat’ (165) and describes Falstaff as ‘a calendar in himself, for the various parts of his body seem to symbolize a whole string of annual festive traditions’ (225). See Nares, Glossary. Martius (A) The name of Shakespeare’s hero, Caius Martius, later called Caius Martius Coriolanus in the eponymous play. It is related to Mars, the god of war. (B) The word shows how essential it is to have a pragmatic approach to insult, as ‘Martius’ cannot be understood as an insult if it is considered out of its context of enunciation. Coriolanus is insultingly deprived of his heroic stature by Aufidius when the latter calls him ‘Martius’: Coriolanus: Aufidius: Coriolanus: Aufidius:

‘Traitor’? How now? Ay, ‘traitor’, Martius. ‘Martius’? Ay, Martius, Caius Martius. Dost thou think I’ll grace thee with that robbery, thy stolen name ‘Coriolanus’, in Corioles? (Cor 5.6.87–92)

Calling Coriolanus ‘Martius’ amounts to negating his victory in Corioles and to transforming him into a usurper. The word of address, ‘Martius’, has the same insulting effect on him as the word ‘traitor’. Through the name ‘Martius’, Aufidius erases all the heroism and glory attached to the name ‘Coriolanus’. Out of its context, the insult is 281

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invisible but the name is too ‘common’ a name for Coriolanus. His calling his God, Mars, a little later, by saying ‘Hear’st thou, Mars?’ (5.6.103), shows that his reputation as a warrior is at stake. maypole (A) A tall pole decorated with flowers and greenery and often painted with stripes, set up for people to dance around during May-time celebrations (OED ). Hence also a thin or tall person. (B) In MND , Hermia calls Helena, ‘thou painted maypole’ (3.2.296) in retaliation for being called ‘puppet’ (3.2.288) herself. The term refers to Helena’s height, which is contrasted with Hermia’s ‘dwarfish’ (3.2.328) figure. The insult is emblematic of the festive atmosphere of May games that pervades the play and ironically reveals that all the men are turning around the ‘maypole’, the idol, Helena. Incidentally, Helena is in one sense a painted maypole, a painted man with a phallic attribute (for Williams ‘maypole’ means ‘penis’) playing the part of a woman. (C) On MND as an illustration of the amusements of May Day, see Laroque (1991), 115–19: ‘for Merry England enthusiasts, the rallying symbol was none other than the maypole, ceremoniously erected by the village youths early on May Day morning and the focal target of the Puritans’ attacks against the seasonal festivals’ (115–16). For Williams, 2, 866–7, ‘maypole’ may mean ‘penis’: ‘Maygaming, a degeneration of ancient sexual rites designed to impart fertility to the soil [. . .], was decried in an urbanized society’. Williams notes that ‘For Stubbes, Anatomy of abuses (1583) I.149, the maypole was a “stinking Ydol”, a defiant Priapus’ (866). Brand, 1, 234–47. For a description of the maypole, see Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses, ed. Kidnie (2002), (‘The maner of Maie-games in England’, 209–10). mechanical (A) From classical Latin mēchanicus (concerning machines) and Middle French mécanique, characterized by the use of tools and the hands, hence artisan. The word refers to manual or practical work. Florio (1598) has: ‘Mecanico, mechanical, base, vile, a workman in whom there is a good hand and a good wit, a handicrafts man, a man of an occupation’ and ‘Patarino, a base mechanical fellow, a porter or daie labourer’. The association with baseness shows that social class is a source of abuse, which provides another example of what Lewis called the ‘moralisation of status words’ (21; chap. 5, 111). (B) In 2H6, York calls Horner the armourer ‘Base dunghill villain and mechanical’ (1.3.194). The expression is to be related to the preceding image of Horner and his servant, Peter, ‘scouring my Lord of York’s armour’ (1.3.192–3), which provides an illustration of what mechanical, manual work is. In MW , Falstaff addresses Master Brook without knowing it is in fact Ford, and he thus slanders Ford in his face, calling him ‘mechanical salt-butter rogue!’ (2.2.264). He de-bases Ford with the word and later calls him ‘peasant’ and ‘knave’ (2.2.268–9). In MND , the ‘mechanicals’ are described as ‘rude’ by Puck (3.2.9). In 2H4, Pistol refers to the ‘most mechanical and dirty hand’ (5.5.36) that has brought Doll to prison, thus associating manual work with filth. At the beginning of JC , Flavius addresses the commoners with contempt: 282

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Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home! Is this a holiday? What, know you not (Being mechanical) you ought not walk Upon a labouring day, without the sign Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou? (1.1.1–5) The term connotes baseness and vulgar status as appears in AC , where Cleopatra gives a detailed description of what a ‘mechanic slave’ is for her, when she imagines the public humiliation she and Iras will have to bear: Thou an Egyptian puppet shall be shown In Rome as well as I. Mechanic slaves With greasy aprons, rules and hammers shall Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths, Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, And forced to drink their vapour. (5.2.207–12) Coriolanus refers to ‘Rome’s mechanics’ (Cor 5.3.83) to show his contempt for his fellow citizens. medlar (A) A small brown-skinned fruit with a widely gaping apex. It was eaten when somewhat decayed because it was otherwise too hard. The fruit is associated with rottenness but also used to refer to the female genitals and to a prostitute. The earlier English word for the medlar was ‘open arse’, due to the ‘deep depression’ it has at the top, surrounded by the ‘remains of the calyx lobes’ (Williams, 2, 871). ‘Medlars are never good till they be rotten’ (Tilley, M863) and ‘Soon ripe, soon rotten’ (Tilley, R133) are proverbial phrases. Cotgrave glosses French Neffle as ‘a Medler or Open-arse’. (B) In AYL , Rosalind grafts the image of the rotten medlar on the figure of the clown: Rosalind: Touchstone: Rosalind:

Peace, you dull fool, I found them [Orlando’s poems] on a tree. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit. I’ll graft it with you, and then I shall graft it with a medlar. Then it will be the earliest fruit i’th’ country, for you’ll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that’s the right virtue of the medlar. (3.2.112–17)

The medlar is known for having two or three ‘stones’ and thus, beyond the allusion to rottenness, the choice of the image may be related to the Clown’s name ‘Touchstone’ who ‘meddles’ with everything. Timon turns the term against Apemantus: Apemantus: [. . .] There’s a medlar for thee – eat it. Timon: On what I hate I feed not. Apemantus: Dost hate a medlar? 283

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Timon: Ay, though [meaning ‘if’] it look like thee. Apemantus: An thou’dst hated meddlers sooner, thou shouldst have loved thyself better now. (4.3.304–9) Timon associates Apemantus with the rotten fruit, which is in keeping with the general vision of decay and corruption that the play builds up. As an answer to the insult, Apemantus reverses the point of view by suggesting that the ‘meddlers’, his former false friends, were ‘medlars’, rotten friends. As Dawson and Minton note (Tim, 296), the sexual meaning of the word ‘meddle’ (to copulate) may not be absent. (C) Williams, 2, 870–2 (‘meddle’ and ‘medlar’). In Rom, Mercutio bawdily puns on the term (2.1.33–40). In MM , Lucio uses the expression ‘rotten medlar’ (4.3.171) to refer to a ‘whore’. See Fitzpatrick (2011), 276–7. Mephostophilus (A) Mephostophilis, the devil made popular by Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. (B) In MW , Pistol uses the name as an insult: Slender: Bardolph: Slender: Pistol: Slender: Nim:

Marry, sir, I have matter in my head against you, and against your cony-catching rascals, Bardolph, Nim, and Pistol. [. . .] You Banbury cheese! Ay, it is no matter. How now, Mephostophilus? Ay, it is no matter. Slice, I say! Pauca, pauca, slice, that’s my humour! (1.1.116–24)

The use of this literary insult is typical of Pistol’s bombastic rhetoric and emblematic of his use of quotations and allusions. Marlowe’s play was popular at the time and is later mentioned by Bardolph who calls the ‘cozeners’ who have stolen the host’s horses ‘three German devils, three Doctor Faustasses’ (4.5.66), with a possible pun on ‘asses’ and on Falstaff’s name (Melchiori, MW , 264). The comedy of the insult comes from its association with the grotesque image of the Banbury cheese and the way cheese and devil get interwoven through Nim’s use of the word ‘slice’ that both refers to a martial threatening attitude and the slicing of cheese. Ford would probably consider that ‘Mephostophilus’ sounds well as an insult, like ‘Amaimon’, ‘Lucifer’ or ‘Barbason’ (2.2.281–2), but its proximity with the Banbury cheese deflates the noble ring of the name. The insult features one of the numerous devils in a play that is haunted by the abominable ‘horns’ of cuckoldry. (C) On MW and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, see Smith (1992). milksop (A) A piece of bread (sop) that has been soaked in milk and also an infant not advanced beyond a milk diet, used as a metaphor for cowardice and effeminacy. Cotgrave has ‘Poupart: m. An infant, or young child; also, a meacock, or milkesop; a tender sot that lookes to be alwayes fed with pap’ and ‘Effeminé: m. ée: f. Effeminate, 284

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womanish, womanlike, heartlesse, weake, tender, delicate; that hath no hardinesse, that can endure no hardnesse. Homme effeminé. A weakling, milksop, sensuall and refined goose, puling or faint-hearted cokes.’ (B) To motivate his troops, Richard describes Richmond as a ‘paltry fellow’ (R3 5.3.323), ‘A milksop, one that never in his life / Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow’ (5.3.325–6). Richard aims at debunking the manly and potentially heroic stature of his opponent by comparing him to an effeminate, cowardly boy. In 1H4, Hotspur uses the same image of milk to inveigh against the coward who refuses to support him, calling him in absentia ‘such a dish of skim-milk’ (2.3.30–1). The expression refers to someone insubstantial and unworthy but also conveys ‘milky’ cowardice. Antonio calls Claudio and Don Pedro ‘Boys, apes, braggarts, jacks, milksops’ (MA 5.1.91). The word transforms the two men into little boys who are contrasted with Antonio’s old age and who are still drinking milk, which is related to effeminacy. The reference to the milk is also evocative of the whiteness associated with cowardice. In KL , Goneril calls Albany a ‘milk-livered man’ (4.2.51), meaning that he lacks guts and playing on the name ‘Albany’ related to Latin albus (white). In MV , Bassanio refers to ‘cowards [. . .] / Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk’ (3.2.83–6). For the Elizabethans, the liver was the seat of courage and if it was pale, it meant that it lacked blood, which was a sign of cowardice. (C) Fitzpatrick (2011), 286. See liver. minimus (A) From classical Latin minimus, smallest, least, youngest. Geoffrey the Grammarian (1499) reads: ‘Leest of all: Minimus ma mum’. Huloet has ‘Least of all. Minimus. a. um’; Thomas reads ‘Minĭmus, a, um, superl. à Parvus. The least and smallest of all, verie litle, small, or still.’ Something or someone insignificant, something minute (menu or minuscule in French). (B) The only occurrence of the word appears in MND where Lysander calls Hermia ‘you dwarf; / You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; / You bead, you acorn’ (3.2.328–30). The insult conveys Hermia’s small size, which is targeted several times in the scene (‘little’ and ‘low’ 3.2.325–6), Hermia being contrasted with the ‘painted maypole’ (3.2.296), Helena. It is one of the inventive insults on the theme of small size in this quarrel scene. (C) See minnow. minion (A) Hussy. From Middle French mignon, a lover. Hence a mistress or paramour, a man or woman kept for sexual favours. The term can be used to refer to a sovereign’s favourite but also as a term of endearment, meaning ‘trim’ and ‘handsome’ (mignon in modern French), as appears in Sherry (‘Antiphrasis’). Hollyband has ‘Ma mignonne, my minion, my trul, my sweeting: my darling’. The word is also used as a derogatory term, meaning ‘slave’ and ‘wanton girl’. Florio (1598) has ‘Pedrolina, a strumpet, a harlot, a trull, a minion, a flurt, a minx’, which tells a lot about the sexual meaning of the word which also appears in Cotgrave (‘Fringuereau’). 285

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(B) In TGV , Julia addresses her waiting-woman Lucetta as ‘minion’ (1.2.88) and then tells her ‘You, minion, are too saucy’ (1.2.92). Carroll (TGV , 154) translates the term as ‘hussy’ and suggests that, considering the extended musical metaphor in the sequence, there might be a pun on ‘minim’, a half-note in music. The word is part of a sequence that is full of bawdy innuendoes and thus the word takes on sexual connotations. In TS , Kate calls her sister Bianca ‘minion’ (2.1.13), meaning that she is a hussy and a spoilt child, her father’s darling. In CE , Antipholus of Ephesus exclaims against Luce, Adriana’s maid, because she refuses to let him into his own house: ‘Do you hear, you minion, you’ll let us in I trow? (3.1.54), ‘You’ll cry for this, minion, if I beat the door down’ (3.1.59). Foakes too translates the word as ‘hussy’ (CE , 45). Addressed to Luce, ‘minion’ also refers to her status as a servant and, as she is called ‘baggage’ (3.1.57) in the same sequence, it is clear that the sexual meaning is not absent. Carroll notes that ‘Luce’, that one finds in the diminutive ‘Lucetta’ as well in TGV , could be heard as ‘loose’ (TGV , 135), which enhances the bawdy meaning in CE and TGV . Later, Antipholus of Ephesus applies the same word to his wife, Adriana: ‘You minion, you, are these your customers?’ (4.4.62), meaning that she is a courtesan, a loose woman, who has revelled behind ‘guilty doors’ (4.4.65). In 2H6, the Queen calls Eleanor ‘minion’ before giving her a box on the ear and saying ‘I cry you mercy, madam; was it you?’ (1.3.140), as if she had mistaken her for a servant. Eleanor’s menacing reaction shows how insulting both the word and gesture are: ‘Was’t I! Yea, I it was, proud Frenchwoman. / Could I come near your beauty with my nails / I’d set my ten commandments in your face’ (1.3.141–3). In Rom, Capulet calls his daughter Juliet ‘Mistress minion’ (3.5.151) when she refuses to marry Paris. Weis glosses ‘spoiled little madam’, but the context points to a possible sexual meaning as she is also called ‘baggage’ (3.5.156). Othello calls Desdemona ‘minion’ (5.1.33) in absentia, the word showing, through its essential ambivalence, how he is torn between contradictory feelings. He uses a word that expresses both abuse and endearment. It amounts to calling her ‘strumpet’ (5.1.34) while preserving the image of the dear one. The cruel irony of the word is best heard in Tit when Demetrius calls Lavinia ‘this minion’ (2.2.124) before defiling her. (C) Williams, 2, 890–1. On ‘minim’, see Wilson and Calore, 278. Innes, 436. minnow (A) Small fish, hence someone insignificant. (B) In LLL , the word is applied to Costard when King Ferdinand reads Armado’s letter out loud, which refers to the clown as ‘that base minnow of thy mirth’ (1.1.240), meaning ‘a thing so small and insignificant as to be laughable’ (Woudhuysen, LLL , 128). Costard’s reaction to this portrait of himself makes the epistolary insult a source of comedy as, hearing these words while his name is not mentioned, Costard identifies himself as such: Ferdinand (reading Armado’s letter): Costard:

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[. . .] There did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth, – Me? (1.1.239–41)

miscreant

Beyond the diminutive meaning of the insult, the circumstances of its enunciation make it particularly comic. In TNK , the insignificance of the ‘minnow’ appears when the jailer, talking about prisoners, metaphorically declares that ‘before one salmon, you shall take a number of minnows’ (2.1.3–4). Coriolanus insultingly calls Sicinius ‘this Triton of the minnows’ (3.1.90), thus mocking the ‘absolute “shall” ’ (3.1.91) that Sicinius has just uttered. The phrase constitutes both an insult to Sicinius who is described as a poor sea-god and to the people who are presented as a group of non-entities. (C) For another example of the metaphorical use of ‘minnow’, see Have With You to Saffron Walden (1596) where Nashe calls Richard Harvey ‘a little minnow’ (Works, 3, 80), quoted by Hibbard, LLL , 107). See Hydra. minx (A) Whore. Literally a pet dog. Figuratively a lewd, wanton woman or a prostitute, perhaps an altered form of ‘minikin’ (a young girl, a minion, a favourite). The word is found in Florio (1598) next to words such as ‘gill’, ‘gicksie’ (gixie), ‘trull’, ‘strumpet’, ‘queane’, ‘harlot’, ‘wench’, ‘girle’, ‘lass’, ‘flurt’, ‘minion’, ‘whore’ (see the words chizza, magalda, mattotta, mucciaccia, pedrolina, ruffa, zambélla). Cotgrave has ‘Gadrouillette: f. A minx, gigle, flirt, callet, Gixie; (a fained word, applyable to any such cattell.)’ and ‘Goguenelle: f. A fained title, or tearme, for a wench; like our Gixie, Callet, Minx, &c.’ (B) ‘Minx’ is part of the numerous outrageous terms that Othello applies to Desdemona. The one who is himself described as an ‘old black ram’ (1.1.87), ‘a barbary horse’ (1.1.110), ‘a lascivious Moor’ (1.1.124), ‘the lusty Moor’ (2.1.293) in his turn accuses his wife of lewd behaviour. He uses the term in absentia when, addressing Iago, he exclaims ‘Damn her, lewd minx: O, damn her!’ (3.3.478), before Iago calls her ‘a wanton’ (4.1.71) and a ‘strumpet’ (4.1.97). Othello’s abuse is prolonged when Bianca, the perfumed ‘fitchew’ (4.1.145), refers to the handkerchief that Cassio shows her as ‘some minx’s token’ (4.1.152). This insult in absentia is an important stage in the process of ‘bewhoring’ (4.2.117) Desdemona and will be followed by direct abuse in 4.2 (see whore, strumpet). In TN , Malvolio uses the term in a less sexual way when he calls Maria ‘minx’ (3.4.117), meaning she is an impudent girl. (C) Williams, 2, 892–3; Findlay (2010), 270. See strumpet, wanton, whore. miscreant (A) An infidel, a heretic, a faithless, unbelieving person. Hollyband (1593) has ‘Mescreant, a miscreant, a faithlesse fellowe, an vnbeleeuer’. Florio (1598) has ‘Ricreduto, a miscreant, a recreant, a misbeleeuing wretch.’ Hence, more generally a vile wretch. (B) In 1H6, Vernon calls Basset ‘miscreant’ (3.4.44), which Burns (1H6, 222) glosses as ‘evil-doer, with a sense of heretic and unbeliever’. The word is the conclusion of an exchange of abuse and blows and contains the promise of revenge. Then York applies the word to Joan Puzel: ‘Curse, miscreant, when thou com’st to the stake’ (5.2.65). In the opening sequence of R2, Bolingbroke tells Mowbray ‘Thou art a traitor and a 287

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miscreant’ (1.1.39), the two words expressing the idea of betrayal. In KL , when Kent contradicts his kingly master, Lear calls him a ‘miscreant’ (1.1.162) to signify that he breaks faith, before calling him a ‘recreant’ (in F, 1.1.168), which means much the same. As Hassel notes (217), only Joan technically deserves the title of ‘miscreant’: she is shown conjuring devils (1H6 5.2.22–50), while Mowbray dies as a holy crusader, Basset is merely a Lancastrian, and Kent is the most faithful servant that can be. See recreant. mome (A) Fool, dolt. Florio (1598) has: ‘Buaffo, a gull, a mome, an oxe, an asse’; ‘Caparrone, a pugge, an ape, a munkie, a babuine, a gull, a ninnie, a mome, a sot’; ‘Capassone, a nickname as we say a ioulthead, a gull, a loggarhead, a mome’. Cotgrave has: ‘Mome: m. A Momus, find-fault, carping fellow’ and ‘Singeur: m. An Apish mome, or, a keeper of Apes.’ Momus (ancient Greek Μῶμος; personification of μῶμος ridicule) is the name of the Greek god of censure and ridicule. (B) The term is only used once by Shakespeare in CE where Dromio of Syracuse echoes Dromio of Ephesus’ calling for ‘Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cicely, Gillian, Ginn!’, by answering him with a string of abuse: ‘Mome, malthorse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch’ (3.1.31–2). The choice of the word here derives from the demands of comic stichomythia. mongrel (A) Probably derived from ‘mung’ (a mingling) or ‘to mang’ (to mingle). A dog having parents of different breeds and thus of no definable breed. Hence a person of low status, a worthless, contemptible person. Cooper (1584) has: ‘Hybris, hybridis, [. . .]. A dogge ingendered betweene an hound & mastiue, called a limmer, or a mongrel [. . .]’. (B) In TC , Thersites exclaims against Ajax: ‘The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord!’ (2.1.11–12). The use of the word here refers to the mixed origins of Ajax who is described by Aeneas as ‘half made of Hector’s blood’ (4.5.84) and as ‘This blended knight, half Trojan and half Greek’ (4.5.87). Bevington (TC , 291) notes that Ajax’s mother, Hesione, was Hector’s aunt (Priam’s sister) according to Caxton, 589–90 (The recuyell of the Histories of Troye, 1474) and Lydgate’s Troy Book, 3.2045–8. Beyond this reference to Ajax’s ‘mixed breed’, the word is also an answer to Ajax’s calling Thersites ‘Dog!’ (2.1.7) and ‘Thou bitch-wolf’s son’ (2.1.10). In one of his soliloquies, Thersites uses the same word about Ajax, referring to him as ‘that mongrel cur’ (5.4.12) and thus again referring to his mixed parentage. In KL , Lear refers to Oswald as ‘that mongrel’ (1.4.48), which Kent echoes a little later when he calls him ‘the son and heir of a mongrel bitch’ (2.2.21–2). A general insult meaning ‘whoreson’, ‘mongrel’ is also part of the obsessive presence of bastardy in a play that starts with a dialogue between Kent and Gloucester about birth and breeding (1.1) and where Poor Tom (Edgar) draws a list of dogs that reminds of Caius’ book on English dogs (3.6.60–72). (C) On Ajax as a ‘mongrel’, see Hirota, ‘Hesione’ (2013). See cur, dog. 288

monster/monstrous

monkey (A) An ape, a marmoset; hence a fool. Cotgrave has: ‘Babouïnner. To baboonize it; to play the Monkey; to vse apish or foolish tricks, waggish or knauish prankes; also, to deceiue, cosen, gull’. (B) In Tem, Caliban tells Trinculo ‘Thou liest, thou jesting monkey, thou’ (3.2.43), not knowing he is in fact addressing Ariel who imitates Trinculo’s voice. Thus, it is Ariel who is called a ‘jesting monkey’. Jesting he is indeed, since he plays the ventriloquist deceiver. Yet the insult reveals that Caliban contrasts the ‘valiant’ (3.2.44) Stephano whom he chooses to worship as a master with the ‘pied ninny’, the ‘scurvy patch’ (3.2.61) Trinculo, who is reduced to his status as a jester, a fool, using apish tricks. The circumstances of enunciation lead to the comic overlapping of opposite figures, Trinculo and Ariel, and the expression ironically reveals that the two characters are jesters and entertainers, however different they are. Burnett notes that the formulation ‘brings to mind fairground humour, imitation and the collapse of animal and human boundaries’ (Monsters, 2002, 127). (C) In other contexts, the monkey is associated with lechery (see Williams, 2, 900–2). On aping, see Knowles, ‘ “Can you not tell a man from a marmoset?”: Apes and Others on the Early Modern Stage’ (2004). See ape, baboon, fool, jackanape. monster/monstrous (A) Someone inhuman, cruel, misshapen, something unnatural. Thomas has: ‘Monstrum, stri, n.g. A monster or mishapen thing: that excedeth, lacketh, or is disordered in naturall forme: anie thing done against the course of nature: a monstrous thing & vncredible, a marvelous signe, a straunge sight, a token or shewing, a thing that signifieth [. . .]’. Cotgrave reads: ‘Monstrüeux: m. euse: f. Monstrous; mishapen; defectiue, exorbitant, vnnaturall, or most contrary to nature.’ (B) In LLL , Holofernes exclaims ‘O, thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!’ (4.2.23). The exclamation seems to target ‘Ignorance’ itself and, through this allegorical insult, Dull who has just revealed what Holofernes considers as his ‘twicesod simplicity’ (4.2.22). Dull has turned twice the Latin ‘haud credo’ into ‘auld grey doe’ (4.2.11–12; 19–20), which explains Holofernes’ use of the word ‘deformed’. In TS , Petruccio exclaims against the little tailor: ‘O monstrous arrogance’ (4.3.109), which has a comic effect as the tailor is not arrogant at all and the adjective ‘monstrous’, which may mean ‘huge’, is applied to a character who is described as a tiny ‘quantity’ (4.3.113). In KJ , Constance and Eleanor use the term in a stichomythia: Eleanor: Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth! Constance: Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth! Call not me slanderer; [. . .] (2.1.173–5) In H5, King Henry calls the traitors ‘These English monsters’ (2.2.85) to convey the unnatural nature of their behaviour, which is all the more abominable since monsters are supposed to be exotic marvels (Craik, H5, 173). The expression ‘English monsters’ thus sounds oxymoronic. Treason is also characterized as ‘monstrous’, that is unnatural, in 289

monster/monstrous

2H6, where York is called a ‘monstrous traitor’ (5.1.106) which draws a parallel between him and Cade, whom Iden calls ‘that monstrous traitor’ (4.10.65) just after slaying him. In KL , Oswald comments on Kent’s abusive rhetoric: ‘Why, what a monstrous fellow art thou, thus to rail on one that is neither known of thee, nor knows thee!’ (2.2.24–6). The term here suggests that Kent’s behaviour is unnatural, unexplainable. In Tim, Timandra rejects Timon who has just called her whore by exclaiming ‘Hang thee, monster!’ (4.3.87). She thus formulates Timon’s lack of humanity, which is in keeping with his self-definition: ‘I am Misanthropos and hate mankind’ (4.3.54). Through the insult Timandra suggests that he is no longer part of humanity. In Tem, Caliban is regularly called ‘monster’ so that the term loses its offensive meaning to be just descriptive. Caliban is a man-fish-monster (2.2.24–36), or ‘strange fish’ (2.2.27) reminiscent of the fish that Alonso mentions when he wonders ‘what strange fish’ has made his meal on his son (2.1.113). Caliban is also evocative of the ballads of the time, which told about monstrous fish (see Pafford, WT , 105). Thus the potential insult is made neutral, which allows for positive formulations such as ‘A most delicate monster’, about the ‘four legs and two voices’ of the monster made by Trinculo and Caliban (2.2.88–9), ‘Monsieur Monster’ (3.2.17) or ‘brave monster’ (2.2.183). What seems oxymoronic in fact reveals that the term is deprived of derogatory connotations, Caliban being reduced to the objective status of a monstrous, hence ‘marketable’ (5.1.266) creature. The same neutralization of a potential insult appears with the word ‘mooncalf’ (2.2.105; 132–3; 3.2.20–1) which refers to a shapeless birth, a monstrosity, probably caused by the moon: the term is applied several times by Stephano to Caliban but he erases its offensive content by using it as a sort of nickname. Thus when Trinculo abuses Caliban, the insult does not come from the word ‘monster’ itself but rather resides in the additions to the word: ‘a very shallow monster’ (2.2.141–2), ‘A very weak monster’ (2.2.142), ‘A most poor credulous monster’ (2.2.143), ‘a most perfidious and drunken monster’ (2.2.147–8), ‘A most scurvy monster’ (2.2.152), ‘An abominable monster’ (2.2.155–6), ‘A most ridiculous monster’ (2.2.162). Later in the play, the term itself partly recovers its offensive dimension in the quarrel between Caliban and Trinculo: Caliban (about Trinculo).: [. . .] I’ll not serve him; he is not valiant. Trinculo: Thou liest, most ignorant monster. I am in case to jostle a constable. Why thou deboshed fish, thou, was there ever man a coward that hath drunk so much sack as I today? Wilt thou tell a monstrous lie, being but half a fish and half a monster? Caliban: Lo, how he mocks me. Wilt thou let him, my lord? Trinculo: ‘Lord’, quoth he? That a monster should be such a natural! (3.2.22–31) When Caliban says he is not ‘valiant’ (ie not a valiant drinker), Trinculo reactivates the offensive potential of the word ‘monster’ by adding derogatory terms to it such as 290

Moor

‘deboshed’ (debauched) and ‘ignorant’ and by playing on the image of the ‘monstrous lie’, which explains Caliban’s defensive reaction. The monster Caliban is the counterpart to the wonder Miranda. (C) On the fish-monster in ballads, see Pafford, WT , 105. On the monsters of Tem, see Burnett, Monsters (2002), chap. 5, ‘ “Were I in England now’: Localizing “Monsters” in The Tempest’, 125–53. On monster as cuckold, see Williams, 2, 903–5. Moor (A) A black person. From classical Latin Maurus. Inhabitant of North Africa, originally of Mauritania. A Muslim. (B) The term is used with contempt in Tit and Oth. In Tit, Aaron bears a lot of abuse related to the colour of his skin. When Bassianus and Lavinia meet Tamora in the woods, Lavinia ‘de-nigrates’ her ‘sweet Moor’ (2.2.51) once he has left the stage, by calling Aaron ‘your Moor’ (2.2.68). The Moor Aaron is described as ‘your swart Cimmerian’ who makes Tamora as ‘Spotted, detested, and abominable’ as his body’s hue (2.2.72–4). Bassianus contrasts the ‘barbarous Moor’ (2.2.78) with the ‘snow-white goodly steed’ (2.2.76) and suggests that he makes Tamora ‘foul’ (2.2.79). In the ‘fly scene’ Aaron is called ‘the empress’ Moor’ and compared to ‘a black ill-favoured fly’ by Marcus (3.2.67–8). Titus imagines he will ‘insult on’ the fly, ‘Flattering myself as if it were the Moor’ (3.2.72– 3). The term ‘insult’ here means ‘to triumph’ but it also conveys all the insults that the Moor has to bear. He is ‘a coal-black Moor’ (3.2.79), ‘this barbarous Moor’ (5.3.4) and associated with the devil: he is a ‘hellish dog’ (4.2.79), ‘so foul a fiend’ (4.2.81), ‘this accursed devil’ (5.3.5; see also 5.2.86, 90), ‘that misbelieving Moor’ (5.3.142), ‘an irreligious Moor’ (5.3.120). Thus, through all the negative images that are associated with Aaron the Moor, the word itself is insulting. The same process is at work in Oth. ‘Here is the man, this Moor [. . .]’ (Oth 1.3.72): when Brabantio designates Othello as the one who has abused, stolen and corrupted his daughter (1.3.61), the spectator cannot but hear all the derogatory connotations that are associated with the word from the beginning of the play. In the first scene, Othello is called ‘the thicklips’ (1.1.65), ‘an old black ram’ (1.1.87), ‘a Barbary horse’ (1.1.110), ‘the Moor’ (1.1.115, 145, 162), ‘a lascivious Moor’ (1.1.124), ‘an extravagant and wheeling stranger / Of here and everywhere’ (1.1.134–5). Although these words are not directly addressed to him, they contribute to transforming the word ‘Moor’ into an insult. For Brabantio, Othello is more a Moor than a man and the Moor is presented as a devil (1.1.90; 2.1.224), a sorcerer (‘an abuser of the world, a practiser / Of arts inhibited’, 1.2.78–9), a lustful creature (1.1.124). The play shows the process of connotation at work. (C) On the possible Moorish origins of the Morris dance, see Laroque (1991), 120–1, who quotes Chambers, The Elizabethan stage (Oxford, 1923): The earlier English writers call it the Morisce, morisk, or morisco. This seems to imply a derivation of the name at least from the Spanish morisco, a Moor. The dance itself has consequently been held to be of Moorish origin, and the habit of blackening the face has been considered as proof of this. . . . (1, 199) 291

Moor

This is in keeping with Hornback’s suggestion that Othello is a black-face clown. On the figure of the Moor in English Renaissance drama, see D’Amico; Floyd-Wilson, chap. 6 (on Oth), 132–60. On racist abuse, see Larguèche (1993). See black, Cimmerian, devil, Ethiop. Moorditch (A) An open sewer, a foul ditch draining Moorfields, a marshy area in the north of London. ‘The new walkes on the North side of London formerlie called Morefieldes’ are described in Stow’s Annals (ed. 1632) as they were until 1606: on the North-side of the City, anciently called Morefield, which field [. . .] was a most noysome and offensive place, being a generall laystall, a rotten morish ground, whereof it first took the name. This fielde for many yeares was environed, and crossed with deep stinking ditches, and noysome common shewers and was of former times ever held impossible to be reformed, especially to bee reduced to any part of that fayre, sweete, and pleasant condition, as now it is. (1021) Bevington (1H4, 137) notes that ‘Lepers and mad folks (with whom melancholy was associated) were allowed to beg there, as Jonson observes in The Alchemist 1.4.20’. (B) In 1H4, The word is used by Hal in a dialogue with Falstaff: Falstaff: Prince: Falstaff: Prince: Falstaff:

[. . .] ’Sblood, I am as melancholy as a gib cat or a lugged bear. Or an old lion or a lover’s lute. Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe. What sayst thou to a hare, or the melancholy of Moorditch? Thou hast the most unsavoury similes and art indeed the most comparative, rascalliest, sweet young prince. (1.2.70–8)

By referring to Moorditch, Hal refers to a place where beggars and melancholy fools could circulate and thus comments on Falstaff’s melancholy. But Falstaff’s reaction shows that he feels another insulting effect and that the word is also associated with dirt, which makes the image ‘unsavoury’, disgusting. The irony of the insult is conspicuous, as it is Falstaff himself who starts the series of similes by comparing himself to a ‘gib cat’ and a ‘lugged bear’. Hal only continues the series of negative comparisons, which turns out to be insulting, as if Falstaff had been fishing for insults. morsel (A) A bite or mouthful, a piece of food, a gobbet, a lump of anything. Related to French morceau and mors (from mordre, to bite). Hollyband has: ‘Bouchée, a morsel, a mouth full: f.’ Cotgrave has ‘Morceau: m. A morsell; bit, mouthfull; also, a gobbet, fragment, broken peece of, or peece broken off from’. The word may take on a sexual meaning: ‘Woman as a sexual mouthful’ (Williams, 2, 910). (B) Cleopatra boasts that she was ‘a morsel for a monarch’ (AC 1.5.32), meaning she was a delicacy, but Antony, seeing Cleopatra flirting with Thidias, transforms the image into an insult: 292

mouldy

I found you as a morsel, cold upon Dead Caesar’s trencher – nay, you were a fragment Of Gnaeus Pompey’s, besides what hotter hours, Unregistered in vulgar fame, you have Luxuriously picked out. For I am sure, Though you can guess what temperance should be, You know not what it is. (3.13.121–7) From a delicacy, Cleopatra is reduced to the status of a cold morsel, a fragment that has gone from one man’s trencher to another’s. Antony’s words illustrate the image of the inconstant woman, the ‘boggler’ (3.13.115) who turns from one lover to another, becoming some kind of ‘Mistress Overdone’, a bawdy character who is cynically called ‘my dear morsel’ by Lucio in MM (3.2.52). Both a ‘morsel for a monarch’ and a mere ‘fragment’, Cleopatra oscillates between the figures of the goddess and the whore and is represented as ‘a boggler ever’ indeed (3.13.115), constant in her inconstancy. (C) Fitzpatrick (2011), 287–8; Williams, 2, 910. See fragment. mouldy (A) Rotten, putrefied, decaying, decrepit. Hollyband has ‘Se moisir, [. . .] rancir, to waxe mouldy, or mustie, to waxe rancke.’ (B) All the occurrences of the word, except one (TC 2.1.102), appear in 2H4, where Doll Tearsheet uses the term three times against Pistol: Pistol: Then to you, Mistress Dorothy! I will charge you. Doll: Charge me? I scorn you, scurvy companion. What, you poor, base, rascally, cheating, lack-linen mate! Away, you mouldy rogue, away! I am meat for your master. Pistol: I know you, Mistress Dorothy. Doll: Away, you cut-purse rascal, you filthy bung, away! By this wine, I’ll thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps and you play the saucy cuttle with me. [. . .] (2.4.119–28) In this passage, which is full of bawdy-martial innuendoes based on the ambivalence of the word ‘charge’ and on the pun on ‘mate/meat’, Doll, by characterizing Pistol as ‘mouldy’, suggests that he is too rank to be edible, that he is no ‘meat’/‘mate’ for her. The idea is prolonged when she declares that ‘He lives upon mouldy stewed prunes and dried cakes’ (2.4.143–4), thus associating him with the world of brothels. The word takes on a new dramatic dimension when a character named ‘Mouldy’ appears in the enrolment scene, next to other potential recruits insultingly named Wart, Shadow, Feeble and Bullcalf. Mouldy’s name is the object of comments: ‘ ’Tis the more time thou wert used’ (3.2.108), ‘It is time you were spent’ (3.2.119), says Falstaff, while Shallow adds that ‘Things that are mouldy lack use’ (3.2.109–10). Falstaff concludes: 293

mouldy

‘Mouldy, stay at home till you are past service’ (3.2.249–50), suggesting that he is unfit for war. Hence, retrospectively, describing Pistol as ‘mouldy’ amounts to reducing him to the status of a character who is unfit for war as well as sexually impotent; it amounts to saying that he definitely should not be called ‘Captain’ (2.4.137). mountain(eer) (A) The inhabitants of the mountains were regarded as ignorant and uncivilized. They were associated with robbers and outlaws because they lived in remote places. Wales was known as a country that was mountainous and thus considered as more rustic than England. (B) In MW , Pistol calls the Welsh Parson Evans ‘thou mountain-foreigner’ (1.1.148). He thus refers to the Welsh as strangers coming from a wild, uncivilized, mountainous country. In H5, Fluellen bears a grudge against Pistol for calling him ‘mountain-squire’ (5.1.36), an insult that cannot be found in the preceding scenes, but which conveys the national tensions between the characters and explains Fluellen’s leek retaliation. Here ‘squire’ is a general term of contempt and the national part of the insult lies in the reference to the mountain. Declaring that he will make Pistol a ‘squire of low degree’ (5.1.37), Fluellen plays on the contrast between the high (mountain) and the low, thus turning Pistol’s presumed insult against him, in a boomerang effect. In Cym, in one of the sequences that Galway (190) identifies as a ‘flyting scene’ (ritual exchange of abuse), Cloten who is obsessed with rank, asks Guiderius and Belarius: ‘Soft, what are you / That fly me thus? Some villain mountaineers? / I have heard of such’ (4.2.70–2). Then he orders Guiderius to ‘Yield, rustic mountaineer’ (4.2.100). Cloten’s insulting address is explained later by Belarius, who refers to what is heard at court: ‘although perhaps / It may be heard at court that such as we / Cave here, hunt here, are outlaws, and in time / May make some stronger head’ (4.2.136–9). When Guiderius is asked ‘What hast thou done?’ by Belarius, he answers: ‘cut off one Cloten’s head, [. . .] / Who call’d me traitor, mountaineer [. . .]’ (4.2.117–20). Imogen, mistaking Cloten for Posthumus and believing him dead, uses the same term: ‘This was my master, / A very valiant Briton, and a good, / That here by mountaineers lies slain’ (4.2.368–70). (C) In Tem, the folk-lore around mountaineers appears when Gonzalo remembers the days ‘When we were boys, / Who would believe that there were mountaineers / Dewlapped like bulls, whose throats had hanging at ’em / Wallets of flesh’ (3.3.42–6). Mountaineers here appear as exotic creatures, a source of wonderful tales that feed people’s imagination, along with tales about ‘such men / Whose heads stood in their breasts’ (3.3.46–7). On Wales, see Innes, 535–6 and Hawkes (2002), chap. 3, 23–65. movable (A) An object that can be moved. A piece of property, something that can be removed, displaced. (B) In TS , Katherina turns Petruccio’s words against him: Petruccio: Katherina: 294

[. . .] Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife. ‘Moved’. In good time, let him that moved you hither

muddy

Petruccio: Katherina: Petruccio:

Re-move you hence. I knew you at the first You were a movable. Why, what’s a movable? A joint-stool. Thou hast hit it: come sit on me. (2.1.193–9)

By his question, ‘What’s a movable?’, Petruccio ironically fishes for more insult. Kate probably means that Petruccio is a changeable person but her use of a word that refers to property makes her taming all the more ironical, as she herself becomes the ‘movable’ that Petruccio displaces at his will: [. . .] I will be master of what is mine own. She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, My household-stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything, [. . .] (3.2.230–3) (C) On ‘moveables’, see Innes, 441. muddy (A) Living in mud, dirty, limy, boggy, miry, hence morally impure. (B) In 1H4, Gadshill calls the Chamberlain, a servant at an inn and his accomplice, ‘you muddy knave’ (2.1.96). Editors translate the word as ‘dull-witted’ or ‘muddled’. The word may be related to the chamberlain’s allusion to the commonwealth which holds out ‘water in foul way’ (2.1.83) that is ‘lets you stay dry on a muddy road’ (1H4, 190). The punning evocation of the ‘boots’ (2.1.81–2), both the source of plunder and the shoes, may also explain the use of the adjective ‘muddy’ here. Doll Tearsheet shows a taste for the word in 2H4. Addressing Falstaff, she exclaims: ‘A pox damn you, you muddy rascal, is that all the comfort you give me? (2.4.37–8) and then ‘Hang yourself, you muddy conger, hang yourself!’ (2.4.51–2; the line is omitted in F). The conger lives in muddy waters and Falstaff is thus described as a dirty, bawdy, sinful man. Partridge glosses ‘smutty, dirty, indelicate, bawdy’. ‘Combined with rascal, it meant a deer sluggish and out of season’, notes Humphreys (2H4, 65), referring to the occurrence that can be found in Ham, when in one of his soliloquies, Hamlet inveighs against himself: [. . .] Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing. (2.2.501–4) Thompson and Taylor (Ham, 276) translate ‘poor-spirited’ and explain that ‘muddy’ may both mean ‘inert’ and ‘lacking clarity’. The possible pun on ‘mettle’ (temperament) and ‘metal’ also suggests tarnished metal. 295

muleteer

muleteer (A) A mule driver. From Middle French muletier, a person who keeps mules. (B) In 1H6, Talbot provokingly addresses the French at the gates of Rouen, in an exchange with the Duke of Alençon: Talbot:

[. . .] Will ye, like soldiers, come and fight it out? Alençon: Seigneur, no. Talbot: Seigneur, hang: base muleteers of France – Like peasant footboys do they keep the walls And dare not take up arms like gentlemen. (3.2.65–9)

Talbot contrasts the French peasant mule-drivers with the aristocratic English horsemen, and thus opposes French baseness to English nobleness. murderer (A) A person guilty of murder. A manslayer, a man-queller (killer), a bloodthirsty man. Hollyband (1593), for example, has: ‘Homicide, ou meurtre, a mankiller, a murtherer, a manslaughter: m.’ (B) In 3H6, Margaret, striving to ‘unpack [her] heart with words’ (Ham 2.2.520), looks for words that could describe reality in all its horror: What’s worse than murderer, that I may name it? No, no, my heart will burst an if I speak – And I will speak, that so my heart may burst. Butchers and villains! Bloody cannibals! (5.5.58–61) ‘Murderer’ seems insufficient to express the cruel truth, so that it must be followed by a gradation of other words, which suggests the essential inability of words to tell things. In Tit, Lavinia, begging for instant death to escape rape, oxymoronically asks Tamora to be a ‘charitable murderer’ (2.2.178). In JC , the second Plebeian declares, about Brutus and his followers, who have killed Caesar: ‘They were villains, murderers’ (3.2.156). These words, uttered while Brutus is off-stage, ironically contradict his prediction that: ‘We shall be called purgers, not murderers’ (2.1.179). In Cym, Posthumus calls himself ‘egregious murderer’ in a self-cursing tirade (5.5.210–18). Contrary to Othello, who tries to transform the insulting ‘murderous coxcomb’ (5.2.231) that Emilia hurls at him into the title of ‘honourable murderer’ (5.2.291), Posthumus truly ‘extenuates’ nothing of his fault but rather heaps abuse on himself. The irony lies in the fact that, contrary to what happens in Oth, Imogen is not dead and thus he is no murderer. mussel-shell (A) The shell of a mussel, a word etymologically related to ‘muscle’. 296

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(B) The only occurrence appears in MW where Falstaff applies the term to Simple, Master Slender’s servant: Simple: Pray you, sir, was’t not the wise woman of Brentford? Falstaff: Ay, marry, was it, mussel-shell. What would you with her? (4.5.24–7) Melchiori (MW , 262) considers that the term is a variant of ‘egg-shell’, for ‘emptyheaded person’. This is in keeping with the name of the character, which conveys a lack of wit, and with the Host calling Simple ‘boor’ and ‘thick-skin’ (4.5.1–2), two words that mean ‘blockhead’ and suggest that Simple is a clownish figure. The Host also calls Simple ‘the Bohemian-Tartar’ (4.5.18), thus playing with an exotic evocation that is reminiscent of Pistol’s rhetoric. He provides ‘a splendidly inappropriate title of barbaric splendour for Simple’ (Crane, MW , 129). ‘Simple’, the lack-wit, the one who is too ‘simple’ to understand that Falstaff is the woman of Brentford, is thus ironically given sophisticated nicknames. Craik (MW , 197) mentions other explanations, suggesting that Simple is called ‘mussel-shell’ ‘Either because Simple is gaping in expectation (Johnson) or because he is insignificant (Hart)’ while noting that ‘an egg-shell is a more frequent type of worthlessness (Tilley, E95)’. There is a lot of matter for interpretation in this empty shell. (C) On mussels, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 292.

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N nag (A) A small strong riding-horse; a prostitute, a whore. (B) In 2H4, Pistol insults Doll by asking the question ‘Know we not Galloway nags?’ (2.4.188–9). This is a rhetorical question to say: ‘I know a whore when I see one’. The image refers to small but strong horses that were bred in Galloway, in Scotland (OED Galloway 1a). In itself the image may be positive but when applied to Doll, it means that anyone may ride her. In AC , Scarus calls Cleopatra ‘Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt’ (3.10.10), which is one of the numerous images that contribute to presenting Cleopatra as a whore. (C) Williams (2, 932–3) explores a second sexual meaning (‘penis’) that does not appear in Shakespeare’s plays. On the various interpretations of ‘ribaudred’, see Wilders, AC , 201–2. For descriptions of ‘Galway nagges’, see Markham, Cavelarice (1607), Book 3, chap. 1, 7; Dorrell, Willobie his Avisa (1594), A1r. See adultress, baggage, bawd, callat, courtesan, drab, giglot, gipsy, harlot, hobby-horse, minion, quean, slut, strumpet, thing, trull, wanton, whore. nail (A) Unit of measurement. A measure of length for cloth equal to two-and-a-quarter inches, that is one sixteenth of a yard, approximately 5.72 cm. (B) In TS , striving to impress Kate, Petruccio verbally assaults the little tailor and displays his art of insult as an art of diminution, calling him ‘Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail’ (4.3.110). He ironically turns the tailor’s jargon against the tailor himself by associating him with units of measurement that are smaller and smaller, from the ‘yard’, which is typical of the tailor, to the ‘nail’. The insult is comically cut out for the tailor, but it can also have a sexual meaning if one considers that ‘tailor’ could refer to a ‘tradesman-fornicator’ (Williams, 3, 1358) or to a penis, as is suggested by Hulme (1962, 99–102, quoted by Hodgdon, TS , 138) and the proverbial phrase ‘The tailor makes the man’ (Tilley and Dent, T17). If one retains this possible meaning, then Petruccio is verbally cutting the tailor to pieces, verbally castrating him by reducing his ‘yard’ to the size of a ‘nail’. (C) For ‘nail’ meaning ‘penis’, see Williams, 2, 932. nation (A) National clichés are a source of insults in Shakespeare’s plays. Thomas has ‘Nātĭo, ōnis, f.g. verb. à Nascor. A nation, a countrie, a people hauing their beginning in the countrie where they dwell: also a sort or companie, a people.’ Hollyband has ‘Vne Nation, a nation, kindred, or people’. Cotgrave reads: ‘Gent: f. A nation, people; stocke, 299

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race, kind, linage, familie, kindred; Looke Gens’. By referring to a nation, one refers to a ‘sort’ of people (a gens). (B) The word is spectacularly interpreted as an insult in H5, where Shakespeare dramatizes the tensions and the war of tongues between several nations, in an exchange between the Welsh Fluellen and the Irish Macmorris, with Gower, the English Captain, as a kind of referee: Fluellen:

Captain MacMorris, I think, look you, under your correction, there is not many of your nation – Macmorris: Of my nation? What ish my nation? Ish a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal? What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation? Fluellen: Look you, if you take the matter otherwise than is meant, Captain Macmorris, peradventure I shall think you do not use me with that affability as in discretion you ought to use me, look you, being as good a man as yourself, both in the disciplines of war, and in the derivation of my birth, and in other particularities. Macmorris: I do not know you so good a man as myself. So Chrish save me, I will cut off your head. Gower: Gentlemen both, you will mistake each other. (3.2.121–36) This episode shows the insulting effect that an apparently neutral word may have, and which depends on interpretation. Macmorris’s reaction can easily be understood if one remembers that the Irish were generally considered as an uncivilized people. Innes (330) states that ‘English representations of Ireland from the Renaissance continually characterize it as a barren land full of recalcitrant natives who need to be civilized in accordance with the dictates of English superiority’. Taylor (H5, 168–9, after Walter, H5, 65) notes that: This kind of patriotic infighting was common enough to be specifically forbidden, as in Garrard’s [William Garrard, The Art of War, 1591, p. 40.] law 30: ‘there shall no soldiers . . . procure or stir up any quarrel with any stranger, that is of other nation and such as serve under one head and lord with them’. Fluellen’s description of Captain Macmorris before he arrives on stage paves the way for the Irish Captain’s reaction: By Cheshu, he is an ass, as any is in the world. I will verify as much in his beard. He has no more directions in the true disciplines of the wars, look you, of the Roman disciplines, than is a puppy dog. (3.2.70–4) Through the contrast with the ‘Roman’ disciplines of war, Macmorris is presented as a Barbarian and this dimension can be felt behind the word ‘nation’. Ironically, in Act 5, it is the Welsh Fluellen who resents Pistol’s words as national insult and thus has him 300

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eat the leek, the very emblem of Wales that he mocked. The lesson Gower gives to Pistol, in defence of Fluellen is emblematic of these national tensions and insults: [. . .] You thought because he [Fluellen] could not speak English in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel. You find it otherwise, and henceforth let a Welsh correction teach you a good English condition. Fare ye well. Exit. (5.1.75–80) One finds traces of insulting national clichés in Ford’s monologue in MW : [. . .] I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese, an Irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle, or a thief to walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself. [. . .] (2.2.286–9) (C) In The Schoole of Abuse, Gosson conveys a series on national clichés to show that England is contaminated by the other nations: ‘Wee have robbed Greece of gluttony, Italy of wantones, Spayne of pride, France of deceite, and Duchland of quaffing’ (24). Hamlet describes the mechanism that leads to national insult and that transforms an individual fault into a national slander: This heavy-handed revel east and west Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations: They clepe us drunkards and with swinish phrase Soil our addition, and indeed it takes From our achievements, though performed at height, The pith and marrow of our attribute. (Ham 1.4.17–22) For an example of national insult (‘Caudatus Anglicus’), see Neilson, Caudatus Anglicus, A Medieval Slander (1896): ‘There can be no doubt whatever that for centuries Englishmen felt it as a very real and aggravating reproach, a sore thorn in the flesh’ (1). Neilson mentions a series of national insults (9). For another example of studies of national insults, see Valerie Allen, ‘ “Scot” as a Term of Abuse in Skelton’s Against Dundas’ (1987), 19–23. See Innes, 329–32 (Ireland); 450–1 (nation); 535–6 (Wales); Vienne-Guerrin, ‘Couple a gorge’ (2008). For a panorama of nations, see the description of Nell’s body in CE , 3.2. See French, goat, leek. natural (A) Dull fool, rustic clown. Natural fool as opposed to the court jester or artificial Fool. A person having, by nature, little intellectual capacity. Hollyband has ‘Naïf, naturall, [. . .]’. Florio (1598) reads: ‘Nescio, a foole, an idiot, a natural, a dolt. One that knowes nothing, ignorant.’ (B) In AYL , Rosalind and Celia call Touchstone a ‘natural’, which for a jester like him cannot but be insulting. They do so in a sophisticated passage that plays with the word ‘nature’: 301

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Enter Touchstone [. . .] Though Nature hath given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument? Rosalind: Indeed there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when Fortune makes Nature’s natural the cutter-off of Nature’s wit. Celia: Peradventure this is not Fortune’s work neither, but Nature’s, who, perceiving our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, hath sent this natural for our whetstone; for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. – How now, wit, whither wander you? (1.2.44–55) Celia:

Dusinberre (AYL , 163) glosses ‘natural’ as ‘illegitimate offspring’, but the term also refers to a ‘natural fool’. Celia and Rosalind are wittily greeting Touchstone as a ‘natural’, which is proleptic of the complex part he will play once in the forest of Arden as a ‘clownish fool’ (1.3.127), an expression that sounds oxymoronic and suggests the overlapping of the natural and artificial fools. Once in nature, Touchstone repeatedly contrasts the rustic clowns and the fool he is, to show his superior wit. Thus, calling him a ‘natural’ and playing with his name (whetstone/Touchstone), Celia and Rosalind mischievously provoke him. In this context, their address to him as ‘wit’ is full of irony as they have just deprived him of any wit by calling him ‘natural’. On stage, one may either have Touchstone hear the women’s exchange or just hear the final question. In any case, the insulting and provoking dimension is present. In Tem, Trinculo denounces Caliban as an idiot, when he hears him call the drunkard Stephano ‘Lord’: Trinculo: ‘Lord’, quoth he? That a monster should be such a natural! Caliban: Lo, lo, again! Bite him to death, I prithee. Stephano: Trinculo, keep a good tongue in your head. If you prove a mutineer – the next tree! The poor monster’s my subject, and he shall not suffer indignity. (3.2.30–5) Trinculo sees in Caliban’s worshipping of Stephano a sign of his lack of wit. He calls him ‘most ignorant monster’ (3.2.24) and inveighs against the ‘the folly of this island’ (3.2.4) when he hears Stephano address Caliban as ‘Servant monster’ (3.2.3): ‘Servant-monster? The folly of this island! They say there’s but five upon this isle; we are three of them. If th’other two be brained like us, the state totters’ (3.2.4–6). There might be an allusion to the ‘picture of we three’ mentioned in TN (2.3.15–16), which was a painting or inn sign representing two asses or loggerheads, with the caption ‘We three’ implicating the spectator. Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo seem to constitute such a comic trio, like Feste, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, the latter being described by Maria as ‘almost natural’ (TN 1.3.27). (C) See clown, fool, head, ninny, noddy, sot, wit.

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naught(y) (A) Wicked, worthless. Hollyband has: ‘Mauvais, euill, wicked, hurtfull, peruerse, vnhappy, mischeeuous, naught.’ Naught/nought also means ‘nothing’. Hollyband reads: ‘Rien, nothing, naught.’ The two meanings may overlap. (B) Ophelia says to Hamlet ‘You are naught, you are naught! I’ll mark the play’ (Ham 3.2.140–1), because he has just played bawdily with Ophelia’s question: Ophelia: Will ’a tell us what this show meant? Hamlet: Ay, or any show that you will show him. Be not you ashamed to show, he’ll not shame to tell you what it means. (3.2.136–9) Using the term ‘naught’, Ophelia means that Hamlet is being indecent and offensive, that he is ‘naughty’, morally bad, wicked and sexually provocative, as is suggested in MM where Elbow describes a ‘bawd’s house’ as a ‘naughty house’ (2.1.74–5). Behind the word, one may also get an image of Hamlet as a worthless son who does not manage to do anything. When Lear tells Regan ‘Beloved Regan, / Thy sister’s naught’ (2.2.322–3), the term means ‘wicked’ but it also echoes Cordelia’s insulting ‘Nothing’ at the beginning of the play (1.1.87) and it amounts to reducing her to being an ‘O without a figure’ (1.4.183–4), a cipher or zero to his heart. Regan is later, in her turn, called ‘Naughty lady’ (3.7.37) by Gloucester, who means that she is wicked but who also provides another illustration of the importance of nothingness in the play. The three daughters are successively reduced to ‘naught’ in KL . In AW , Lafew says to the King about Parolles, who is on stage: ‘He’s a good drum, my lord, but a naughty orator’ (5.3.253–4), which suggests that Parolles is more noisy than verbally skilful, which is full of irony if one considers his name. It suggests that his words are ‘naught’, some meaningless wind, which is in keeping with his being called a ‘bubble’ (3.6.5). In 1H4, Falstaff, impersonating the King, the Prince’s father, calls Hal/his son ‘thou naughty varlet’ (2.4.419), thus suggesting he is a mischievous boy. According to Scott Kastan, this ‘seemingly strikes a nerve, since it is here that Hal insists in trading roles and playing his father’ (1H4, 231). In JC , Flavius addresses the Cobbler as ‘thou naughty knave’ (1.1.14), an expression that obviously combines the two meanings: ‘wicked’ and ‘having naught’ (nothing), thus ‘base’. In MV , Shylock, finding the jailer too lenient with Antonio, ironically calls him ‘Thou naughty jailer’ (3.3.9). Drakakis (MV , 317) notes that here Shylock means ‘worthless’ rather than ‘wicked’, but one may also consider that, by using this word, he reveals a reversal of values that transforms good into evil, since the jailer is precisely not ‘naughty’ but rather generous. Shylock’s words suggest that, by favouring Antonio (by being ‘fond’, 3.3.9), the jailer is economically counterproductive (it will bring ‘naught’ to Shylock) and they also display a world that is turned upside down. In MA , Dogberry calls Conrade, who has just called him ‘coxcomb’ (4.2.71), ‘Thou naughty varlet!’ (4.2.74), the insult comically revealing the Constable’s powerlessness. Leonato refers to Borachio as ‘this naughty man’ (5.1.287) at the end of the play. Ironically, the two characters that are called ‘naughty’ are the ones who have done much with and about ‘nothing’. 303

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In TC , Cressida calls Pandarus ‘Go hang yourself, you naughty mocking uncle!’ (4.2.26): the term here means ‘wicked’ but also conveys Pandarus’ bawdy spirit, as he has just mocked Cressida’s loss of virginity. He then bawdily plays on the word ‘do’ before mocking Troilus: ‘Ha, ha! Alas, poor wretch! Ah, poor capocchia, has ’t not slept tonight? Would he not – ah, naughty man – let it sleep?’ (4.2.32–4). Pandarus, as expected, uses bawdy language when he utters the word ‘capocchia’, which means ‘dolt’ but also refers to the prepuce of a man’s privy member. He thus transforms Troilus into a ‘naughty’, that is bawdy, man, thus rewriting the love scene between Troilus and Cressida into a bawdy scene. (C) See Williams, 2, 937–8. See cipher, O. neat’s tongue (A) Cow or ox tongue, often served dry as food. (B) Falstaff calls Hal ‘you dried neat’s tongue’ (1H4 2.4.239) in a string of insults that all target his thin stature and his lack of sexual vigour, his ‘dryness’. Bevington (1H4, 190) notes that the foods mentioned by the fat man suggest ‘not only emaciation but a temperament opposite to sanguinity and moisture – the qualities of youth’. The dried neat’s tongue is one of the many terms that are evocative of ‘genital emaciation or insufficiency’. This contributes to constructing Hal as a figure of Lent contrasted with Carnival Falstaff. (C) Fitzpatrick (2011), 298; Laroque (1991). Nero (A) A figure that is the embodiment of cruelty. Elyot (1538) has: ‘Nero, the name of an emperour, of a monstruous and cruell nature’. Du Bartas (1605) reads: ‘Nero, a most cruell Emperour of Rome, the monster of nature, and shame of mankinde.’ Hence, a person resembling Nero. (B) In KJ , the Bastard describes his adversaries as Neroes: [. . .] And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts, You bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb Of your dear mother England, blush for shame: [. . .] (5.2.151–3) Nero had his own mother Agrippina, murdered and, the story says, subsequently ripped open her womb, which explains the image used here. Lewis stops the Bastard’s flow of invectives, by expressing his contempt for words, preferring to them the drums and what he calls the ‘tongue of war’ (5.2.164): There end thy brave, and turn thy face in peace; We grant thou canst outscold us: fare thee well; We hold our time too precious to be spent With such a brabbler. (5.2.159–62) 304

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Nero appears as a symbol of unnatural cruelty, when Hamlet declares, preparing his confrontation with his mother: ‘Let not ever / The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom – / Let me be cruel, not unnatural’ (Ham 3.2.383–5). The reference to Nero is here significant as the emperor is also said to have slept with his mother, before killing her. Nero’s cruelty also appears in 1H6 where Talbot refers to Nero playing ‘on the lute, beholding the towns burn’ (1.4.95) and 3H6 where King Henry argues that Margaret would move anyone and that hearing her sighs and tears, even ‘Nero will be tainted with remorse’ (3.1.40). (C) See Christine de Pisan (1521), cap. Xlviii, Kiii–Kiv: ‘when she [his mother] was dead he made her to be opened to see the place where he was conceyued’ (Kiiir). See also Rainolde, A booke called the Foundacion of rhetorike (1563), ‘The dispraise of Nero’, fol. Xliii–xliiii. Blount (1656) has: ‘Nero Domitius, an Emperor of Rome, infamous for his cruelty and tyranny; he murdered his Mother Agrippina, his Brethren, and his Wife Octavia, his Master Seneca, and the Poet. Lucane, &c. Hence Tyrants are called Neroes.’ ninny (A) A simpleton, a fool. Perhaps a shortened form of ‘innocent’. The word appears regularly in Florio’s World of Words (1598): ‘Caparrone, a pugge, an ape, a munkie, a babuine, a gull, a ninnie, a mome, a sot’ or ‘Ignocco, a foole, a sot, a patch, a noddie, a gull, or a ninnie.’ It is part of the list of words that Cotgrave enumerates to translate ‘Fol’: ‘A foole; asse, goose, calfe, dotterell, woodcocke; noddie, cokes, goosecap, coxcombe, dizard, peagoose, ninnie, naturall, ideot, wisakers [wiseacre]’. A ‘ninnyhammer’ is a blockhead, a fool and OED relates ‘ninny’ to ‘nicompoop’ (a simpleton, a foolish person). (B) In Tem, Caliban exclaims about Trinculo: ‘What a pied ninny’s this!’ (3.2.61). As Vaughan and Vaughan (Tem, 228) note, it is a reference to the jester and his costume, ‘pied’ describing the motley garment and ‘ninny’ the fool who wears it. Trinculo can be seen as a court jester, as he is sometimes performed on stage, and he can be contrasted with the ‘natural’ (3.2.31) Caliban, in the general ‘folly of this island’ (3.2.4), where even Ariel becomes a ‘jesting monkey’ (3.2.43) and where Caliban offers to ‘brain’ Prospero (3.2.88). In MND , Flute, rehearsing the part of Thisbe, misdelivers one of his lines: ‘I’ll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny’s tomb’ (3.1.91), he says, instead of ‘Ninus’ tomb’. Although Quince corrects the mistake (3.1.92), both Bottom and Flute make it again during the performance (5.1.200; 257). In this context the word is not an insult but its usual insulting content impairs the text and makes it comical. The malapropism comes as evidence that the mechanicals themselves are ‘ninnies’ indeed. (C) On ‘nincompoop’, see Williams, 2, 951. nit (A) The egg of the louse; a gnat or other small fly. Thus, an insignificant person. (B) In TS , Petruccio, practising the rhetorical art of diminution, calls the tailor ‘Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket, thou’ (4.3.111), which leads critics to think that the part was played by a boy actor. In LLL , Costard, soliloquizing, describes the little page, Moth, as a ‘handful of wit’ and ‘a most pathetical nit’ (4.1.146–7). His words seem to hover between praise and dispraise, as the context suggests that Costard expresses his 305

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admiration for Armado and his page but the words he uses seem to be far from compliments. ‘Nit’ is part of the numerous words that are used to refer to the page’s small size in the play but also sounds like a term of endearment in this case. The reference to the nit, that is an insect, is one of the arguments used by the editors who prefer the spelling ‘Moth’ to ‘Mote’. (C) On louse, lousy, lice and nit, see Iyengar, 195–7. On the name Moth/Mote, see Woudhuysen, LLL , Appendix 3, 342–5. noddy (A) A fool, a simpleton, a gull, a sot. Thomas reads: ‘Perfătuus, a, um, [. . .] Very foolish, a starke noddy or cockescombe.’ Florio (1598) has ‘Balordo, a foole, a noddie, a dizzard, an idiot, a giddie-head’ and ‘Noddo, a noddie, a foole, a patch, a gull, a ninnie.’ It is perhaps a shortened version of ‘noddypoll’ (simpleton). (B) The word only appears at the beginning of TGV : Proteus: Speed: Proteus: Speed:

But what said she? [Nods his head.] Ay. Nod - ay – why, that’s ‘noddy’. You mistook, sir. I say, she did nod, and you ask me if she did nod, and I say ‘Ay’. Proteus: And that set together is ‘noddy’. (1.1.108–13) Proteus is calling Speed a fool by playing on his nodding and his ‘Ay’, through a kind of arithmetic word composition. Given the bawdy content of the sequence, the term may also be interpreted in a sexual way, as suggested by Williams (2, 953) who shows that ‘noddy’ can refer to ‘copulation’, from the ‘very popular cribbage-like card game’. Although Williams does not mention this example, the expression ‘set together’ may invite such a sexual reading. A few lines later, Speed, as a servant dissatisfied with the tip he receives, complains about ‘having nothing but the word “noddy’ for [his] pains’ (1.1.119–20), which shows that he has caught the insulting content of Proteus’ words. (C) Braunmuller (KJ , 128) notes that there may be a link between ‘noddy’ and (k)nob (the head). See ninny. nothing (A) No thing. An insignificant person, a nobody. The term may refer to the vagina (Williams, 2, 960–1), as ‘thing’ could be a euphemism for ‘penis’. (B) ‘Nothing’ is an unsettling word of abuse on several occasions. In MND , the term is wittily-ironically applied to Bottom/Pyramus: Pyramus: Now die, die, die, die, die. [Dies] Demetrius: No die, but an ace, for him; for he is but one. Lysander: Less than an ace, man; for he is dead, he is nothing. Theseus: With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover, and prove an ass. (5.1.300–6) 306

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Beyond the pun on ‘die’ (‘the one of a pair of dice’), ‘ace’ and ‘ass’, which means much for a character who has literally been transformed into an ass, Lysander’s words suggest that Bottom/Pyramus is insignificant, a nobody that at best may prove an ass, an idiot. Throughout the performance of the play within the play, the words of the spectators on stage constitute a ritual of collective insulting that one may choose to consider lightly or more seriously. In 1H4, the term concludes a highly rhetorical piece of abuse: Prince:

[. . .] Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? Wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? Wherein cunning, but in craft? Wherein crafty, but in villainy? Wherein villainous, but in all things? Wherein worthy, but in nothing? (2.4.442–7)

The Prince is here impersonating his father and imagining he is addressing himself. The ‘He’ is only named afterwards (2.4.448–53). The rhetoric of the speech makes the word that concludes it, spectacular. Beyond the comedy of the situation, the ‘nothing’ sounds ironically proleptic when we know that at the end of 2H4 Falstaff becomes ‘nothing’ indeed for the new King who solemnly declares: ‘I know thee not, old man’ (5.5.47). In performance, this flyting scene may hover between the purely playful and the potentially serious mode and effect of abuse. Hamlet at best teases, at worst insults Ophelia with his bawdy allusions: Hamlet: Ophelia: Hamlet: Ophelia: Hamlet: Ophelia: Hamlet: Ophelia: Hamlet:

Lady, shall I lie in your lap? No, my lord. Do you think I meant country matters? I think nothing, my lord. That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs. What is, my lord? Nothing. You are merry, my lord. Who, I? (3.2.108–16)

Hamlet’s bawdy interpretation of Ophelia’s ‘nothing’ is offensive and prolongs the nunnery scene (3.1.120–48). He transforms her words into bawdy words, thus suggesting she is bawdy and relegating her to the status of a whore. Hamlet keeps playing on ‘thing’ and ‘nothing’ when, addressing Guildenstern, he describes the King as ‘a thing’ . . . ‘of nothing’ (4.3.26–8), negating Claudius’ virility just after seemingly stating it. In MM , this reductive vision of woman appears when Mariana is described by the Duke: ‘Why, you are nothing then: neither maid, widow, nor wife!’ and Lucio jumps to the conclusion: ‘My lord, she may be a punk!’ (5.1.178–80). KL provides the best illustration that any word, anything, even ‘nothing’, can become an insult: 307

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Lear:

[. . .] What can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak. Cordelia: Nothing, my lord. Lear: Nothing? Cordelia: Nothing. Lear: How, nothing can come of nothing. Speak again. Cordelia: Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty According to my bond, no more nor less. Lear: How, how, Cordelia? Mend your speech a little, Lest you may mar your fortunes. (1.1.85–95) For Lear, Cordelia’s refusal to deliver compliments is an insult. The whole play dramatizes the insulting effect that this ‘nothing’ has on Lear and his world. It is the first of a long series of outrages he has to bear and it paves the way to his annihilation. Cordelia’s ‘nothing’ makes her ‘naughty’ in her father’s eyes. Her silence ‘flouts’ him (as Kate the shrew says about her sister Bianca in TS , 2.1.29). Much comes of this nothing, this original abuse, which is for Lear a traumatic experience that shatters his self-esteem and the image he has of himself as a king. This ‘nothing’ is a striking example of what Larguèche calls ‘l’effet injure’ (1983), in a play that is obsessed with nothingness. The Fool then reduces the king to nothing: ‘Now thou art an O without a figure; I am better than thou art now. I am a fool, thou art nothing’ (1.4.183–5). Coming from the Fool, who has the liberty to ‘blow on whom’ he pleases (AYL 2.7.47–9), the potential insult has no impact on Lear, all the more so since, as Lear has renounced his kingship, he, indeed, has become nothing. In Cym, Imogen inveighs against ‘that harsh, noble, simple nothing / That Cloten’ (3.4.132–3). The line, which is irregular, has been the object of many conjectures and emendations (see Nosworthy, Cym, 96), but one can easily consider that Imogen’s ‘noble’ is uttered with irony, Cloten constantly referring to his high birth and nobility. Seeing Cloten as a ‘noble nothing’ makes sense in the context of the play. (C) On ‘nothing’ as ‘a crude and reductive term for the vagina and signifying woman as lack’, see Findlay (2010), 301–2. nunnery (A) Convent. Residence for nuns who have vowed chastity. The unmarried priesthood was a ‘locus of Reformation controversy’ (Hassel, 225). It can be a slang term for ‘brothel’, ‘bawdy house’. (B) The ‘nunnery scene’ in Ham is undoubtedly a scene of insult. Hamlet regularly (eight times in Q1, five times in Q2 and F) tells Ophelia to ‘go to a nunnery’: [. . .] Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? [. . .] (3.1.120–1)

308

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[. . .] We are arrant knaves – believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father? (3.1.127–9) [. . .] be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery. Farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery go, and quickly too. Farewell. (3.1.135–9) I say we will have no more marriage. Those that are married already – all but one – shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go! (3.1.146–8) Behind what can be seen as words of advice for the preservation of Ophelia’s purity, Hamlet’s speech is offensive in many respects. The meaning of the word ‘nunnery’ is much debated: some editors argue that it cannot mean ‘brothel’ as it would not be coherent with Hamlet’s trying to deter Ophelia from ‘breeding’ (Thompson and Taylor, 290). Others like Jenkins (Ham, 493–6) provide evidence that the text preserves ambiguity and that one may ironically hear ‘brothel’ (house of unchastity), behind ‘nunnery’ (house of chastity). Findlay (2010) notes that Hamlet, as a student of Wittenberg, the place of Reformation, ‘draws on the tradition of Protestant satire when he cruelly directs Ophelia to “Get thee to a nunnery!” ’ (302), nunneries being related to the Roman Church and associated with brothels by Nashe (Christs Teares, 1593, Works, 2, 152). Whether the two meanings are present here – which I tend to believe – or not, Hamlet’s words are insulting. Telling Ophelia to go to a nunnery amounts to saying that without doors, she will be a whore, like all women and that she will transform men into ‘monsters’, that is cuckolds. Telling Ophelia to go to a brothel amounts to saying that within doors, she will be a whore. Moreover, whether she goes to a nunnery or a brothel, regardless, she shall ‘not escape calumny’ and thus she will be seen as a whore. The term cuts both ways. (C) See Williams, 2, 962–4; Findlay (2010), 302–3; Hassel, 226; Innes, 454–5. nut (A) A fruit with a hard shell enclosing a kernel. Something of trifling value. ‘Not worth a nutshell’ is proverbial (Tilley, N366), as well as ‘Sweet is the nut but bitter (hard) is the shell’ (Tilley, N360). (B) In AYL , Touchstone, mimicking Orlando’s bad verse, invents and delivers to Rosalind potentially insulting lines: ‘Sweetest nut hath sourest rind, / Such a nut is Rosalind’ (3.2.106–7). Beyond the allusion to the proverb, the Fool may be referring to Rosalind’s sour disguise hiding her sweet female nature. Williams (2, 965) quotes Touchstone’s words to show that ‘nut’ may be an allusion to the vulva, with the implication of ‘being opened up to get at the sexual kernel’. This is in keeping with Touchstone’s numerous bawdy puns. Describing Rosalind as a nut in a love poem is a source of comic discrepancy. It finds its echo in Celia’s comparing Orlando with a ‘dropped acorn’ (3.2.228). 309

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In AW , Lafew warns Bertram against Parolles, who is present on stage: Lafew:

[. . .] believe this of me: there can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this man is his clothes. Trust him not in matter of heavy consequence; I have kept of them tame, and know their natures. Farewell, monsieur; I have spoken better of you than you have or will to deserve at my hand; but we must do good against evil. Exit. (2.5.42–8)

The image of the ‘light nut’, like that of the ‘bubble’ (3.6.5), conveys Parolles’s lack of substance: he is all words and no matter. In Rom, Mercutio blames Benvolio for being a great quarreller: ‘Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes’ (3.1.18–20). (C) For the sexual meanings, see Williams, 2, 965–7. On the nut as food, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 301–2. nut-hook (A) A hooked stick used to pull down the branches of trees when gathering nuts. A beadle, a constable. For Williams (2, 967), ‘It is notable that “nuthook” [. . .] was (like “catchpole”) also used opprobriously of constables, from the weapon they carried.’ (B) At the end of 2H4, Doll copiously insults the beadle who has come to ‘catch’ her and she uses terms that have to do with his profession. Before calling him ‘you bluebottle rogue, you filthy famished correctioner’ (5.4.20–1), she exclaims: ‘Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie!’ (5.4.8). The term suggests that he has come to arrest her, but it is also evocative of the Beadle’s thin appearance and is in keeping with Doll’s final insults: ‘Come, you thin thing, come, you rascal!’ (5.4.30). The nut-hook is a ‘thin thing’ indeed and the metaphor conveys the shape of the Clown John Sincklo who would probably play the part and was known for being thin and pale (see Humphreys, 2H4, 177). Williams (2, 965–8) provides examples of the term meaning ‘bawd’ or ‘whore’ and explores the various sexual meanings of the word ‘nut’. Given the world of whoredom to which Doll belongs, it is tempting to hear the term ‘nut-hook’ with a bawdy ear.

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O O (A) Zero, cipher. The letter O, an orifice. (B) In LLL , during a ‘set of wit well played’ (5.2.29) between Rosaline and Katherine, Rosaline exclaims: ‘O, that your face were not so full of O’s!’ (5.2.45). The ‘O’s’ probably refer to smallpox scars, which explains why the Princess comments on the insulting joke by saying ‘A pox of that jest and I beshrew all shrews’ (5.2.46). The ‘O’, which refers both to the letter and the hole, is an answer to Katherine’s ‘B’, as she has just told Rosaline that she was ‘Fair as a text B in a copy-book’ (5.2.42), which means that she is not ‘fair’ because such a letter as capital B would use a good deal of black ink. In a play that is obsessed with numbers and letters, it is not surprising that some insults should be related to that field. In KL , the Fool tells the King: ‘thou art an O without a figure’, before telling him ‘thou art nothing’ (1.4.183–5). The King is like the O, ‘with no number before it to give it value’ (Foakes, KL , 202), an image which takes all its meaning when one considers how Lear is obsessed with the number of his followers and considers his numbers as the sign of his kingly stature and existence. Act 2 scene 2 dramatizes the cruel process of subtraction that leads him to literally being an O without a figure, when Regan asks the question ‘What need one?’ (follower) (2.2.452). (C) Williams, 2, 969 (‘O’) and 829–30 (‘Lovers’ alphabet’): ‘Letters of the alphabet provide copious opportunity for bawdy quibbling’ (829). orange (A) A whore. The sexual meaning may partly derive from the quibbling association with ‘leman’ (lemon), meaning ‘an unlawful lover or mistress’ (Williams, 2, 974). Cotgrave has ‘Aigre-douce: f. A ciuile Orange; or, Orange, that is betweene sweet and sower.’ (B) In MA , Claudio violently rejects Hero, saying to Leonato: ‘There, Leonato, take her back again. / Give not this rotten orange to your friend; / She’s but the sign and semblance of her honour’ (4.1.29–31), clearly meaning that she is a whore, through the image of fruit rotten from the inside out. McEachern (MA , 258, see also 196) notes that ‘Oranges were associated with prostitutes (perhaps because pocked skin was an effect of venereal disease); they are also a symbol of deception as one cannot tell from their covering what taste lies within’. Ironically, the Count that Beatrice describes as ‘civil as an orange’ (2.1.270) proves highly uncivil, by calling Hero a ‘rotten orange’. The reference to the civil orange contains a pun on ‘Seville’, which was well-known for its oranges of a bitter-sweet savour. The violence of the insult euphemistically kills Hero, 311

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who swoons a little later (4.1.109). The image of the orange is also part of the context of economic exchange that Claudio and Don Pedro delineate through a cruel game of question and answer that makes the insult all the more spectacular: Claudio:

And what have I to give you back whose worth May counterpoise this rich and precious gift? Don Pedro: Nothing, unless you render her again. (4.1.25–7) Hero becomes some corrupted foodstuff that is rendered, in disgust, to its dealer because it can no longer be eaten or consumed. (C) On ‘Oranges and Lemans’ in MA , see Madelaine; on ‘Rotten Oranges and Other Spoiled Commodities: The Economics of Shame in Much Ado about Nothing’, see Chamberlain. Williams, 2, 974–5; Fitzpatrick (2011), 307–9. otter (A) An amphibious beast, an aquatic mammal. Topsell (1607) writes that the otter ‘liueth both on the Water and on the land’ (572) and that ‘Their outward forme is most like vnto a beaver, sauing in their taile, for the taile of a beaver is fish, but the taile of an otter is flesh’ (573). Florio (1598), has ‘Lontra, an otter which liues both on land and in water, a beauer.’ (B) In 1H4, when Falstaff, the ‘muddy conger’ (2H4 2.4.51) calls Hostess Quickly ‘an otter’, Prince Hal asks him to elucidate the insult: Falstaff: Hostess: Falstaff: Prince: Falstaff:

[. . .] thou art a beast to say otherwise. Say, what beast, thou knave thou. What beast? Why, an otter. An otter, Sir John? Why an otter? Why? She’s neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her. Hostess: Thou art an unjust man in saying so. Thou or any man knows where to have me, thou knave thou. Prince: Thou sayst true, hostess, and he slanders thee most grossly. (3.3.121–31)

The comedy rests on the discrepancy between the emission and the reception of the insult. When Falstaff calls the hostess ‘beast’, her question ‘what beast?’ shows that she asks for an explanation of the abusive word. She wants to understand what meaning Falstaff puts behind the word. Larguèche (1983) makes a useful distinction between what she calls ‘l’injure non spécifique’ (non specific insult, that is to say words of abuse that are not related to any characteristic, or to any feature of the person who is abused) and what she calls ‘l’injure specifique’ (specific insult, which translates, reflects, is based on a characteristic of the abused person). Falstaff here emits a word in a ‘non specific mode’, while the hostess wants the word to mean something ‘specific’. For the hostess, these words of abuse are not simply substitutes of something negative (what 312

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Larguèche calls ‘substituts de négatif’), they are not mere insults whose meaning lies in the speech act rather than in the word, that is rather than in any precise semantic content. For the hostess, words of abuse should mean something. The same idea appears in Hal’s reaction when he hears Falstaff call the hostess ‘otter’: ‘why an otter?’ The incongruous and extravagant nature of the image could suggest that it is not connected to any of the hostess’s characteristics and that the word is here only a ‘verbal gesture’ of abuse (what Larguèche calls ‘des gestes verbaux’, Injure et sexualité, 1997, 95). Yet Hal wants Falstaff to put meaning in the word, which he does, by defining precisely what he means: ‘Why? She’s neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her’, an answer which reflects how Topsell (1607), describes the otter. The explanation gives the image a sexual meaning, with the double entendre on the word ‘have’. The hostess, in her turn, ironically ‘freezes’ the sexual content of the insult saying ‘Thou art an unjust man in saying so. Thou or any man knows where to have me, thou knave thou.’ (C) On the hunting of the otter, see Gascoigne (1575), 201–5 (363 sic). Topsell (1607); Walton, The Compleat Angler (1653), 46. On the theoretical implications of the ‘otter episode’, see Vienne-Guerrin (2014). owl (A) Nocturnal bird of prey whose cry was supposed to be ominous and to announce death and disaster. ‘The croaking raven [the screech owl] bides misfortune’ (Tilley, R33) is proverbial. The owl can also be a type of stupidity and refer to an idiot who looks wise and grave, a wiseacre. It is described as a dull sluggard, because it sleeps during the day. Maplet (96v) has ‘The Owle is called the dastardly Bird: she is of such slouth and sluggishnesse, she hath feathers inough to flie abrode day and night: But the sluggarde sleepeth all day long’. (B) In 1H6, the Captain of the French forces in Bordeaux calls Talbot ‘Thou ominous and fearful owl of death’ (4.2.15). The Captain is saying that Talbot is the harbinger of death while, ironically, it is he who is the ‘fatal bellman’ (Mac 2.2.3) to Talbot who dies in 4.4.144. In R3, when three messengers in succession come to tell news to Richard, he exclaims: ‘Out on you, owls! Nothing but songs of death.’ (4.4.507). He strikes the third messenger before he has delivered the end of his message, which is in fact good news for him. Richard’s exclamation is ironically reminiscent of the words uttered by Henry VI just before Richard kills him. He associates Richard’s birth with an ominous sign of disaster and death: The owl shrieked at thy birth, an evil sign; The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; Dogs howled; and hideous tempests shook down trees; The raven rooked her on the chimney’s top; And chatt’ring pies in dismal discords sung. (3H6 5.6.44–8) In TC , Ajax calls Thersites ‘the vile owl’ (2.1.88). The example appears in OED with the explanation: ‘looking solemn or wise (freq. with implication of attendant dullness or 313

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underlying stupidity)’ (3 Fig.). Bevington glosses ‘wiseacre, solemn dullard’ (TC , 187). The word also suggests that Thersites is a bird of ill omen that curses, rails and ‘croaks’ upon the world he lives in. This reading is confirmed when Thersites compares himself to a raven: ‘Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode’ (TC 5.2.197–8). The evocation of the owl as a slothful, indolent, lazy creature may not be absent. In LLL , Boyet leaves the stage, saying: ‘Good night, my good owl’ (4.1.138), which can be heard as a taunting expression. The two characters on stage with him are Maria, with whom he has just had a bawdy banter, and Costard, the clown. Woudhuysen (LLL , 184) notes that the term conveys ‘a stupid person who looks wise and grave’, which seems to suit Costard. But the possible pun on owl/hole suggests that the owl is Maria. The term rhymes with ‘bowl’ that concludes the preceding line and is in keeping with the evocation of the night (‘good night’). The image anticipates the owl in the final show within the play (5.2.880; 905). (C) See Maplet, 96–7, which quotes Ovid (Metamorphoses, LCL , 5.549–50): Ouid hath these verses. Foedaque sic volucris venturi nuncia luctus, Ignauus Bubo dirum mortalibas omen. That filthie Birde and Messenger of sorrowes ill to come: The sluggish Owle hath bene to man most often daunger some. (96v) Ovid’s quotation appears in the description of Ascalaphus’ being turned into an owl. For a description of the owl, see Batman vppon Bartholome (1582), Book 12, chap. 5.

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P pagan (A) Non-Christian, heathen, unbelieving person considered as savage, uncivilized. Also paramour, prostitute (Williams, 2, 986). (B) In 1H4, Hotspur, alone, reading a letter, inveighs against the (never named) lord who refuses to support him: ‘What a pagan rascal is this! An infidel’ (2.3.27), an exclamation which means that the lord should trust him, believe in him as in a god. In Oth, Brabantio, rebelling against the charm Othello has on his daughter, concludes: For if such actions may have passage free Bond-slaves and pagans shall our statesmen be. (1.2.98–9) This rhyming aphorism amounts to reducing Othello, who is present on stage, to the status of ‘bond-slave’ and ‘pagan’. Othello recalls the time when he was ‘sold to slavery’ (1.3.139) and Brabantio, horrified at the thought of the Moor’s marriage with Desdemona, wants to put him back into that state of slavery and stress his otherness by calling him a ‘pagan’. In MV , the clown leaves Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, saying: ‘Adieu. Tears exhibit my tongue. Most beautiful pagan, most sweet Jew! If a Christian did not play the knave and get thee, I am much deceived’ (2.3.10–12). Given the negative connotations associated with ‘pagan’ and ‘Jew’, the words of endearment sound oxymoronic. Calling Jessica ‘pagan’ feeds the Christian prejudice, all the more so since the sexual meaning of the term is probably not absent. Lancelet imagines that a ‘Christian’ ‘will play the knave’ and ‘get’ her, which suggests that she is a sexual object, a ‘jewel’. (C) In 2H4, the Prince uses the term to refer to a prostitute: ‘What pagan may that be?’ (2.2.147). In R2, the Bishop of Carlisle pays tribute to Suffolk who fought many times: ‘Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross, / Against black pagans, Turks and Saracens’ (4.1.95–6). See Hassel, 234. See infidel, Jew, Turk. paint (A) To represent with paint or colour; to decorate and adorn with colour, to apply cosmetics, hence to deceive. Jezebel (2 Kings 9:30–7) is an illustration of a loose or ‘painted’ woman whose appearance is deceitful. Baret reads: ‘Paint. To drawe out the shape & fourme of a thing. [. . .] A painter. Pictor, ris [. . .] One that painteth or setteth on a counterfait beauty vpon faces or any kinde of wares, the sooner & dearer to sell them.’ (B) In Tit, Aaron inveighs against Chiron and Demetrius who want to ‘dispatch’ (4.2.88) his son: 315

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What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys, Ye white-limed walls, ye alehouse painted signs! (4.2.99–100) As noted by Bate (Tit, 224), the passage ‘inverts the traditional idea that white is the “natural” colour, making it on the contrary a crude artificial covering, where black is authentic and incapable of bearing false face’. The ‘alehouse signs’ were crudely painted and Aaron’s insult is an answer to those who think that black is a ‘base hue’ (4.2.73). In R3, Queen Margaret calls Elizabeth ‘Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune’ (1.3.240), meaning that she is only the semblance of a queen and that she has no reality. In 4.4, Margaret reminds Elizabeth of these same words and glosses them at length retrospectively, explaining what ‘painted’ means: I called thee then poor shadow, painted queen, The presentation of but what I was, The flattering index of a direful pageant, One heaved a-high, to be hurled down below, A mother only mocked with two sweet babes, A dream of what thou wast, a garish flag To be the aim of very dangerous shot, A sign of dignity, a breath, a bubble, A queen in jest, only to fill the scene. (4.4.83–91) This passage constitutes a footnote to better understand what lies behind ‘painted’. The words ‘shadow’ (used to characterize actors in MND ), ‘pageant’, ‘jest’ and ‘scene’ relate Margaret’s speech to the world of acting and theatre, the ‘painted’ queen being thus reduced to the status of an actor, who is painted indeed on the Elizabethan stage. In LLL , Berowne exclaims: ‘Fie, painted rhetoric!’ (4.3.235), meaning that rhetoric is deceptive and that truth does not need it (Tilley, T 575: ‘Truth has no need of rhetoric’). In MND , Hermia calls Helena ‘thou painted maypole’ (3.2.296), as an answer to Helena who has just called her ‘you counterfeit! You puppet you!’ (3.2.288). The ‘paint’ suggests counterfeiting and probably contains a comic allusion to the Elizabethan male actor being ‘painted’ to play the part. It can also suggest that Hermia is a loose deceptive woman who seduces men thanks to the paint she wears. In Tim, Apemantus turns the image of the painter against the painter himself: Timon: Apemantus: Timon: Apemantus: Painter:

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How lik’st thou this picture, Apemantus? The best for the innocence. Wrought he not well that painted it? He wrought better that made the painter, and yet he’s but a filthy piece of work. You’re a dog! (1.1.198–203)

Pandar/pander

Apemantus transforms the painter into a ‘filthy’ painting, ill made by the arch painter, God. Timon echoes Apemantus’ cynical words when, later in the play, he exclaims in an aside, about the painter: ‘Excellent workman, thou canst not paint a man so bad as is thyself’ (5.1.29–30). Paint is also related to deception and whoredom when Timon addresses Timandra and Phrynia: ‘Whore still, / Paint till a horse may mire upon your face. A pox of wrinkles!’ (4.3.146–8). In context, Timon’s words suggest that the two women are loose ‘painted women’, but also that they should hide with paint the scars due to the small pox in the same way as he advises them to ‘thatch your poor thin roofs / With burdens of the dead’ (4.3.144–5), that is cover their heads with hair supplied by the dead from which wigs were made, loss of hair being one of the signs of syphilis. It is not fortuitous that such insults should occur in a play that is obsessed with hypocrisy and dramatizes a ‘dream of friendship’ where ‘pomp’ is ‘painted, like [Timon’s] varnished friends’ (4.2.34–6). paltry (A) Worthless, insignificant, contemptible. Possibly related to the noun ‘paltry’ meaning ‘refuse’, ‘rubbish’. Florio (1611) has: ‘Tambelltóne a word of disgrace, as we say a paltry fellow, a shitten slaue.’ Cotgrave has: ‘Triquenisques: f. Trash, trifles, nifles, paltrie stuffe, things of no value.’ (B) The word is used to contrast one’s high status with one’s opponent’s baseness. In 2H6, Suffolk redundantly calls the pirates who are going to kill him ‘these paltry, servile, abject drudges!’ (4.1.105). In R3, Richard, addressing his army, describes his adversary Richmond as a ‘paltry fellow / Long kept in Bretagne at our mother’s cost’ (5.3.323–4), in a speech that systematically de-bases his opponent. In TC , Ajax exclaims against Achilles: ‘A paltry, insolent fellow!’ while Nestor says in an aside ‘How he describes himself!’ (2.3.205–6), thus turning Ajax’s words against him. Pandar/pander (A) A go-between in love affairs, a pimp, a procurer, a bawd. Cotgrave reads ‘Ruffien: m. A Bawde, a Pandar.’ The name of Pandarus appears in Iliad and refers to a Trojan archer but his part as a go-between (Pandaro) who procures for Troilus the good graces of Chryseis (or Cressida) is an innovation introduced by Boccacio in Il Filostrato and then rewritten by Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1374). (B) ‘Pander’ is one of the numerous insults that Kent hurls at Oswald in KL (2.2.21), which announces the part he plays as a go-between for Edmund and Goneril and reduces him to the basest kind of servant. Shakespeare displays the very process through which a proper name becomes an insult in TC : If ever you prove false one to another, since I have taken such pains to bring you together, let all pitiful goers-between be called to the world’s end after my name: call them all panders. Let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between panders! (3.2.193–9) This passage dramatizes the birth of insulting names and archetypes, which supposes that they have become proverbial. In Per, the names of the characters, ‘Bawd’ (the wife) 317

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and ‘Pander’ (the husband), sound like insults. In Cym, Cloten addresses Pisanio as ‘you precious pandar!’ (3.5.82), probably meaning that Pisanio is playing the go-between for Imogen and Posthumus, ‘precious’ being an intensifier that Cloten uses later again with the word ‘varlet’ (4.2.83). The insult echoes an extract from the letter addressed to Pisano and read aloud by Imogen, in which Posthumus slanders Imogen herself: ‘if thou fear to strike [. . .] thou art the pandar to her dishonour, and equally to me disloyal’ (3.4.28–30). Calling Pisanio ‘pandar’ amounts to calling Imogen a ‘strumpet’ (3.4.22), as is formulated in the letter. The figure of Pandar may be present even if the name is not uttered, as in LLL , where Maria tells Boyet: ‘Thou art an old love-monger, and speakest skilfully’ (2.1.253), which transforms him into a ‘dealer in love affairs, a pander’ (Wouldhuysen, LLL , 160). In H5, Bourbon’s speech gives an idea of the baseness associated with the figure of the pander: And he that will not follow Bourbon now, Let him go home and with his cap in hand Like a base pandar [leno in Q] hold the chamber-door Whilst by a slave no gentler than my dog, His fairest daughter is contaminated. (4.5.12–16) (C) Williams, 2, 988–90. See bawd, Cressid, Posthumus Leonatus. pantler (A) Pantryman. Derived from Anglo-Norman and Old and Middle-French panetier (from Fr. pain, bread), the word refers to the officer who provides, controls and cuts the bread in a household, the one who is in charge of the pantry, the room where bread was stored. (B) The word has an insulting effect on Hal in 2H4 when Falstaff tells Doll Tearsheet that the Prince is ‘A good shallow young fellow; a would have made a good pantler, a would ha’ chipped bread well’ (2.4.237–8). As Hal is eavesdropping on the scene, he hears the words and then comments on their abusive impact: Falstaff: Prince:

No abuse, Hal, o’mine honour, no abuse. Not? – to dispraise me, and call me pantler, and bread-chipper, and I know not what? Falstaff: No abuse, Hal. Poins: No abuse? Falstaff: No abuse, Ned, i’th’ world, honest Ned, none. (2.4.313–19) This passage questions the tight limit between abuse and ‘no abuse’ and throws into relief the importance of the circumstances of enunciation in the insulting effect. Humphreys (2H4, 79) notes that pantlers ‘chipped the hard crust off loaves’ and refers 318

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to Boorde’s A compendyous regyment or a dyetary of healthe (1547) where one finds that ‘Burnt breade, and hard crustes, & pasty crustes, doth engender color (choler), aduste and melancholy humour; wherefore chyp the upper crust of your breade’ (in ‘The xi Chapyter treateth of bread’). Falstaff calls Hal ‘bread-chipper’ (‘bread-chopper’ in F) and ‘pantler’ to answer Doll’s question about the Prince’s humour: ‘what humour’s the Prince of?’ (2.4.236). It is probably the word ‘humour’ that leads to the evocation of food, humours being thought to depend on one’s diet. Calling the Prince a ‘pantler’ puts Hal at the bottom of the social scale, as appears in Cym, when Cloten reprimands Imogen by telling her she should not ‘foil the precious note’ of the crown with Posthumus, that is with ‘a base slave. / A hilding for a livery, a squire’s cloth, / A pantler; not so eminent’ (Cym 2.3.122–5). Yet, the context suggests that calling the Prince ‘pantler’ also contributes to describing him as ‘shallow’, that is witless, since Falstaff considers that Hal is like Poins, whose wit is ‘as thick as Tewkesbury mustard’ (2H4 2.4.241). (C) See Fitzpatrick (2011), 54–6 (‘bread’). On the ‘no abuse’ sequence, see McLaverty. paraquito. See parrot. parasite (A) A person who lives at another’s expense and repays him or her with flattery. Cotgrave reads: ‘Parasite: m. A Parasite; a trencher-friend, or belliefriend; a smell-feast, and buffoone at feasts; a clawback, flatterer, soother, smoother for good cheare sake’ and ‘Oiseau de bec. A hungrie, or greedie Parasite; one in whom there is nothing but words.’ On the link between the parasite and the table, see also Cooper, Florio (1598) and Bullokar. (B) The term is used as an insult when Timon serves lukewarm water to his guests, exclaiming: May you a better feast never behold, You knot of mouth-friends! Smoke and lukewarm water Is your perfection. This is Timon’s last, Who, stuck and spangled with your flatteries, Washes it off and sprinkles in your faces Your reeking villainy. [Throws the water in their faces.] Live loathed and long, Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites, Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears – You fools of fortune, trencher-friends, time’s flies, Cap-and-knee slaves, vapours and minute-jacks! Of man and beast the infinite malady Crust you quite o’er! (Tim 3.7.87–98) Such insults as ‘mouth-friends’ or ‘trencher-friends’ correspond to the definitions of the word ‘parasite’ and the whole speech associates parasites with flattery, itself conveyed by several ironical oxymora. In R2, the queen compares ‘cozening hope’ to: 319

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[. . .] a flatterer, A parasite, a keeper-back of Death, Who gently would dissolve the bands of life, Which false Hope lingers in extremity. (2.2.69–72) (C) See Pugliatti, chap. 5, ‘Plagues and parasites’, 107–21. parrot/paraquito (A) Exotic bird known for mimicking speech and other sounds, emblematic of prating. ‘To speak (prate) like a parrot’ was proverbial (Tilley, P60), as well as ‘an almond for parrot’ (Tilley, A220) meaning ‘a reward for speaking’. Perhaps derived from French Perrot, variant of Pierrot, diminutive of the male forename Pierre (OED ). Boehrer argues that there was a ‘growing popularity of pet parrots in early modern England’ (99). Hope (Shakespeare & Language, 2010) describes a parrot as being ‘languageless’, that is ‘physically able to utter coherent sounds, but not capable of reason and therefore unable to control language’ (41). (B) The parrot is associated with a lack of wit and senseless speech in 1H4, where Prince Henry says about Francis, who keeps repeating ‘anon, anon’: ‘That ever this fellow should have fewer words than a parrot, and yet the son of a woman!’ (2.4.96–7). The play draws a parallel between the simple-minded Francis and Hotspur who is also called ‘paraquito’ (2.3.82) by his wife Kate in the preceding scene. Even if Kate’s insult is affectionate, it nevertheless suggests that Hotspur is ‘not conversing but responding reflexively’ (Scott Kastan, 1H4, 203). Contrary to Hal and Falstaff, the parrots Francis and Hotspur are creatures of few words, who do not use language inventively. In MA , Benedick tells Beatrice: ‘You are a rare parrot-teacher’ (1.1.132), meaning that she keeps harping on the same things, like a teacher ever repeating the same words so that the parrot can learn them. Beatrice answers: ‘A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours’ (1.1.133–4), meaning that she prefers to speak rather than be mute. Through the image of the parrot-teacher, Beatrice is presented from the start as ‘my Lady Tongue’ (2.1.252). In AYL , Rosalind warns Orlando that she will be ‘more clamorous than a parrot against rain’ (4.1.141), which associates parrots with senseless noise. The same idea appears in Oth, when Cassio laments because he has talked nonsense: ‘Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with one’s own shadow?’ (2.3.275–7). In MV , Salanio contrasts Antonio, the embodiment of sadness, with fellows who will ‘laugh like parrots at a bagpiper’ (1.1.53), that is birds who are silly enough to laugh at the melancholy sound of bagpipes. Later on, Lorenzo compares the Clown’s spirit to that of a parrot, known for its repetitive babble: ‘How every fool can play upon the word. I think the best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence, and discourse grow commendable in none only but parrots’ (3.5.40–2): the Clown is thus contrasted with the sad figure of Antonio. Other aspects of the parrots appear in the plays. They are taught to cry ‘a rope, a rope’ to call for hanging (CE 4.4.44–5). Falstaff is compared to a parrot after Doll has caressed his head: ‘Look whe’er the withered elder hath not his poll clawed like a parrot’ 320

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(2H4 2.4.258–9), with a possible bawdy pun on poll, meaning ‘head’ and ‘penis’. May there be in the word ‘poll’ an early example of ‘Poll’ as the conventional name of a parrot? OED finds the first occurrence in 1600 but the parrot’s name may have been in use earlier. Thersites compares Patroclus to a parrot: ‘The parrot will do no more for an almond than he for a commodious drab’ (TC 5.2.200–1), which associates parrots with ‘lechery’. (C) See Maplet, 1567, 98r; Cotgrave. Breton (Will of Wit, 1597) describes a woman as follows: ‘in the Parler, shee is a Parrat, shee learnes but what is taught her, and an Almonde will please her’ (69r). On ‘the parrat or poppiniay’, see also Leo Africanus, A geographical historie of Africa (1600), Book 9, 349. Taylor, The nipping and snipping of abuses (1614), ‘Epigram 31. A Rope for Parrat: ‘Why doth the Parrat cry a Rope, a rope, / Because he’s cagde in prison out of hope. [. . .]’ (K3v). On the representation of parrots in early modern cultures, see Boehrer (2002), chap. 3, ‘Dead parrot sketch’, 99–132. See popinjay. patch (A) Simpleton, fool, clown. Apparently originally derived from ‘Patch’, the nickname of Thomas(?) Sexten or Sexton (around 1530), a jester employed by Cardinal Wolsey and then by Henry VIII . OED quotes Wilson’s Arte of Rhetorique (1553) which, in a section on tropes, gives an example of ‘word making’ (also called ‘onomatopeia’): ‘As to call one Patche or Cowlson, whom we see to do a thinge folyshelye, because these two in their time were notable foles’ (92v). The term appears numerous times in Florio (1598), as a synonym of ‘fol’, ‘gull’, ‘noddie, ‘sot’, ‘dolt’, ‘coxcomb’, among other terms. It is sometimes suggested that that Sexten’s nickname referred to his patched clothes or face but according to OED it may derive from Italian pazzo (fool). Florio (1598) reads: ‘Pazzo, foolish, fond, mad, rash, doting, rauing or simple. Also a foole, a gull, an idiot, a mad man, a naturall.’ The word ‘patch’ is also used to refer to the face decoration that covered the scars especially due to syphilis and is thus associated with the disfigurement of venereal disease. (B) In CE , Dromio of Syracuse hurls a string of insults at Dromio of Ephesus: ‘Mome, malthorse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch’ (3.1.32), to which Dromio of Ephesus reacts with the question ‘What patch is made our porter?’ (3.1.36). In LLL , Nathaniel, addressing Holofernes, draws an insulting portrait of Dull in his presence: Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book. He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink. His intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts. And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should be – Which we of taste and feeling are – for those parts that do fructify in us more than he. For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool, So were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school. (4.2.24–31) 321

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The comic speech leads to the rhyming couplet that ironically has ‘fool’ rhyme with ‘school’. Dull is in fine called a ‘patch’, which summarizes the whole portrait. The irony of the speech lies in the fact that the ‘bookman’ (4.2.34), Nathaniel, seems to be the most obvious fool in the sequence. In MND Puck calls the artisans ‘a crew of patches’ (3.2.9), which is ironically echoed when Bottom meditates on his dream: ‘but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had’ (4.2.207–9). Macbeth calls the ‘lily-livered’ messenger ‘patch’ (Mac 5.3.15), an insult that reveals his own fear and loss of control rather than anything about the messenger himself. In MV , Shylock refers to the Clown, once the latter has left the stage, as ‘the patch’ (2.5.44). In Tem, Caliban exclaims about Trinculo, whose voice is imitated by Ariel: ‘What a pied ninny’s this? Thou scurvy patch!’ (3.2.61). In Per, one fisherman calls another ‘Patchbreech’, which according to Gosset (Per, 224) probably recalls Hodge in Gammer Gurton’s Needle who desperately needs to have his breeches ‘patched’. Hamlet, addressing his mother during the closet scene, calls Claudius ‘a king of shreds and patches’ (3.4.99), meaning a ragged patchwork contrasted with his ideal king and father. In AW , the Clown announces to the Countess: ‘O madam, yonder’s my lord your son with a patch of velvet on’s face’ (4.5.93–4) which puts the brand of venereal disease and thus of dissolute life on Bertram. (C) See John Heywood, An Hundred Epigrams (1550), Epigram xliiii: ‘A saiyng of Patche my lord cardinal’s foole. Master Sexten, a parson of knowne wit, As he at my lord Cardinals boord did sit [. . .].’ On Patch as Sexton’s nickname, see Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court, 65–9; 194–5 n17, in which Southworth suggests that no evidence supports the common view that the word derives from the ‘patched dress’ worn by fools of the time (195). See also Goldsmith (36–9), who mentions Cardinal Wolsey’s natural fool ‘Patch’ as he appears in Rowley’s chronicle play When you see me, you know me (1605). On the sexual meaning of ‘patch’, related to syphilis, see Williams, 2, 1001–2. See fool, ninny. pate (A) The upper part of the head. Thomas has ‘Tonsus, a, um. Shorne or clipped, polled, rounded, notted, cropped, lopped, shread.’ Rider has ‘To Notte, or cut the haire away.’ Florio (1598) reads: ‘Zuccone, a shauen pate, a notted poule, a pouled pate, a gull, a ninnie, a ioulthead.’ (B) The word appears in several compound insults. In 1H4, Hal calls Falstaff ‘thou knotty-pated fool’ (2.4.220), an expression that is usually glossed as ‘block-head’, or ‘thick-headed’ but which may be related to ‘notted-pated’. A few lines earlier, addressing Francis, Hal uses a similar expression when he asks Francis: ‘Wilt thou rob this leathernjerkin, crystal-button, not-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smoothtongue, Spanish-pouch?’ (1H4 2.4.68–70). Although the terms are not specifically insulting but refer to the garments worn by the vintner and to his general accoutrement, Hal here seems to be training for the long strings of abuse that he will deliver in the rest of the scene. In what seems to be an exercise in the art of combination and verbal 322

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pyrotechnics, the term ‘not-pated’ refers to the fashionable short hairstyle that was associated with Puritan tradesmen, a fashion that Falstaff alludes to in 2H4 when he expostulates against Master Dommelton, referring to him as ‘the whoreson smoothpates’ (1.2.37–8). The allusion to short hair is in keeping with the series of images which identify Falstaff as a Puritan (see Scott Kastan, 1H4, 61–2). At the end of MM , Lucio calls Vincentio ‘goodman Baldpate’ (5.1.324–5) and ‘you bald-pated, lying rascal’ (5.1.349), referring to the priest’s tonsure but also to the loss of hair that was one of the symptoms of syphilis. (C) See head. paunch (A) A big, protruding belly. From Anglo-Norman and Middle French pance and Classical Latin pantic- pantex, meaning paunch, bowels. Thomas has ‘Clŏāca, æ, f.g. The chanell, sinke, or gutter of a towne, whereby all filthie thinges passe: also the paunch of a glutton’. (B) Paunch is a one man’s insult in Shakespeare’s plays. It characterizes Falstaff who is nicknamed ‘Sir John Paunch’ (1H4 2.2.64) by Hal, in contrast with ‘John of Gaunt’ (2.2.65), a name that is a form of ‘Ghent’, a city of Flanders but that is also an adjective meaning ‘thin and haggard’. Poins later calls Falstaff ‘ye fat paunch’ (2.4.138). This is prolonged in MW where Ford, Mistress Page and Page call him names in a chorus: Ford: What, a hodge-pudding? A bag of flax? Mistress Page: A puffed man? Page: Old, cold, withered and of intolerable entrails? (5.5.150–2) The paunch is symbolic of the part of Carnival played by Falstaff and it takes on a more scatological turn in MW where Falstaff becomes an object of evacuation. (C) See Hall, ‘The evacuations of Falstaff’; Hillman, ‘Visceral knowledge’. On obesity, see Vigarello. See bowels, guts. peasant (A) A person who lives in the country and works on the land. Related to French paysan. A term of abuse meaning a person of low status, a rustic, a stupid fellow. Cotgrave has ‘Paisant: m. A peasant, boore, clowne, swaine, hind; a hob, or lob, of the countrey.’ (B) In TGV , Proteus addresses Lance with the question: ‘How now, you whoreson peasant, / Where have you been these two days loitering?’ (4.4.42–3). He thus refers to his status as a clown, a rustic character, while the word ‘whoreson’ is probably used here ‘in a rough but affectionate way’ (Carroll, TGV , 253), as a marker of intimacy. In TS , Petruccio calls Grumio ‘You peasant swain’ (4.1.115), meaning ‘you rustic servant’ in a sequence of abuse that is meant to impress Kate more than the servants. In 1H6, Joan Puzel, herself a peasant, proclaims she is of ‘noble birth’ (5.3.22) and hurls cruel abuse at the shepherd, who claims to be her father: 323

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Decrepit miser, base ignoble wretch, I am descended of a gentler blood. Thou art no father, nor no friend of mine. (5.3.7–9) ‘Peasant, avaunt!’ (5.3.21) are the last words she addresses him. In 2H6, Cade, himself a man of low birth, feeling he is abandoned by the common people, calls ‘this multitude’ (4.8.56) ‘base peasants’ (4.8.21). In R3, Richard debases his enemies in his oration to his army by calling them ‘A sort of vagabonds, rascals, runaways / A scum of Bretons and base lackey peasants’ (5.3.317–18). In CE , Adriana calls Dromio of Ephesus ‘prating peasant’ (2.1.82), to suggest that he is both a slave and a fool. In MW , Falstaff unwittingly insults Ford to his face, thinking he addresses Master Brook: ‘Hang him, mechanical salt-butter rogue! [. . .] I will predominate over the peasant [. . .]’ (2.2.264–8). He thus socially debases the one he intends to sexually debase by cuckolding him. The situation of enunciation renders the insult highly comical. In H5, Pistol calls the French soldier, Monsieur le Fer, ‘peasant’ (4.4.38) after referring to him as ‘this slave’ (4.4.24). The irony comes from the fact that Pistol is one of the base slaves and peasants in the play, while the French soldier describes himself as being of noble birth (‘le gentilhomme de bonne maison’, 4.4.41–2). Hamlet curses himself in one of his soliloquies: ‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!’ (2.2.485). Thompson and Taylor note that ‘Q1’s “dunghill idiote slave” carries the same class-based self-insult’ (Ham, 274). One may add that the term ‘peasant’ enhances the ‘clownish’ dimension of a character that is interested in ‘country matters’ (3.2.110). (C) See Rawson, 284. On ‘Bold pezant’, see Hope, Shakespeare & Language, 115– 21. See Innes, 469–70. See clown, rustic, villain. pernicious (A) Dangerous, causing harm or death, destructive, fatal, evil, villainous. Derived from Anglo-Norman ‘pernicious’ and Middle French pernicieux (of a disease) severe (in Old French as pernicieus) and Latin perniciosus, (per- nex, necis, violent death, destruction). Thomas has ‘Pernĭciōsus, a, um. Deadly, mortall: pernicious, daungerous: causing death, destruction, great hurt, or domage: hurtfull, noysome, mischieuous.’ See also Cotgrave. (B) The word conveys the fear of treason and the general sense of destruction that pervade the history plays. In 1H6, it is part of the insults that Gloucester addresses to the Bishop of Winchester: Thou art a most pernicious usurer, Froward by nature, enemy to peace, Lascivious, wanton – more than well beseems A man of thy profession and degree. (3.1.17–20) The word announces Gloucester’s accusation: ‘thou laid’st a trap to take my life’ (3.1.22). The expression ‘pernicious faction’ (4.1.59) appears in the Duke of Burgundy’s 324

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letter read aloud by Gloucester, which reduces the King and his followers to an evil gang. In 2H6, it is Winchester (Cardinal of Beaufort) who calls Gloucester ‘Pernicious Protector, dangerous peer’ (2.1.21). Then Warwick, accusing Suffolk of Gloucester’s, that is ‘Duke Humphrey’s timeless death’ (3.2.187), calls Suffolk ‘Pernicious bloodsucker of sleeping men!’ (3.2.226) meaning he is destructive. Hamlet, in one of his soliloquies, calls his mother ‘O most pernicious woman!’ (1.5.105), which is typical of the way he ‘unpacks’ his heart with words (2.2.520). King Lear, alone on stage in the storm scene, inveighs against his ‘two pernicious daughters’ (3.2.22). In Oth, Emilia hypothetically curses her husband: ‘If he say so, may his pernicious soul / Rot half a grain a day!’ (5.2.152–3), which is echoed by Othello, who definitely shows he is under linguistic influence, when he exclaims ‘O thou pernicious caitiff’ (5.2.316). In MM , the term, applied to Angelo in his presence, is an object of comment: Isabella:

I went To this pernicious caitiff Deputy. Duke: That’s somewhat madly spoken. Isabella: Pardon it; The phrase is to the matter. (5.1.90–3) The word echoes Isabella’s former exclamation about Angelo’s dark plans: ‘And most pernicious purpose!’ (2.4.149). ‘The phrase is to the matter’ indeed, since Angelo deceitfully orders Claudio’s death and proves dangerous, harmful and destructive. Duke Vincentio ironically uses the term against the innocent Mariana by calling her ‘thou pernicious woman’ (5.1.240) deceptively suggesting that he is unable to make the difference between good from evil. In CE , Antipholus of Ephesus draws the portrait of ‘one Pinch’ that sounds like a string of insults, even if Pinch is not on stage: They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac’d villain; A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A thread-bare juggler and a fortune-teller, A needy-hollow-ey’d-sharp-looking wretch; A living dead man. This pernicious slave [. . .] Cries out, I was possess’d. (5.1.238–46) Pinch being described as a living dead man, the term ‘pernicious’, which relates him to death, is particularly appropriate and yet, in this context, sounds comically exaggerated. Phrygian. See Turk. Pilate (A) Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea (Luke 3:1) under Tiberius Caesar. In charge of the trial of Christ, he delivered him to be crucified. He found no cause for 325

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executing him, but yielded to the ‘chief priest and elders of the people’. He asked Christ the question ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ and washed his hands before the crowd to make clear he was not guilty (Matthew 27:1–26). (B) In the deposition scene, Richard II addresses those who force him to resign: Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands, Showing an outward pity, yet you Pilates Have here delivered me to my sour cross, And water cannot wash away your sin. (4.1.239–42) By turning his opponents into Pilates, Richard is transformed into a figure of Christ, as is shown earlier when he mistakenly curses his friends as ‘Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas!’ (3.2.132) and when he refers to his former followers who used to cry ‘All hail’ to him ‘As Judas did to Christ’ (4.1.170–1). According to Shaheen, ‘Shakespeare’s comparison of Richard’s betrayal with Christ’s’ seems to have been inspired by Jean Créton’s Histoire du roy d’Angleterre Richard (1399). (C) See Shaheen, 382–3; Hassel, 248. piled/pill’d/peeled. See bald. pirate (A) A robber on the sea. Thomas has ‘Pīrāta, æ, m.g. A pirate or rouer on the sea: a theefe, a robber.’ Hollyband reads ‘Pirate, ou larron & escumeur de mer, a Sea theefe, a Pirate’. Edelman (2000, 257) notes that ‘The distinction between naval warfare and piracy was so unclear in Shakespeare’s time as to be virtually non-existent, and everyone of Elizabeth’s famous captains was like Lucio’s “sanctimonious pirate, that went to sea with the Ten commandments, but scraped one out of the table”, the “scraped” item, as Lucio’s friend easily guesses, being number eight, “a commandment to command the captain and all the rest from their functions” (MM 1.2.7–13)’. (B) In 2H6, Suffolk calls his captors ‘pirates’ just before dying at sea: Come, soldiers, show what cruelty ye can, That this my death may never be forgot. Great men oft die by vile Bezonians. A Roman sworder and banditto slave Murdered sweet Tully; Brutus’ bastard hand Stabbed Julius Caesar; savage islanders Pompey the Great; and Suffolk dies by pirates. (4.1.134–40) This passage reveals the blurred limit between soldier and pirate. The last word he utters is an insult that ironically conveys the story of Suffolk’s fate, as the play refers to the prediction that he should die by water: ‘By water shall he die, and take his end’ (1.4.65). The prediction proves true when Suffolk hears that he is prisoner to Walter Whitmore, the name ‘Walter’ being uttered like ‘water’ (4.1.31): ‘a cunning man [. . .] / [. . .] told me 326

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that by water I should die’ (4.1.34–5). The word ‘pirates’ is here inscribed in a series of derogatory terms (‘Bezonian’, ‘banditto slave’, ‘savage’) while Suffolk inscribes his name in History by drawing a list of mythical names of great men (Brutus, Tully, Pompey the Great). By using the word ‘pirate’, Suffolk reveals that he is being villainously murdered and the word ‘soldiers’ is uttered with irony here, as is shown by the Norton edition, for example, which puts it in inverted commas (‘soldiers’). The irony of the word ‘pirates’ appears when we remember that Suffolk is himself accused of having ‘swallow[ed] the treasure of the realm’ (4.1.74) and that he debases Walter Whitmore as follows: [. . .] this villain here, Being captain of a pinnace, threatens more Than Bargulus, the strong Illyrian pirate. (4.1.106–8) Thus the word ‘pirate’ becomes an insult after being used as an example of strength with the allusion to the famous pirate Bargulus mentioned in Cicero’s De Officiis, II .xi (78r). The word sounds all the more ironic in Suffolk’s mouth since York had compared him to a pirate at the beginning of the play (1.1.219). The word ‘pirates’ is an answer to the insult that Whitmore addresses to Suffolk by playing on his name ‘William de la Pole’ and the word ‘Pool’ (4.1.70). It is part of the motif of wasting the treasures of England that is central in the play and which is also found in R3 when the old Queen Margaret violently addresses Richard, Queen Elizabeth and the English Lords for having pillaged her realm: Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out In sharing that which you have pilled from me: (1.3.157–8) In MV , Shylock gives an idea of the negative connotations of the word when he describes the dangers of the sea: ‘But ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land rats, and water rats, water thieves, and land thieves – I mean pirates [. . .]’ (MV 1.3.20–2). Edelman (2000, 260) notes that the word is sometimes considered as a mere pun on ‘pie-rats’ but that ‘Shylock’s water thieves were a matter of great significance to the Elizabethans, since the pirates threatening Antonio’s ships would have been English.’ In TN , Orsino, discovering Antonio, calls him ‘Notable pirate, thou salt-water thief’ (5.1.65), to which Antonio anwers: [. . .] Orsino, noble sir, Be pleased that I shake off these names you give me. Antonio never yet was thief or pirate, Though I confess on base and ground enough, Orsino’s enemy. (5.1.68–72) (C) On Bargulus, see Juric; on pirate, see Edelman (2000), 257–61; Jowitt, The Culture of Piracy (2010). 327

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pish (A) Interjection meaning ‘fie’. Cotgrave reads: ‘Nargues. Tush; blurt; pish, fie, it cannot be so.’ According to OED , the word is imitative. (B) The word is rarely used by Shakespeare. In H5, Nym and Pistol exchange insults: Nym: Pish! Pistol: Pish for thee, Iceland dog, thou prick-eared cur of Iceland! (2.1.41–2) The exchange is characteristic of Pistol’s ejaculations. The insult here can be considered as a mere verbal gesture, a projectile word. Pistol, whose name is evocative of his expostulations and his using verbal ammunition, takes Nym’s word as a projectile. One is tempted to hear a possible pun on ‘pish’ and ‘piss’, although no etymological link is known between the two words. Considering Pistol may mean ‘penis’ and refer to a ‘weapon which discharges’ (Williams, 2, 1043–5), the pun is not impossible. In 2H4, Shakespeare plays on Pistol’s name and on the word ‘discharge’: Falstaff: Pistol: Falstaff: Hostess:

Welcome, Ancient Pistol! Here, Pistol, I charge you with a cup of sack; do you discharge upon mine hostess. I will discharge upon her, Sir John, with two bullets. She is pistol-proof, sir; you shall not hardly offend her. Come, I’ll drink no proofs, nor no bullets; I’ll drink no more than will do me good, for no man’s pleasure, I. (2.4.109–18)

In the same scene, Hostess Quickly plays on the name by calling him ‘Good Captain Peesel’ (2H4 2.4.158), which Williams glosses as ‘pizzle’, meaning an animal’s penis. In TGV , Lance associates the word ‘pissing’ with the figure of the dog: ‘He had not been there – bless the mark! – a pissing-while but all the chamber smelt him’ (TGV 4.4.18–19). In Oth, the word is heard as an expression of disgust at Desdemona’s lechery in both Iago and Othello’s mouths, as if Othello were borrowing Iago’s language (2.1.262; 4.1.42). (C) On the word ‘piss’, see Williams, 2, 1041–3; Hughes (2006), 345–6. In Jonson’s Everyman in His Humour, ‘pish’ is used several times as a verb. See Mohr. pizzle (A) An animal’s penis or yard. (B) In 1H4, Falstaff, the ‘huge hill of flesh’ (2.4.236–7), the Carnival figure, hurls strings of abuse at Hal and reduces him to a figure of Lent: ’Sblood, you starveling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stock-fish! O, for breath to utter what is like thee! You tailor’s yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing-tuck – (2.4.237–41) The ‘bull’s pizzle’ refers to a dried bull’s penis that was sometimes used as a whiplash (Scott Kastan, 1H4, 220). It is emblematic of thinness and far from symbolizing virility, the bull’s pizzle here conveys feeble manliness as it is dried. In 2H4, Shakespeare plays 328

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on ‘Pistol’ and ‘pizzle’ when the Hostess calls Pistol ‘Good Captain Peesel’ (2.4.158), thus punning on the word ‘discharge’ that should no doubt be heard with a bawdy ear: Pistol: Falstaff:

I will discharge upon her, Sir John, with two bullets. She is pistol-proof, sir; you shall not hardly offend her. (2.4.112–15)

Williams (2, 1043) glosses ‘pistol-proof’ as ‘immune to pricks, pox, pregnancy and Pistol himself’, the two bullets being ‘part of a popular configuration’. (C) Williams, 2, 1043–5; 1047–8. See pish. Pool/Pole (A) A pond of standing water, a puddle. (B) In 2H6 the Lieutenant insultingly puns on the name of the Duke of Suffolk, William de la Pole (4.1.45) after capturing him at sea: Lieutenant: First let my words stab him, as he hath me. Suffolk: Base slave, thy words are blunt, and so art thou. Lieutenant: Convey him hence, and on our longboat’s side Strike off his head. Suffolk: Thou dar’st not for thy own. Lieutenant: Yes, poll! Suffolk: Pole! Lieutenant: Pool! Sir Pool! Lord! Ay, kennel, puddle, sink, whose filth and dirt Troubles the silver spring where England drinks; Now will I dam up this thy yawning mouth For swallowing the treasure of the realm. (4.1.66–74) The Lieutenant provides the meaning of the insult ‘Pool’ by defining the word. There is a double pun here. ‘Pool’ can be heard as ‘Pole’, Suffolk’s name being turned into an insult with an ironical allusion to the ‘pole’ which will ‘hoist his head aloft’ (Knowles, 2H6, 290). It can also be heard as ‘poll’ (head) and thus refer to the head that Suffolk is going to lose at the end of the scene. The word is part of the insults that constitute a shock and cannot be tolerated. The lieutenant wants to purge the ‘silver springs where England drinks’ and the water imagery that he uses here is ironically used against him when Suffolk concludes that he dies ‘by pirates’ (4.1.140). The irony of the insult ‘Pool’ is best understood if we consider the importance of water in Suffolk’s fate. In 1.4, we hear a prediction that ‘By water shall he die, and take his end’ (1.4.65), a prophecy that is fulfilled when Suffolk hears that he is prisoner to Walter Whitmore, the name ‘Walter’ being uttered ‘water’ (4.1.31): ‘A cunning man did calculate my birth / And told me that by water I should die’ (4.1.34–5). Through the insult, Suffolk is symbolically killed by water, as the Lieutenant uses the word ‘Pool’ to ‘stab him’. 329

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(C) On ‘Susprall’, a variant of ‘suspiral’ and cesspool, see Knowles, 2H6, 137–9. See pirate. polecat (A) Prostitute, whore. The term literally refers to a small mammal known for its fetid smell, a member of the weasel family, putois in French (a stinking beast, puer meaning ‘to stink’). ‘To stink like a (worse than) a polecat’ was proverbial (Tilley, P461). It has been suggested that the word derives from French poule (hen), polecats being known for their appetite for chicken. Another suggestion is that it is related to Anglo-Norman pulent, pullent and Old French, Middle French pullent, meaning stinking, disgusting, dirty. (B) In MW , Ford, thinking that he is insulting ‘mother Prat’ (4.2.172), exclaims: ‘Out of my door, you witch, you rag, you baggage, you polecat, you runnion, out, out! I’ll conjure you, I’ll fortune-tell you’ (4.2.174–6). The word echoes Hostess Quickly’s reaction to the Latin term pulcher: Evans: [. . .] What is ‘fair’, William? William: Pulcher. Quickly: Polecats! There are fairer things than polecats, sure. (4.1.22–5). Mistress Quickly hears ‘polecats’ instead of pulcher. The word was probably uttered ‘pullcats’, allowing for the confusion with pulcher (Melchiori, 240). In the same sequence, the other puns on ‘stone’ (testicle) and lapis (maybe related to the French la pisse, urine) confirm the sexual content as well as the motif of evil smelling that is recurrent in the play, and especially appears when Falstaff is evacuated and thrown into the Thames. In Oth, Cassio refers to Bianca as ‘such another fitchew; marry, a perfumed one’ (4.1.145–6). As appears in Topsell’s description (see below), ‘fitchew’ is synonymous with ‘polecat’ and Cassio’s words associate Bianca with a notoriously malodorous and lecherous creature. (C) On ‘polecat’ meaning ‘whore’, see Topsell (1607), ‘Of the fitch or the Poul-cat’: ‘[it] is called Putorius of Putore because of his ill smell: [. . .] when in the spring time they endeuour procreation, for which cause among the Germans (when they would expresse an infamous Whoore or whoore-maister) they say they stinke like an Iltis that is a fitch or Poul-cat’ (219–20). See Williams, 2, 1069–70. On the ‘Latrine tongue’ in MW , see Vienne-Guerrin (2008). See runnion. poltroon (A) An utter coward. Derived from French poltron and Italian poltrone (coward, worthless, lazy creature). Hollyband has: ‘Vn poltron, a nothing worth, a slothfull person, faynt-hearted’. See also Florio (1611) and Cotgrave. (B) The word is only used once by Shakespeare. At the beginning of 3H6, the ‘factious Duke of York’ (1.1.74) symbolically insults King Henry by sitting ‘Even in the chair of state’ (1.1.51), thus usurping royal power: 330

porcupine/porpentine

Westmorland: King Henry: Clifford:

What, shall we suffer this? Let’s pluck him down. My heart for anger burns; I cannot brook it. Be patient, gentle Earl of Westmorland. Patience is for poltroons, such as he. He durst not sit there had your father lived. (1.1.59–63)

Clifford’s words are insulting in two ways: behind the potential insult to York, Clifford suggests that King Henry is the poltroon if he bears the insult, an idea which is confirmed in the following line which means that the son is nothing compared to his father, Henry V, who had real authority, contrary to Henry VI . Thus, saying that York is a coward implies that Henry is one too. popinjay (A) A parrot. Related to Old French papegai and Anglo-Norman papejai, which have been influenced by the name of the jay (European chattering bird) and probably also by forms of the adjective ‘gay’. Referring to the bird’s gaudy plumage or its mechanical repetition of words and phrases, the word designates a shallow, vain, or conceited person (OED 2). (B) In 1H4, Hotspur provides a lengthy description of a ‘certain lord’ who came on the battlefield on behalf of the King and presents him as a ‘popinjay’ (1.3.50), that is ‘a certain lord, neat and trimly dressed’, ‘Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin, new reaped’, ‘perfumed like a milliner’ (1.3.33–6). This description constitutes a provocation for the King who is insulted through the figure of this lord who acts ‘in your majesty’s behalf’ (1.3.48). The speech delineates both a prattler and a gaudy character whose colour and sweet perfume contrast with the darkness and loathsomeness of the battlefield and whose chattering tongue contrasts with the soldier’s exhausted breathlessness. (C) See Boehrer, chap. 3 (‘Dead Parrot Sketch’), 99–132, who notes that there are ten allusions to parrots in Shakespeare, all of them being in satirical fashion (125). See parrot. porcupine/porpentine (A) A rodent having the body and tail covered with defensive erectile spines or quills, and belonging to the families Hystricidae. ‘Porcupine’ derives from Middle French porc espin (also porc d’espine), porc espi, porc espic, from classical Latin porcus (hog, pig) and spīna thorn. ‘Porpentine’ is Shakespeare’s usual form. (B) In TC , Ajax uses the image against Thersites: Ajax: Do not, porcupine [QF porpentin, porpentine], do not. My fingers itch. Thersites: I would thou didst itch from head to foot. An I had the scratching of thee, I would make thee the loathsomest scab in Greece. (2.1.24–7) Thersites, like the porcupine, can scratch and cause his enemies to itch. He is as ‘sharpquilled’ as the porpentine mentioned in 2H6 (3.1.362) and in Ham (1.5.20). Thersites turns Ajax’s words against him by suggesting that he would love to ‘scratch’ him. 331

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Palmer (TC , 152) notes that the porcupine is the emblem of satire in Hall’s Virgidemiarum (1598): ‘The Satyre should be like the Porcupine, / That shoots sharp quills out in each angry line’ (Lib. V, Satire iii, 1–2, 70). (C) For a description of the porcupine, see Topsell (1607), 588–90. There is a link between histrio and histrix (porcupine) in Northbrooke’s Treatise (1577) where actors are called ‘histriones’, ‘histrices which play upon scaffoldes and stage enterludes and comedies, or otherwise with gestures, &c.’ (59). The author presents actors as porcupines who hurt their contemporaries, as is explained in a marginal note: ‘Histrix is a little beast with speckled prickles on his back, whiche he will cast off and hurt menne with them, which is, as Plinie sayth, a porkepine’ (59). Posthumus Leonatus (A) Imogen’s husband in Cym. ‘Posthumus’ refers to the fact that he was born after his father’s death. The character, deceived by Iachimo, believes his wife is unfaithful and orders his servant Pisanio to murder her. (B) Believing he has mistakenly ordered the death of his wife Imogen, Posthumus Leonatus indulges in self-cursing. Yet instead of saying ‘I am a villain’, he expresses the wish that his own name, which is an object of comment at the very beginning of the play (1.1.27–41), become an insult that could brand all the villains in the world: Spit, and throw stones, cast mire upon me, set The dogs o’th’ street to bay me: every villain Be call’d Posthumus Leonatus, and Be villainy less than ’twas. [. . .] (5.5.222–5) Discovering that Imogen is innocent and thus that he is guilty, Posthumus ironically inscribes his name in the collective memory, giving himself a ‘posthumous’ existence. While he strives to rebuild her name by defining her as ‘The temple / Of virtue’ (5.5.220–1), he becomes the herald of his own infamy. The ‘jewel in the world’ (1.2.22) becomes the worst villain ever. The passage provides a metaphorical description of what insult is, as a speech act (‘spit’, ‘throw stone’, ‘cast mire’) and displays the metamorphosis of a name into an insult. Posthumus strives to transform a proper name into a common name and thus means to inscribe in language itself the print of his villainy. This sequence of remorse and self-castigation shows the insufficiency of words to translate reality and the necessity to make language live by introducing new words (Posthumus Leonatus), by updating, as it were, the definition of the word ‘villain’. The character’s name, the etymology of which is given within the play (1.1.33–41), wishes to become the ‘root’ (1.1.28) of a new ill name designating villainy. (C) On insult and memory, see Vienne-Guerrin (2013). See Cressid, Pandar. potion (A) A liquid which has healing, magical or poisonous qualities. It derives from classical Latin pōtāre (to drink). 332

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(B) In MND , Lysander exclaims against Hermia: ‘Out, loathed medicine! O hated potion, hence!’ (3.2.264). For Lysander, Hermia has become a poison that makes him sick. This image echoes the earlier dialogue between Demetrius and Helena: Demetrius: Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit; For I am sick when I do look on thee. Helena: And I am sick when I look not on you. (2.1.211–13) What makes the insult comic is that it contrasts with the words of love previously exchanged by the two characters. Beyond the medical dimension, the term is also in keeping with a play where magic is omnipresent and where Puck uses a magic ‘juice’ to transform everyone. princox (A) A saucy, vain, or insolent boy or young man. Florio (1598) explains that Hérba da buoi was ‘many times vsed for a princock boy [1611 a prime-cock-boy], a fresh man, a milke sop, a nouice, or fresh water souldier’. OED suggests that the word, of obscure origin, may be related to ‘-cock’, hypocoristic suffix, and notes the frequent transferred use of words denoting the male sexual organ to refer to boys or men. Minsheu has ‘A Princocke, a ripe headed yong boy, à L. Praecox, i, soon over hastie or rash ripe.’ (B) In Rom, Capulet uses the word against Tybalt who wants to quarrel with ‘that villain Romeo’ (1.5.63) and thus defy Capulet’s authority: Go to, go to, You are a saucy boy. Is’t so, indeed? This trick may chance to scathe you, I know what. You must contrary me! – [. . .] [. . .] You are a princox, go, (Rom 1.5.81–5) Weis glosses ‘insolent pup’ (Rom, 172). He is a foolish impulsive boy. proditor (A) A traitor, a betrayer. Derived from classical Latin prōdere (to betray). (B) The word is only used once. In 1H6, Winchester, the ‘peeled priest’ (see goose), addresses Gloucester as ‘thou most usurping proditor – / And not Protector – of the King, or realm’ (1.3.31–2). The use of the word is dictated by the sarcastic pun on ‘proditor’ and ‘protector’. (C) See traitor. pudding/hodge-pudding (A) Stuffed entrails or sausage. The entrails of a pig or sheep stuffed with minced meat. Probably related to French boudin (blood sausage), which Estienne (1549) and Nicot (1606) relate to Latin botellus, farcimen (farce in French, stuffing). Thomas has ‘Farcīmem [. . .]. A gut pudding or sausage’ and ‘Fartum [. . .]. The stuffing of a pudding’. ‘Hodge-pudding’ refers to a pudding made of various ingredients. Huloet refers to ‘Hochpot whiche some do call a puddinge’. 333

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(B) The end of MW (5.5.159) dramatizes a sequence of collective abuse to Falstaff who becomes the scapegoat of Windsor and the ‘theme’ of all the other characters: Ford: What, a hodge-pudding? A bag of flax? Mistress Page: A puffed man? Page: Old, cold, withered and of intolerable entrails? (5.5.150–2) This ‘hodge-pudding’, which like ‘puffed’ targets Falstaff’s fatness, echoes the conclusion of Mistress Page’s soliloquy: ‘For revenged I will be, as sure as his guts are made of puddings’ (2.1.25–6). Considering Falstaff’s lecherous spirit, the sexual meaning may not be absent from the words ‘pudding’ and ‘puffed’ (which means ‘inflated’). The insult transforms Falstaff into foodstuff in a scene where, adorned with ‘buck’s horns’, he is symbolically roasted by the Windsor characters disguised as fairies. The same kind of image appears in 1H4, where Hal calls Falstaff ‘that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly’ (2.4.439–41). In Oth, the sexual potential of the image appears in Iago’s exclamations against Desdemona and Cassio: Roderigo: I cannot believe that in her, she’s full of most blest condition. Iago: Blest fig’s-end! The wine she drinks is made of grapes. If she had been blest she would never have loved the Moor. Blest pudding! Didst thou not see her paddle with the palm of his hand? Didst not mark that? (2.1.247–53) The association of the ‘fig’ (vagina) and the ‘pudding’ (penis) is emblematic of Iago’s imaginary world of ‘lechery’ (2.1.255). (C) See Rider (1589), who enumerates many kinds of pudding (see ‘pudding’); Cowell, 1607 (‘Hotchepot’) and Cotgrave (‘Farce’). See also Nicot who relates boudin to Latin botulus or botellus (toute farseure enclose dans un boyau, ie any stuffing in an entrail). Fitzpatrick (2011), 345–6. In Williams (2, 1106–7), ‘pudding’ is glossed ‘penis’ but no Shakespearean example is mentioned. Rubinstein mentions several Shakespearean examples of the sexual meaning (205–6). On ‘puff’ and its sexual meaning, see Rubinstein, 206. punk (A) Prostitute, bawd. Of obscure origin. Cotgrave reads: ‘Galoise: f. A scuruie trull, scabbie queane, mangie punk, filthie whore’, ‘Bagasse: f. A Baggage, Queane, Iyll, Punke, Flirt’ and ‘Putain: f. A whore, queane, punke, drab, flurt, strumpet, harlot, cockatrice, naughtie pack, light huswife, common hackney.’ (B) The term is not frequent in Shakespeare’s plays. In MW , Pistol says about Hostess Quickly in absentia: ‘This punk is one of Cupid’s carriers’ (2.2.127) meaning that she is a messenger from the God of love, hence a pander. In MM , Lucio applies the word to Mariana: Duke: Mariana: Duke: 334

What, are you married? No, my lord. Are you a maid?

puppet

Mariana: Duke: Mariana: Duke: Lucio:

No, my lord. A widow, then? Neither, my lord. Why, you are nothing then: neither maid, widow, nor wife! My lord, she may be a punk; for many of them are neither maid, widow nor wife. (5.1.172–81)

Findlay (2010, 334) notes that the term ‘conjures up the plague of uncontrolled activity in the Vienna of Measure for Measure. Even Mariana is diseased with it after her sexual assignation with Angelo’. She adds that Lucio is ‘characteristically speaking with a grain of truth here.’ Playing the bawd by putting Angelo in Mariana’s arms, Vincentio has indeed transformed her into a ‘punk’. (C) Williams, 3, 1113–15. puppet (A) A doll. A small figure made to play with, moved by strings or wires, related to French poupée, deriving from classical Latin pupa (little girl, doll). A marionette. A contemptuous term for someone who is easily manipulated, it can express the vanity and pride of women and refer to a second-rate actor (OED ). It can also mean ‘whore’. (B) In TS , Kate feels she is treated like a puppet by Petruccio, who keeps debasing and insulting the gown the tailor has made for her (4.3.89–94): Katherina:

Petruccio: Tailor:

I never saw a better-fashioned gown, More quaint, more pleasing, nor more commendable. Belike you mean to make a puppet of me. Why true, he means to make a puppet of thee. She says your worship means to make a puppet of her. (4.3.103–8)

Kate’s words show that by insulting the tailor and his gown, Petruccio, the puppetmaster, is in fact insulting her. The term announces 4.5, where Kate truly becomes Petruccio’s puppet by saying whatever he wants her to say, about the moon and the sun, or the old man and the ‘young budding virgin’ (4.5.38). In MND , the term unleashes Hermia’s violent reaction: Helena: Hermia:

Fie, fie, you counterfeit! You puppet you! ‘Puppet’! Why, so? Ay, that way goes the game! Now I perceive that she hath made compare Between our statures; [. . .] [. . .] How low am I? I am not yet so low But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes. (3.2.288–98)

Helena’s ‘puppet’ refers to Hermia’s small stature, as appears again when she characterizes her as ‘lower’ (3.2.305) and ‘little’ (3.2.325–6). It announces Lysander’s 335

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string of abuse: ‘you dwarf; / You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; / You bead, you acorn’ (3.2.328–30). It is also in keeping with the world of MND where Puck is the puppet-player, gesticulator or circulator, as defined by Elyot and Huloet and it points to the theatrical world of counterfeiting and acting (OED 2b) in which Hermia is probably played by a ‘puppet’ (ie a child actor). Hermia’s answer ‘thou painted maypole’ (3.2.296) suggests that the ‘puppet’ probably also refers to Hermia’s superficial vanity. In KL , Kent heavily insults Oswald and, through him, his mistress Goneril: Draw, you rascal! You come with letters against the King, and take Vanity the puppet’s part against the royalty of her father. Draw, you rogue, or I’ll so carbonado your shanks! – draw, you rascal, come your ways! (2.2.34–8) ‘Vanity the puppet’ refers to Goneril who is seen as a morality-play figure of pride performed in a puppet play. In AC , Cleopatra imagines the humiliation she and Iras will have to bear if they yield to Caesar: Now, Iras, what think’st thou? Thou an Egyptian puppet, shall be shown In Rome as well as I. Mechanic slaves With greasy aprons, rules and hammers shall Uplift us to the view. [. . .] (5.2.206–10) The theatrical meaning of the word is present, as Cleopatra imagines she will be a puppet, an actor in a pantomime, on a platform drawn after Caesar’s car in triumph. For Cleopatra, becoming a ‘puppet’ constitutes Caesar’s insult, Caesar’s triumph, which is in keeping with the etymological meaning of insultare (in+saltare, leap upon in triumph). Considering that one of the most memorable Shakespearean ‘whores’ is named ‘Doll’, the term ‘puppet’ takes on bawdy connotations that can colour the figure of the puppet in all the examples mentioned above. (C) On ‘Shakespeare and the Puppet Sphere’, see Barasch; Garber (1997) notes that ‘the early modern term for puppet-show was “motion”, which also became a shorthand word for puppet’ (see TGV 2.1.87) and that ‘Touring companies of Italian puppetmasters were popular in England and throughout Europe in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the shows they presented where often related to the commedia dell’arte’ (39–40). See also Procházka (1996). On the rich cultural connotations of puppets, see Shershow, Puppets and ‘Popular’ Culture, esp. 71–90. On puppets on stage, see P. Butterworth, esp. chap. 6 (‘Mechanical images, automata, puppets and motions’, 113–39). See Lantern Leatherhead in a puppet scene in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (5.4). Dent (1601) reads: ‘Is it not a shame, that women, professing true Religion, should make themselues such pictures, puppets, and peacockes, as they doe?’ (48).

336

Q quantity (A) Size, extent, dimension. Something that can be measured. Fragment, piece, portion. Florio (1598) has ‘Tantino, a verie little, neuer so little, a little little quantity.’ (B) In TS , Petruccio insults the tailor: Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant, Or I shall so bemete thee with thy yard As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv’st. (4.3.113–15) Petruccio ironically turns the vocabulary of cloth against the tailor, the three words ‘rag’, ‘quantity’ and ‘remnant’ all referring to pieces of cloth. Next to the other insults ‘thou thread, thou thimble, / Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, / Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket, thou!’ (4.3.109–11), the term undoubtedly refers to a little quantity. The part of the tailor was probably played by a boy actor or by John Sincklo, who was known for his little size and there may be a connection with the proverbial ‘nine (three) tailors make a man’ (Tilley, T23). The yard with which Petruccio threatens to measure (‘bemete’, with a possible pun on ‘beat’) the tailor is the ‘mete-yard’, a cloth measure used by tailors (Hodgdon, TS , 267), the tailor’s measuring stick. In LLL , When Holofernes suggests that Moth the page play Hercules, Armado replies: ‘Pardon, sir, error! He is not quantity enough for that Worthy’s thumb. He is not so big as the end of his club’ (5.1.122–4). The term prolongs the preceding affectionate insults addressed to Moth, such as ‘flap-dragon’ (5.1.41) or ‘consonant’ (5.1.49). quarter. See yard. quean (A) A harlot, a strumpet, a disreputable woman. Originally, a woman, a female. Later, a bold or impudent woman; a hussy. See Verstegan (336). (B) In 2H4, Falstaff uses the word against Mistress Quickly: Falstaff:

Away, varlets! Draw, Bardolph. Cut me off the villain’s head! Throw the quean in the channel! Hostess: Throw me in the channel? I’ll throw thee in the channel. [. . .] (2.1.46–9)

337

quean

Ironically, it is Falstaff who is thrown in the channel in MW (3.3 and 3.5), where Ford, believing he is the woman of Brentford, exclaims: ‘A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean!’ (4.2.162). (C) Williams, 3, 1127; Findlay (2010), 335; Vienne-Guerrin (2008). quilt (A) A bed covering consisting of two joined pieces of fabric stuffed with soft material such as wool, cotton. Related to French couette. Perceval has ‘Cocédra, a quilt or mattresse bed’ and ‘Cólcha, a quilt couering for a bed’. Cotgrave reads ‘Coitte-pointe: f. A Quilt, or quilted couering, for a bed’. The term refers to a thick covering, hence to a fat person. (B) In 1H4, Hal humorously greets Falstaff with: ‘How now, blown Jack? How now, quilt?’ (4.2.48). As is noted by Scott Kastan (1H4, 292), Hal picks up the secondary meaning of the word ‘Jack’ which refers to a soldier’s quilted leather jacket. This is in keeping with Falstaff’s being called ‘woolsack’ (2.4.129), ‘my sweet creature of bombast’ (2.4.318) and ‘bed-presser’ (2.4.236). This is typical of the Bakhtinian ‘praise-abuse’ that characterizes the play.

338

R rabbit In 2H4, Bardolph, addressing the Page, exclaims: ‘Away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away!’ (2.2.83). The exclamation is no doubt insulting but the ‘rabbit’ is hard to decipher. Rawson (320) comments: ‘A person of no account, especially a timid one, a novice (in schools, freshmen are rabbits), or poor and easily victimized gameplayer (a cony)’ and then concludes that the term is here a general expression of contempt. Bardolph probably wants to suggest that the Page is little and insignificant. The term ‘upright’ may be evocative of the world of cony-catching, which is characteristic of the play: the ‘upright man’ is an essential figure in Harman’s Caveat, a big, strong, sturdy vagrant, the highest figure in the class of vagabonds, the one who has authority over the other rogues. If one considers this meaning, which is in keeping with the terms ‘bung’, ‘cutpurse’ and ‘rogue’ that appear in the play, the insult then seems to be oxymoronic, as the Page is then both the rabbit (cony) and the rogue (upright man). Q has ‘rabble’ instead of ‘rabbit’. rag (A) A piece of old cloth, a scrap to which a garment is reduced by wear and tear. Small worthless fragment or scrap. Hence, a worthless person. (B) In TS , Petruccio turns the tailor’s jargon against him by calling him ‘thou rag’ (4.3.113). In MW , Ford beats Falstaff, disguised as a woman, out of his house, exclaiming ‘Out of my door, you witch, you rag [‘hagge’ in Q3 and ‘hag’ in F3], you baggage, you polecat, you runnion, out, out!’ (4.2.173–5). The use of the term is ironically reminiscent of the way Falstaff is evacuated as dirty linen in the buck basket in 3.3. The word is also applied to the ‘rogue’ Pistol whom Falstaff accuses of ensconcing his ‘rags’ under the shelter of his ‘honour’ (2.2.25–8). Rags are the attributes of rogues. In R3, the ‘base foul stone’ (5.3.250), Richard, motivates his army to ‘Lash hence these overweening rags of France’ (5.3.328), using a sartorial metonymy to debase his adversaries. Ironically, Richard himself is called ‘thou rag of honour’ (R3 1.3.232) by Margaret who means that he lacks honour and is ignoble. The connection of rags and rogues also appears when Timon addresses Apemantus: Why shouldst thou hate men? They never flattered thee. What hast thou given? If thou wilt curse, thy father, that poor rogue (‘ragge’ in F), Must be thy subject, who in spite put stuff To some she-beggar and compounded thee Poor rogue hereditary. Hence, be gone! (Tim 4.3.268–73) 339

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‘Rogue’ which appears instead of ‘ragge’ is Johnson’s emendation. Jowett prefers to keep ‘rag’ (Tim, sc. 14, 272), arguing that the term prepares the image of sex as ‘stuffing’. This choice also avoids repetition. rampallian (A) A ruffian or villain when applied to men; a whore when applied to women. The term probably derives from ‘ramp’ meaning ‘whore’ (Williams, 3, 1139– 40). Florio (1598) has: ‘Puttanaccia, a filthie great whore or iadish strumpet, a stallion rampe.’ Cotgrave has ‘Gadriller. (A wench) to raump, or play the rig.’ ‘Ramp’ is related to Middle French ramponner, ramposner, meaning ‘to rail in an insulting manner’. (B) The term is used once in Shakespeare’s plays, when the Page, addressing Hostess Quickly, exclaims: ‘Away, you scullion! you rampallian! you fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe’ (2H4 2.1.59–60). One hears ‘ramp’ in the word, which is both evocative of a whore and a shrew, while the suffix ensures the music of the string of words. One may also hear ‘rump’ (as in Mac’s ‘rump-fed ronyon’, 1.3.6) behind the rampallian, which is in keeping with ‘I’ll tickle your catastrophe’ (I’ll make your posteriors smart) and the cul in ‘scullion’. (C) Florio (1598) associates the terms ‘stallion’ and ‘ramp’ under the words ‘Gabrina, an old filthie ouerridden whore or witch, a stallion ramp’, ‘Rienza, a common whore, a stallion ramp’ and ‘Trafolciona, a gadding, a stallion ramp, riggish, gixie wench or whore’. The term appears in Nashe’s Strange News (1593): ‘Pocket not up this abuse at a rakehell rampalions hands’ (Works, 1, 309). See also Harvey’s Pierces Supererogation (1593): ‘See, how the daggletaild rampalion bustleth for the franktenement of the dunghill’ (146) and Rowlands’ Greenes Ghost: ‘Here was an aged Rampalion put besides her schoole-tricke’ (D3r). rascal (A) A base, vile person, a rogue, a member of the rabble, a dishonest person. Derived from Anglo-Norman rascaile, Anglo-Norman and Middle French rascaille, Middle French rescaille, rasqualle, rabble, common people; racaille in modern French. Hollyband has ‘La Racaille du peuple, a rascallie sort of people: f: cullers or robbers.’ Thomas has: ‘Fæx, fæcis, f.g. Lees, dregges, or thicke substance of any thing setled in the bottome: also the base and rascall sort’. See also Florio (1598), Cotgrave, Verstegan (336). The term also refers to the young, lean, or inferior deer of a herd or to any lean or inferior animal. Palsgrave has ‘Rascall, refuse beest, refus’. Caius’ Of Englishe Dogges (1576) draws a list of dogs: ‘Some be called, fine dogs, some course, other some mungrels or rascalls’ (42). (B) The term is paradoxically regularly applied to fat Falstaff. In 1H4, Hal calls Falstaff ‘ye fat-kidneyed rascal’ (2.2.5), meaning that he is a round-bellied scoundrel but also oxymoronically comparing him to a lean deer, an image that is put into action in MW , where Falstaff is transformed into a horned stag hunted by the Windsor community. The same paradoxical association of words appears when Hal refers to him as ‘this oily rascal’ (1H4 2.4.513), meaning both that he is fat and shifty. The oxymoron 340

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reappears when Hal addresses Falstaff as ‘thou whoreson, impudent, embossed rascal’ (3.3.155–6), ‘embossed’ meaning ‘swollen’ and perhaps also applied to a hunted animal ‘foaming at the mouth’ (Scott Kastan, 1H4, 276) although the first occurrence of the word quoted in OED is dated 1651. On the other hand, Falstaff tells Hal that he is the ‘rascalliest, sweet young prince’ (1.2.77–8). In 2H4, the word is part of Doll Tearsheet’s idiolect. When she calls Falstaff ‘you muddy rascal’, he answers her ‘You make fat rascals, Mistress Doll’ (2.4.37–9). Falstaff plays on the meaning of ‘rascal’ as ‘lean deer’. Humphreys glosses: ‘You tempt us to loose-living and so we grow bloated’ (2H4, 65). Weis notes that ‘she renders lean deer gross and bloated, presumably through venereal disease’ (2H4, 172), which is suggested by the exchange that follows: Doll: I make them? Gluttony and diseases make them, I make them not. Falstaff: If the cook help to make the gluttony, you help to make the diseases, Doll; we catch of you, Doll, we catch of you; grant that, my poor virtue, grant that. Doll: Yea, joy, our chains and our jewels. Falstaff: ‘Your brooches, pearls, and ouches’ – for to serve bravely is to come halting off, you know; to come off the breach with his pike bent bravely; and to surgery bravely; to venture upon the charged chambers bravely; – (2.4.40–50) This confirms the allusion to venereal disease in the word ‘fat’, the terms ‘brooches, pearls and ouches’ euphemistically referring to boils and sores on the skin (Weis, 2H4, 173). Later, Doll applies the word several times to Pistol, calling him ‘swaggering rascal’ (2.4.69), ‘you poor, base, rascally, cheating, lack-linen mate!’ (2.4.122–3), ‘you cutpurse rascal’ (2.4.126), ‘you bottle-ale rascal’ (2.4.129), ‘fustian rascal’ (2.4.187). Doll then calls the beadle ‘thou damned tripe-visaged rascal’ (5.4.9), before exclaiming ‘Come, you thin thing, come, you rascal!’ (5.4.30). In MW , Ford exclaims about Falstaff, in absentia ‘What a damned epicurean rascal is this?’ (2.2.272), meaning that he is a pleasure-loving rogue. Mistress Page later describes him to Mistress Ford as a ‘dishonest rascal’ (3.3.170). The adjectives contribute to giving this common word of abuse some originality, as when Hamlet curses himself as ‘A dull and muddy-mettled rascal’ (Ham 2.2.502). ‘Rascally’ is part of the strings of adjectives that characterize Fluellen’s rhetoric in H5: ‘what an arrant, rascally, beggarly, lousy knave it is’ (4.8.35–6); ‘the rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, pragging [bragging] knave Pistol’ (5.1.5–6). In KL , Oswald is regularly called ‘rascal’, by Lear first: ‘Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?’ (1.4.82); then four times by Kent in 2.2. In TC , Patroclus calls Thersites ‘You rascal!’ (2.3.53), which the satirist ironically echoes when he answers Hector’s question ‘Art thou of blood and honour?’, ‘No, no, I am a rascal, a scurvy railing knave, a very filthy rogue’ (5.4.26–8), to show that he is no prey for an heroic Hector. Selfdebasement is here used as a shield. 341

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In MM , Lucio uses the term three times against the Friar (Duke Vincentio), which has a highly ironical effect. After publicly announcing twice ‘here comes the rascal I spoke of’ (5.1.281), ‘This is the rascal: this is he I spoke of’ (5.1.302), Lucio pulls off the friar’s hood and discovers the Duke: [. . .] Why, you bald-pated, lying rascal! – You must be hooded, must you? Show your knave’s visage, with a pox to you! Show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an hour! (5.1.348–52) Discovering the Duke, Lucio realizes that this both is and is not the ‘rascal’ he spoke of. The Duke is not a man of the ‘rabble’, but he is a rascal indeed (ie a dishonest person). At the beginning of Cor, Menenius debases the second citizen, ‘one o’th’ lowest, basest, poorest / Of this most wise rebellion’ (1.1.152–3): Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run, Lead’st first to win some vantage. (1.1.154–5) The term both means ‘one of the common rabble’ and refers to an ill-bred dog. Johnson glosses ‘Thou that art a hound, or running dog of the lowest breed, lead’st the pack, when anything is to be gotten’ and thus relates the term to the world of hunting. Holland (Cor, 163) notes that ‘The phrase is another stage in the play’s investigation of people as dogs’. In Tim, where the dog imagery is particularly obsessive, Timon addresses the Poet and Painter: ‘Out, rascal dogs!’ (5.1.113). (C) Grose (1785; 1811) explores the term’s sexual meaning: ‘Some derive it from rascaglione, an Italian word signifying a man without testicles, or an eunuch.’ See Williams, 3, 1143–4. On ‘The “rascal” Falstaff in Windsor’, see Berry, 133–58. rat. See cat and pirate. raven (A) A crow. A bird of ill omen. Associated with blackness, and thus lack of beauty and with the propagation of infection, as the raven feeds on carrion. The raven’s note is proverbially ominous: ‘The croaking raven bodes misfortune (death)’ (Tilley and Dent, R33). ‘The raven chides blackness’ is also proverbial (Tilley and Dent, R34). (B) Juliet amorously insults Romeo, oxymoronically calling him: ‘Dove-feathered raven’ (Rom 3.2.76). The terms reveal a mixture of love and hate and are followed by ‘wolvish-ravening lamb’ (3.2.76), which creates an echo between ‘raven’ and ‘ravening’. The image of the bird of ill omen is characteristic of a play that cultivates proleptic signs of tragic fate. The contrast/association of the raven and the dove is recurrent. In MND , Lysander, addressing Helena, contrasts the black ‘raven’ (Hermia) and the white ‘dove’ (Helena): ‘Not Hermia, but Helena I love: / Who will not change a raven for a dove?’ (2.2.112–13). Lysander is saying this in disgust when he wakes up after Puck’s magic trick and the derogatory image applied to Hermia signals his metamorphosis. This 342

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change shows that Lysander is going to switch from praise to abuse when Hermia wakes up in her turn. The same contrast appears in 2H6 in Queen Margaret’s speech about the Duke of Gloucester: Queen: Ah, what’s more dangerous than this fond affiance? Seems he a dove? His feathers are but borrowed, For he’s disposed as the hateful raven. [. . .] (3.1.74–6) Under the white feathers hides the ‘fatal raven’ (Tit 2.2.97). The same image appears in TN where Orsino, furious against Olivia, speaks of spiting ‘a raven’s heart within a dove’ (5.1.127). In Tem, one finds a possible link between the raven and sorcery in Sycorax’s name where one can hear Greek Korax and Latin Corax, meaning ‘raven’. The association of ravens and carrion appears in KJ : [. . .] and vast confusion waits, As doth a raven on a sick-fall’n beast The imminent decay of wrested pomp. (4.2.152–4) (C) On the borrowed feathers, see Aesop’s fable of ‘The Crow, the Eagle and the Feathers’ (Fable 328 in Aesop’s Fables, 157). rebel/rebellious (A) Someone who refuses obedience to an established authority, a person who refuses to submit, who fights against an established government or ruler. Cotgrave has ‘Rebelle: com. Rebellious; wilfull, stubborne, restie, disobedient, that will not be ruled.’ (B) In Rom, Escalus addresses those who create ‘civil brawls bred of an airy word’ (1.1.87), as ‘Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace’ (1.1.79) and the lines that follow provide a description of the disorder and ‘disturbance’ (1.1.89; 94) that are related to rebellion. The term is often found in history plays. In 2H6, Sir Humphrey Stafford addresses Cade and his followers as ‘Rebellious hinds [rural labourers], the filth and scum of Kent, / Marked for the gallows’ (4.2.113–14). York refers to ‘that monstrous rebel Cade’ (5.1.62) just before Iden arrives on stage with Cade’s head, showing what happens to rebellious subjects: ‘Lo, I present your grace a traitor’s head’ (5.1.66). The King then describes the rebel as someone who ‘wrought me such exceeding trouble’ (5.1.70). In 3H6, King Henry calls York, who is ‘sitting in the chair of state’, ‘the sturdy [intractable, unruly] rebel’ (1.1.50). But the fact that he says this to his followers, without addressing York, reveals his weakness. In 1H4, the earl of Worcester misreports the King’s words to Hotspur: He calls us ‘rebels’, ‘traitors’, and will scourge With haughty arms this hateful name in us. (5.2.39–40) 343

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Worcester caricatures the King’s words: Henry gives a detailed description of rebellion to conclude that, if they ‘take the offer of our grace’, those ‘that are misled’, ‘Both he, and they and you, yea, every man / Shall be my friend again, and I’ll be his’ (5.1.105–8). Worcester reduces the King’s speech to mere abuse. In 2H4, the Prince John of Lancaster laments that the Archbishop of York has turned into ‘an iron man [man in armour], / Cheering a rout of rebels with your drum’ (4.2.8–9). In TS , Kate, delivering her final lesson in obedience, applies the term to the unruly wife: And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor to her loving lord? (5.2.163–6) Kate, ironically or not, calls Bianca and the widow, ‘these headstrong women’ (5.2.136) and, through them, all the unruly women in the audience, ‘rebels’ and ‘traitors’, associating two terms that often go together. She thus transforms men into kings, whose subjects (women) are rebellious and describes the domestic sphere in terms of political relationships. recreant (A) Both used as noun and adjective. As a noun: a coward, a person who yields or is defeated in combat, a person who breaks allegiance, an apostate, a deserter and, more generally, a villain. As an adjective: cowardly, base, faint-hearted. Cotgrave reads: ‘Tired, toyled, wearied, spent, iaded, out of heart, or faint-hearted, cleane done.’ The term derives from Anglo-Norman recreire, recreere and Middle French recroire, to desist, give up, to acknowledge oneself defeated, to yield in battle, to fail, to go back on what one has said. ‘Recreant’ and ‘traitor’ often go hand in hand. (B) In MND , Puck, imitating Lysander’s voice, provokes Demetrius: [. . .] Come, recreant, come, thou child! I’ll whip thee with a rod; he is defil’d That draws a sword on thee. (3.2.409–11) The term means ‘coward’ but also takes a particular resonance in a play where several characters change faith. In KJ , Constance insults Austria, calling him ‘thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward! / Thou little valiant, great in villainy!’ (3.1.41–2) and, echoing the bastard’s previous insult to Austria (2.1.137–46), she concludes her tirade with: Thou wear a lion’s hide! doff it for shame, And hang a calve’s-skin on those recreant limbs. (3.1.54–5) ‘Recreant’ here thus both means villain and coward. Shakespeare throws the word into relief in the dialogue that follows: 344

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Austria: Bastard: Austria: Bastard:

O, that a man should speak those words to me! And hang a calve’s-skin on those recreant limbs. Thou dar’st not say so, villain, for thy life. And hang a calve’s-skin on those recreant limbs. (3.1.56–9)

He repeats Constance’s words again a few lines later: Bastard: And hang a calve’s-skin on his recreant limbs. Austria: Well, ruffian, I must pocket up these wrongs, Because – Bastard: Your breeches best may carry them. (3.1.125–8) The repetition of the line precisely shows that Austria is a ‘recreant’, a coward, indeed, who swallows down the insult without switching to acts. In 2H4, Pistol, addressing Silence, who has just interrupted him to mention ‘goodman Puff of Barson’, exclaims ‘Puff? / Puff i’ thy teeth, most recreant coward base!’ (5.3.89–92), thus reducing Silence to silence. In R2, Mowbray calls Bolingbroke ‘A recreant and most degenerate traitor’ (1.1.144), meaning he is faithless both to his king and religion. The term may here both be a noun (‘coward’, ‘traitor’) and an adjective. The Duchess of Gloucester then in her turn terms Mowbray ‘A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford’ (1.2.53). The same word appears in the Heralds’ ritual formula before the combat, stating that both Bolingbroke and Mowbray stand here, ‘On pain to be found false and recreant’ (1.3.105–11). The whole point of the combat is thus to spot who is ‘false and recreant’, two synonymous terms here, whether the ‘recreant’ points to something true or is mere abuse and slander. Lear addressing Kent exclaims: ‘Hear me, recreant, on thine allegiance, hear me!’ (F. 1.1.168) before banishing him. There are two layers of irony here: Lear calls Kent a ‘recreant’ and in the same breath refers to his allegiance; the ‘recreant’ in question, that is the one who is supposed to be a villain who breaks faith, is precisely the embodiment of faithfulness in the play. In Cor, Volumnia, addressing her son, Coriolanus, imagines he ‘Must as a foreign recreant be led / With manacles through our streets [. . .]’ (5.3.114– 15). The word means ‘deserter’, the one who turns his back to his own country and army. The use of the word also conveys an accusation of cowardice to which, Volumnia knows, Coriolanus may be particularly sensitive. (C) See coward, traitor. remnant (A) Something that remains, a residue, a fragment, a parcel or a piece of stuff, a remainder. Cotgrave has ‘Rongneure: f. A shred, paring, clipping, remnant, offall, odde end. Rongneures. Shreds, parings, clipping, odde ends; also, wine left in the bottome’ and ‘Escapolin: m. A remnant, or parcell, of a peece of stuffe.’ 345

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(B) The term is only used once as an insult, when Petruccio abuses the tailor: ‘Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant’ (TS 4.3.113). The tailor is reduced to being a leftover, a remaining piece of cloth, Petruccio ironically borrowing all his insults from the tailor’s jargon. In Guthrie’s 1939 production, at the Old Vic, the tailor ‘listened to Petruchio’s railing with indifference, until the insult “thou remnant!” pierced his professional heart and he departed in high dungeon and in tears’ (Audrey Williamson, Old Vic Drama: A Twelve Years’ Study of Plays and Players, London: Rockliff, 1948, 120, quoted by Schafer, 2002, 195). Richard (A) Proper name. Verstegan (268), in a chapter on the etymology of Saxon proper names, has ‘Rychard. Of our ancient woord ryc wee yet retaine our woord rich (as formerly I haue shewed) rich signifieth aboundant, Ryc=hart (for so anciently it is) is no other then Rich-hart, that is, An aboundant plentifull and liberal mynde.’ (B) In R2, the name becomes an insult when Northumberland says ‘Richard’, instead of ‘King Richard’: Northumberland: [. . .] Richard not far from hence hath hid his head. York: It would beseem the Lord Northumberland To say ‘King Richard’. Alack the heavy day When such a sacred king should hide his head. Northumberland: Your grace mistakes; only to be brief Left I his title out. York: The time hath been, Would you have been so brief with him, he would Have been so brief with you to shorten you, For taking so the head, your whole head’s length. Bolingbroke: Mistake not, uncle, further than you should. (3.3.6–15) York interprets this ‘Richard’ as a negation of Richard’s kingship and an insult to his royal authority. Respect would demand that the king be not deprived of his title. York is here the protector of Richard’s royal identity, which is put into question by the ambitious Northumberland who claims that York ‘mis-takes’ a form of address that is supposedly neutral. The insult that is conveyed by ellipsis and brevity announces Richard’s deposition. robber (A) A thief. (B) In Cym, Cloten insults Guiderius: Cloten:

346

Thou art a robber, A law-breaker, a villain: yield thee, thief.

rogue

Guiderius: To who? to thee? What art thou? Have not I An arm as big as thine? a heart as big? Thy words I grant, are bigger: for I wear not My dagger in my mouth. Say what thou art: Why I should yield to thee. (4.2.74–80) The word leads to physical confrontation and allows Shakespeare to find an easy pretext to get rid of Cloten, as is suggested by Galway (190). It is to be related to the ‘villain moutaineers’ (4.2.71), Cloten probably associating ‘rustic mountaineers’ (4.2.100) with pillage and thievery. rogue (A) One of the key words of Shakespearean insult. An idle vagrant, a vagabond. A dishonest person, a scoundrel. One of the status words that have been ‘moralized’ (Lewis, 21) as the word has a legal meaning and corresponds to a precise social status, and yet it also conveys moral insulting connotations. It is one of the numerous canting words introduced about the middle of the sixteenth century, to designate the various kinds of beggars and vagabonds. The term is perhaps related to roger, an itinerant beggar pretending to be a poor scholar from Oxford or Cambridge, Latin rogare meaning ‘to beg’. Cowell notes that it ‘seemeth to come of the French (Rogue. i. arrogans)’, but OED considers the connection is unlikely. DHLF relates French ‘rogue’ to Scandivavian hròkr (excess, insolence) and mentions Guiraud who relates ‘rogue’ to Latin arrogare, meaning ‘to beg with insistance’. ‘Rogue’ is sometimes used as a playful term of reproof or reproach, or as a term of endearment. Florio (1598) has ‘Furfantare, to play the rogue, rascall, vagabond, knaue, to rogue vp and downe.’ (B) The term, like ‘rascal’, is spectacularly recurrent in Falstaff’s world of the tavern in 1H4 and 2H4. In 1H4, Poins refers to Falstaff as ‘this same fat rogue’, ‘the fat rogue’ (1.2.177, 2.2.108), Hal refers to ‘this fat rogue’ (2.4.532), while Falstaff refers to Hal as ‘the rogue’ (2.2.17). The term is a banal mode of address, a very common insult, as appears when Hal tells Falstaff ‘Out, ye rogue; shall I be your ostler?’ (2.2.41) or when Falstaff calls Gadshill ‘ye rogue’ (2.2.54). The word is part of the tavern’s dialect. Even Hotspur uses the term when he expostulates: ‘What a frosty-spirited rogue is this!’ (2.3.18). Francis the drawer is called ‘rogue’ by Hal and Falstaff (2.4.77; 114; 118), who thus throw his low social status into relief. Falstaff typically declares: ‘I am a rogue if I drunk today’ (2.4.146), ‘I am a rogue if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them, two hours together’ (2.4.158). He addresses Peto as ‘You rogue’ (2.4.172), Bardolph as ‘ye rogue’ (2.4.471). The world of the tavern seems to be made of rogues and rascals, confirming Falstaff’s motto: ‘There is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous man’ (2.4.119–20). In 2H4, the word is part of Hostess Quickly and Doll Tearsheet’s idiolect. When Falstaff issues the order to ‘Throw the quean in the channel!’, Hostess Quickly calls him ‘thou bastardly rogue!’, ‘thou honeyseed [homicide] rogue!’ (2.1.47–52). Doll Tearsheet

347

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uses the word both as an insult and a term of endearment: an insult when she refers to Pistol as ‘the foul-mouth’dst rogue in England’ (2.4.70–1) and calls him ‘you mouldy rogue’ (2.4.123) or when she calls the beadle ‘you blue-bottle rogue’ (5.4.20–1); a term of endearment when she addresses Falstaff: ‘Ah, you sweet little rogue, you! [. . .] Ah, rogue, i’faith, I love thee’ (2.4.215–18). The use of the word is in keeping with the world of cony-catchers and cut-purses that the two parts of H4 stage. In KL , Kent calls Oswald ‘a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue’ (2.2.17–18). The invention lies in ‘the addition’ (2.2.23), the adjectives that are attached to the word, which is used three other times in the scene as part of a whirl of derogatory terms such as ‘rascal’ ‘knave’, ‘slave’, ‘varlet’ (2.2.14–42), which pervade one of the most spectacular flyting scenes in the whole Shakespearean canon. In Tim, the word is thrown into relief through repetition in a name-calling exchange between Timon and Apemantus: Timon:

Away, thou tedious rogue! I am sorry I shall lose a stone by thee! [Throws a stone.] Apemantus: Beast! Timon: Slave! Apemantus: Toad! Timon: Rogue, rogue, rogue! (4.3.368–70) Dawson and Minton note that the ‘volleying of insults, with pauses makes it possible to scan it as one line of verse’ (Tim, 300). The repetition of ‘rogue’ shows that Timon lacks words and that he strives to give impact to a common, worn-out word by repeating it. The use of the word also suggests that although Timon has left the society of men, social status still plays a key role in his world. Apemantus reveals Timon’s constancy within change when he asks: ‘Art thou proud yet?’ (4.3.276). (C) See Harman, Caveat or Warning for common cursitors ([1567], 1573), ‘A Roge’, cap. 4, ‘A Wylde Roge’, cap. 5; The groundworke of conny-catching (1592), cap. 4 and 5. See Cowell (‘Roag’) who distinguishes the rogues of the first and second degree. The meaning of the word is an object of legal controversy in the Elizabethan period, as people wondered whether the word was ‘actionable’ or not. See Baker and Milsom, 637. See the Statute entitled ‘An Act for the Punishment of Vagabondes, and for the releefe of the poore and impotent’ (14 Eliz. cap. 5), where one can find a detailed definition of the word, (Statutes of the Realm, IV, 591). See Jacob’s Law-Dictionary (1729), ‘rogue’. See Rawson, 330; Williams, 3, 1164–6 (‘Roger’ and ‘Rogue’); Drouet; Pugliatti. See knave, rascal, Ruffian, scoundrel, slave, vagabond, varlet, villain. rotten (A) Corrupt, putrefied. (B) In MW , Falstaff addresses Ford (disguised as master Brooke) to tell him about the fright that he felt that he might ‘be detected with a jealous rotten bell-wether’ 348

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(3.5.101). The comedy of the situation is to be noticed, as Falstaff insultingly compares Ford to a castrated ram, leading the ‘rabble of his companions’ (3.5.71), like a flock leader, without knowing that he addresses Ford himself. Melchiori glosses ‘rotten’ as ‘diseased (mad)’ (MW , 236). The ‘rotten’ may also be related to the evil smell (‘the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril’, 3.5.84–6) that Falstaff is describing while narrating his being thrown into the Thames. In MA , Claudio violently rejects Hero, saying to Leonato: ‘Give not this rotten orange to your friend’ (4.1.30), meaning that she is a whore. The association of rottenness and whoredom appears in MM where Lucio uses the expression ‘rotten medlar’ (4.3.171) to refer to a harlot, which is ironically proleptic as he is forced to marry a ‘whore’ (5.1.511–12) at the end of the play, as a punishment for his slanderous tongue. The image is that of fruit that looks good but is rotten at the heart and that can no longer be consumed. In MV , Antonio, addressing Bassanio in an aside, refers to Shylock who is present on stage, using the same image of decay: Mark you this, Bassanio, The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, A goodly apple, rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! (1.3.93–8) Coriolanus insults Sicinius, one of the tribunes: ‘Hence, rotten thing, or I shall shake thy bones / Out of thy garments’ (3.1.179–80). The insult prolongs the image of the previous ‘Hence, old goat’ (3.1.177), which may already refer to his smell. It also constitutes a memento mori for the ‘Aged sir’ (3.1.178) who appears as a decaying corpse, whose bones are ready to come off. Cotgrave has ‘Cadavreux [. . .]: Carkasse-like; leane, skraggie, fleshlesse; also, putrified, stinking, rotten.’ This image of corruption comes back when Coriolanus banishes Rome: You common cry of curs whose breath I hate As reek o’th’ rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcasses of unburied men, That do corrupt my air, I banish you. (3.3.119–22) Ironically Aufidius uses the word against Coriolanus when he reproaches him with ‘Breaking his oath and resolution like / A twist of rotten silk’ (5.6.97–8). (C) On the sexual meaning of ‘rot’, as ‘venereal disease, combining notions of physical and moral corruption’, see Williams, 3, 1172–3. rudeness (A) Lack of knowledge, ignorance; lack of refinement, bad manners, absence of virtue and goodness. Also, violence in action or the treatment of others. Elyot (1538) 349

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reads: ‘Ruditas, rudenes, lacke of lernyng or wit’ and Thomas: ‘Rŭdĭtas, atis, [. . .] Rudenesse ignorance, when a man knoweth nothing.’ (B) In TC , Thersites reacts to Ajax’s physical violence (he beats him) by saying: ‘Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness, do, camel; do, do!’ (2.1.52). There can be several layers of meaning in this ‘rudeness’: for Thersites, Ajax is an allegory of violence and of the ill-treatment of others, but the ignorance, blockishness, lack of manners and general lack of goodness are also present in this original insult. Ruffian (A) A lawless, violent villain, a devil, a bawd. From Middle French ruffian, rufian, ruffien, rufien, pander, pimp, lecher, degenerate, bawd. Probably related to Italian ruffiano pander, pimp. It may be related to ‘Ruffin’, the name of a devil or fiend, derived from post-classical Latin Rufon-, Rufo, the name of a demon said to have been sent in the likeness of a dragon to devour St Margaret of Antioch. OED notes that Rufo is of uncertain origin but it may be related to rufo, rufare (to make red). The term conveys sexual, social and moral misbehaviour (see Baret; Thomas; Hollyband; Florio [1598] and Cotgrave). It is also a cant term meaning ‘devil’. In Harman’s Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors ([1567], 1573), ‘To the ruffian’ is translated as ‘to the Deuill’ and ‘the ruffian cly thee’ as ‘the deuill take thee’ (Giiiiv). (B) In TGV , when Proteus threatens to woo Silvia ‘like a soldier’ and is about to force her to ‘yield’ to his desire (5.4.57; 59), Valentine comes forward saying: Ruffian, let go that rude uncivil touch, Thou friend of an ill fashion! (5.4.60–1) The term conveys the violence and immorality of the character. In 1H4, Hal, impersonating his kingly father in the play he improvises in the tavern, calls Falstaff ‘that father Ruffian’ (2.4.442). Scott Kastan glosses ‘elderly swaggerer’ while noting that ‘Ruffian may mean fiend or devil’ (1H4, 232). Falstaff is later called ‘That villainous, abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan’ (1H4 2.4.450–1). ‘Ruffian’ probably here combines several layers of meaning: Falstaff is an old villain; he is a devil and a whoremonger, or at least he haunts bawdy houses. Falstaff’s reaction shows that he hears the bawdy meaning of the term, as he answers: ‘But that he [himself] is [. . .] a whoremaster, that I utterly deny’ (2.4.456–8). Associated with other allegorical figures (‘that reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity, [. . .] that Vanity in years’ 2.4.441–2), the image of the ‘father Ruffian’ is also reminiscent of the personifications of evil that appear in the medieval morality plays, that strive to deceive and corrupt the innocent hero. The term is also characteristic of the underworld jargon of roguery that is present in the play. In 2H4, Henry IV, addressing his son, ironically echoes the term when he imagines that his son’s crowning will lead to the triumph of ‘Vanity’ (4.5.119) and of ‘apes of idleness’ (4.5.122). He satirically imagines that England will then give ‘office, honour, might’ (4.5.129) to ‘a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance, / Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit / The oldest sins the newest 350

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kind of ways’ (4.5.124–6), thus echoing the words Hal uttered in imitation of his kingly father in the tavern in 1H4 (2.4.433–51) and giving a portrait in which one can recognize Falstaff. The description of Falstaff as a ‘ruffian’ is evocative of Salisbury’s reference to Winchester, the ‘haughty cardinal’ (2H6 1.1.182), as someone he has seen ‘Swear like a ruffian’ (2H6 1.1.185). Ironically, the term is used against Salisbury himself later when the King reproves his behaviour: Old Salisbury, shame to thy silver hair, Thou mad misleader of thy brain-sick son! What, wilt thou on thy death-bed play the ruffian, And seek for sorrow with thy spectacles? (2H6 5.1.162–5) The king’s speech transforms Salisbury into an ‘abominable misleader of youth’. The characterization of Falstaff as an old ‘Ruffian’ is also evocative of the ‘ruffian lust’ denounced by Adriana in CE (2.2.132). In TS , Kate calls Petruccio ‘A madcap ruffian and a swearing Jack / That thinks with oaths to face the matter out’ (2.1.291–2). In AC , Caesar calls Antony (in absentia) ‘the old ruffian’ (4.1.6), an expression that, according to Wilders, suggests that ‘Caesar has an affection for Antony’ (AC , 226) but that may also refer to his association with the ‘whore’ Cleopatra. The phrase is also Caesar’s answer to Antony’s insultingly calling him ‘boy’ (4.1.1). In KJ , Austria calls the Bastard ‘ruffian’ (3.1.126), meaning ‘villain’. In KL , Oswald calls Kent ‘This ancient ruffian’ (2.2.60), probably alluding to his violent behaviour, a meaning that can be found in phrases such as ‘ruffian billows’ (2H4 3.1.22), ‘ruffian battle’ (2H6 5.2.49) or ‘the ruffian Boreas’ (TC 1.3.38). In TN , Olivia calls her uncle Sir Toby ‘this ruffian’, after his exit, referring to the many ‘fruitless pranks’ he has ‘botched up’ (4.1.54–5). Rubinstein gives the term a sexual meaning, referring to Cotgrave’s translation of ruffienner as ‘to make lecherous matches’. (C) See Samuel Rowlands, Looke to it: for, Ile stabbe ye (1604), ‘Swaggring Ruffian’ (D2r). On the sexual meaning, see Williams, 3, 1178–9; Rubinstein, 225. On 1H4 as a political morality play, see Potter, The English Morality Play, 129–38. See bawd, devil, villain. runagate (A) A person who renounces his or her faith, an apostate; a vagabond, a wanderer; a restless roving person (‘agate’ meaning ‘on the way, on the road’); a fugitive, a runaway. ‘Runagate’ is a variant or alteration of ‘renegate’. Cotgrave has ‘Fugitif: m. iue: f. Fugitiue; gadding, flitting, run-away, runagate, quickly gone, of no continuance, of no sure abiding, of no certaine stay; inconstant, giddie, fickle; (also), full of euasions.’ (B) In R3, Richard calls Richmond ‘white-livered runagate’ (4.4.464) in absentia. The term refers to Richmond’s taking refuge in Brittany during Edward IV ’s reign and thus means that he is a renegade, a traitor, a fugitive and a vagabond. In Cym, the term leads to a comic effect: 351

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Cloten:

I cannot find those runagates, that villain Hath mock’d me. I am faint. Belarius: ‘Those runagates!’ Means he not us? […] (4.2.62–4) Belarius overhears Cloten’s words and misinterprets them. Cloten means that the ‘villain mountaineers’ (4.2.71) are vagabonds who live far from the court. On the other hand, Belarius hears this ‘runagates’ as a threat revealing that Cloten knows that he was banished twenty years earlier by Cymbeline and that he and his sons are ‘outlaws’ (4.2.67). That is why he decides to go unnoticed and become, again, a ‘runagate’, a fugitive, when Cloten stops him: ‘Soft, what are you / That fly me thus?’ (4.2.70–1). runaway (A) A coward, a fugitive, a vagabond. Thomas reads: ‘Prōfŭgus, a, um, [. . .] He that flieth or is driuen farre out of his own country: a runnagate, a fugitiue or runaway, a wanderer from place, &c. escaped or fled, flitting away.’ Florio (1598) has: ‘Refugo, he that flieth away, a runaway, he that taketh his flight.’ (B) In MND , Demetrius, looking for Lysander to fight, calls for him: Lysander, speak again. Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled? Speak! In some bush? Where dost thou hide thy head? (3.2.404–6) While Lysander has fallen asleep and thus cannot react to the insults, Puck goes on deceiving Demetrius who continues: He goes before me, and still dares me on; When I come where he calls, then he is gone. The villain is much lighter-heel’d than I: I follow’d fast; but faster he did fly (3.2.413–16) ‘Runaway’ means that Lysander is a coward and refuses to fight but the word is also emblematic of a play that stages the adventures of characters who are ‘runaways’ indeed, as Lysander and Hermia are fugitives from the court and we see them run away in 1.1 (150–250). It is not fortuitous that this particular insult should be found in this particular play. In R3, Richard, in his oration to his army, calls Richmond’s followers: ‘A sort of vagabonds, rascals and runaways’ (5.3.316). runnion (A) The definition OED gives of the word which is signalled as having no known origin is 1. ‘Used as a general term of abuse, esp. for a woman.’ 2. Penis (from 1665). Oliver (MW , 114) and Melchiori (MW , 252) relate it to French rongneux, scurvy, 352

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‘rongne’ meaning ‘Scurfe, scabbinesse, the mange’ (Cotgrave). One can also relate it to French ‘Le Rein, ou Roignon, the kidney’ (Hollyband). Williams, who glosses the word as ‘penis’, relates it to Latin runa, runae, lance, dart, and notes that ‘The status of the word may be deduced from the avoidance of direct use in print and its popularity in libertine writing of the later C17’ (3, 1183–4). DHLF relates French rogne to popular Latin ronea (mange), derived from classical Latin rodere (gnaw, eat away). The French verb rogner is related to Latin rotundus (round) while rongnure (rognure) refers to the pieces that are left after one has trimmed something, hence to waste. French rogner (ruignier) also means to be angry, to grumble. Rognon (roignon, rongnon) means kidney and also metonymically may refer to the hips. Brooke (Mac, 100) notes that J. Haust, Dictionnaire Liègeois (Liège, 1933), gives the phrase ‘mâle rogne’ for ‘méchante femme’, ‘evil woman’. (B) In MW , Ford, seeing Falstaff in the guise of the old woman of Brentford, exclaims: ‘Out of my door, you witch, you rag, you baggage, you polecat, you runnion, out, out!’ (4.2.174–6). The term appears in another form in Mac when the First Witch alludes to a sailor’s wife she calls ‘the rump-fed ronyon’ because she insultingly said to her ‘Aroynt thee, witch’ (1.3.5–6). ‘Rump-fed’ may mean ‘fat-buttocked’, ‘fed on rump (offal as well as good meat)’ and it may also suggest buggery, as ‘rump’ can mean whore or genitals (Williams, 3, 1180) but may have the common sense of hindquarters. The ‘runnion’ that is applied to Falstaff has several layers of meaning: it may refer to the hip size (rognon, kidney referring to the hip) of the fat man/woman of Brentford; it possibly ironically reveals that there is a penis (or rognons, testicles) under Falstaff’s woman’s garments; it can suggest that Falstaff is a waste/waist that is evacuated in the play (rognure); it conveys the image of a diseased body (scurvy, mangy). The term also suggests that Falstaff is forced to ‘run’ away to escape Ford’s anger. In AYL , Touchstone is referred to as the ‘roynish clown’ (2.2.8) by one of the lords. Dusinberre (AYL , 196) relates the word to French rogneux, and glosses ‘scurvy, coarse, boisterous’ while mentioning Nashe’s Strange News (1592), which refers to ‘clownish and roynish ieasts’ (Works, 1, 324). ‘Roynish’ derives from ‘roin’, related to French rogne and meaning ‘A scab; a patch of rough, scabby skin’ (OED ). (C) On ‘runnion’ as ‘penis’, see Williams, 3, 1183–4. On French rogne, see Godefroy; Huguet. rustic (A) Lacking in elegance, refinement, or education; boorish; ignorant; foolish. Derived from Middle French, French rustique, of or belonging to the countryside or to rural life, rural (1355), and its etymon classical Latin rūsticus (adjective). Cotgrave has: ‘Rustique: [. . .] Rusticall, rude, boorish, clownish, hoblike, lumpish, lowtish, vnciuill, vnmannerlie, home-bred, homelie, sillie, ignorant.’ (B) ‘Yield, rustic mountaineer’ (Cym 4.2.100) are Cloten’s last words in Cym. They are addressed to Guiderius, just before the two characters leave the stage and fight. A few lines later, Guiderius re-enters the stage, ‘with Cloten’s head’ (SD , 4.2.113), showing that the ‘rustic mountaineer’ has not yielded and that he has even vanquished a 353

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character who shows his obsession with rank throughout the play. Given Cloten’s contempt for ‘rustic mountaineers’ who, for him represent baseness and villainy, his being defeated by Guiderius just after bombastically stating his own superiority is highly ironic and makes his death a paradoxical moment of comedy. In WT , Autolycus addresses the Clown and shepherd as ‘rustics’ (4.4.718), meaning they are peasants but also expressing some contempt. He then tells them they are ‘rough and hairy’ (4.4.726) to better contrast them with the ‘courtier cap-à-pie’ he claims he is (4.4.734; 740).

354

S salamander (A) ‘A spotted Lizard, or beast like a Lizard, which (as old Authors affirme) liues much in the fire; and either is not hurt by it, or within a while quenches it; but the truth is, that although she endure it better then any other beast, yet at length, or if she stay any while in it, it is not quenched by her, but shee consumed by it. [. . .]’ (Cotgrave). (B) In 1H4, Falstaff compares Bardolph to a salamander, an image that refers to Bardolph’s red, seemingly burning nose which is the object of a detailed description in the form of a counter-blazon in which praise and abuse get blurred: Falstaff:

Do thou amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life. Thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop, but ’tis in the nose of thee. Thou art the Knight of the Burning Lamp. Bardolph: Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm. Falstaff: No, I’ll be sworn, I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a death’s head, or a memento mori. I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire and Dives that lived in purple: for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy face; my oath should be ‘By this fire that is God’s angel.’ But thou art altogether given over and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. [. . .] O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern. [. . .] I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two-and-thirty years, God reward me for it! (3.3.24–47) Shakespeare feeds on poetry and praise to produce insult. Poetic insult is based on the style of a paradoxical encomium. In Palladis Tamia (1598), Meres offers a chapter entitled ‘Of ill Name’ which suggests that it was common to use the image of the salamander to refer to red noses: As some by the deformities of their bodie have got unto them a surname, as of crooked legges, to bee called Vari, of flabberkin lippes, Chilones, of great noses Nasones, of redde noses, Salamanders: so manie by their mischievous misdeeds

355

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do purchase infamous and ill names, as Nero for his beastlinesse to bee tearmed the Beast of Rome; Tamberlane for his tyrannie, The wrath of God, and Attila for his crueltie, The scourge of God, &c. (215) The art of insults has much to do with the art of nicknaming as it is based on the selection of one main feature of its target, in Bardolph’s case, his nose. (C) See Maplet, 102; Topsell (1608), 217–21. See also, Bossewell, 62; Batman vppon Bartholome, Liber XVIII , cap. 92, 379 (‘De Salamandra’). salt (A) Used as an adjective, lecherous. Usually applied to bitches. Derived from French saut (leap) and Latin saltus, from salire (to leap). ‘To go or be assau(l)t’ means ‘to seek the male, to rut’ as it is related to French à saut meaning ‘in heat’ (with a leap). Florio (1598) has ‘Foia, lustfull, bitchie, salt, filthie, beastlie lecherie’, ‘Foiosa, beastly, leacherous, or salt like a bitch’, ‘Infoiare, to be leacherous as a goate, or a salt bitch’ and ‘Fregna, a womans or beasts priuie parts. Also the smell of a salt bitch, a quaint as Chaucer cals it.’ (B) Pompey addresses the queen of Egypt as ‘Salt Cleopatra’ (2.1.21), as if she were on stage. The etymology relates the word to ‘leap’ (saltus) but, as Cleopatra is described as Antony’s ‘Egyptian dish’ (2.6.128), as ‘fine Egyptian cookery’ (2.6.63) and a ‘morsel for a monarch’ (1.5.32), and as she refers to her ‘salad days’ (1.5.76), related to ‘salt’ (seasoning), and ‘saucy’, the culinary meaning of the term may not be absent and the expression may suggest that she is ‘dressed’ and tasty, thus announcing the Clown’s aphorism: ‘I know that a woman is a dish for the gods if the devil dress her not’ (5.2.272–4). Timon uses the word against Timandra: Timon:

Be a whore still, they love thee not that use thee; Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust. Make use of thy salt hours: season the slaves For tubs and baths, bring down rose-cheeked youth To the tub-fast and the diet. Timandra: Hang thee, monster! (4.3.83–7) ‘Salt’ is related to disease and food. Iyengar notes that the tubs in which the patients sat to cure syphilis were ‘commonly used to salt and preserve meat’ (297). Timon’s abusive words to Timandra take the form of a piece of cynical advice. Timon ironically puns on ‘salt’ and ‘season’. The use of ‘salt’ is in keeping with Timon calling Timandra and Phrynia (a name in which, I suggest, one could hear Italian fregna as defined by Florio in A) a ‘brace of harlots’ (4.3.80), ‘brace’ usually referring to a pair of dogs. It also announces Timon’s rudely dismissing Alcibiades and his ‘whores’: ‘Get thee away, and take / Thy beagles with thee’ (4.3.173–4). 356

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(C) Fitzpatrick (2011), 368–9; Iyengar, 297; Williams, 3, 1193–4. See butter, saucy. Satan (A) The devil, the enemy of man and God, the tempter and the father of lies. Thomas Cooper (1584) has ‘Satan, Dictio Hebraica quæ aduersarium significat. An aduersarie, the diuel, aduersarie to God and al goodnesse.’ In Hebrew ṣāṭān means ‘adversary, one who plots against another’ and derives from ṣāṭan (to oppose, plot against). Satan as the ‘father of lies’ appears in John 8:44 (see Shaheen, 415). (B) In CE , the Courtesan, who mistakes one Antipholus for the other, is compared to Satan: Antipholus of Syracuse: Dromio of Syracuse: Antipholus of Syracuse: Dromio of Syracuse:

Courtesan:

Satan, avoid, I charge thee, tempt me not. Master, is this Mistress Satan? It is the devil. Nay, she is worse, she is the devil’s dam; and here she comes in the habit of a light wench, and thereof comes that the wenches say ‘God damn me’, that’s as much as to say, ‘God make me a light wench’. It is written, they appear to men like angels of light; light is an effect of fire, and fire will burn; ergo, light wenches will burn; come not near her. Your man and you are marvellous merry, sir. (4.3.47–57)

The numerous games of mistaken identity that pervade the play lead to the idea that the streets of Ephesus are devil-haunted and thus, when Dromio and Antipholus of Ephesus see the courtesan, they assume that she is a devil. Their words are pregnant with bawdy innuendoes suggesting that she is a sexual temptress. The reference to the hellish fire and the aphoristic phrase ‘a light wench will burn’ mean that a prostitute will ‘burn’ a man with venereal disease (Whitworth, CE , 149). The image of Satan is followed by other devilish insults applied to the courtesan: ‘devil’ (4.3.63; 70), ‘fiend’ (4.3.64), ‘sorceress’ (4.3.65), ‘witch’ (4.3.77). In 1H4, Falstaff is called by Hal (who mimics his kingly father in the tavern scene) ‘That villainous, abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan’ (2.4.450–1). Scott Kastan (1H4, 233) notes that, after calling the fat knight ‘that reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity, that father Ruffian, that Vanity in years’ (2.4.441–2), Hal ‘intensifies the criticism: no longer described as a morality play Vice-figure, Falstaff becomes here Satan himself’. The text already conveys the image of Satan when Hal comments on Falstaff’s lying nature: ‘These lies are like their father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable’ (2.4.218–19). The Gad’s Hill episode proves that Falstaff is the ‘father of all lies’, an idea that also appears in MW where Ford describes him as ‘one that is as slanderous as Satan’ (5.5.153). Shaheen (201) notes that ‘While the basic meaning of “Satan” is “adversary, opposer,” the basic meaning of “devil” is 357

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“slanderer,” from the Greek diabolos.’ The image of Falstaff as the one Feste calls ‘dishonest Satan’ (TN 4.2.31), or ‘hyperbolical fiend’ (TN 4.2.25) is particularly relevant in plays where he spends his time lying. Shaheen also suggests (202) that because ‘slanderous as Satan’ is alliterative, the phrase meets Shakespeare’s poetic needs. (C) Wilson (1612) has ‘Sathan [. . .] A speciall aduersary to God and Man. 1 Cor. 5, 5. To deliuer him to Sathan. Iob 1, 6. One of the Names of the Deuill. 2 Any person, that doth any way hurt or hinder another in the course of piety. Math. 16, 23. Come after me Sathan.’ See Shaheen, 114–15 (on CE ), 201–2 (on 1H4), 415; Gibson and Esra, 164. saucy (A) Insolent, impertinent, rude, arrogant, malapert; sometimes, wanton, lascivious. Related to French sauce (in Old French also sausse), derived from popular Latin salsa, feminine of salsus, salted. The etymological sense is identical with that of ‘salad’ (OED ). Cotgrave has ‘Impudent. Impudent, shamelesse, vnshamefac’d, brasen faced, malapert, saucie, ouer-bold.’ (B) In 1H6, when Gloucester calls Winchester ‘saucy priest’ (3.1.45), the term means he is arrogant but, considering all the bawdy innuendoes attached to his name (see Winchester goose), one cannot but hear some lecherous ‘salt’ behind this ‘saucy’. The same ambivalence is found in AC , when Antony exclaims against Mardian: ‘Hence, saucy eunuch! Peace!’ (4.14.25). The term means ‘impudent’, but one can hear an ironical oxymoronic effect in the association of ‘eunuch’ and ‘saucy’, which is related to ‘salt’, hence to potential lechery, as in ‘salt Cleopatra’ (2.1.21). Even if ‘salt’ here derives from saltus (leap), one cannot but hear the seasoning ‘salt’ that is also found in Cleopatra’s ‘salad days’ (1.5.76). Antony already uses the term when he sees Thidias flirting with Cleopatra and orders that he be whipped for being ‘So saucy with the hand of she here – what’s her name/ Since she was Cleopatra?’ (3.13.103–4). No doubt there is some ‘salt’, something lecherous, in this ‘saucy’, all the more so since the ‘what’s her name’ is uttered to avoid the term ‘whore’. The ‘saucy lictors’ that Cleopatra imagines ‘catching’ them ‘like strumpets’ (5.2.213–14) are seen as both impudent and lascivious. The two meanings are also present in MM , where Lucio refers to Vincentio as ‘a saucy friar, / A very scurvy fellow’ (5.1.138–9). Given the sexual slander that Lucio has committed against the Duke (3.2.111–82), there is no doubt that ‘saucy’ here refers to lechery. (C) See goose, salt. scab (A) A skin disease in which pustules or scales are formed and itch; the crust which forms over a wound during cicatrisation. Hence also a mean, base, scurvy fellow; a rascal, a scoundrel. (B) In TC , a play that is obsessed with disease, Thersites associates Ajax with a scab: Ajax: Do not, porcupine, do not. My fingers itch. Thersites: I would thou didst itch from head to foot. An I had the scratching of thee, I would make thee the loathsomest scab in Greece. (2.1.24–7) 358

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Thersites’ ‘scab’ is related to Ajax’s ‘itch’ and is in keeping with other images of disease. Thersites also imagines Agamemnon with ‘boils, full, all over’ and transformed into a ‘botchy core’ (2.1.5–6). Ironically Thersites, in his turn, is turned into a ‘core of envy’, ‘crusty batch [botch] of nature’ (5.1.4–5) by Achilles and introduces himself to Hector as ‘a rascal, a scurvy railing knave, a very filthy rogue’ (5.4.26–7). With ‘scurvy’ and ‘filthy’, the layers of disease and dirt that Thersites has spread on the others ironically come back to him, in a form of boomerang effect. Coriolanus applies the word to the people of Rome: Martius:

[. . .] What’s the matter, you dissentious rogues, That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, Make yourselves scabs? 2 Citizen: We have ever your good word. (Cor 1.1.159–61) One can understand the image in three ways: the citizens get covered in scars because they rub their diseased skins; they, themselves, are the scab, the disease, on the Roman body, which comes as a complement to the fable of the body told by Menenius (1.1.91–141); they are scabs, that is villains, rogues. In MA , Borachio uses the word against Conrade: Borachio: Conrade: Borachio: Conrade:

Conrade, I say! Here, man, I am at thy elbow. Mass, and my elbow itched; I thought there would a scab follow! I will owe thee an answer for that. [. . .] (3.3.94–8)

Tilley (E98) cites as proverbial the sentence ‘My elbow itched, I must change my bedfellow’. Borachio thus uses Conrade’s allusion to his elbow to get to the word ‘itch’ that is often associated to it and then naturally goes from ‘itch’ to ‘scab’. Conrade’s reaction shows that he feels insulted by the comparison. When in TN , Sir Toby exclaims against Malvolio ‘Out, scab!’ (2.5.72) in an aside, the term means rogue, scoundrel. In 2H4, Falstaff puns on the word when he addresses a character named ‘Wart’: ‘Well said, i’ faith, Wart, th’art a good scab’ (3.2.272–3). The expression combines an insult and a term of affection and turns Wart’s name (referring to a small, round, dry, tough excrescence on the skin) against him. By calling him ‘scab’, Falstaff also means that Wart is ‘a very ragged Wart’ (3.2.142), with a pun on ‘ragwort’, a plant that was also known as ‘priest’s pintle’, ‘pintle’ being dialectal for ‘penis’ (Weis, 2H4, 202; see Williams, 2, 1037–8), leading to Shallow’s pun on ‘prick’ (‘Shall I prick him, Sir John?’, 3.2.143). (C) See Iyengar, 299; Williams (3, 1198–9) glosses ‘pox’. scald (A) Scabby, affected with the scall, a scaly or scabby disease of the skin, especially of the scalp. ‘Scall’ derives from Old Norse skalle, a (naturally) bald head. Florio (1598) has ‘Schianze, the scurffe, the scald or scab, that comes to childrens heads’ and ‘Tegna, 359

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the scurfe or scald that comes to some mens heades’. Figuratively ‘scald’ means scurvy, mean, contemptible. The scald is also an injury to the skin caused by hot fluid or steam. Williams (3, 1200) reads ‘Infect with venereal disease, alluding to the burning pains’. (B) In H5, Fluellen uses the word against Pistol, together with other markers of contempt related to disease such as ‘scurvy’ and ‘lousy’. After describing Pistol to Gower as ‘The rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, pragging knave Pistol’ (5.1.5–6), Fluellen directly insults him while forcing him to eat the leek: ‘you scurvy, lousy knave’ (5.1.17–18), ‘scurvy, lousy knave’ (5.1.22), repeating ‘scald knave’ three times in ironically courteous sentences: ‘Will you be so good, scald knave, as eat it?’ (5.1.30–1); ‘You say very true, scald knave, when God’s will is’ (5.1.33–4); ‘Much good do you, scald knave, heartily’ (5.1.54). The term may mean he is a scabby, scurvy fellow, but it can also be evocative of venereal disease, as is suggested by Pistol’s last speech in the play: News have I, that my Nell is dead i’th’ spital Of malady of France, [. . .] Well, bawd I’ll turn, [. . .] To England will I steal, and there I’ll steal; And patches will I get unto these cudgelled scars, And swear I got them in the Gallia wars. Exit. (5.1.82–90) Pistol refers to syphilis, the malady of France (Gallia) and the patches he mentions may well be those that usually cover the scars of venereal disease. His final speech gives a new meaning to the expression ‘scald knave’ by explicitly relating Pistol to venereal disease. In MW , Evans uses the term ‘scall’, meaning ‘scald’, affected by the scall: ‘and let us knog our prains [ie brains] together to be revenge on this same scall, scurvy, cogging companion, the host of the Garter’ (3.1.107–9). (C) Williams, 3, 1200–1. See chicken, French, scab. scold/scolding (A) An unquiet woman, a disturber of the peace, considered as a sower of discord among neighbours. Hollyband has: ‘Criarde, an vnquiet woman, a scold’ and ‘Ce n’est qu’vne Raillarde laissez-la là, she is but a scold, a pratler, a iarring woman, let her alone’. Florio (1598) has ‘Sbragliare, to raile aloude, to scolde, to braule, to chide, to exclaime’ and ‘Petegolare, to play the idle flurt, trull, slut or whore, to braule, chide or skold.’ Ingram (1994, 51) notes that ‘scold’ was not originally related to women but referred to a chiding, brawling person and could apply to either sex. The Elizabethan period thus constitutes a transition in the gendered use of the term. Ingram (1994, 51) also delineates the judiciary dimension of the word and notes that ‘the phrase common scold was a technical term in common law, and meant an individual liable to prosecution and punishment as a nuisance for continually disturbing the neighbours by contentious behaviour.’ 360

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(B) In 3H6, the term is both applied to Margaret and Richard of Gloucester: Richard of Gloucester: For God’s sake, take away this captive scold! Prince Edward: Nay, take away this scolding crookback, rather! King Edward: Peace, wilful boy, or I will charm your tongue. George of Clarence: Untutored lad, thou art too malapert. (5.5.29–32) Shared by the two characters who will keep brawling in R3, the term suggests that they both are evil, unruly tongues. In KJ , Queen Eleanor calls Constance ‘Thou unadvised scold’ (2.1.191), thus reducing her furious words to a bedlam’s divagations, as King John suggests (2.1.183) and to a shrew’s ‘ill-tuned repetitions’ (2.1.197) as King Philip terms them. In TS , Kate is ‘Renowned in Padua for her scolding tongue’ (1.2.99), ‘famous for a scolding tongue’ (1.2.253) and is given the mock title of ‘ “Katherine the Curst”–/ A title for a maid of all titles the worst’ (1.2.127). Petruccio defuses the word that seems to frighten all the other characters by saying: ‘I know she is an irksome brawling scold. / If that be all, masters, I hear no harm’ (1.2.186–7). Behind the word ‘scold’ one finds both an insulted and insulting woman who calls the others ‘half a score knaves or so’ (1.2.109). The scold is the embodiment of an evil tongue that must be tamed. Although ‘scold’ is never used as a direct insult in the play, the term seems to be part of a legal procedure that consists in taming this evil tongue. One can see in Kate’s mud bath a rewriting of the punishment of the ducking or cucking-stool (see Boose, 185) and in her travel on horseback a sort of shaming parade which is evocative of what Ingram describes when he notes that scolds were sometimes ‘carted or paraded round the town with basins ringing before them’ (Ingram, 1994, 58). One finds the image in the punning exchange between Kate’s father and Gremio: Baptista: Gremio:

[. . .] Leave shall you have to court her at your pleasure. To cart her rather. She’s too rough for me. (1.1.54–5)

In this context, the ‘honeymoon’ journey takes on the form of a cucking-stool ritual in a muddy pond, as appears when Grumio tells Curtis how her horse fell, and she under her horse; [. . .] in how miry a place, how she was bemoiled, how he left her with the horse upon her, how he beat me because her horse stumbled, how she waded through the dirt to pluck him off me, how he swore, how she prayed that never prayed before, how I cried, how the horses ran away, how her bridle was burst, [. . .] (4.1.65–72) In AC , Cleopatra bitingly insults Antony when she suggests that he cowardly blushes ‘When shrill-tongued Fulvia scolds’ (1.1.33), which is ironical at the very moment when Cleopatra herself is chiding Antony. 361

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(C) Findlay (2010), 358–9. Historians have studied the punishments that were inflicted upon scolds, such as the branks, the bridle or the cucking-stool. On the legal cases which involve the word, see Emmison, Church, Chap. 9, ‘Trial and Punishment’, 281–315 and Emmison, Disorder. On ‘The Taming of the Scold: the Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England’, see Underdown (1985); In ‘ “Scolding women cucked or washed”: a crisis in gender relations in early modern England?’, Ingram (1994) questions most of Underdown’s statements. On scolds associated with witches and whores, see Boose (1991). According to Underdown (120), cases for scolding proliferate between 1560 and 1640. According to Ingram (53), prosecutions for scolding were commonplace from the late fourteenth century and could be found in court reports behind such terms as ‘railing’, ‘cursing’, ‘brawling’, or Latin ‘rixatrix’, ‘garrulatrix’, ‘obiurgatrix’, ‘calomniatrix’, ‘litigatrix’, ‘perturbatrix pacis’. Ingram (57) agrees with Underdown that the punishment of convicted scolds became more severe after 1550, while toning down the feminist readings one can make of this fact by noting that corporal punishment was a general trend of the period. See A Homilie Agaynst Contention and Brawlynge (ed. Bond, 200). See shrew. scullion (A) A domestic servant of the lowest rank who performed the menial offices of the kitchen; hence, a base slave. Perhaps an alteration of French souillon, related to ‘scullery’ itself related to Old French escuelerie, escuelier. Hibbard (Ham, 235) notes that scullions were known for their ‘command of foul language’. (B) In 2H4, the Page, practising the art of insult that he has learned in the tavern (‘Has not the boy profited?’, 2.2.82), exclaims against Mistress Quickly: ‘Away, you scullion! you rampallian! you fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe’ (2.1.59–60). Hamlet blames himself because he ‘Must like a whore unpack my heart with words / And fall a-cursing like a very drab, / A stallion! [scalion in Q1; Scullion in F] Fie upon’t, foh!’ (2.2.520–2). In the two cases, the term has several layers of meaning: it refers to Hamlet’s foul language, it suggests he is a base slave, it conveys his ‘sluttishness’ (souillarderie). Moreover, in Ham, one may hear a ‘cullion’ (coward) in this ‘scullion’, or as Ann Lecercle (2008, 12) suggests, the French cul, ‘all the more so as the as “Fie” is glossed by Cotgrave as the characteristic cry of the latrine cleaner, Maistre Fi Fi’. Cotgrave has ‘Maistre fi fi. A Gold-finder, Dung-farmer, cleanser of iakes, feyer of priuies.’ One may also hear the cul in Falstaff’s being called ‘scullion’, all the more so since ‘I’ll tickle your catastrophe’ means ‘I’ll make your backside smart’. (C) Fitzpatrick (2011), 372–3. On ‘stallion’ (whore) instead of ‘scullion’ in Ham Q2, see Williams, 3, 1304–5. On scullion, see Ann Lecercle (2008), 12–13. scum (A) The offscourings of humanity; the lowest class of a population. Applied to an individual, the word means a worthless wretch. Identical with Middle Low German schûm derived from Germanic and Indogermanic root skeu- (to cover), as in Old French escume (modern French écume), the term literally refers to an undesirable 362

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deposit especially on foul liquid. Bright glosses ‘Skumme’ as ‘Filth’. Hollyband reads ‘Escume, scumme, drosse, fome’ and ‘La lie, bourbe & Limon, lees, drosse, scumme, or grounds’. Florio (1598) has: ‘Recremento, any superstuous drosse, dregs, or scum of any thing’ and ‘Sordità, [. . .] the dregs of the people, the rascall and vile sort of men or women, the sinke of a citie, the scum of the earth’. (B) In 2H6, Sir Humphrey Stafford addresses Kent and his followers as ‘Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent’ (4.2.113). In R3, Richard refers to Richmond’s army as ‘A scum of Bretons and base lackey peasants’ (5.3.317), thus expressing his xenophobia. In MW , Pistol insults the Welshman Evans: ‘Word of denial in thy labras here! / Word of denial! Froth and scum, thou liest!’ (1.1.151–2). Blake glosses ‘lightweight person’ (131). The two words are almost synonymous and refer to some foam that seems to correspond more to Pistol’s foaming mouth than to Evans. The ‘froth and scum’ may also be borrowed from the world of the tavern to which Pistol belongs. scurvy (A) Covered with scurf; suffering from skin disease; scurfy, scabby. Hollyband has ‘Grateleux, itchie, skuruie’ and ‘Teigneux, which hath the skall, scuruie: m.’ Perceval has: ‘Tiñóso, scuruie, scalde.’ The ‘scurvy’ (scurvey, scorbutus), also known as ‘The Tinoso’, is, according to Wateson’s The Cures of the Diseased (1598): an infecting Disease, sufficientlie knowne vnto Seafaring men: who by putrified meates, and corrupted drinkes, eating Bisket flowrie, or foule crusted, wearing wet apparell (especially sleeping in it) and slothfull demeanour, or by grosse humours contained in their bodies, obtaine the same. (C3v) The symptoms of the ‘scurvey’ are: ‘swelling of their anckles and knees, and blacknes of their gummes, or loosenes of their teeth’ (Wateson, 1598, C4r). Figuratively, the term means ‘worthless’. (B) In Rom, the nurse who has been provoked by Mercutio calls him ‘scurvy knave’ (2.4.146–7; 156) twice, once he has left the stage. In 2H4, Doll Tearsheet tells Pistol: ‘I scorn you, scurvy companion’ (2.4.121). The term appears again in her love declaration to old Falstaff: ‘I love thee better than I love e’er a scurvy young boy of them all’ (2.4.272–3). In H5, Fluellen again applies the term to Pistol, calling him ‘scurvy, lousy knave’ twice (5.1.22; 17–18), which goes together with his use of the term ‘scald’ that he also applied to Pistol. In MW , Doctor Caius calls Sir Hugh Evans ‘a scurvy jackanape priest’ (1.4.102) and ‘Scurvy Jack-dog priest’ (2.3.57). In Oth, Emilia concludes that ‘The Moor’s abused by some most villainous knave, / Some base notorious knave, some scurvy fellow’ (4.2.141–2). As Iago is on stage, there is a comic potential in seeing him hearing his wife’s abusive words and insulting him without knowing she does so. In MM , Lucio calls the Friar/Duke ‘a very scurvy fellow’ (5.1.139) and Friar Peter contradicts him by describing the Friar/Duke as ‘a man divine and holy, / Not scurvy, nor a temporary meddler, / As he’s reported by this gentleman’ (5.1.146–8). In AW , Parolles cowardly calls Lafew, once the latter has 363

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left the stage, ‘scurvy, old, filthy, scurvy lord!’ (2.3.235) while Lafew later tells him ‘Let thy curtsies alone, they are scurvy ones’ (5.3.322). In TC , Thersites calls Ajax ‘Thou scurvy-valiant ass!’ (2.1.44) and ‘You scurvy lord!’ (2.1.50). The term may be related to the preceding image of the sailor breaking a ‘biscuit’ (2.1.38), eating dry biscuits during a sea voyage being known as one of the causes of the ‘scurvy’. Then Thersites ironically applies the term to himself, when he tries to deter Hector from fighting against him: ‘No, no, I am a rascal, a scurvy railing knave, a very filthy rogue’ (5.4.27–8). He proves a ‘scurvy-valiant ass’ himself, that is a coward and he is scurvy indeed as his part is to ‘itch’ the other characters. The medical meaning is probably present here as the play is obsessed with disease imagery. In TN , the term is part of Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s letter of challenge as it is read aloud by Sir Toby: ‘Youth, whatsoever thou art, thou art but a scurvy fellow’ (3.4.143–4). In Tem, Trinculo calls Caliban ‘A most scurvy monster’ (2.2.152), while Caliban calls him ‘Thou scurvy patch’ (3.2.61). In these examples, the meaning hovers between a general (worthless) and a medical (diseased) meaning. (C) On the medical meaning of the term, see Iyengar, 300–1, who notes that ‘the disease especially prevailed among sailors who lacked fresh food on long sea-voyages’ and that the cure was the plant known as the ‘scurvy-grass’ or ‘spoon-wort’ (301). See the Treatise of the Scorby, published in Guillemeau’s Worthy Treatise of the eyes (1587), 1–38, which is a translation of Johann Weyer’s Medicarum observationum rararum (1567). Semiramis (A) An Assyrian queen known for beauty and cruelty. Described as ‘unchaste’ in Andrewe’s The vnmasking of a feminine Machiauell (1604, F1r), she is thought to have had incestuous relationships with her son. (B) The name only occurs in Tit, where Lavinia addresses Tamora: Ay, come, Semiramis, nay, barbarous Tamora, For no name fits thy nature but thy own. (2.2.118–19) After having tried to create an insult, by using ‘Semiramis’, she concludes that the term is infelicitous, insufficient to tell Tamora’s cruelty. Ironically, Aaron uses the same image earlier to praise Tamora, imagining he will ‘wanton with this queen, / This goddess, this Semiramis, this nymph, / This siren that will charm Rome’s Saturnine’ (1.1.520–2). The name both conveys praise and insult. (C) Semiramis is celebrated in Pisan’s Boke of the cyte of ladyes (1521), ca. xv. William Painter mentions ‘the fonde loue, & wicked ribauldrie of Semiramis’ in The Second Tome of the Palace of Pleasure (1567), 185v. She appears among the ‘incarnate devils’ in Lodge’s Wits miserie (1596), 45 (‘Semiramis vnlawfull whordome with her owne sonne’). Herbert, in A letter written by a true Christian Catholike (1586), mentions ‘the warlike harlot Semiramis’ (3). On the ambivalence of the figure, see Thomas Heywood who asks the essential question: 364

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It is questioned by some authors, concerning this potent and mightie Queen, Whether she be more renowned for her braue and magnanimous exploits, or notorious for her ignoble and infamous actions? (Gynaikeion, 1624, 165). See Findlay (2010), 360. senator (A) A common counsellor in a city. From the Latin senātor, related to senex (old, old man). (B) The word becomes an insult at the beginning of Oth in a precise situation of enunciation: Brabantio: Thou art a villain! Iago: You are a senator! Brabantio: This thou shalt answer. [. . .] (1.1.116–18) By echoing Brabantio’s insult, Iago puts the word ‘senator’ on the same level as the word ‘villain’ and activates it as an insult. Brabantio grasps the insulting impact of the utterance as is shown by ‘this thou shalt answer’. This is emblematic of the fact that any word can be put into action and be heard and uttered as an insult, even such an apparently innocuous word as ‘senator’. The word also reveals that Brabantio is a senex iratus. (C) Another emblematic example of the capacity any word has to become an insult can be found in 1H4 where the name ‘Bolingbroke’ (1.3.227, 244) is uttered by Hotspur as an insult, since by using the name he erases the King’s kingly status. See also ‘My lady’s father’ in KL (1.4.77), which is an insult as, with this expression, Oswald denies Lear his kingly status. serge (A) A kind of cheap cloth, also known as ‘say’. From Old French serge, sarge. Palsgrave translates ‘Saye clothe’ as ‘serge’. (B) In 2H6, Cade mocks Lord Saye: ‘Ah, thou say, thou serge – nay, thou buckram lord!’ (4.7.21–2). Knowles guesses that ‘Lord Saye has appeared dressed with deliberate modesty in order not to provoke by dressing according to his status and the sumptuary laws’ (2H6, 320). The insulter feeds on the character’s name. (C) See buckram. serpent (A) A creeping thing, usually a reptile, a repulsive animal (from Latin serpere, to creep). It is known for being a hissing and venomous creature, lurking in the grass. In early modern lexicons, the word often appears as synonymous with ‘adder’ and ‘snake’. Beyond the similarity between the three terms, it is to be noticed that the term ‘serpent’ is used generically as appears in Topsell’s History of serpents (1608) where the word covers various species from the snake through to the adder, tortoise, spider, crocodile and dragon (10). 365

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The word has important biblical resonances as appears in Wilson’s Dictionary (1612, 438) where ‘Serpent’ is described as: ‘A Creature, so called, being full of venome and subtiltie, of all other Creatures most contrary and dangerous to mankind’. Wilson also notes the expression ‘as wise as serpents’: ‘such as bee provident and circumspect (as serpents be) to see to themselves, that they be not circumvented by crafty ones of this world. Math. 10,16. Be wise as Serpents.’ Wilson relates the ‘Old serpent’ to ‘The Deuill or Sathan, which thorough long experience (euer since the Creation of Man) is wonderfull deep in manifold crafts and subtilties. Reu. 12, 9. The Deuill that Old Serpent.’ He describes the ‘Presence of the serpent’ as ‘The power of the Deuill, and his murthering persecutors’. See also Wither (1585, 124–5). The serpent is associated with the double tongue. Withals reads: ‘A serpent, serpens, tis. Bilinguis dicitur, that hathe two tunges, as serpents haue.’ In Cotgrave, ‘Langue de Serpent’ may refer to ‘the venomous tongue of a Detractor’. (B) The image of the serpent is mostly negative in Shakespeare’s plays where it generally conveys ideas of deception, treachery and duplicity. Its forked, double tongue is the sign of its villainy and hypocrisy. The image is recurrent in MND where it is used as an insult by Hermia who accuses Demetrius of having slyly killed Lysander whiles he was asleep: ‘for with doubler tongue / Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung’ (3.2.72–3). ‘Thou serpent’ means ‘thou traitor’. It is not fortuitous that the word should be used as it is a resurgence of Hermia’s nightmare in 2.2: Hermia:

(starting) Help me, Lysander, help me! do thy best To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast! Ay me, for pity! What a dream was here! Lysander, look how I do quake with fear. Methought a serpent eat my heart away, And you sat smiling at his cruel prey. (2.2.144–9)

The insult ‘thou serpent’ seems to have been suggested to Hermia by the traitorous serpent of her dream. The two figures of Demetrius and Lysander seem to overlap in this use of the same image. A little later, Lysander, in his turn compares Hermia to a serpent: Hang off, thou cat, thou bur! Vile thing, let loose, Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent. (3.2.260–1) Holland (MND , 202) notes that there is here an echo of the Bible in which Saint Paul ‘shoke off the worme into the fyre’ (Acts 28:5), but the analogy is also pregnant with all the references to the serpent that have preceded it. Hermia’s reaction: ‘Why are you grown so rude? What change is this, / Sweet love? (3.2.262–3), reveals the series of changes that the play throws into relief, the serpent being first Demetrius, then Lysander, then Hermia. In the last instance, the serpent appears as a creature that inspires fear and disgust. The image of the serpent conveys the series of treasons and metamorphoses that the play stages. 366

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In 2H6, the word occurs many times to reveal political treason but only twice as an insult. Salisbury warns Henry, in the name of the ‘Commons’, against the dangers that he runs, by using the image of the serpent that stings the king while he is asleep. He finally gives the name of Suffolk to the serpent, his speech switching from allegory to insult: Dread lord, the commons send you word by me, [. . .] They say, in care of your most royal person, That if your highness should intend to sleep And charge that no man should disturb your rest, In pain of your dislike, or pain of death, Yet notwithstanding such a strait edict, Were there a serpent seen, with forked tongue, That slyly glided towards your majesty, It were but necessary you were waked, Lest, being suffered in that harmless slumber, The mortal worm might make the sleep eternal. And therefore do they cry, though you forbid, That they will guard you, whe’er you will or no, From such fell serpents as false Suffolk is, With whose envenomed and fatal sting Your loving uncle, twenty times his worth, They say is shamefully bereft of life. (3.2.243–69) Suffolk is here publicly accused of being a traitor, a threat for a too confident King. Suffolk is the target of the whole speech that aims at convincing the King to banish him. The name ‘Suffolk’ appears twice, at the beginning (l. 244) and at the end of the speech. Although the speech is addressed to the King, Suffolk, who is on stage, receives it as an insult coming from ‘rude unpolished hinds’ (3.2.271), from a ‘sort of tinkers’ (3.2.277) through their spokesman Salisbury. The verbal assault against Suffolk echoes the words the King himself addresses Suffolk, after swooning on hearing the news of Gloucester’s death: Hide not thy poison with such sugared words; Lay not thy hands on me – forbear, I say! Their touch affrights me as a serpent’s sting. (2H6 3.2.45–7) In the following lines, Suffolk is also called ‘basilisk’ (3.2.52) and the Queen’s reaction, ‘Why do you rate my Lord of Suffolk thus?’ (3.2.56), shows how insulting the King’s words are. All the more so since she recycles the King’s accusation by comparing Henry to a deaf adder (3.2.76), asking him to ‘be poisonous too’ (3.2.77) and referring to the 367

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image of a ‘scorpion’s nest’ (3.2.86). Suffolk returns the insult to its senders when he curses his enemies: [. . .] Poison be their drink! Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste! Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees; Their chiefest prospect murdering basilisks; Their softest touch as smart as lizards’ stings; Their music frightful as the serpent’s hiss, And boding screech-owls make the consort full! All the foul terrors in dark-seated hell – (3.2.321–8) This malediction, by using the words ‘basilisk’, ‘lizard’ and ‘serpent’ echoes Salisbury’s and the king’s insulting speeches. As is noted by Cairncross (2H6, 93) ‘The erroneous idea that lizards had stings may be traced to the medieval use of “lizard” as equivalent to “anguis”.’ In KL , the serpent symbolizes ingratitude: ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child.’ (1.4.280–1). But it is also the creature whose forked tongue kills, as appears in the Bible (Psalms 140:3): ‘Thei have sharpened their tongues like a serpent’. Lear uses this image to describe his daughter Goneril’s cruel ungratefulness: [She hath] struck me with her tongue, Most serpent-like, upon the very heart. (2.2.349–50) Goneril is described in absentia here, but the image crops up again at the end of the play when Albany points to Goneril, insultingly calling her ‘this gilded serpent’ (5.3.85), conveying the idea of a vile heart hidden under an attractive appearance, as in ‘gilded newt’ (Tim 4.3.181) and ‘a green and gilded snake had wreathed itself’ (AYL 4.3.107). The serpent here embodies treason and duplicity. In AC , ‘serpent’ is one of the pet names that Antony gives to Cleopatra: [. . .] He’s speaking now, Or murmuring ‘Where’s my serpent of old Nile?’ For so he calls me. (1.5.25–7) The word is given an affectionate ring by the use of the possessive ‘my’ but the negative connotations of treachery and cunning remain. One finds the same mixture of praise and abuse, admiration and repulsion when Tullus Aufidius tells Coriolanus: We hate alike: Not Afric owns a serpent I abhor More than thy fame and envy. (1.8.2–4) 368

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(C) See Batman vppon Bartholome (1582), liber XVIII , cap. 95 (‘De Serpente’). For an analysis of the serpent in Hermia’s dream, see Holland, ‘Dreaming the Dream’ (1988). Neill (AC , 174) summarizes the ambivalent meanings of the image of the serpent. See adder, snake. shallow (A) Not deep, superficial, unconvincing. Hence, lacking depth, lacking wit. Florio (1598) has: ‘Capocchio, a doult, a noddie, a loggarhead, a foolish pate, a shallow skonce’, ‘Ghisello, a gull, a ninnie, a shallow-headed foole’. Dusinberre (AYL , 238) notes that it is a ‘lawyer’s term for unsound proof’. (B) Robert Shallow is a Justice of the Peace in 2H4 and MW . His name sounds like an insult throughout the plays, revealing his ‘shallow wit’, which is characteristic of other justices such as Dull (LLL ) or Silence (2H4), Dogberry (MA ) or Elbow (MM ), all illustrating the proverbial ‘you might be a constable for your wit’ (Tilley, C616). The name Shallow is an object of puns that enhance its insulting potential when Falstaff says: ‘Master Shallow; deep, Master Shallow’ (2H4 3.2.162–3), or ‘I do see the bottom of Justice Shallow’ (3.2.297–8). The same pun can be found later when Prince John of Lancaster tells Hastings: ‘You are too shallow, Hastings, much too shallow, / To sound the bottom of the after-times’ (4.2.50–1). The first lines of MW show Shallow as essentially a victim of abuse: Shallow:

Sir Hugh, persuade me not: I will make a Star Chamber matter of it. If he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow esquire. (1.1.1–3)

Here ‘abuse’ means ‘wrong’ but, given the insulting meaning of the name ‘Shallow’ itself, the esquire’s resistance to ‘abuse’ (both insult and wrong) sounds highly comical as his name is ‘abuse’, per se. In 1H4, Hotspur addressing the absent lord who refuses to join his plot declares: ‘I say unto you again you are a shallow cowardly hind [ie coward, a hind being a female deer, hence timid], and you lie. What a lack-brain is this!’ (2.3.13–15). In H5, King Henry answers the Dauphin’s insulting gift (tennis balls) with an insulting message delivered through the ambassador: And tell the Dauphin His jest will savour but of shallow wit, When thousands weep more than did laugh at it. (1.2.295–7) The term shows that Henry has said farewell to his ‘rude, and shallow’ (1.1.55) companions and now wants to contrast with the portrait the Dauphin later draws of him when he reminds his father of the Prince’s early years, describing him as ‘a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth’ (2.4.28). Becoming the king, Hal has abandoned ‘shallow wit’. 369

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In LLL , Costard is called ‘That shallow vassal’ (1.1.244) in the highly comic episode of the reading of Don Armado’s letter in which the Clown recognizes himself: King:

(reading Don Adriano’s letter) [. . .] there did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth – Costard: Me? King: That unlettered small-knowing soul – Costard: Me? King: That shallow vassal – Costard: Still me? King: Which, as I remember, hight Costard – Costard: O, me! (1.1.239–47)

A ‘costard’ was a kind of large apple and also slang for the head. The scene signifies that there is nothing in the Clown’s ‘costard’ and that he lacks wit and depth of spirit. In AYL , Touchstone applies the term several times to Corin’s reasoning (3.2.54; 58). Dusinberre suggests that Touchstone’s part was probably played by Kemp and that ‘the jester’s reiteration of the word “shallow” might have reminded the audience of Kemp’s earlier performance as Justice Shallow’ (AYL , 239). Touchstone calls Corin ‘Most shallow man’ (3.2.62) and ‘shallow man’ (3.2.69), meaning he lacks intellectual depth, that he is ‘raw’ (3.2.69), that he is a ‘natural philosopher’ (3.2.30). The term ‘shallow’ is associated with folly when Benedick refers to the ‘shallow follies’ of love (2.3.10–11) and Borachio calls Dogberry and his assistants ‘these shallow fools’ (5.1.224), revealing that fools see better than wise men. In TN , Malvolio leaves the stage saying to Sir Toby and his companions: ‘Go hang yourselves, all. You are idle shallow things; I am not of your element. You shall know more hereafter’ (3.4.119–21): the irony is that it is Malvolio who has a superficial, shallow vision of things and who will ‘know more hereafter’. sheath (A) A scabbard, a case for a knife or sword. Cotgrave has ‘Fourreau. A sheath; a scabbard. Le fourreau d’vne beste. The thicke skin wherein the yard, or pizzle of a beast is sheathed. [. . .]’ Vagina in Latin. Elyot (1538) has: ‘Vagina, a shethe or scaberde.’ Baret (1574) has ‘a Sheath: a scabberde: a keuering: a case. Vagîna, ginæ, f.g. Cicer. Gaine ou fourreau. And Vagínula, æ. Plin. A litle sheath.’ Florio (1598) reads: ‘Vagina, a sheath for a knife, a scabberde for a rapier, a case of leather.’ (B) In 1H4, Falstaff calls Hal: ‘you eel-skin, [. . .] you bull’s pizzle, [. . .] You tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing-tuck [useless rapier]’ (2.4.238–41). All these images convey Hal’s thin stature, which is contrasted with Falstaff’s fatness. The image of the sheath may also convey Hal’s effeminacy or lack of virility if we consider the sexual meaning of the word ‘sheath’, which may refer to a vagina. The bawdy potential of the word also appears in Tit, where Demetrius provokes 370

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his brother Chiron, calling him ‘boy’ (1.1.537; 544) and suggesting he cannot use his tool (the ‘dancing rapier’ [1.1.538] his mother gave him), when he orders: ‘Go to, have your lath glued within your sheath / Till you know better how to handle it’ (1.1.540–1) The terms are evocative of a parallel between the sword and the penis. (C) Williams, 3, 1228. sheep (A) Emblematic of stupidity. (B) In TGV , the word is at the heart of a witty game of insult between Speed and Proteus: Speed: Proteus: Speed: Proteus: Speed: Proteus: Speed: Proteus: Speed: Proteus: Speed:

Proteus:

Speed:

Twenty to one, then, he [Valentine] is shipped already, And I have played the sheep in losing him. Indeed, a sheep doth very often stray, An if the shepherd be a while away. You conclude that my master is a shepherd then, and I a sheep? I do. Why then, my horns are his horns, whether I wake or sleep. A silly answer, and fitting well a sheep. This proves me still a sheep. True, and thy master a shepherd. Nay, that I can deny by a circumstance. It shall go hard but I’ll prove it by another. The shepherd seeks the sheep, and not the sheep the shepherd; but I seek my master, and my master seeks not me. Therefore I am no sheep. The sheep for fodder follow the shepherd, the shepherd for food follows not the sheep; thou for wages followest thy master, thy master for wages follows not thee. Therefore thou art a sheep. Such another proof will make me cry ‘baa.’ (1.1.72–91)

The sequence integrates insult into a comic reasoning process based on a battle of arguments to prove that Speed is or is not a ‘sheep’, that is a fool. The comedy derives from the neutralization of the insulting effect through the use of logic. The final ‘baa’ may both confirm that Speed is a sheep or express his scepticism and contempt regarding Proteus’ arguments. The whole dialogue derives from a common pun on ship and sheep that is also found in CE , where Antipholus of Ephesus, addressing Dromio of Syracuse says: ‘Why, thou peevish sheep, / What ship of Epidamnum stays for me?’ (4.1.94–5). Both ‘peevish’ and ‘sheep’ mean that he is silly, but the insult mainly rests on an obvious pun on ‘ship’ and ‘sheep’ since the servant has just announced: ‘The ship is in her trim’ (4.1.91). In LLL , where the same pun on ship/sheep can also be found (2.1.218–22), the image of the sheep is at the heart of Moth’s sophisticated ‘venue of wit’ (5.1.55) against Holofernes: 371

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Armado [To Holofernes]: Monsieur, are you not lettered? Moth: Yes, yes! He teaches boys the hornbook. What is a, b, spelt backward, with the horn on his head? Holofernes: Ba, pueritia [ie child], with a horn added. Moth: Ba, most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning. Holofernes: Quis, quis, thou consonant? Moth: The last of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the fifth, if I. Holofernes: I will repeat them: a, e, i – Moth: The sheep. The other two concludes it: o, u. Armado: Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit! Snip-snap, quick and home! It rejoiceth my intellect. True wit! (5.1.43–56) Moth verbally traps the schoolmaster who becomes the ‘silly sheep with the horn’. With the question ‘Quis, quis’, Holofernes asks who is the ‘most silly sheep’. Moth first suggests that, depending on who utters the last and fifth vowel ‘u’/you, the silly sheep can be both Holofernes and Moth. Yet, by interrupting Holofernes on the vowel ‘i’, Moth focuses the insult on Holofernes only: the sheep is ‘I’ (Holofernes) when Holofernes says the vowel ‘i’; it is ‘you’ (Holofernes again), when Moth says the vowel ‘u’, with an added pun on ‘Oh, ewe’. The witty insult, which consists in playing with letters to associate Holofernes with ‘Ba’, the cry of the sheep and thus with ‘the silly sheep’, is the object of Armado’s admiring comment. sheep-biter/sheep-biting (A) Literally a dog that bites or worries sheep, hence a sneaking or thieving fellow according to OED , giving the example from TN . Also, a mutton-eater or one who runs after ‘mutton’ (ie after women). A whoremonger. (B) In MM , Lucio applies the term to the Friar/Duke: Why, you bald-pated, lying rascal! – You must be hooded, must you? Show your knave’s visage, with a pox to you! Show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an hour! (5.1.348–52) The term may mean that the Friar is a sneaking fellow but it also suggests that he is a bawdy character, a whoremonger. It prolongs Lucio’s slanderous words, ‘The Duke [. . .] would eat mutton on Fridays’ (3.2.174), meaning that he eats sexual food and frequents prostitutes. Ironically, the Duke sentences Lucio to ‘eat mutton’ everyday by forcing him to marry a ‘punk’ (5.1.519). In TN , Malvolio is referred to as ‘the niggardly, rascally sheep-biter’ (2.5.4–5), which probably means, ‘a shifty, sneaking, or thievish fellow’ (OED , giving this example). It may also mean ‘A malicious or censorious 372

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fellow’, given by OED as a possible sense. Malvolio is seen as the dog that harasses his sheep, Sir Toby and his companions. The sexual meaning that suggests whoremongering may not be absent as puritans were thought to conceal their lecherous behaviour. Moreover Malvolio is called ‘Peg-o’-Ramsey’ (2.3.75), a name that is evocative of two bawdy ballads (see Jezebel) and he is associated with Jezebel (2.5.38), a loose woman. (C) On ‘sheep-biter’ as ‘whoremonger’, see Williams, 3, 1228–9. On ‘mutton’ (prostitute) and ‘muttonmonger’, see Williams, 2, 926–8. shrew (A) An unruly, bad-tempered woman given to scolding, railing, quarrelling and brawling. Cotgrave has ‘Ocrisse: f. A scould, shrew, vnquiet or impatient woman.’ The term is generally held to be a figurative use of shrew (the animal), the metaphorical meaning being accounted for by the superstitions linked to the malignant influence of the animal. (B) The term, although it is definitely pregnant with negative connotations, is never directly used as an insult, although TS dramatizes the taming and symbolic punishment of Kate the shrew. Shakespeare has much contributed to building the negative figure of the shrew. In TN , Sir Andrew comically greets Maria with ‘Bless you, fair shrew’ (1.3.45). He probably refers to the little shrew-mouse and means to deliver a term of endearment but the derogatory connotations attached to the word, which mainly means a bad tempered woman or scold, produce a comic oxymoronic phrase, which contains an insult while it is meant to be a compliment. Maria’s answer ‘And you too, sir’ (1.3.46) suggests that Sir Andrew’s awkward words have no insulting effect on her. (C) On the figure of the shrew as a female stereotype, emblematized by Socrates’ notoriously bad-tempered wife, Xanthippe (TS , 1.2.70), see Findlay (2010), 365–7. See Wootton and Holderness. See scold. shrimp (A) A small crustacean. Probably related to Middle High German (Middle German) schrimpen, to shrink up. The word was used to refer to a small person. (B) In 1H6, after debasing Talbot’s stature by the question ‘Is this the scourge of France?’ (2.3.14), the countess goes on: I thought I should have seen some Hercules, [. . .] Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf: It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp Should strike such terror to his enemies. (2.3.18–23) The countess here targets Talbot’s small size, the same association appearing in LLL when Holofernes declares that ‘Great Hercules’ will be ‘presented by this imp’ (child, literally a sprig, an offshoot), who ‘when he was a babe, a child, a shrimp / Thus did 373

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he strangle serpents in his manus’ (5.2.582–5). The countess also probably refers to Talbot’s deformity, the part being probably played by the actor who played Richard III (Cairncross, 1H6, 44). ‘Silly’ here means feeble and the general idea is that Talbot looks weak. Talbot answers the insult in action when his soldiers (his ‘substance’, 2.3.50) arrive, allowing the countess to measure his real power: Victorious Talbot, pardon my abuse. I find thou art no less than fame hath bruited, And more than may be gathered by thy shape. (1H6 2.3.66–8) (C) Fitzpatrick (2011), 377. sirrah (A) A common term of address used to men or boys, expressing contempt, reprimand, or assumption of authority on the part of the speaker (OED ). Deriving from ‘sir’. The additional syllable was, probably erroneously, explained by Minsheu as the interjection ‘ah’ or ‘ha’. Minsheu has: ‘A contemptuous word ironically compounded of Sir and a, ha, as much to say, ah Sir or Sir boye’. Kersey (1702) has ‘Sirrah! (an injurious term) denoting a rascal or vain fellow.’ (B) The word is used many times in the plays, usually as a contemptuous term of address to a servant or inferior, thus very often appearing in imperative sentences. This general rule makes the Fool’s addresses to Kent and the King as ‘sirrah’ quite spectacular and unsettling in KL : ‘Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb’ (1.4.96), the Fool says to Kent; ‘Sirrah, I’ll teach thee a speech’, he tells the King (1.4.113). This use of a debasing form of address to the king illustrates the Fool’s licence and freedom to ‘blow’ on whom he pleases (AYL 2.7.49), but also shows that the world of KL is turned upside down and that one can no longer distinguish between fools and kings. Kent’s role in the play is to restore these distinctions, as appears when he threatens Oswald: ‘I’ll teach you differences’ (1.4.88). In LLL , the word may be the object of a multilingual pun: Enter [ARMADO , the] Braggart, [MOTH , his] Boy, [and COSTARD ]. Nathaniel: Videsne quis venit? Holofernes: Video et gaudeo. Armado: Chirrah! Holofernes: Quare ‘chirrah’, not ‘sirrah’? Armado: Men of peace, well encountered. Holofernes: Most military sir, salutation. (5.1.29–34) Uttering ‘Chirrah’ which is probably a corruption of the Greek chaere, used as a ‘greeting in Erasmus’s colloquies which were read in Elizabethan schools’ (Woudhuysen, LLL , 227), Armado paves the way to various interpretations. Holofernes hears ‘sirrah’ but in such a multilingual play that is full of puns, a French ear may well hear chiera 374

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(future of the verb chier, to shit), which makes the greeting even more comic and out of place because potentially offensive. The ‘Peace’ that follows may be heard as pisse (piss), a word that Shakespeare plays with in the Latin lesson sequence in MW where Lapis is to be translated (4.1.27–31). (C) See Dunkling, 227. slander/slanderer/slanderous (A) Calumny, defamation, detraction; the utterance of false and malicious reports; disgrace; a source of shame and dishonour. Derived from Anglo-Norman esclaundre, Old French esclandre, from Latin scandalum. A slanderer is one who slanders, a defamer or calumniator. Someone who is slanderous is both a source of shame and disgrace and an evil, calumnious tongue. Florio (1598) has: ‘Infamare, to defame, backbite, or make one infamous, to detect, to slander, to shame, to report ill of, to dishonest.’ (See also Thomas; Hollyband). Slander is a metalinguistic term that tells a lot about the destructive power of words. The Elizabethan period saw an increasing number of defamation cases. To limit the number of such trials, lawyers, often with difficulty, tried to distinguish slander from insult and to decide what words were ‘actionable’ or not. (B) In R3, Queen Margaret calls Richard ‘Thou slander of thy mother’s heavy womb’ (1.3.230), meaning that he is a source of infamy, disgrace for his mother. This insult is part of a long string of abuse that Richard redirects against Margaret by interrupting her litany with her own name ‘Margaret’ and concluding ‘Thus have you breathed your curse against yourself’ (1.3.239). In KJ , Queen Eleanor calls Constance ‘Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!’ (2.1.173), to which the latter answers in an echo: Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth! Call not me slanderer; thou and thine usurp The dominations, royalties and rights Of this oppressed boy: [. . .] (2.1.174–7) From Eleanor’s perspective, it is slanderous to think that heaven would do the wrong of supporting Constance’s son, Arthur. In Oth, Desdemona, addressing Iago, jestingly exclaims ‘O, fie upon thee, slanderer!’ (2.1.113). One feels the bitter irony of the phrase because it is uttered in a bantering scene where Iago slanders women in general (2.1.109–13). Desdemona’s exclamation which is uttered as part of a game of wit proves painfully true in the play, where Iago is the ‘slanderer’ indeed. In TC , Ulysses calls Thersites ‘slanderer’ in absentia when he describes the satirist’s ‘ridiculous and awkward action – / Which, slanderer, he imitation calls –’ (1.3.149–50) when he ‘pageants’ the Greeks. Then Nestor describes the railer Thersites as ‘A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint’ (1.3.193). The beginning of R2 dramatizes the battle of slander against slander, the King being unable to say who tells the truth. Thomas 375

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Mowbray thus calls Bolingbroke ‘a slanderous coward and a villain’ (1.1.61) and then describes the effect of a slander: I am disgraced, impeached and baffled here, Pierced to the soul with Slander’s venomed spear, The which no balm can cure but his heart-blood Which breathed this poison. (1.1.170–3) The slanderous tongue is a poisonous tongue for which there is no antidote. (C) On slander, see Butterworth; Craun; Habermann; Doran; Kaplan (1997); Gross, chap. 2, ‘The book of the slanderer’ (33–67); Vienne-Guerrin (2012). In Ovid and Whitney, slander is related to envy, which corresponds to the ‘dog’ Thersites. See devil, envy, Satan. slave (A) A villain, a knave. Originally a servant divested of any freedom and right. A term of address showing authority toward an inferior but used as a term of contempt, it conveys both moral and social baseness and constitutes another example of what Lewis called the ‘moralisation of status words’ (Studies in Words, 21). Derived from Old French esclave, from medieval Latin sclavus, sclava, identical with the racial name Sclavus, Slav. (B) ‘Slave’ is a common word in Shakespeare’s plays but can take on specific meanings depending on the context. In CE , it is a recurrent term of address to the servants, who are indeed slaves to their masters. In R3, Margaret calls Richard ‘the slave of nature’ (1.3.229), meaning that nature has left monstrous birthmarks on him. Siemon suggests that it may also mean that ‘he remains enslaved to a sinful nature rather than being in a state of redemption’ (R3, 184). In Oth, there is some irony in hearing Othello call Iago several times a slave, as Othello himself refers to his former state of ‘slavery’ (1.3.139). Enmeshed in Iago’s web, Othello remains Iago’s ‘slave’ throughout, ensnared as he is in the trap Iago sets for him. Coriolanus uses the term several times in the plural to show the contempt he feels at the common people. This recurrent use against the common people makes his exclamation to Aufidius ‘O slave!’ (5.6.105) evocative of the disgust he feels for the people of Rome. Holland (Cor, 407) suggests that Coriolanus may also be returning the class insult ‘boy’ (meaning slave, servant) at Aufidius. In KL , Kent calls Oswald ‘slave’ several times, thus making a difference between the loyal servant he himself is and the base slave Oswald is. Kent’s words show the moral dimension of the word when he explains to Cornwall that he is angry ‘That such a slave as this should wear a sword, / Who wears no honesty’ (2.2.70–1). Calling Oswald a ‘slave’ allows Kent to teach ‘differences’, to explain what ‘difference’ there is between these two kinds of servants, Kent and Oswald. When Cornwall asks ‘What is your difference?’ (2.2.50), he means ‘what is your quarrel?’ but the other meaning (‘what is the difference between you two, what makes you different?’) is relevant as is suggested when Kent tells Oswald: ‘I’ll teach you differences’ (1.4.88). In KL , the base slave 376

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is Oswald and Lear’s calling Kent ‘vassal’ (1.1.162), which insultingly means ‘slave’, only shows the King’s blindness and folly. In Cym, the use of the word by Cloten, when he refers to Posthumus (2.3.123) and when he addresses Guiderius, shows his obsession with rank. Guiderius comically returns the term to its sender: Cloten:

Soft, what are you That fly me thus? Some villain mountaineers? I have heard of such. What slave art thou? Guiderius: A thing More slavish did I ne’er than answering A slave without a knock. (4.2.70–4)

In the context of Tem, the word has a specific ring of colonial authority. Prospero’s use hovers between the literal and the metaphorical, the social and the moral meanings when he refers to Ariel and Caliban. Prospero addresses Ariel as ‘Thou, my slave, / As thou report’st thyself’ (1.2.270–1). Vaughan and Vaughan note that ‘Ariel’s apparent protest that he is Prospero’s slave echoes a common complaint of servants in Shakespeare’s time; Prospero mocks the contention’ (Tem, 169). With Caliban, Prospero uses the term in its social sense of low-born servant first (‘We’ll visit Caliban, my slave, 1.2.309) and then the text adds moral connotations to the word when he calls him ‘Thou poisonous slave’ (1.2.320), ‘Thou most lying knave’ (1.2.345), ‘Abhorred slave’ (1.2.352). One sees the moralisation of the status word at work. Caliban measures Prospero’s power to his capacity of making a ‘vassal’ (ie a slave) of his ‘dam’s god Setebos’ (1.2.373–5). In H5, Pistol makes the word spectacularly sonorous when he utters: ‘Base is the slave that pays’ (2.1.96). The phrase has become proverbial (Tilley, S523) and probably originated in Pistol’s bombastic statement. (C) Rawson, 358. For a study of the relationships between masters and servants in early modern England, see Evett; Burnett (1997). See vassal, villain. slug/sluggard/slug-a-bed (A) A lazy fellow, an idler. Thomas has ‘Cessātor, ōris, f.g. verb. à Cesso, A lingerer: a loyterer: an idle fellow: a sluggard, a slacke bodie, a slowbacke, a trewant’ and ‘Dormĭtātor, ōris, m.g. verb. Plaut. A sleeper, a sluggard, a negligent person: a fellow that sleepeth by daie that he may steale by night.’ Florio (1598) reads: ‘Sonacchione, a sluggard, a slug, a sluggabed, a heauie, drouzie, lumpish fellow.’ See also Cotgrave (dormart and paresser). (B) In CE , when Luciana exclaims ‘Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot’, his reaction is ‘I am transformed, master, am I not?’ (2.2.193–4), ludicrously suggesting that Luciana’s words may have taken effect. ‘Slug’ is in keeping with the other words, ‘drone’ and ‘snail’ and one may hear a multilingual pun in Dromio and the French dormir. In R3, Prince Edward exclaims: ‘Fie, what a slug is Hastings, that he 377

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comes not / To tell us whether they will come or no’ (3.1.22–3), ironically just before Hastings enters. Then Richmond calls himself ‘a tardy sluggard’ (5.3.225), which shows that he has slept well while Richard was having his nightmares. Richard is no longer the ‘long sleeper’ he used to be (3.4.23). It is not fortuitous that the word ‘sluggard’ should appear twice in a play that is full of sleep and dreams. In Rom, when the nurse comes to wake Juliet up, she calls her ‘you slug-a-bed!’ (4.5.2), meaning she is a lazy girl and a late sleeper. OED cites this as the first example. The comic insult contrasts with the tragic situation as she discovers Juliet’s inanimate body. Juliet will be a ‘slug-a-bed’ indeed. slut (A) A woman of dirty habits or appearance; a foul slattern. A loose woman. Cotgrave has ‘Salisson: com. A slouen, or slut (at Tours)’ and ‘Saloppe: com. A slouen, or slut: Orleannois.’ The word relates dirt and sexual profligacy. (B) In AYL , Touchstone applies the term to Audrey in a scene that illustrates his ‘foulosophy’: Touchstone: [. . .] to cast away honesty upon a foul slut were to put good meat into an unclean dish. Audrey: I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul. Touchstone: Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness: sluttishness may come hereafter. (3.3.32–7) Audrey acknowledges the foulness of her rustic appearance but not the foulness of her sexual habit and thus reacts to the bawdy meaning of the term. Dusinberre notes that the sentence on ‘sluttishness’ is probably ‘a throwaway line to the audience’ (AYL , 267). Timon addresses Phrynia and Timandra, Alcibiades’ whores who have just asked him to give them some gold: ‘Hold up, you sluts, / Your aprons mountant’ (4.3.134–5). As several editors suggests and as the play in performance shows, Timon asks the women to raise their skirts to make a receptacle for gold. Doing so, they thus behave as whores who raise their ‘aprons’ for gold. The insulting content of the word appears in MW when Pistol declares, in an implicit homage to Queen Elizabeth, that ‘Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery’ (5.5.46). (C) Findlay (2010), 374–5; Williams, 3, 1257–8. snail (A) A metaphor of slowness. Snails are known for their slow pace, their shells and their horns. A cuckold figure (Williams, 3, 1262–4). A slug, a sluggard, a slow person. (B) In CE , Luciana insultingly addresses Dromio of Syracuse: Luciana:

Why prat’st thou to thyself and answer’st not? Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot. Dromio of Syracuse: I am transformed, master, am I not? (2.2.192–4)

378

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The word is part of a quick alliterative enumeration that contrasts with the image of slowness and laziness that is conveyed. The string of insults aims to wake up a dormant Dromio. In AYL , when Orlando turns up too late at his rendez-vous, Rosalind delivers a sort of paradoxical encomium of the gastropod: Rosalind: Nay, an you be so tardy, come no more in my sight. I had as lief be wooed of a snail. Orlando: Of a snail? Rosalind: Ay, of a snail, for though he comes slowly he carries his house on his head – a better jointure, I think, than you make a woman. Besides, he brings his destiny with him. Orlando: What’s that? Rosalind: Why, horns – which such as you are fain to be beholding to your wives for; but he comes armed in his fortune and prevents the slander of his wife. (4.1.46–56) The comparison is insulting for Orlando, both because it means that he is too slow and because it announces the cuckold he is bound to be. (C) On the snail as a cuckold figure, see Williams, 3, 1262–4. On snails as food, see Fitzpatrick (2011), 379. solus (A) Alone (from Latin solus). A relatively frequent stage direction. (B) In H5, Pistol interprets ‘solus’ as an insult and sends it back to its enunciator: Nym: [to Pistol ] Will you shog off? I would have you solus. Pistol: Solus, egregious dog? O viper vile! The solus in thy most marvailous face, The solus in thy teeth, and in thy throat, And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw perdy, And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth! I do retort solus in thy bowels, [. . .] (2.1.45–52) Pistol, obviously not understanding the Latin solus, receives the word as an insult. Then the word is thrust back into Nym’s body, down to his ‘mouth’ and ‘bowels’. Pistol metaphorically does with the word ‘solus’ what Fluellen later literally does with the leek by forcing Pistol to eat it. The term is emblematic of the fact that even the apparently most innocuous words can be insulting and can be used as projectiles, things that are thrown at someone’s face and thrust into their throats. The deeper the word goes into the body, the more insulting it is. The theatrical term solus that is often used in stage directions is made spectacular in the scene.

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(C) See Vienne-Guerrin, ‘Couple a gorge’ (2008). On the physicality of insults, see R2, 1.1.44 where Bolingbroke says to Mowbray ‘With a foul traitor’s name stuff I thy throat.’ Hamlet imagines someone who ‘gives me the lie i’th’ throat / As deep as to the lungs’ (Ham 2.2.509–10). On the use of ‘solus’ in stage directions, see Dessen and Thomson’s Dictionary of Stage Directions, 206–7. sot (A) A fool. The word, which is of French origin, appears next to many others that convey idiocy in Florio and Cotgrave: gull, sot, ninny, fool, patch, noddy, idiot, jolt-head, natural or coxcomb. Cotgrave mentions the ‘fool or vice in a play’, referring to the sots or fools who appeared as characters in the sotties (which are related to the French word ‘sottise’), short satirical plays performed in fifteenth and sixteenth century France. OED mentions a second meaning: ‘One who dulls or stupefies himself with drinking; one who commonly or habitually drinks to excess; a soaker’ and quotes from Nashe’s Pierce Penilesse: ‘The Danes are bursten-bellied sots, that are to be confuted with nothing but Tankerds or quart pots’ (Works, 1, 180.15). (B) In CE , Luciana insultingly addresses Dromio of Syracuse: Luciana:

Why prat’st thou to thy self and answer’st not? Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot. Dromio of Syracuse: I am transformed, master, am I not? (2.2.192–4) The word means ‘fool’, which is confirmed when Adriana adds ‘If thou art chang’d to aught, ’tis to an ass’ (2.2.198), but next to the words ‘snail’ and ‘slug’, it also refers to someone who is as slow as someone besotted by drinking and thus incapable of acting. The word may also relate Dromio to the comic players of the sotties. In MW , when Caius becomes aware that he has been an object of ridicule, he exclaims: ‘Ha, do I perceive dat? Have you make-a de sot of us, ha, ha?’ (3.1.104–5). As Melchiori notes (MW , 207) the word ‘sot’ is particularly appropriate here as it is of French origin, like Caius the character himself. In KL , Oswald reports the insult he has received from Lear: When I informed him, then he called me sot, And told me I had turned the wrong side out. (4.2.8–9) Lear’s reported abuse not only conveys Oswald’s idiotic nature, but it may also relate him to the comic carnivalesque characters who turn the world upside down. Foakes notes that ‘the idea is from clothing, as if the lining of a garment were placed on the outside’ (KL , 10). In the world of KL , the sot Oswald seems to reign supreme, which is emblematic of a society in which king and fool become indistinguishable. In Tem, Caliban notes that, without his books, Prospero is ‘but a sot, as I am’ (3.2.93), words that are overheard by Prospero’s servant, Ariel. Caliban associates books with intellect: ‘There thou mayst brain him, / Having first seized his books’ (3.2.88–9). To 380

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‘brain’ Prospero means to kill him and also to deprive him of his books. In this scene, ‘The folly of this island’ (3.2.4) appears in the use of such words as ‘natural’ applied to Caliban (3.2.31), ‘thou jesting monkey, thou’ (3.2.43), ‘pied ninny’, ‘scurvy patch’ applied to Trinculo (3.2.61), and ‘the picture of Nobody’ (3.2.127) which is probably an allusion to a comic character from the 1606 anonymous comedy No-body and Some-body. In this world of folly where the fool Stephano becomes a king, even Prospero is transformed into a ‘sot’, which in such a context of drinking, has the added ironic connotation of ‘drunkard’ (OED A2), as Vaughan and Vaughan suggest (Tem, 230). The double meaning also appears in TN when Sir Toby Belch addresses Feste: ‘How now, sot?’ after having cursed ‘these pickle herring’ (1.5.116–17). The context invites consideration that both ‘sot’ and ‘pickle herring’ are names given to the stage fool, Feste. As Sir Toby Belch is a well-known drunkard, his calling Feste ‘sot’ (1.5.117), with the connotation of ‘drunkard’ has an ironic ring. At the end of the play Sir Toby, with his ‘bloody coxcomb’ (5.1.185) uses the word again to address Feste: ‘Sot, didst see Dick Surgeon, sot?’ (5.1.193). This again has an ironic effect as the reference to Sir Toby’s coxcomb makes a fool of him and Feste turns into the wise man. In the context of TN the word ‘sot’ is more of a term of address than an insult. (C) About sotties and clowns, Goldsmith, chap. 2, 15–31. spell (A) A charm, an enchantment. A formula supposed to have magical powers. The term originally refers to a tale. (B) Antony, seeing Cleopatra after the battle of Actium and believing that ‘This foul Egyptian’ (4.12.10) has betrayed him, exclaims: ‘Ah, thou spell! Avaunt!’ (AC 4.12.30). The term suggests that Cleopatra is a witch that has enchanted Antony and caused his loss at Actium. The insult conveys Cleopatra’s bewitching beauty and attraction as well as her becoming a mythical tale. The word expresses a mixture of fascination and repulsion. The insulting effect stems as much from the word ‘spell’ as from the address ‘thou’ and from the marker of rejection ‘avaunt’ (derived from French avant, to the front, forward, before), which is one of the words (with avoid and aroint) used to banish fiends and devils. (C) Gibson and Esra, 15–16; 173–4. spider (A) An indefatigable spinner (the term is etymologically related to ‘spin’) that weaves a web to catch its prey. Spiders are often described as venomous creatures. (B) In R3, Margaret warns Elizabeth against Richard: Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune, Why strew’st thou sugar on that bottled spider, Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about? (R3 1.3.241–43) The phrase conveys Richard’s deformity and inspired Anthony Sher’s 1984 RSC version of the character. The term also draws attention to his poisonous nature, as appears 381

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when Margaret calls him ‘this poisonous bunch-backed toad’ (1.3.245). In WT , Leontes’s evocation of the spider in a cup relates it to ‘venom’ and ‘infection’ (WT 2.1.41–2). Lady Anne mentions a series of ‘creeping venomed things’, connecting Richard ‘to wolves [‘adders’ in Qq], to spiders, toads’ (1.2.19–20). One can wonder whether the ‘wolf’ may refer to a spider, as Topsell, in 1608 (History of Serpents, 270) mentions the ‘Autumnall Lupi, or Wolfe-Spyder, which in a very short space of time do grow from the bignesse of a little Pease, to a very great bulk and thicknesse.’ OED describes it as a spider ‘which hunts after and springs upon its prey’. Queen Elizabeth remembers Margaret’s words: O, thou didst prophesy the time would come That I should wish for thee to help me curse That bottled spider, that foul bunch-backed toad. (4.4.79–81) The repetition renders the insult unforgettable, in a play that keeps harping on memory. In Cym, the three venomous creatures are again associated: Cloten, thou double villain, be thy name, I cannot tremble at it, were it Toad, or Adder, Spider, ’Twould move me sooner. (4.2.88–90) As suggested by Nosworthy (Cym, 123), ‘spider’ may be a direct insult to Cloten, meaning he is a mean creature. Yet the three terms may be on the same level, Guiderius showing his contempt for Cloten by giving him the names of base creatures. (C) See Topsell (1608), 246–76. Topsell’s chapters show the ambivalence of the spider, both full of virtues and an object of repulsion. See bottle. sponge (A) One who absorbs or drains in sponge-like manner. (B) Hamlet uses the image to insult Rosencrantz: Hamlet: Do not believe it. Rosencrantz: Believe what? Hamlet: That I can keep your council and not mine own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! What replication should be made by the son of a king? Rosencrantz: Take you me for a sponge, my lord? Hamlet: Ay, sir – that soaks up the King’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the king best service in the end: he keeps them like an ape in the corner of his jaw, first mouthed to be last swallowed. When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again! 382

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Rosencrantz: Hamlet:

I understand you not, my lord. I am glad of it. A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear. (4.2.8–22)

Rozencrantz is presented as a vile flatterer who absorbs what the king gives him, but who will have to render everything in the end. Jenkins (Ham, 524) notes that: the image of the sponge [. . .] exploits the irony latent in the thing: what the sponge soaks up can be just as easily squeezed out of it. This goes back to Suetonius, who tells how it was said of the emperor Vespasian that he used rapacious officials like sponges, advancing them to high position so that they would be richer when he came to condemn them (Lives of the Caesars: Vesp. 16). (C) The sponge metaphor appears in Whitney’s Emblem 151. See Alciat’s emblem ‘Quod not capit Christus rapit fiscus’ (What Christ does not receive, the exchequer seizes), available at: www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/ See Marston, The Scourge of villainy, satire VII , 58–60 (quoted by Hibbard, Ham, 291). staff. See block. stale (A) A ‘common stale’ is a prostitute of the lowest class, employed as a decoy by thieves. Used as a term of contempt for an unchaste woman. This meaning is related to the stale as a decoy bird, used to entice other birds into a snare. The term also refers to urine, usually of horses (OED n. 5). As an adjective ‘stale’ means ‘that has lost its freshness’ (OED adj. 2). (B) In TS , Katherina asks her father Baptista: ‘I pray you, sir, is it your will / To make a stale of me amongst these mates?’ (1.1.57–8). She plays on two main meanings: the stale as the decoy or low class prostitute and the ‘stalemate’ in chess. Hortensio’s answer is insulting as, rather than commenting on the offensive ‘stale’, he replies: ‘ “Mates”, maid? How mean you that? No mates for you / Unless you were of gentler, milder mould’ (1.1.59–60). In MW , the Host calls Doctor Caius ‘bully stale’ (2.3.26), meaning ‘urine’, which is, as Melchiori notes, a jocular way of calling a doctor since diagnoses were based on the inspection of the patient’s “water” ’ (MW , 196). The other meanings of the word (as decoy or dupe) are probably not absent but the ‘urinary’ meaning is confirmed when the Host calls Caius ‘castalian king urinal’ (2.3.30). In MA , Hero is publicly called a ‘stale’ by Don Pedro during the church scene: ‘I stand dishonoured that have gone about / To link my dear friend to a common stale’ (4.1.63–4). The word echoes Borachio’s slander when he previously advised Don John to tell Don Pedro that Claudio was married to a ‘contaminated stale’ (2.2.23). One hears Borachio’s words coming out of Don Pedro’s mouth. In 2H4, Doll Tearsheet calls Pistol ‘you basket-hilt stale juggler, you!’ (2.4.129). ‘Stale’ may mean that he is no longer young, that he stinks but also that he ‘juggles’ or copulates with ‘stales’ (whores). 383

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In TC , Thersites refers to ‘that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nestor’ (5.4.9–10), meaning that he is no longer fresh and that he stinks. (C) On stale meaning ‘low whore’, see Williams, 3, 1303–4. Williams also relates ‘stale’ and ‘stallion’ (1304–5). On ‘stale’ as ‘urine’, see the pun in Harington’s title A New Discourse of a Stale Subject called the metamorphosis of Ajax (1596). See commoner, juggler, urinal. starveling (A) A starved person or animal; one who is emaciated from lack of food. Starve is related to the Germanic root sterƀ- (German sterben). (B) In 1H4, Falstaff calls Hal ‘you starveling’ (2.4.238). In the kind of Brueghel-like Battle of Carnival and Lent that Shakespeare dramatizes in the play, the Prince ludicrously represents the world of Lent, opposed to Falstaff’s world of Carnival, hence the use of words that throw Hal’s thinness into relief. The contrast between the two figures is emphasized when Gadshill notes of Falstaff that ‘he is no starveling’ (1H4 2.1.67–8). (C) See Bakhtin, Laroque (1991), Knowles (1998), Vienne-Guerrin (1996). See bow-case, eel-skin, neat’s tongue, pizzle, sheath, stock-fish, tailor. stewed (prunes) (A) Dried plums which were a popular dish in brothels which were known as ‘stews’. This may be explained in part by what Clowes says of their prophylactic properties (Observations, 1596, 161, quoted by Williams, 3, 1314, and Humphreys, 2H4, 72) but it also probably derives from the pun on ‘stews’. (B) In 1H4, Falstaff tells Hostess Quickly: ‘There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune [. . .]’ (1H4 3.3.112–13). By using the image, Falstaff relates the Hostess to the world of brothels. Williams suggests that ‘the overtone is of a brothel-whore, and perhaps even of a poxed one’ (1314). Scott Kastan (1H4, 274) glosses ‘bawd’, referring to Dekker’s 2Honest Whore which mentions ‘two dishes of stew’d prunes, a Bawde and a Pander’ (H4v). ‘Plum’ is another word for ‘prune’ and is full of sexual connotations. A prune is a dried plum and, according to Partridge, plum may mean ‘pudend’. Partridge notes that: Cotgrave has hoche prunier which is defined as ‘a Plum tree shaker; a mans yard’. In 2H4, Doll Tearsheet violently reacts when Hostess Quickly calls Pistol a ‘captain’: ‘You a captain? You slave! For what? For tearing a poor whore’s ruff in a bawdy-house? He a captain? Hang him, rogue, he lives upon mouldy stewed prunes and dried cakes’ (2.4.141–4). (C) Fitzpatrick (2011) 344–5; Williams, 3, 1312–15 (‘stew’ and ‘stewed prunes’); Humphreys, 2H4, 72–3. For elaborate puns on ‘stewed prunes’, see MM , 2.1.87 et seq. stigmatic(al) (A) Constituting a stigma; branding with infamy; marked with or having a deformity or blemish; deformed, ill-favoured, ugly. Marked with a stigma or branded. A ‘stigma’ is a mark made upon the skin with a hot iron as a sign of infamy. Derived from Latin stigma and Greek στίγμα (a mark made by a pointed instrument) from the root stig- in στίζειν (to prick, puncture). Thomas has: ‘Stigmatias, æ, [. . .] A point or 384

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marke: also a roage, a vagabond, a lewd knaue that beareth a marke of shame & reproch, &c.’ See also Florio (1598, ‘Stimmatico’) and Cawdrey. (B) In CE , Adriana expostulates against her husband because she thinks he is unfaithful: I cannot, nor I will not, hold me still. My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will. He is deformed, crooked, old and sere, Ill-fac’d, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere; Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind, Stigmatical in making, worse in mind. (4.2.17–22) Adriana means that he is ugly and misshapen, deformed but the term also suggests that he is ‘branded’ with infamy, that he is both physically and morally ugly. Her speech contributes to branding him with infamy. In 2H6, Young Clifford calls Richard Gloucester ‘Foul stigmatic’ (5.1.215). Knowles (2H6, 354) glosses: ‘literally one who was branded; figuratively having a deformity equivalent to being marked out.’ Margaret uses the same word in 3H6: But thou art neither like thy sire nor dam, But like a foul misshapen stigmatic, Marked by the Destinies to be avoided, As venom toads or lizards’ dreadful stings. (2.2.135–8) The term ‘marked’ refers to the literal meaning of ‘stigmatic’, which means that he is marked by physical deformity. Richard’s opening monologue in R3, which describes Richard as ‘rudely stamped’ (R3 1.1.16) and ‘deformed’ (1.1.20), provides an explanation and illustration of all there is behind the word ‘stigmatic’. The monologue he delivers in 3H6 (3.2.153–62) also conveys Richard’s ‘deformity’ (3.2.158), especially when he declares that he ‘carries no impression like the dam’ (3.2.162). All the insults he has to bear in the play leave their mark upon him, ‘stigmatizing’ him. stockfish (A) Dried cod. Fish cured by splitting open and drying hard in the air without salt (OED ). The type of something cold and sexless. ‘To beat one like a stockfish’ (Tilley, S867) was proverbial. (B) In 1H4, Falstaff uses two names of fish to insult Hal in a very long string of abuse: ’Sblood, you starveling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stock-fish! O, for breath to utter what is like thee! You tailor’s yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck – (2.4.238–41)

385

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This insult is part of the battle of Carnival and Lent that the play stages (see Laroque, 1991). The image of the fish often conveys sexual vigour and fertility, but here it is reversed into a metaphor of impotence as the word refers to dryness. Bevington (1H4, 190) notes that ‘The dryness emphasized in Falstaff’s comparisons would produce not only emaciation but a temperament opposite to sanguinity with its heat and moisture – the qualities of youth. Falstaff’s images repeatedly suggest genital emaciation or insufficiency’. In other contexts, the word ‘stockfish’ refers to someone or something that gets beaten, as in 2H4 where a fruiterer against whom Shallow fought one day is called ‘Samson Stockfish’ (3.2.32), or when Stephano threatens to make a stockfish of Trinculo (Tem 3.2.68–9). As a matter of fact, one had to beat the stockfish to make it tender and thus edible and there is here an allusion to the proverb. The term may evoke the tonguelashing that is part of the scene. ‘Stockfish’ targets Hal’s thinness but also his lack of sexual appetite, as in MM , where Lucio explains Angelo’s coldness as follows: ‘Some report, a sea-maid spawned him. Some, that he was begot between two stockfishes’ (3.2.103–4). (C) Fitzpatrick (2011), 386–7. See Partridge and Williams under ‘pizzle’, ‘cod’, ‘eel’, ‘fish’, ‘yard’, ‘tongue’. See herring. stone (A) A piece of rock. A type of hardness, and hence an emblem of insensibility and stupidity. (B) Richmond describes Richard to his army as ‘A base foul stone, made precious by the foil / Of England’s chair, where he is falsely set’ (R3 5.3.250–1). Although the words are uttered while Richard is offstage, they are delivered as an insult that must both ease Richmond’s heat and motivate his army. Debasing the adversary is part of the oration ritual. In JC , Murellus calls the people of Rome ‘You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! / O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, [. . .]’ (JC , 1.1.36–7), referring to their lack of feeling because they show no sign of sadness after Pompey’s death. ‘And do you now strew flowers in his way, / That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood?’ (1.1.51–2), he asks, targeting the Roman citizens’ ingratitude. Lear arrives on stage, holding the dead Cordelia in his arms and exclaims: ‘O, you are men of stones!’ (5.3.255). His words then seem to be ‘howled’ to the whole audience and the entire humanity, suggesting they are, as Buckingham says in R3, ‘like dumb statues or breathing stones’ (R3 3.7.25). In TN , Malvolio debases the Clown Feste in his presence by describing him to Olivia: ‘I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal [Feste]. I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool that has no more brain than a stone’ (1.5.79–81). The base comparison to the ordinary fool is insulting for Feste. Lothian and Craik (TN , 25), referring to Mahood (1968), note that ‘Stone’ may refer to Stone, a famous Elizabethan tavern fool (‘ordinary fool’), which could explain the name ‘Touchstone’ in AYL. Yet, 386

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the image is also related to the proverbial phrase ‘He has no more wit than a stone’ (Tilley, W550). Timon tells Apemantus: ‘Away, thou tedious rogue! / I am sorry I shall lose a stone by thee!’ and then ‘throws a stone’ (Tim 4.3.368–9). Timon means that Apemantus does not even deserve a stone, is less worthy than a stone. Throwing the stone is the material complement or substitute to delivering insults. (C) On ‘stone’ as testicle, see Williams, 3, 1320–3. stool/joint-stool (A) A stool of easement. Baret reads ‘Stool: A basen or vessell to receiue brine, or ordure: a water potte: a close stoole.’ Thomas has ‘ Cӑco, as, Mart. To goe to the stoole’. Hollyband reads ‘Vne selle percée pour aller à la selle, a stoole of easement’, ‘Chier, to goe to the stoole, or doe our ease, to shite’. Florio (1598) has ‘Ciesso, a priuie, a close stoole, a iakes.’ In Pliny’s History of the World (1601), ‘Seege’ is defined as ‘a stoole of easement, whereupon we sit to discharge the ordure and excrements of the guts.’ Cotgrave has ‘Chaire percée. A close-stoole’, ‘Chier. To shite, cacke, scummer, vntrusse the points, goe to the stoole, doe that which no bodie can doe for him’, ‘Selle: f. A stoole, or seat; (any ill fauored, ordinarie, or countrey stoole, of a cheaper sort then the ioyned, or buffet-stoole;) also, a (purgatiue) stoole, or the excrement voided at a stoole. Selle percée. A chaire of easement, a close-stoole. Selle à ribauldes, ou à ricaldes. A Cuck-stoole.’ ‘Stool’ may also mean ‘excrement’. (B) In TS , the image of the ‘joint-stool’ is part of the battle of wit between Kate and Petruccio: Petruccio: Katherina:

Petruccio: Katherina: Petruccio:

[. . .] Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife. ‘Moved’. In good time, let him that moved you hither Re-move you hence. I knew you at the first You were a movable. Why, what’s a movable? A joint-stool. Thou hast hit it: come sit on me. (2.1.193–9)

The ‘joint-stool’ is a low three-or four-legged stool made by a joiner rather than a carpenter (Hodgdon, TS , 204). ‘I cry you mercy, I took you for a joint stool’ was proverbial and ‘a taunting apology for overlooking a person’ (Tilley and Dent, M 897). Kate is taking Petruccio for a ‘joint stool’, that is considering him as a worthless object but he defuses the insult by giving it a bawdy meaning. Asking her to ‘sit’ on him, Petruccio possibly plays on the sexual meaning of ‘joint’ as ‘penis’ (connecting piece) (Williams, 2, 745–6) and the ‘it’ in ‘thou hast hit it’ can refer to the sexual organ (Williams, 2, 719–20). The ‘joint-stool’ proverb is delivered by the Fool in Q KL (3.6.51) and constitutes the last line he utters in the play. He addresses the words to an imaginary Goneril in the 387

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mock-trial scene (only in Q) that Lear orchestrates as the only solace he can find for his pains. The absent Goneril is probably represented by a stool on stage, which makes the Fool’s words doubly ironical. Marjorie Garber notes that ‘the Fool offers the very phrase as an insult to (the absent) Goneril’ and that ‘he is speaking, in literal fact, to a piece of furniture, thus reversing the usual gesture in which a wooden “person” is called a thing’. ‘The Fool’, Garber goes on, ‘is offering his back-handed apology to a stool’ (Garber, 2004, 679). ‘Thou stool for a witch!’ (TC 2.1.41): although Q and F attribute the line to Ajax, some editors have considered it was more likely that the line be delivered by Thersites because it is more in keeping with the pun on ‘stool’ and ‘Ajax’ (‘a jakes’, ‘privy’). Ajax calls Thersites ‘toadstool’ (2.1.19), which may refer to a poisonous mushroom, but also suggest that he is the excrement of a toad (toad’s stool), stool possibly meaning ‘excrement’, which is the kind of stuff a witch could use. If ‘stool’ means excrement, it suits Thersites, whose part in this play is to ‘match’ the other characters ‘in comparisons with dirt’ (1.3.194). The phrase may also associate Thersites with the ‘cucking stool’, the stool which was used to duck noisy women into water, also known as a ‘tumbrel’ (that is a dung cart). The term ‘cuck’ is related to ‘cack’ (from Latin cacare) meaning ‘defecate’, which again relates Thersites to dirt. Whether the target is Ajax or Thersites, the pun on Ajax/a jakes is present, with more irony if Ajax himself delivers the line. It is in keeping with the definition Alexander gives of Ajax as being ‘a very man per se’ (1.2.15), which, I suggest, may contain a pun on French ‘chaire percée’ (close stool). The association of Ajax and the close stool appears in LLL where Costard declares to Nathaniel (impersonating Great Alexander) that ‘your lion, that holds his pole-axe sitting on a close-stool, will be given to Ajax’ (5.2.571–2). (C) On the ‘cucking stoole’, see Cowell (1607). On scatology, see Smith (2012); Mohr; Laporte. About the close stool, see Gaignebet (1990). On ‘joint-stool’ as sexually meaningful, see Rubinstein, 138. On ‘joint’ referring to ‘penis’ or ‘sexual partner’ see Williams, 2, 745–6. On ‘Stool of repentance’, see Williams, 3, 1324. On the object and its relation to witches, see Peter Hewitt’s 2011 post, ‘Shakespeare’s World in 100 Objects: Number 20, a stool for a witch’: http://findingshakespeare.co.uk/shakespearesworld-in-100-objects-number-20-a-stool-for-a-witch Elizabeth Sharrett’s 2011 post, ‘Shakespeare’s World in 100 Objects: Number 19, a joint-stool’: http://findingshakespeare.co.uk/shakespeares-world-in-100-objects-number19-a-joint-stool See Ajax. strumpet (A) A prostitute; a wanton woman, a harlot. Of obscure etymology; perhaps related to Old French Strupe or stupre (the former, a metathesis of the latter) and Latin stuprum, ‘rape’, ‘violation’. (B) In 1H6, Joan Puzel (or ‘pussel’, as Talbot says, 1.4.106) is constantly seen as a whore. Talbot calls her ‘this high-minded strumpet’ (1.5.12) and York calls her ‘strumpet’ (5.3.84) after she claims she is ‘with child’ (5.3.62) to deter her enemies from killing her. 388

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It is in Oth that the term is the most recurrent: Othello: Desdemona: Othello: Desdemona:

[. . .] Impudent strumpet! By heaven, you do me wrong. Are you not a strumpet? No, as I am a Christian. If to preserve this vessel for my lord From any hated foul unlawful touch Be not to be a strumpet, I am none. (4.2.82–7)

‘Strumpet’ is just one of the names Othello calls Desdemona, together with ‘public commoner’ (4.2.74), ‘whore’ (4.2.73; 88; 91) or ‘thou art as false as hell’ (4.2.40) in a scene that leaves Desdemona ‘half asleep’ (4.2.99), stunned by her husband’s words. ‘I understand a fury in your words / But not the words’ (4.2.32–3), she tells Othello. The negation of the term he brands her with (‘I am none’), shows that she tries to put back meaning into the words. If words mean something, she says, then I deny I am a ‘strumpet’. Othello keeps repeating the word when he murders her, ceaselessly ‘ ’bewhoring’ (4.2.117), in other words, ‘bestrumpeting’ her: Othello: Desdemona: Othello:

Out, strumpet, weep’st thou for him to my face? O, banish me, my lord, but kill me not! Down, strumpet! (5.2.76–8)

The term is part of the death sentence Othello delivers. After Cassio’s aborted assault for which Iago needs to find a culprit, Iago applies the term to Bianca, the courtesan, exclaiming: ‘O notable strumpet!’ (5.1.77). Emilia echoes her husband, which leads to Bianca’s denial: Emilia: O fie upon thee, strumpet! Bianca: I am no strumpet But of life as honest as you, that thus Abuse me. (5.1.121–3) Bianca’s reaction is an ironic counterpoint to Desdemona’s denial. Her use of the word ‘honest’ shows that the world Othello has lived in has blurred the difference between vice and virtue, between honesty and villainy. As Findlay (2010, 382) suggests, Bianca’s ‘response to Emilia’s charge [. . .] raises pertinent questions about the loading of blame’. Findlay also rightly notes that ‘In these Shakespearean uses, “strumpet” connotes “whore” (Oth. 4.2.86), a “common gamester to the camp” or camp follower (AW 5.3.188) and prostitution in military context’ (381), a military meaning that can be found in the word ‘baggage’ as well as the word ‘commoner’. The ‘trumpet’ of Othello’s war exploits is 389

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turned into a ‘strumpet’, an ironical change that Iago orchestrates when he announces Othello’s arrival in Cyprus, just after describing Desdemona’s supposedly bawdy game with Cassio: ‘The Moor! I know his trumpet’ (2.1.178). Given Iago’s obscene imagination to which the spectators have just been given access, one is tempted to hear a pun on ‘(s)trumpet’, a pun that can be found in TC where the collective exclamation ‘The Trojans’ trumpet’ (4.5.65) can be heard as ‘the Trojan strumpet’, referring to Cressida, in response to her exit at this point. Rossiter considers this homophonic pun as ‘one of [Shakespeare’s] wickedest puns’ and as ‘a knavish piece of work’ (Angel with Horns, 133). In the two plays the strumpet appears in a military context that implies women are the soldiers’ ‘baggage’. In Cym, Imogen reads Posthumus’ letter to Pisanio aloud: ‘Thy mistress, Pisanio, hath played the strumpet in my bed’ (3.4.21–2). Shakespeare throws into relief the insulting effect of the word through Pisanio’s reaction: What shall I need to draw my sword? the paper Hath cut her throat already. No, ’tis slander, Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie All corners of the world. Kings, queens, and states, Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave This viperous slander enters. (3.4.31–8) The impact of the word is thus shown at length. Imogen’s first reaction is ‘False to his bed? What is it to be false?’ (3.4.39), which reveals that she cannot repeat the very word ‘strumpet’ (the term ‘false’ is not in the letter and yet it seems it is a quotation from it). Imogen first euphemises the insult by using the word ‘false’. Only later does she repeat the word: I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear Therein false struck, can take no greater wound, Nor tent, to bottom that. (3.4.113–15) Imogen’s words again illustrate the efficiency and materiality of the word she has read and heard. (C) See Partridge; Williams, 3, 1335–6; Findlay (2010), 380–2; Stanton (2000). swaggerer (A) A quarreller. Cotgrave has ‘Bravache. (soldat bravache [miles gloriosus]) A Roister, Cutter, Swaggerer, Swash-buckler; one thats euer vaunting of his owne valour.’ ‘Iarnat: m. A ruffian, swaggerer, swashbuckler, blasphemous or foule-mouthed huffesnuffe.’ ‘Tranche-montaigne: m. A swash-mountaine, terrible swash-buckler, horrible swaggerer.’ ‘Taille-vent: m. A wind-cutter; an idle, or fond swaggerer.’ Chapman, 390

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in Achilles Shield (1598) reads ‘Swaggering is a new worde amongst them, and rounde headed custome giues it priuiledge with much imitation, being created as it were by a naturall Prosopopeia without etimologie or deriuation’ (‘To the understander’, B2r). (B) The term is mainly associated with one character: Pistol, in 2H4. Doll Tearsheet exclaims about him: ‘Hang him, swaggering rascal, let him not come hither: it is the foul-mouth’dst rogue in England’ (2H4 2.4.69–71). Once Doll has uttered the word, Hostess Quickly keeps repeating it to say that she will have no ‘swaggerer’ in her house: Hostess Quickly: If he swagger, let him not come here. No, by my faith! I must live among my neighbours, I’ll no swaggerers. I am in good name and fame with the very best. Shut the door, there comes no swaggerers here. I have not lived all this while to have swaggering now. Shut the door I pray you. [. . .] there comes no swaggerers here. [. . .] and your ancient swagger, a comes not in my doors. [. . .] ‘no swaggering companions’: there comes none here. [. . .] No, I’ll no swaggerers. (2.4.72–94) Ironically Falstaff comes to Pistol’s defence: Falstaff: Hostess Quickly:

Doll Tearsheet: Hostess Quickly:

He’s no swaggerer, hostess, a tame cheater, [. . .] Cheater, call you him? I will bar no honest man my house, nor no cheater, but I do not love swaggering, by my troth, I am the worse when one says ‘swagger’. Feel, masters, how I shake, look you, I warrant you. So you do, hostess. Do I? Yea, in very truth do I, and ’twere an aspen leaf. I cannot abide swaggerers. (2.4.95–107)

The whole sequence feeds suspense and makes Pistol’s arrival comically spectacular. He is branded with the name of ‘swaggerer’ before we see him on stage. Ironically, Doll who denounces Pistol as a ‘swaggerer’ is a great quarreller herself. Shakespeare throws into relief what Chapman describes as a new word. In TN , Sir Toby advises Sir Andrew to have a ‘swaggering accent sharply twanged off’ (3.4.175) to impress his opponent. (C) For a portrait of the ‘Swaggering Ruffian’, see Rowlands, Looke to it: for, Ile stabbe ye (1604, D2r). swain (A) A young man attending on a knight; hence, a man of low degree. A countryman, a rustic, a servant. Derived from Old Norse sveinn, boy, servant, attendant. Another example of what Lewis (1960, 21) termed the ‘moralisation of status words’. Cawdrey has ‘swaine, clowne’. Also a lover, a sweetheart. 391

swain

(B) In TS , Petruccio calls Grumio ‘You peasant swain!’ (4.1.115) which sounds ironic if you remember that Kate calls Petruccio ‘swain’ (2.1.205) a few scenes earlier. In 2H6, before dying, Suffolk curses the ‘pirates’ (4.1.140) who have made him prisoner and addresses the Lieutenant as an ‘obscure and lousy swain’ (4.1.50) to show that his blood, ‘The honourable blood of Lancaster, / Must not be shed by such as jaded groom’ (4.1.51–2). All the insults he hurls in the scene are social insults, such as ‘the vulgar groom’ (4.1.130), ‘these paltry, servile, abject drudges’, ‘base men’, ‘this villain here’, ‘such a lowly vassal’ (4.1.105–11), ‘vile Bezonians’ (4.1.136), in a play that is obsessed with class struggle. Shakespeare plays with the insulting sense of the word in LLL . Longaville calls Costard ‘Costard the swain’ (1.1.177), a sort of brand name or surname that will follow the character throughout the play and guide the reception of his clownish role. The King, reading Armado’s letter, refers to Costard as ‘that low-spirited swain’ (1.1.240) and ‘the aforesaid swain’ (1.1.260). Then Don Armado calls him ‘the swain’ (3.1.5; 46; 62), while Moth wittily suggests that Costard is ‘slow-gaited’ (3.1.52), and antiphrastically ‘as swift as lead’ (3.1.54), thus filling the word ‘swain’ with negative comic clownish connotations that are present in the name ‘Costard’ that was slang for ‘head’. When Costard exclaims about Boyet, once the latter has left the stage: ‘By my soul, a swain, a most simple clown!’ (4.1.139), the line cannot but sound ironic as his words sound like a self-portrait. Costard is known for his ‘great limb or joint’ (5.1.119–20, ie penis), but also for his lack of wit. In the Pageant of the Nine Worthies, ‘Costard the swain’ plays ‘Pompey the Great’ (5.1.120; 5.2.531), the combination of the two surnames being a source of comedy based on the performance of a ‘Worthy’ by an Unworthy. Shakespeare again debunks the figure of Pompey in MM by calling the bawd ‘Pompey Bum’. swarthy. See black, Ethiope and Cimmerian.

392

T tadpole (A) The larva of a toad, frog, or other batrachian. Florio (1598) has ‘Girino, a tadpole, or yoong frogge.’ Etymologically related to ‘toad’ and probably ‘poll’ (round head). (B) In Tit, Demetrius threatens to kill Aaron’s son: ‘I’ll broach the tadpole on my rapier’s point’ (4.2.87). Calling the baby a ‘tadpole’ constitutes an insult to Aaron whose reaction shows that he hears it as racist abuse: What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys, Ye white-limed walls, ye alehouse painted signs! Coal-black is better than another hue In that it scorns to bear another hue; (4.2.99–102) It is the only Shakespearean occurrence of the word. tailor (A) A maker of men’s and women’s garments. Tailors were objects of derision on the early modern stage, as is the case, for example, in TS (4.3) where the tailor appears as a weak, servile, fearful scapegoat for Petruccio’s violence. Women’s tailors were represented as effeminate, as is Nick Stuff in Jonson’s New Inn (Hodgdon, TS , 138). Tailors are associated with cowardice, effeminacy and ‘sexual deviance’ (Weis, 2H4, 202). Francis Feeble in 2H4 introduces himself as ‘A woman’s tailor’ (3.2.151), which leads to a series of bawdy puns on ‘prick’ (penis). There is derision when Falstaff oxymoronically predicts that Feeble will be ‘courageous Feeble’ and will be ‘as valiant as the wrathful dove, or most magnanimous mouse’ (2H4 3.2.159–61). Williams analyses the sexual connotations attached to the word and defines ‘tailor’ as ‘tradesmanfornicator’ (3, 1358), the word ‘tailor’ referring to both male and female organs. The proverb ‘the tailor makes the man’ (Dent, A283 and T17), may convey the sexual meaning of the word ‘tailor’ (penis), but it also means that social status derives from the clothes that you wear and conveys the insulting idea that clothes may be deceptive, that fashion unfortunately prevails over value. (B) In KL , Kent uses the proverb to rail at Oswald: Kent: [. . .] you cowardly rascal; nature disclaims in thee – a tailor made thee. Oswald: Thou art a strange fellow – a tailor make a man? Kent: Ay, a tailor, sir; a stone-cutter or a painter could not have made him so ill, though they had been but two years o’the trade. (2.2.52–8) 393

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Kent transforms the proverb ‘The tailor makes the man’ to suggest that Oswald is made, not only socially but in every sense, by his clothes and that the man inside the clothes is so worthless that he cannot have been made by Nature. In AW , Lafew uses a sartorial metaphor to insult Parolles: Parolles: [to Bertram] These things shall be done, sir. Lafew: Pray you, ‘sir’, who’s his tailor? Parolles: Sir! Lafew: O, I know him well. Ay, ‘sir’, he, sir, ’s a good workman, a very good tailor. (2.5.15–18) By asking Bertram the question ‘who’s his [Parolles’] tailor?’, Lafew means that Parolles’ substance and value are only in his clothes. Parolles’ exclamation shows that he has grasped the insult, while Lafew prolongs the attack by wittingly misunderstanding that the ‘sir’ is the tailor’s name. He makes the image more explicit when he again describes Parolles to Bertram, still in Parolles’ presence, as follows: ‘[. . .] there can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this man is his clothes’ (2.5.43–4). Transforming Parolles into an empty shell, Lafew deprives him of all matter and of all humanity by suggesting he is only made of ‘scarfs’ and ‘bannerets’ (2.3.204), that he is mere wind, mere ‘vent’ (2.3.203). Lafew mentions clothes that are too nice to be honest: I did think thee for two ordinaries to be a pretty wise fellow; thou didst make tolerable vent of thy travel; it might pass. Yet the scarfs and the bannerets about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great a burthen. (2.3.202–6) There are many references in the play to Parolles’ military attire and adornment: ‘If ever thou be’st bound in thy scarf and beaten thou shall find what it is to be proud of thy bondage’ (2.3.224–6); ‘Why dost thou garter up thy arms a’ this fashion? Dost make hose of thy sleeves?’ (2.3.248–50); ‘That jackanapes with scarfs’ (3.5.85); ‘Monsieur Parolles, the gallant militarist – that was his own phrase – that had the whole theoric of war in the knot of his scarf and the practice in the chape of his dagger’ (4.3.139–42); ‘You are undone, captain – all but your scarf; that has a knot on’t yet’ (4.3.317–18). Parolles is also described as ‘a snipp’d-taffeta fellow there, whose villainous saffron would have made all the unbak’d and doughy youth of a nation in his colour’ (4.5.1–4) and also ‘that red-tail’d humble-bee’ (4.5.6–7). Thus, the many sartorial comments on Parolles explain Lafew’s insulting question about his tailor, which reveal that Parolles is only made of words (French paroles); he is only made of appearances and has no more substance than a ‘bubble’ (3.6.5). All this explains the proverbial: ‘a tailor made thee’ (Tilley, T17). This sartorial reading is relevant to another image used by Lafew: So, my good window of lattice, fare thee well; thy casement I need not open, for I look through thee. (2.3.213–15) 394

tallow

The word ‘lattice’ may refer to tavern windows through which one could see but may also be an allusion to the snipped clothes through which one can discern the body and thus anticipate the ‘snipp’d taffeta fellow’ (4.5.1–2). One finds the same kind of insult in Cym, during the mock-heroic ‘flyting scene’ (ie ritual exchange of abuse) between Guiderius and Cloten: Cloten:

Thou villain base, Know’st me not by my clothes? Guiderius: No, nor thy tailor, rascal, Who is thy grandfather: he made those clothes, Which (as it seems) make thee. Cloten: Thou precious varlet, My tailor made them not. (4.2.80–4) Guiderius turns Cloten’s boasting about his clothes into an insult. Clothes that should identify Cloten as having great ancestors are attributed to a tailor. The attack conveys the proverbial ‘a tailor makes a man’ and reduces Cloten to a cowardly figure, as tailors were supposed to be poltroons. The irony should be noticed, as Cloten insists on clothes that he has robbed from Posthumus (his tailor obviously ‘made them not’) and which thus paradoxically reveal who he is, what Garber identifies as ‘a savage noble’ (2004, 809). Guiderius revisits Cloten’s glorious genealogy and ancestry by considering his grandfather was a tailor. (C) Jones and Stallybrass (85) note that, in The Honestie of this age (1614), Barnabe Rich denounces the fashion represented by tailors. They are described as ‘Attyremakers’, as ‘Body-makers, that doe swarme through all the parts both of London & about London, that are better customed, and more sought unto, then he that is the Soule maker’ (24–5). On the sexual meanings of the word ‘tailor’, see Williams, 2, 1358–9. tallow (A) Animal fat; grease, a substance deriving from it used for making candles or soap. Cotgrave has ‘Suif: m. Tallow, suet, substantiall fat. Visage de suif. A tallow face; bleake visage, pale countenance.’ (B) The term is associated with Falstaff in the three Falstaff plays. In 1H4, Hal calls him ‘thou whoreson, obscene greasy tallow-catch’ (2.4.220–1). Scott Kastan glosses ‘lump of fat’, noting that the image is probably of the ‘hardened fat that had accumulated beneath roasting meat’ (1H4, 219). Many editors emend to ‘tallow-keech’, ‘keech’ referring to a lump of congealed fat, which makes sense as the word appears in H8 when Buckingham wonders, about Cardinal Wolsey (of York), ‘That such a keech can with his very bulk / Take up the rays o’th’ beneficial sun’ (1.1.55–6). The insulting description refers to Cardinal Wolsey’s corpulence and to his origins as a butcher’s son. The term is also related to butchery in 2H4 where Hostess Quickly refers to ‘Goodwife Keech the butcher’s wife’ (2.1.93–4). Hal also uses the term as a nickname when he orders, about Falstaff: ‘Call in Ribs; call in Tallow’ (1H4 2.4.108). In 2H4, Falstaff echoes the insult 395

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when the Chief Justice compares him to a candle ‘the better part burnt out’ and he answers: ‘A wassail candle, my lord, all tallow – if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth’ (1.2.155–9), with a possible pun on ‘wax/grow’. The ‘wassail candle’ was a large candle used at a feast. In MW , Falstaff prolongs the image by presenting himself as a ‘Windsor stag, and the fattest’ and asking ‘who can blame me to piss my tallow?’ (5.5.12–14). ‘He has pissed his tallow’ was proverbial (Tilley and Dent, T66) and referred to the stags that grew lean after rutting time. Williams glosses ‘to lecher oneself lean’ (2, 1052). Falstaff reverses Hal’s original insult into a praise of sexuality and fertility. In Rom, Capulet calls Juliet ‘You tallow-face!’ (3.5.157): the insult targets her extreme pallor and ironically reveals that she is already bound to be a ‘carrion’ (3.5.156), a corpse. (C) See Williams, 2, 1042–43 (‘piss one’s tallow’). Tartar (A) A native inhabitant of the region of central Asia, including Turkey. From French Tartare (Old French also Tartaire, thirteenth century), or from medieval Latin Tartarus, plural Tartari, an ethnic name. An old cant name for a strolling vagabond, a thief, a beggar. Hence an opprobrious appellation. Tartarus is defined by Marcellus Palingenio Stellato, in The Zodiake of Life (1561) as ‘the depest and darkest place in hel, wher sinners be tormented’. (B) In MND , Lysander rejects Hermia, exclaiming: ‘out, tawny Tartar, out!’ (3.2.263). The alliteration is to be noted. The insult is to be related to Lysander’s calling her ‘Ethiope’ (3.2.257) and it echoes Puck’s departing words: ‘I go, I go, look how I go! / Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow’ (3.2.100–1). Editors note that that the Tartar’s bow is known for its power and that there is probably a reference to Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis (10.687), where Atalanta runs ‘as swift as arrow from a Turkey bow’. The cant meaning may not be absent as Hermia can be seen as a beggar, a vagabond indeed, not knowing where to go and what to think. (C) See Turk. tawny (A) Swarthy, black. Probably from French tané, now tanné, (dark), from tan which Cotgrave describes as ‘the barke of a young Oake, wherewith, being small beaten, leather is tanned’. (B) In 1H6, Gloucester exclaims against Winchester and his servants: ‘Out, tawny coats – out, scarlet hypocrite’ (1.3.56). He reduces the Bishop’s servants to their ‘tawny’ costumes (SD , 1.3.28) and plays on the colours to insult Winchester as well, using the ‘scarlet’ colour of his robes against him. In Revelation 17:3–5, one finds a vision of ‘a woman sit upon a skarlat coloured beast, full of names of blasphemie . . . And the woman was araied in purple & skarlat’. Burns (1H6, 146) notes that Geneva Bible has as a marginal note to the passage that the scarlet coloured beast ‘signifieth the ancient Rome: the woman that sitteth thereon, the newe Rome which is the Papistrie whose crueltie and blood-shedding is declared by skarlat’. Surrey addresses Cardinal Wolsey 396

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as ‘Thou scarlet sin’ in H8 (3.2.255), which is a clear anti-Catholic insult, and then reduces him to being a ‘piece of scarlet’ (3.2.280), referring to his red robes. In Tit, Aaron is reported to insult (‘rate’, 5.1.33) his own baby, his ‘tawny’ colour being an obstacle to being an Emperor. The second Goth narrates the scene: ‘Peace, tawny slave, half me and half thy dame! Did not thy hue bewray whose brat thou art, Had nature lent thee but thy mother’s look, Villain, thou mightst have been an emperor. [. . .]’ (5.1.27–30) In MND , Lysander calls Hermia ‘tawny Tartar’ (3.2.263), referring to her dark hair and thus suggesting that, in his eyes, she is ugly, darkness of skin being associated with lack of beauty. (C) On ‘scarlet’, see Wilson (1612): ‘Scarlet coloured beast sig: The malignant Church, the Romain Sinagogue, the Kingdome of Anti-christ, persecuting with bloody cruelty (represented by Scarlet colour) the Saints of God. Reu. 17, 3. A woman sat vpon a Scarlet coloured Beast.’ See Hall, Things of Darkness (1995). tennis-balls (A) Small balls used at tennis. Tennis is a game in which a ball is struck with a racket and driven to and fro by two players in an enclosed court. In the Renaissance, tennis was considered as an expensive sport that was reserved to an idle nobility. The game was French in origin and popular at the Henrician and Jacobean courts. Minsheu notes that the name originated in the French imperative tenez, ‘take, receive’, which is probably wrong according to OED , but which reveals that tennis was associated with the French. The French name is la paulme, la paume, which is probably, according to Guiraud (see DHLF ), the origin of the French word tripot, a word that means ‘tenniscourt’ (Cotgrave) but that also has a bawdy resonance, evocative of a place where one plays with the hands (paume, hence pote, as in French tripoter). Williams (3, 1372–4) relates tennis to sexual activity. Cotgrave connects tennis with French words that are still now evocative of sexual activities: ‘Bander. [. . .] to bandie, at Tennis’; ‘Faire bourre voler. To play much at Tennis (the ball being meant by bourre, wherewith it is stuffed) [. . .]; ‘Pelote: f. A (hand)ball, or tennis ball; any little ball to play with’; ‘Tripoté: m. ée: f. Bandied, or tossed to and fro, as a ball at Tennis; also, confusedly iumbled, hudled, bungled, or slubbered ouer.’ The ‘balls’ often refer to testicles. (B) In H5, King Henry is offered ‘tennis-balls’ (1.2.259) by the French ambassador sent by the Dauphin, which can be considered as an insult in deed. Henry’s reaction to the insulting gift leaves no doubt as to its interpretation as a provocation to himself and to the whole English nation. What Exeter defines as a ‘bitter mock’ (2.4.122) triggers off the action of the play. The gift of the tennis-balls is related to Hal’s former life that was seen as a life of idleness and light folly, tennis-balls being the epitome of this form of vain existence. The Dauphin explains to his father that ‘matching to his [King Henry’s] youth and vanity / [He] did present him with the Paris-balls’ 397

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(2.4.130–1). King Henry strikes back by transforming these insulting tennis-balls into martial weapons: When we have matched our rackets to these balls We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard. Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler That all the courts of France shall be disturbed With chases. (1.2.262–7) War is announced through the tennis metaphor, which is no longer the light game it used to be for Hal in 2H4 where he uses the image of the ‘tennis-court keeper’ in a context of bawdy bantering with Poins: Belike then my appetite was not princely got; . [. . .] What a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name! or to know thy face tomorrow! or to take note how many pair of silk stockings thou hast – viz. these, and those that were thy peach-coloured ones! or to bear the inventory of thy shirts – as, one for superfluity, and another for use! But that the tennis-court keeper knows better than I, for it is a low ebb of linen with thee when thou keepest not racket there; as thou hast not done a great while, because the rest of thy low countries have made a shift to eat up thy holland. And God knows those that bawl out of the ruins of thy linen shall inherit his kingdom: but the midwives say the children are not in the fault; whereupon the world increases, and kindreds are mightily strengthened. (2.2.9–27) Through sophisticated puns, Hal compares himself to a ‘tennis-court keeper’, that is a bawd who keeps track of his clients’ linen. The allusions to ‘the low countries’ and to ‘those that bawl out of thy linen’ (that is testicles, with a pun on ‘balls’) leave no doubt as to the bawdy meaning of Hal’s words which show that tennis is associated with light bawdy games. Thus the Dauphin returns an image that is used by Hal in 2H4 against the new King Henry, who announces he is going to be a new ‘tennis-court keeper’ as the leader of a court and an army. (C) On tennis as sexual activity, see Williams, 3, 1372–4. Puttenham, in The Arte of English Poesy (1589), describes ‘rebound’ as characteristic of tennis (216). The scornful gift is mentioned by Hall in his chronicle, The vnion of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre [and] Yorke (1548, xliv). On tennis, see Colón Semenza, Sport, Politics, and Literature in the English Renaissance (2003), 11–12. On the 2H4 passage, see Partridge, 24 and Williams, 3, 1373. thief (A) One who steals, robs. Also a general term of reproach meaning ‘villain’. (B) In MND , Hermia calls Helena ‘O me! / You juggler! You canker-blossom! / You thief of love! What, have you come by night / And stol’n my love’s heart from 398

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him?’ (3.2.283–5). The insult sounds comic because the spectators know that the only ‘thief’ in the story is Puck and also because it suggests that love and Lysander’s heart are concrete commodities. In MW , the French doctor Caius uses the French word ‘larron’ to call Simple ‘thief’, when he pulls him out of his closet: ‘O diable, diable, vat is in my closet. Villainy, larron! – Rugby, my rapier!’ (1.4.62–3). Cotgrave reads: ‘Larron: m. A felon, theefe, robber, purloyner, stealer, imbeazeler, pilferer, filcher, nimmer.’ Cotgrave also has ‘Larron d’eau. An issue in a Conduit head for the voiding of superfluous water’, which is in keeping with the ‘Haringtonian’ reading of the play (see Ajax). In Oth, Brabantio exclaims, against Othello, ‘Down with him, thief’ (1.2.57), ‘O thou foul thief, where has thou stowed my daughter?’ (1.2.62). Doing so, he only echoes Iago’s exclamations: Awake, what ho, Brabantio! thieves, thieves, thieves! Look to your house, your daughter and your bags! Thieves, thieves! (1.1.78–80) This is the first example of Iago’s putting his own words into the others’ mouths. Brabantio means that Othello has stolen his daughter, which amounts to considering Desdemona as a commodity. The accusation also presents the story from the very start, as the story of a ‘detraction’, both in the senses of theft and slander. ‘Detraction’ means ‘slaunder, backbiting, deprauation, discrediting, misreport of, priuate disgracing, or disparaging; slaunderous speeches, reproachfull tearmes giuen of one behind his backe’ (Cotgrave) but its etymology relates it to theft (dētrahĕre, to draw off or away), the theft of the name. The Duke answers Brabantio’s accusation not by denying it but by trying to teach Brabantio to smile at this ‘robbery’: The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief, He robs himself that spends a bootless grief. (1.3.209–10) Williams (3, 1378) suggests that ‘thief’ can refer to an ‘illicit bedfellow’, a meaning that may be present in Brabantio’s insult, as well as in Isabella’s calling Angelo an ‘adulterous thief’ (MM 5.1.42). About Isabella’s insult, Bawcutt (MM , 205) notes that ‘The word has a shock-effect in branding Angelo as a common criminal; what he has stolen is a woman’s virginity.’ The same can be said of Brabantio’s accusation, which is supposed to make a common criminal of Othello. In Cym, Cloten addresses Guiderius as if he were an outlaw: ‘Thou art a robber / A law-breaker, a villain: yield thee, thief’ (4.2.74–5). Then he calls him ‘Thou injurious thief’ (4.2.86), meaning ‘thou insulting malefactor’. The insults, even if they seem irrelevant are emblematic of a play in which slander, also known as ‘detraction’, rests on the theft of a ring by a ‘cunning thief’ (1.5.93). Cloten’s insults reflect the characters’ inability to make a difference between the ‘thief’ and ‘the true-man’ (2.3.73), or to know 399

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‘which is the justice, which is the thief’, as Lear says (KL 4.6.149–50). Posthumus’ anagnorisis at the end of the play consists in recognizing Iachimo as the ‘thief’ (5.5.211), ‘A sacrilegious thief’ (5.5.220), who has not only stolen Imogen’s ring but also ‘detracted’ her good name. (C) On defamation cases based on the word ‘thief’, see Helmholz. See pirate. thimble (A) A bell-shaped sheath worn on the end of the finger to push the needle in sewing. (B) In TS , it is one of the tailor’s tools that Petruccio verbally returns against the little tailor himself: ‘Thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble, / Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail [. . .]’ (4.3.109–10). Beyond the reifying sewing metaphor, the term is also a diminutive, evocative of the tailor’s small size, transforming him into a kind of Tom Thumb. The word is later used by Grumio in a comic scene of mock-challenge: ‘Error i’th’ bill, sir, error i’th’ bill! I commanded the sleeves should be cut out, and sewed up again, and that I’ll prove upon thee though thy little finger be armed in a thimble’ (4.3.144–7). In the comic duel that is imagined by Grumio, the little tailor is the ‘villain’ (4.3.143), his weapon is his thimble and ‘the note lies in’s throat’ (4.3.132). thing (A) A term of contempt implying unworthiness to be considered a person. The term has several bawdy meanings. Associated with women, it often means ‘vagina’; associated with men, it refer to the penis. (B) The word usually refers to something worthless and is made more insulting through the use of adjectives. In MND , Lysander calls Hermia ‘vile thing’ (3.2.260). Cymbeline calls Posthumus ‘Thou basest thing’ (Cym 1.2.56) and Imogen ‘disloyal thing’ (Cym 1.2.62) and ‘Thou foolish thing!’ (Cym 1.2.81). In TC , Thersites calls Ajax ‘thou thing of no bowels, thou!’ (TC 2.1.48), which probably means that he is deprived of sensitivity but may also contain an allusion to his potentially scatological name (with the pun on Ajax / a jakes). In Tem, Prospero calls Ariel ‘malignant thing’ (Tem 1.2.257), then ‘Dull thing’ (Tem 1.2.285) while Miranda refers to Caliban as ‘a thing most brutish’ (Tem 1.2.358) which contrasts with her vision of the ‘gallant’ Ferdinand that she describes as ‘A thing divine’ (1.2.419). Caliban ironically calls Trinculo ‘this thing’ (3.2.53) while he himself is never considered as human in the play and is called ‘this thing of darkness’ (5.1.275) by Prospero at the end of the play. In 2H4, Doll calls the beadle ‘you thin thing’ (2H4 5.4.30). Coriolanus calls Sicinius ‘rotten thing’ (Cor 3.1.179). In JC , Marullus calls the Romans ‘You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!’ (1.1.36), reducing the Romans to the state of senseless, inhuman objects. Applied to a woman, the term takes on a sexual meaning: Falstaff: Hostess: Falstaff: 400

[. . .] Go, you thing, go! Say, what thing, what thing? What thing? Why, a thing to thank God on.

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Hostess:

I am no thing to thank God on. I would thou shouldst know it. I am an honest man’s wife, and, setting thy knighthood aside, thou art a knave to call me so. (1H4 3.3.115–20)

The Hostess’s reaction shows that she wants this ‘loose’ word to have a specific precise meaning. Partridge quotes the example to illustrate the bawdy meaning of the word and sees it as synonymous with ‘pudend’. Hostess Quickly hears ‘you whore’ in this ‘you thing’, which is why she quickly declares she is ‘an honest man’s wife’. In WT , Leontes, by using the term, both avoids saying the word ‘whore’ and suggests the image by means of a euphemism: Leontes:

[. . .] O thou thing, Which I’ll not call a creature of thy place, Lest barbarism, making me the precedent, Should a like language use to all degrees, And mannerly distinguishment leave out Betwixt the prince and beggar. [. . .] (2.1.82–7)

Leontes refuses to utter the term ‘whore’, in the same way as he refuses to say he is a ‘cuckold’, replacing the word by ‘so-forth’ (1.2.216), but the ‘thou thing’ is enough to suggest that he considers his wife as a harlot, ‘an adulteress’ (2.1.78; 88). By censuring himself, Leontes in fact reveals his thoughts. The term may hover between praise and dispraise, as when Aufidius calls Coriolanus ‘thou noble thing’ (Cor 4.5.118), an expression that both conveys Aufidius’ admiration and the dehumanization (Holland, Cor, 341) of a character, Coriolanus, who moves ‘like an engine’ (5.4.19). The tension between nobility and inhumanity makes the expression ‘noble thing’ ambivalent. Given Aufidius’ comparison with the joy he felt with his ‘wedded mistress’ (4.5.119), the ‘noble thing’ may take on a sexual meaning if we consider the possible homoeroticism conveyed by the play. Lucio’s address to Isabella at the convent as ‘a thing enskied and sainted’ (MM 1.4.34) no doubt suggests that she has and is a ‘thing’, even if she lives in a place of chastity. At the end of AYL , Touchstone describes Audrey as ‘an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own’ (5.4.57–8), uttering what Findlay (2010, 392) calls ‘perhaps the most degrading objectification of woman’. (C) On the sexual meanings, see Williams, 3, 1379–81 (‘penis’, ‘vagina’, ‘copulation’); see Findlay (2010), 392–3; Patricia Parker (1987), 118–21. thou/you (A) Pronouns of address. Often, but not systematically, ‘thou’ is an expression of contempt towards an inferior. (B) As a term of address, ‘thou’ may in itself be sent and received as an insult, as appears in the advice that Sir Toby gives Sir Andrew on the art of writing a challenge: ‘Taunt him with the licence of ink. If thou “thou’st” him some thrice, it shall not be amiss, [. . .]’ (AYL 3.2.42–3). 401

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‘Thou’ is often used as a marker of abuse, for example when Achilles addresses Thersites: Achilles: Thersites:

How now, thou core of envy! Thou crusty batch of nature, what’s the news? Why, thou picture of what thou seemest and idol of idiot-worshippers, here’s a letter for thee. (TC 5.1.4–7)

‘Thou’ answers ‘thou’ while Shakespeare plays on ‘you’ and ‘thou’ in a dialogue between Patroclus and Thersites: Patroclus: Why, thou damnable box of envy, thou, what mean’st thou to curse thus? Thersites: Do I curse thee? Patroclus: Why, no, you ruinous butt, you whoreson indistinguishable cur, no. Thersites: No? Why art thou then exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of sleave-silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal’s purse, thou? (TC 5.1.24–31) All the insults are preceded by the vocative ‘you’ or ‘thou’, which signals that the character is about to ‘shoot’. Patroclus uses either ‘you’, or ‘thou’ to address Thersites, which Abbot explains as follows: Thou is generally used by a master to a servant, but not always. Being the appropriate address to a servant, it is used in confidential and good-humoured utterances, but a master finding fault often resorts to the unfamiliar you (much as Caesar cut his soldiers to the heart by giving them the respectful title of Quirites). (§ 232, 155) By switching from ‘thou’ to ‘you’, Patroclus rejects the ‘good-humoured’ utterance that could lie behind the ‘thou’. Another interesting case is the exchange of abuse between Falstaff and Hal in 1H4: Prince:

[. . .] Why, thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow catch. [. . .] Falstaff: ’Sblood, you starveling, you eel skin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stock-fish! O, for breath to utter what is like thee! You tailor’s yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck – (1H4, 2.4.219–41) Through the differing uses of ‘you’ and ‘thou’ Shakespeare lets us hear the difference between the two characters and shows that the royal ‘You’ that is due to Hal is not far. 402

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One can hear the difference within the echo. The use of the vocative as a targeting marker is a key element in the rhetoric of insult. (C) See Abbott, 153–4; Hope, 73; Nevalainen, 77–84 (‘pronouns’). On ‘thou’ as a term of insult and endearment in AYL , see Calvo. Warren and Wells (TN , 164) note that a contemporary example of the insulting use of thou occurred at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603. The story of Raleigh’s trial is mentioned in John Shirley, The life of the valiant & learned Sir Walter Raleigh (1677), 95. thread (A) A fine cord composed of the fibres or filaments of flax, cotton, wool, or silk, spun to a considerable length (OED ). Baret reads: ‘Thread: a line: the proportion or draught of a thing: the facion of countenance, or stature.’ Thomas has: ‘Filum, [. . .] A thread, a line, a strike: the proportion or draught of a thing: the fashion of countenance, or stature: the string in an instrument: the style & manner of. [. . .]’. Hollyband has ‘Escheveau, a skayne, a loope of silke, or thread.’ (B) The term is used once as an insult when Petruccio verbally assaults the tailor to impress Kate: ‘Thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble, / [. . .] Braved in mine own house with a skein of thread?’ (TS 4.3.109–12). The alliteration in ‘th’ ensures the music of words that are borrowed from the tailor’s vocabulary. The scene plays on the comic discrepancy between the tiny motive of the quarrel and Petruccio’s bombastic rhetoric. ‘Thread’ is essentially fragile, thin and small and thus corresponds to the physical aspect of the actor Sincklo who would probably be playing the part of the tailor. Petruccio’s words also suggest that he wants to cut the tailor’s thread of life. The ‘skein of thread’ (4.3.112) announces the following ‘quantity’ (4.3.113), as a skein is a quantity of thread or yarn wound upon a reel. ‘Braved’ means both ‘defied’ or ‘challenged’ and ‘fitted out’ or ‘decked out by a tailor’ and is another example of the punning use of the tailor’s jargon in the sequence. In CE , the term is also associated with thinness when Antipholus of Ephesus calls Pinch (in absentia) ‘a thread-bare juggler’, meaning that he is very lean. (5.1.240). thumb-biting (A) Thumb-biting is an insulting, taunting gesture. In Cotgrave, the French expression faire la nique is defined as follows: ‘To mocke by nodding, or lifting up of the chinne, or more properly, to threaten or to defie, by putting the thumbe naile into the mouth, and with a ierke from th’ upper teeth make it to knacke’. This description is quoted in OED . DHLF does not confirm this acoustic origin of the word nique. In his Encyclopedia of Swearing (2006), in an article entitled ‘Language and Gesture’, Hughes quotes the exchanges ‘of coded provocation’ (39) between the servants of the Capulets and the Montagues. He notes that ‘Since the actions are derived from Continental practice, they need to be explained in the text to the English audience’ (39) but he does not provide any further explanation for this precise gesture, apart from Cotgrave’s definition. It is as if Cotgrave were the only reference that one could use to understand a gesture that was indeed made famous by Shakespeare’s Rom. (B) Rom starts with a scene of insult, at the heart of which Shakespeare has placed one main provocative, defiant gesture: Samson’s biting his thumb. 403

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Samson: Gregory: Samson:

Let us take the law of our sides: let them begin. I will frown as I pass by and let them take it as they list. Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them, which is disgrace to them if they bear it. Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? Samson: I do bite my thumb, sir. Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? Samson: [aside to Gregory]. Is the law of our side if I say ‘Ay’? Gregory: [aside to Samson]. No. Samson: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir. (1.1.37–49) To elucidate the gesture all the editors of Rom, Gibbons, Blakemore Evans and Levenson all following OED , truncate Cotgrave’s definition and omit the reference to the nodding and the lifting up of the chin. They thus erase the diversity of gestures that the French expression faire la nique could contain. Blakemore Evans adds that Samson’s gesture is ‘a provocative, probably obscene gesture’ (70) while Levenson (146) speaks of a ‘rude gesture’. Shakespeare’s text does not give us any other example as this taunting gesture only appears in Rom. Nothing is said of the precise meaning and origin of the gesture which is probably obscene. Blakemore Evans and Hughes (2006), both follow OED by mentioning the link that there probably was between Samson’s gesture and another gesture known as ‘the fig’ (‘to give the fico, to insult’). ‘There seems to have been some contemporary confusion between this phrase and “to give the fico (or fig)” ’, Blakemore Evans notes. He refers to Cotgrave’s dictionary and quotes Lodge’s Wits Miserie (1596) where Contempt is described as ‘marching forth, giving me the Fico with his thombe in his mouth’ (23). This text is also quoted by Hughes (2006) as one example of the Elizabethan use of the expression making a link between thumb-biting and the fig. The bawdy context which precedes Samson’s gesture, and notably the double entendre on the word ‘thrust’ (1.1.15–17), invites an obscene reading that would combine la nique and ‘the fig’. Beyond the precise meaning and performance of the thumb-biting, what matters here is that Samson presents it as an unbearable insult, which leaves the offended party no opportunity to escape the quarrel. By opening the play with Samson’s oath ‘Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals’ (1.1.1), which figuratively means, ‘we will not bear dirty insults’, Shakespeare signals the issue of the reception and bearing of insults as essential in the play. Samson and Gregory put the Montagues to the test to see whether they will ‘carry coals’. Gregory first mentions a frown (‘I will frown as I pass by and let them take it as they list’, 1.1.38–9) that could leave some liberty of interpretation. Samson, on the other hand, wants to trap the Montagues, to corner them into picking a quarrel. This insult is to be interpreted in the light of precise duelling codes. If the Capulets use a gesture rather than words, it is because they want the Montagues to be the challengers. One finds in Rom many aspects of the duelling codes that were presented in Renaissance duelling manuals and treatises of courtesy. Leggatt notes that this 404

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comic scene ‘introduces the issue of the Romeo-Tybalt confrontation’ (40). Callaghan (208–29) includes extracts from Vincentio’s Saviolo’s Practice (1595) and from George Silver’s Paradoxes of Defense (1599) to explain the context of the play. She notes that ‘Saviolo is particularly important to Romeo and Juliet because Shakespeare has Mercutio ridicule his fashionable theories in the play’ (208). Edelman (1992) describes the Elizabethan ‘fascination with sword play and the duello’. He notes that the exchanges between the servants ‘is a rich parody of insult and counter-insult their masters would and do indulge in’. He also suggests that ‘the fact that the lower classes persisted in imitating their betters by being involved in duels was used by the crown as encouragement to the nobility to give up the practice’. Edelman notes that the ‘civil brawl that begins Romeo and Juliet is not a duel, as no formal challenge has been sent to meet at a pre-arranged time “i’ the field” ’ (173). Yet I would like to suggest that even if the thumb-biting scene is not a duel, it is pregnant with distorted duelling codes. With the thumb-biting sequence, Shakespeare parodies a basic rule by which Saviolo distinguishes the ‘challenger’ and the ‘defender’ (‘A Rule and order concerning the Challenger and Defender’): All iniuries are reduced to two kindes, and are either by wordes or deedes. In the first, he that offereth the iniurie ought to bee the Challenger: in the later, hee that is iniuried. (R4) Saviolo goes on explaining this rule by giving two examples: Example, Caius sayth to Seius that hee is a traitour: unto which Seius answers by giving the lie: whereuppon ensueth, that the charge of the combat falleth on Caius, because hee is to maintaine what hee sayd, and therefore to challenge Seius. (R4) There are two stages in this process. First Caius insults Seius by calling him ‘traitor’; then Seius insults Caius by giving him the lie, which leads to the challenge. Things are different when an injury is offered by deed: Now when an iniurie is offered by deede, then do they proceed in this manner. Caius striketh Seius, giveth him a boxe on the eare, or some other waie hurteth him by some violent meanes: Wherewith Seius offended, saith unto Caius, that hee hath used violence towardes him, or that hee hath dealt iniuriouslie with him, or that hee hath abused him, or some such manner of saying. Whereunto Caius answereth, Thou lyest: whereby Seius is forced to challenge Caius, and to compell him to fight, to maintaine the iniurie that he had offered him. The summe of all therefore, is in these cases of honour, that hee unto whome the lie is wrongfullie given, ought to challenge him that offereth that dishonour, and by the swoorde to prove himself no lyer. (R4)

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This rule seems to be essential to understand why Samson and Gregory choose a silent insult (whether it be frowning or thumb-biting). They want to ‘let them (the Montagues) begin’, that is to force them to deliver the challenge, to put on them what Segar calls the ‘burden’ of challenge in The Booke of Honor and Armes (18). That is why it is essential for Samson and Gregory to offer an injury by deed, and not by word. Peltonen (2003) quotes Simon Robson (R. S.)’s The Courte of Civill Courtesie (London, 1577): It followed that he who received ‘the first reprocheful words’ had his honour insulted and thus became the challenger. It was however expedient ‘for pollicie sake’ [. . .] to try to make the other to challenge ‘to saue my selfe from the daunger of the lawe’ (Peltonen, 47–8, quoting Robson, 23–4). Robson’s formulation is echoed by Samson’s words. Peltonen notes that ‘Robson gave no advice on how to achieve this. The only possibility seems to have been to reply to an insult with a blow rather than a challenge. It was not possible, Robson stated, simply to return the lie’ (Peltonen, 48). It seems clear that, for Samson, the way of doing it is to resort to injury by deed. Yet Shakespeare both dramatizes the application of this basic rule and distorts it, as the thumb-biting proves inefficient. One could parody Austin’s ‘How to do things with words’ and say that this thumb-biting shows ‘how to do nothing with deeds’, in a scene that is based on what Fly (6) describes as an episode of ‘idiotic circularity’. The gesture literally leads to what Saviolo would call a ‘multiplying’ of words and speeches, as the expression ‘bite your thumb’ / ‘bite my thumb’ is repeated six times in a few lines. Shakespeare here blurs the distinction between injury by word and injury by deed. The thumb-biting is a hybrid sign that oscillates between the verbal and the non-verbal worlds. It is a biting, aggressive gesture that should act, but that only becomes an object of playful interpretation. In this sequence, Shakespeare offers food for a modern pragmatic conception of language and interpretation, as he dramatizes a gesture as utterance and shows that a sign is meaningless if it is not considered in the context of its utterance. It illustrates the distinction that pragmatic theorists establish between the ‘sense’ (meaning as semantically determined) and the ‘force’ (meaning as pragmatically, as well as semantically determined) of an utterance (Leech, 1983, 17). Abraham, even if he understands the ‘sense’ of the gesture, does not allow Samson to give it any ‘force’ by questioning its reception. The play on the word ‘at’ shows that the insulting force depends on the reception of the gesture as much as on its deliverance or ‘utterance’. The question ‘at us?’ works as a form of euphemism, a verbal shield that allows the Montagues to resist abuse (See Allan and Burridge, 1991). The play on the word ‘at’ epitomises the essentially pragmatic status of insult. There is no insult per se but the insult only exists if one ‘takes’ it as such. ‘Let them take it as they list’: this episode defines insult as a matter for interpretation. (C) On duelling codes, see Saviolo; Segar; Vienne-Guerrin (2000); Peltonen; Edelman. On the hands, see Neill (2000), chap. 7: ‘Amphitheatres in the body: Playing 406

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with hands on the Shakespearean stage’, 167–203. Williams mentions the link between the thumb-biting gesture and the gesture known as the ‘fig’ (1, 481). See fig, lie. toad (A) A tailless amphibian. A physically abject and poisonous creature. A type of anything loathsome. According to Topsell (1608), the Latin calls it bufu because ‘it swelleth when it is angry’ (187). ‘As loathsome as a toad’ is proverbial (Tilley, T361) and toads were associated with witches who used them ‘in their confections’ (Topsell, 1608, 193). (B) The toad is often mentioned in the plays as a hateful and venomous figure but it is rarely used as a direct insult, which makes the abuse all the more memorable. It is described as ‘ugly and venomous’ (AYL 2.1.13), ‘foul’ (Oth 4.2.62–3), ‘loathed’ (Rom 3.5.31), ‘loathsome’ (Tit 4.2.69), ‘swelling’ (Tit 2.2.101), ‘black’ (Tim 4.3.180). Othello mentions it as the worst of all abject creatures: […] I had rather be a toad, And live upon the vapour of a dungeon, Than keep a corner in a thing I love For others’ uses [. . .]. (Oth 3.3. 274–7) Thersites puts the toad in the basest category of animals: ‘To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus! I would conspire against destiny’ (TC 5.1.58–62). The Nurse in Rom does the same: ‘[. . .] but she, good soul, had as lief see a toad, a very toad, as see him’ (2.4.194–5). The birth of the black toad is part of the ‘abhorred births’ quoted by Timon (Tim 4.3.180–2). This Shakespearean background allows us to better understand the impact of the word as an insult. Richard is the toad in Shakespeare’s plays. In R3, Lady Anne uses the term against him in the spitting sequence: She spits at him. Richard: Why dost thou spit at me? Anne: Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake. Richard: Never came poison from so sweet a place. Anne: Never hung poison on a fouler toad. Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes. (1.2.147–51) The image is reminiscent of 3H6 where Margaret describes Richard as a ‘foul misshapen stigmatic, / Marked by the Destinies to be avoided, / As venom toads or lizards’ dreadful stings’ (2.2.136–8). It is also in keeping with the curse that Lady Anne delivers a few lines earlier: 407

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More direful hap betide that hated wretch That makes us wretched by the death of thee Than I can wish to wolves, to spiders, toads, Or any creeping venomed thing that lives. (R3 1.2.17–20) Margaret uses the image in her turn when she refers to Richard as ‘this poisonous bunch-backed toad’ (1.3.245), which is echoed by Elizabeth when she calls him ‘That bottled spider, that foul bunch-backed toad’ (4.4.81). Then the Duchess of York, Richard’s mother, addresses her son as ‘Thou toad, thou toad’ (4.4.145). The term, used by the three women in the play, shows the physical disgust they feel for Richard. It also may refer to Richard’s deformed shape that can be found in a species of frog that Topsell calls the ‘padd[o]cke or crooked backe frogge’ (186). It conveys the poisonous dimension of the character as well as his moral and physical monstrosity. In Tim, Apemantus calls Timon ‘Toad!’ (4.3.370) during one of their flyting scenes. In this case the word may just express Timon’s loathsome nature but also convey Timon’s venomous dimension. In KL , Edgar calls Edmund ‘[. . .] from th’extremest upward of thy head / To the descent and dust below thy foot / A most toad-spotted traitor’ (5.3.134–6). The toad typifies everything hateful and its spots were thought to be poisonous. The insult also may suggest that Edmund has ‘spotted’ his name and that his reputation is soiled. The loathsome nature of the toad is expressed in TC where Ajax declares: ‘I do hate a proud man as I do hate the engendering of toads’. Nestor returns the phrase against Ajax, thus associating him with toads when he comments, aside: ‘Yet he loves himself. Is’t not strange?’ (TC 2.3.156–7). In Cym, Guiderius associates Cloten with the toad when he ridicules his name: ‘Cloten, thou double villain, be thy name, / I cannot tremble at it, were it Toad, or Adder, Spider, / ’Twould move me sooner’ (4.2.89–91). (C) See Andrew, The noble lyfe a[nd] natures of man of bestes, serpentys, fowles a[nd] fishes (1527) Ciir; Topsell (1608), 187–94. On ‘The truculent toad in the middle ages’, see Robbins (1996). toadstool (A) A poisonous mushroom. A fungus having a round disk-like top and a slender stalk. Thomas has ‘Bōlētus [. . .]. A mushrome yelow and litle: a toade stoole.’ (B) In TC , Ajax calls Thersites ‘Toadstool’ just after the latter has cursed him with ‘A red murrain o’thy jade’s tricks!’ (2.1.18–19). The comparison with a poisonous mushroom is evocative of Thersites as the embodiment of the evil, venomous tongue that plagues the society he lives in. Editors also note that there is probably a pun on ‘toad’s stool’, which suggests that Thersites is reduced to dirt, to the ‘stool’ or excrement of a toad. This meaning bears some irony as Thersites, the one whom Achilles sets ‘To match us in comparisons with dirt’ (1.3.194) is thus in his turn transformed into a ‘stool’.

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(C) See Maplet, 52r; Banister, 90r. See stool. tortoise (A) A four-footed reptile, in which the trunk is enclosed between a carapace and plastron, the skin being covered with large horny plates, commonly called the shell. Probably related to Latin tortus, twisted. The tortoise is a type of slowness of motion. Topsell (1608) notes that although he cannot find ‘by reading or experience that it is venomous’, yet seeing ‘other before [him] have ranged the [tortoise] in the number and Catalogue of these Serpents and creeping creatures’ (281), he follows them. (B) In Tem, Prospero addresses his slave Caliban: ‘Come, thou tortoise, when?’ (1.2.317). Vaughan and Vaughan (Tem, 172) note that the insult leads some editors, critics and artists to visualize Caliban as a giant turtle. If one considers that the image is relevant to represent Caliban, one must infer that he is a ‘tortoise of the earth whose shell is only figured’ (Topsell, 1608, 285), that remains in his shell or cave, and thus avoids being seen. Prospero calls him ‘earth’ (1.2.315), which is in keeping with this reading and might explain why Caliban is then called ‘poisonous slave’ (1.2.320), as Topsell, following tradition, puts the tortoise in the category of venomous, creeping creatures. Yet Prospero’s ‘tortoise’ also very likely means that Caliban is slow to come and contrasts with Ariel’s swiftly entering ‘like a water nymph’ (SD, 1.2.316) just after Prospero has called for Caliban. The figure of the tortoise may announce the ‘strange fish’ (2.2.27) that Trinculo sees in Caliban who has fallen ‘flat’ (2.2.16) on the earth, under his ‘gaberdine’ (2.2.37), so as not to be seen. It is also evocative of the ‘monster of the isle’ (2.2.64) that Stephano discovers, commenting on its ‘four legs and two voices’ (2.2.88), its ‘forward voice’ and its ‘backward voice’ and not knowing which way to look at it. Caliban remains hidden in his shell-gaberdine in the same way as he is long coming out of his shell-cave to see Prospero. In Rom, the tortoise is associated with monstrous fishes too, when Romeo describes the apothecary’s ‘needy shop’ where ‘a tortoise hung, / An alligator stuffed, and other skins / Of ill-shaped fishes’ (5.1.42–4). (C) On the several types of tortoises, see Topsell (1608), 281–9. On the sexual meaning, ‘allusive of (woman’s) coital posture’, see Williams, 3, 1406. traitor (A) A betrayer, a disloyal, unfaithful person. Florio (1598) has ‘Proditore, a traitor, a villain, a deceiuer, a betrayer, an accuser, a discloser’ and ‘Trafugo, a runnegate, a fugitiue, an outlawed, a wandrer heere and there by stealth, a traitor, one that flyeth from his owne part to the enemies.’ Cotgrave has ‘Traistre: m. A traitor; a treacherous, or disloyall person; also, a naughtie-packe; a lewd, or wicked fellow.’ The term has a strong political and judiciary content as it refers to one who is false to his allegiance to his sovereign or to the government of his country and to one who is adjudged guilty of treason. Cowell distinguishes ‘petit treason’ and ‘high treason’ and describes the punishment for treason. ‘Traitor’ is not only an insult, but an ‘actionable word’ that leads to trial and punishment. 409

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(B) ‘What is a traitor?’ (Mac 4.2.46): here is a question asked by the young Macduff to his mother when Lady Macduff complains because Macduff has left them. She answers that a traitor is ‘one that swears and lies’ (4.2.47) and that traitors must be hanged by ‘honest men’ (4.2.53–4). When the murderer calls Macduff a ‘traitor’, young Macduff exclaims ‘Thou liest, thou shag-hair’d villain!’ (4.2.83), thus showing that the word has an insulting effect on father and son. As treason is a matter of faithfulness and truth, the term ‘traitor’ is often found next to accusations of lying. The history plays are full of ‘traitors’, which is not surprising since the plots of the plays are based on reversals of faith and questions of legitimacy. In 2H6, the word is used so often that it loses its meaning, as appears when Cade and the people send the Clerk of Chartham to death because he can write: Cade: [. . .] Dost thou use to write thy name? Or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest plain-dealing man? Clerk: Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up that I can write my name. All: He hath confessed: away with him! He’s a villain and a traitor. Cade: Away with him, I say! Hang him with his pen and ink horn about his neck. (4.2.93–101) Cade, the one who is called ‘the traitor Cade’ (4.9.8) by the King and ‘that monstrous traitor’ by Iden (4.10.65), sends a clerk to execution because, in his eyes, he is too literate to be honest. As Knowles shows (2H6, 305), the clerk’s case is emblematic of a world which is turned upside down: ‘Literacy is apparently a crime, inverting the actual law by which illiteracy, in certain circumstances, was punished by death.’ Cade refers to that law which put people in prison and which, ‘because they could not read’, had them ‘hanged’ (4.7.39–41). He thus formulates the reversal of rules through which traitors are no longer those they used to be. Everyone seems to be a traitor, considered from one particular perspective as appears in the following exchange: Old Clifford: Why, what a brood of traitors have we here! York: Look in a glass and call thy image so. I am thy king and thou a false-heart traitor. (5.1.141–3) An ‘if’ may be enough to put a character in the category of ‘traitors’, as appears in R3, where Richard reacts to Hastings’s words: Hastings: Richard:

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If they have done the deed, my noble lord – If? Thou protector of this damned strumpet, Talk’st thou to me of ifs? Thou art a traitor. – Off with his head! (3.4.72–5)

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The word ‘traitor’ here directly leads to execution. R2 opens with an accusation of treason, when Bolingbroke challenges Mowbray: Thou art a traitor and a miscreant, Too good to be so, and too bad to live, [. . .] Once more, the more to aggravate the note, With a foul traitor’s name stuff I thy throat, And wish – so please my sovereign – ere I move, What my tongue speaks my right-drawn sword may prove. (1.1.39–46) Bolingbroke wants to transform a mere insulting word into an accusation that must lead to trial. He wants to make the word ‘actionable’ so that it can lead to trial by combat. Mowbray answers the insult as follows: First, the fair reverence of your highness curbs me From giving reins and spurs to my free speech, Which else would post until it had returned These terms of treason doubled down his throat. Setting aside his high blood’s royalty, And let him be no kinsman to my liege, I do defy him, and I spit at him (1.1.54–60) The physicality of the act of insulting appears in the image of the words being ‘doubled down his throat’, an image that Mowbray uses again when he tells Bolingbroke: ‘as low as to thy heart / Through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest’ (1.1.124–5). Mowbray in his turn calls Bolingbroke ‘A recreant and most degenerate traitor’ (1.1.144) and an ‘overweening traitor’ (1.1.147). He also formulates the insulting effect that Bolingbroke’s words have on him: I am disgraced, impeached and baffled here, Pierced to the soul with Slander’s venomed spear, The which no balm can cure but his heart-blood Which breathed this poison. (1.1.170–3) Bolingbroke’s words imply Mowbray’s public disgrace. The whole plot of the play rests on the question of treason and truth and on the reversal of fortune that inverses the patterns of treason. In the deposition scene, Richard emphasizes these reversals of perspective when he comments: Mine eyes are full of tears; I cannot see. And yet salt water blinds them not so much But they can see a sort of traitors here. 411

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Nay, if I turn mine eyes upon myself, I find myself a traitor with the rest; For I have given here my soul’s consent T’undeck the pompous body of a king, Made Glory base and Sovereignty a slave, Proud Majesty a subject, State a peasant. (4.1.244–52) The king becomes a traitor to himself, which shows that the landmarks and signs of treason are essentially ambivalent. In H5, Shakespeare relates the motif of treason to the heart and the tongue when Fluellen accuses Williams of being a ‘traitor’ (4.8.26) because he defied the king. Williams, who did not know he was addressing the king, defends himself, saying: ‘All offences, my lord, come from the heart: never came any from mine that might offend your majesty’ (4.8.47–9). In Cor, the word is given a strong emphasis when Sicinius accuses Coriolanus of being ‘a traitor to the people’: Sicinius:

We charge you that you have contrived to take From Rome all seasoned office and to wind Yourself into a power tyrannical, For which you are a traitor to the people. Coriolanus: How? ‘Traitor’? Menenius: Nay, temperately – your promise! Coriolanus: The fires i’th’ lowest hell fold in the people! Call me their traitor, thou injurious tribune! Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths, In thy hand clutched as many millions, in Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say ‘Thou liest’ unto thee with a voice as free As I do pray the gods. (3.3.62–73)

The passage is emblematic of Coriolanus being incensed by a single word, as with ‘shall’ earlier (3.1.89). He resists the trauma of the abuse by banishing Rome in return and thus by reversing the roles and transforming Rome into a nest of traitors. But when the ‘world elsewhere’ (3.3.134) in its turn calls him a traitor, there is no possible resilience left, that could allow him to survive: Aufidius:

Read it not, noble lords; But tell the traitor in the highest degree He hath abused your powers. Coriolanus: ‘Traitor’? How now? Aufidius: Ay, ‘traitor’, Martius. (5.6.84–8)

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The text creates an impression of déjà vu, which shows that there is no way out, no place left for Coriolanus who is even deprived of his name when Aufidius calls him ‘Martius’. In Per, Simonides tests Pericles’ valour by insulting his honour: Simonides: Pericles: Simonides: Pericles:

Traitor, thou liest. Traitor?

Ay, traitor. Even in his throat, unless it be the king, That calls me traitor, I return the lie. Simonides: [aside] Now, by the gods, I do applaud his courage. (2.5.53–6) In WT , Leontes calls Hermione an adulteress and adds ‘More, she’s a traitor, and Camillo is / A federary with her’ (2.1.89–90). The term, which is here exceptionally applied to a woman, suggests that Hermione’s supposed betrayal is given both a private and a public dimension. (C) Saviolo (1595) very precisely describes the duelling codes of honour by using the example of the various possible reactions to the word ‘traitor’ and the ‘lie’ that goes with it. See Saviolo, V2–V3. On the legal aspect, see Sokol and Sokol, 369–80. On ‘treason by words’, see Lemon (esp. chap. 3, on R2 and chap. 4, on Mac) and Cressy, Dangerous Talk. See Judas, miscreant, recreant. trifler (A) A teller of feigned or idle stories, one not to be believed or taken seriously; a jester, a joker; a nonsensical speaker; a frivolous person. From Old French truffle-r, truiffle-r parallel form of truffer (thirteenth century in Godefroy) to make sport of, deceive, jeer or laugh at. Related to Italian truffare ‘to cozen, to cheate, to coniecatch’ (Florio). (B) The only occurrence appears in 1H4 when Hotspur addresses his wife who has just humorously told him she would break his little finger if he did not tell her ‘all things true’ (2.3.83): Away, away, you trifler! Love? I love thee not; I care not for thee, Kate. This is no world To play with mammets and to tilt with lips. We must have bloody noses and cracked crowns, (2.3.88–9) Hotspur opposes the world of war and the world of love, the latter being described as ‘trifling’ with ‘mammets’ (meaning ‘puppets’ but also probably related to the Latin mamma, breasts) and ‘lips’. The insult is part of an amorous bantering scene and thus a sign of complicity rather than conflict, although Hostpur’s calling his wife Kate suggests that she behaves like an unruly shrew. 413

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Trojan (A) An inhabitant or native of Troy. (B) In H5, Pistol twice calls the Welsh Fluellen ‘base Trojan’ (5.1.19 and 32). Editors are at a loss what to do with the word, of which Schmidt notes that it is ‘used as a cant term for persons of a doubtful character’ but which has also been explained as ‘dissolute roisterer’ (Taylor, 262). The word is typical of Pistol’s idiolect which shows he is keen on bombastic and exotic insults ending in ‘an’. In MW , he calls Bardolph ‘O base Hungarian wight’ (1.3.19) and Falstaff ‘Base Phrygian Turk’ (1.3.85). In MW , he exclaims: ‘Shall I Sir Pandarus of Troy become’ (1.3.72), showing his love of Trojan references. In LLL , the King notes that ‘Hector was but a Trojan’ (5.2.631), which Carroll just glosses as ‘ordinary fellow’ (LLL , 166) but which Woudhuysen (LLL , 280), following OED , glosses as ‘drinking companion’. If one considers this meaning (boon companion), one may infer that the word is linked with the word ‘thirst’: ‘Dost thou thirst, base Trojan, / To have me fold up Parca’s fatal web?’ (H5 5.1.19–20) and has more to do with Pistol’s way of life than with Fluellen. In 2H4, one has as much difficulty making sense of Falstaff’s ‘O base Assyrian knight’ (5.3.101), which seems to mimic Pistol’s bombastic vein. trull (A) A low prostitute or concubine; a drab, strumpet, a whore, a harlot. (B) In 3H6, York, before dying, tells Margaret ‘How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex / To triumph like an Amazonian trull’ (1.4.113–14). The term prolongs the image of the ‘she-wolf’ (Latin lupa, whore) that he associates with her (1.4.111). The word ‘Amazonian’ is evocative of a woman’s cruelty towards boys. Bullokar (1616) explains about Amazons that: Their Sonnes they eyther destroyed or sent home to the father, but their daughters they kept, bringing them vp in hunting, ryding, shooting and feates of armes. They burned the right breast of their children, lest it should hinder their archerie, wherefore they had the name Amazons, which (in Greeke) signifieth women wanting a breast. Margaret has just shown her Amazonian cruelty towards boys by narrating young Rutland’s death (1.4.78–88) to his own father, York. Yet the Amazon is also a woman on horseback, which is evocative of sexual activity and leads to the figure of the trull. In Tit, Tamora refers to Lavinia in an oxymoronic way when she leaves the stage saying that she will ‘let my spleenful sons this trull deflower’ (2.2.191), which announces that Lavinia becomes a ‘trull’ indeed for Chiron and Demetrius. The word precedes the thing. (C) On ‘Amazon’, see Williams, 1, 16–17 and Cooper (1584). tun (A) A large cask of wine, a barrel. (B) In 1H4, Hal, playing the part of his father tells Falstaff, playing Hal’s part: ‘a tun of man is thy companion’ (2.4.436). Thus he indirectly calls Falstaff ‘a tun of man’. This is one of the numerous images of containers that are associated with Falstaff, among 414

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which ‘greasy tallow-catch’ (1H4 2.4.221), ‘that bolting hutch of beastliness’ (1H4 2.4.437–8), ‘that huge bombard of sack’ (1H4 2.4.439), ‘a huge full hogshead’ (2H4 2.4.60–2), ‘hulk’ (2H4 2.4.63). All these terms make him a ‘globe of sinful continents’ (2H4 2.4.285). As suggested by Humphreys (2H4, 83) the word ‘continent’ may indeed refer to the sinful parts of the world, the receptacles of sins (‘continent’ meaning that which contains), or to sinful contents (‘continent’ meaning that which is contained). The word ‘tun’ can also be heard as a pun on ‘ton’, which amounts to 2000 lb, and thus may refer directly to Falstaff’s weight. In MW , Mistress Ford compares Falstaff to a whale: ‘What tempest, I trow, threw this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly, ashore at Windsor?’ (2.1.56–8). Turk (A) Infidel, as opposed to Christian. Hence the proverbial ‘to turn Turk’ (Tilley, T609), which literally means to convert to Islam and more metaphorically means, from a Christian perspective, to be unfaithful, to change faith, to become an infidel. Turks were renowned for cruelty and the victory of Christians over the Turks at the battle of Lepanto in 1571 was an official day of celebration. They were also associated with lechery. The image of the Turk conveys many negative connotations that Vitkus (2000) summarizes as follows: ‘the Turks’ stereotypical features [. . .] include aggression, lust, suspicion, murderous conspiracy, sudden cruelty masquerading as justice, merciless violence rather than “Christian charity”, wrathful vengeance instead of turning the other cheek’ (2). (B) In MW , Falstaff ‘turns Turk’ when Pistol calls him ‘Base Phrygian Turk!’ (MW 1.3.85): the editors’ notes on the insult stress its sonorous and bombastic ring. Melchiori points out that the word ‘Turk’ was a common insult meaning ‘infidel’ and that Pistol uses the adjective ‘Phrygian’ because it is a ‘high sounding national attribute’ (MW , 152). Crane notes that ‘Neither Pistol nor the audience is here concerned with Phrygia, an ancient country in Asia Minor, but with the sense of exotic and barbarous places, amply defined as barbarous by “Turk” ’ (MW , 52). According to Oliver, the word ‘Phrygian’ probably intensifies ‘Turk’, the Phrygians being known for their cruelty (MW , 27). Craik notes that Shakespeare wanted the insult to sound ridiculous (MW , 101). Editors also suggest that ‘Phrygian’ is linked to the figure of Pandar, called ‘Lord Pandarus of Phrygia’ by Feste in TN (3.1.50), that Pistol conjures up a little earlier. When Falstaff asks Pistol to turn into some kind of Mercury and to deliver his love letters to Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, Pistol indignantly answers: ‘Shall I Sir Pandarus of Troy become, / And by my side wear steel? Then Lucifer takes all!’ (1.3.72–3). ‘Lucifer’ is a word that ‘sounds well’, according to the typology that Ford establishes in 2.2. This Pistol, who is described as ‘The foul-mouth’dst rogue in England’ (2H4 2.4.70–1), who ‘hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword’ (H5 3.2.34), and who ‘discharges’ on everything (2H4 2.4.110), this ‘Captain Peesel’ (2H4 2.4.158) who is made of verbal ejaculations, this Pistol loves gross terms, terms that sound well, terms that make a noise. It does not matter if Falstaff has already left the stage when Pistol vomits his insult. It is enough for ‘this roaring devil i’th’ old play’ (H5 4.4.70–1) to listen to his own curses. 415

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The opacity of this ‘base Phrygian Turk’, which seems to sound rather than to make sense, reveals that Pistol speaks a strange tongue, based on a collage, an anthology of quotations. He is one of those ‘thieves of language’ described by Blank (1996). He feeds on other people’s words and takes his verbal ammunition from other bombastic dramatic texts. As Falstaff suggests at the end of 2H4, Pistol is not of ‘this world’. When Falstaff tells him ‘I pray thee now, deliver them like a man of this world’ (2H4, 5.3.97–8), Pistol answers ‘A foutre for the world and worldlings base! / I speak of Africa and golden joys’ (5.3.99–100). He is the embodiment of exoticism. He is the one who takes from elsewhere his ‘Trojan’, ‘fico’ and ‘foutre’ to become ‘a veritable tissue of theatrical reminiscences’ (Boughner, 235). Yet beyond the sound of words, this insult suggests that, in MW, Falstaff ‘turns Turk’. The editors of the play never consider that the insult could have some relevance in the context of the play and that it could tell something about its target, Falstaff. Pistol seems to have a taste for what Daniel Vitkus calls the ‘Turk plays’. In 2H4, his speech in 2.4.153–7 echoes, according to Weis (2H4, 178), The Battle of Alcazar, by Peele and one can hear accents of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine in it. The insulting ‘Have we not Hiren here?’ (2H4 2.4.156–7) that he hurls at Doll Tearsheet could be an allusion to a lost play by Peele, The Turkish Mahomet and Hyrin the Fair Greek (Weis, 2H4, 178). This ‘Base Phrygian Turk’ reveals the fascination/repulsion that the Elizabethan society seemed to feel towards the Ottoman culture and to point to the ambiguous relationship that Vitkus and Dimmock analyse in their two books on the question of Islam and the Ottoman world in Shakespeare’s England. Given the context in which Pistol utters these words of abuse, the ‘base Phrygian Turk’ seems to convey one characteristic attributed to the Turks: their lustful nature. Behind this insult, one finds the reputation that the Turks had, at the time, of indulging in sexual pleasures. The association of Islam and sensuality notably took its source in the description of Mahomet’s paradise, such as the one that can be found in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville: ‘if they are asked what paradise they are talking about, they say it is a place of delights, where [. . .] every man shall have four score wives, who will be beautiful damsels, and he shall lie with them whenever he wishes, and he will always find them virgins’ (104, quoted by Vitkus, Three Turk Plays, 14). Reading these words, it is easy to see the relevance of Pistol’s apparently ludicrous insult. Falstaff becomes the Turk who tries to reach that paradise throughout the play, a paradise in which Mistress Ford and Mistress Page are far from being ‘virgins’ (‘you are not young, no more am I’, 2.1.6). The insult that Pistol expresses here is a response to Falstaff’s lecherous project. By calling Falstaff a Turk, Pistol is ironically transformed into a good Christian who refuses to be involved in such depraved ventures. As Rubinstein remarks, the possible sexual puns on ‘stone’, ‘pouch’, ‘and tester’ confirm this interpretation. It is Falstaff’s swelling lust that is here both denounced and debunked. A. B. Taylor (1994, 37–8) also notes that the ‘Let vultures gripe thy guts’ that precedes the insult conveys a sexual image too, as it refers to ‘the plight of Tityus, one of the giants whose body is so huge it covers nine furlongs in the underworld, and whose punishment is to have his own everrenewing “guts” constantly fed upon by vultures. And Tityus’ crime was lechery: he 416

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is variously said to have attempted the rape of the goddesses Latona and Diana.’According to Vitkus (Turning Turk, 88), the expression ‘turn Turk’ referred to an adulterous behaviour and could be synonymous with ‘turn whore’, two meanings that perfectly suit Falstaff who is turned into ‘a witch, a quean, an old cozening quean!’ (4.2.162). The play can be read as the representation of a triple ‘coitus interruptus’. The defeated Turk Falstaff, like a boarding pirate, goes on assaulting his victims so as to make up his serail in a space that rejects him three times. Here is a link with another meaning of the expression ‘turning Turk’ which, according to Williams, conveys some ‘genital damage’, as the image of the Turk can refer to circumcision and the figure of the eunuch. Falstaff is symbolically castrated when he is thrown away and plunged into a bath that makes him ‘frigid’, that is cool, and then when he becomes the old woman of Brentford. The insult ‘base Phrygian Turk’ conveys all these meanings and turns Falstaff into a sexual monster, both virile and effeminate, both hot and cold and who ‘woos both high and low’ (2.1.102). Beyond this insult, Shakespeare’s plays use and circulate the stereotypes associated with the Turks. In AYL , Rosalind distinguishes between Turks and Christians and refers to the Turks’ cruelty when she ironically describes Phoebe’s ‘boisterous and cruel style’: ‘[. . .] Why, she defies me, / Like Turk to Christian’ (4.3.31–3). The proverbial expression of unfaithfulness ‘turn Turk’ can be found in Ham (3.2.268) and MA (3.4.51). In R3, Richard asks the Mayor ‘What? Think you we are Turks or Infidels?’ (3.5.41). In R2, Carlisle opposes Christians to ‘black pagans, Turks and Saracens’ (4.1.95–6), and associates ‘Turks and infidels’ (4.1.140). These associations of words echo the third collect for Good Friday in the Book of Common Prayers: ‘Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels and Hereticks’. Falstaff refers to ‘Turk Gregory’, a figure of cruelty and ferocity, to describe his own feats: ‘Turk Gregory never did such deeds in arms as I have done this day’ (1H4 5.3.46–7). Lafew refers to that very cruelty when he says in an aside ‘An they were sons of mine, I’d have them whipp’d, or I would send them to th’ Turk to make eunuchs of’ (AW 2.3.87–9). Iago swearing he is telling the truth, uses the image: ‘Nay, it is true, or else I am a Turk’ (Oth 2.1.114), meaning ‘or else I am a villain’, a variant of ‘I am a Jew (rogue, villain) else’ (Dent, J49.1). This is ironically echoed when Othello exclaims, after Cassio’s ‘barbarous brawl’ (2.3.168): ‘Are we turned Turks? and to ourselves do that / Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?’ (2.3.166–7). The image of the Turkish villain finally appears when Othello kills himself: And say besides that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turbanned Turk Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, I took by th’ throat the circumcised dog And smote him – thus! (5.2.350–4) Shakespeare manages to blur who is the ‘Turk’ or the villain in the story, as the terms ‘malignant’ and ‘traduced’ seem to refer to Iago rather than Othello. 417

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(C) See Dimmock, New Turkes. Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (2005); Vitkus, Three Turk Plays From Early Modern England. Selimus, A Christian Turned Turk, The Renegado (2000) and Turning Turk. English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterrarean, 1570–1630 (2003); Williams, 3, 1338–40. tyke/tick (A) A low-bred dog (from Old Norse tík, female dog, bitch); a tick, vermin that infests the fur or hair of animals and sucks their blood. See Huloet; Cooper; Florio (1598) Cotgrave reads ‘Mousche à chien. A Ticke, or Tyke.’ (B) The following passage in H5 is an object of debate: Nym: How now mine host Pistol? Pistol: Base tyke, call’st thou me host? Now by this hand I swear I scorn the term; Nor shall my Nell keep lodgers. (2.1.29–32) For Craik (H5, 158) it is clear that the word refers to a low-bred dog which is in keeping with the following ‘Iceland dog’ (2.1.42). Gurr (H5, 93) also favours this reading. The ‘bobtail tyke’ (KL 3.6.67) is part of the list of dogs drawn by Lear as a metaphor for base humanity. For Taylor (H5, 123), on the other hand, one should read ‘tick’: [. . .] as Malone pointed out and as OED confirms, tyke was a legitimate spelling of the modern tick (parasite) from the 14th to the 17th centuries. Although parasites were apparently not spoken of as having hosts until 1857 (sb.2 3), tick was used as a term of abuse (sb. 16), probably suggesting both ‘contemptibly small nuisance’ (like fly, flea, gnat) and ‘social parasite’ (like vermin, worm, caterpillar, bloodsucker). These senses seem more pertinent than tike, which has no particularly opprobrious connotations. One can both hear ‘tyke’ and ‘tick’, two words that are related to the dogs and that express Pistol’s contempt for Nym in which he sees the epitome of baseness. Thersites shows that the ‘tick’ is a symbol of baseness when he says of Achilles: ‘I had rather be a tick in a sheep than such a valiant ignorance’ (TC 3.3.312–13). tyrant (A) A cruel ruler. One who seizes upon the sovereign power without legal right; an absolute ruler; a usurper; a ruler who exercises his power in an oppressive, unjust, or cruel manner; a despot. By extension, a term of reproach referring to any one who acts in a cruel, violent, or wicked manner; a villain. From Old French tyrant and Latin tyrannus, Greek τύραννος. Hollyband has ‘Tyran, vn mauvais & cruel roy ou seigneur, a tirant, a cruell king’. To accuse a king of being despotic was the most serious of insults and deserved punishement. (B) In R3, Margaret calls Richard, in absentia, ‘That excellent grand tyrant of the earth’ (4.4.51), which stigmatizes him as the supreme, arch-tyrant. Then Richmond, in his oration to his army, puts meaning in the word: 418

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A bloody tyrant and a homicide; One raised in blood, and one in blood established; One that made means to come by what he hath, And slaughtered those that were the means to help him; A base foul stone, made precious by the foil Of England’s chair, where he is falsely set; (5.3.246–51) In Mac, the term is hurled as a term of abuse, especially after the dialogue between Macduff and Malcolm has delineated an anatomy of tyranny (4.3) and given a terrifying content to what could appears as an empty title. Thus when Young Siward addresses Macbeth and exclaims ‘Thou liest, abhorred tyrant: with my sword / I’ll prove the lie thou speak’st’ (5.7.10–11), one can hear all the vices and villainies that have been attached to the word in 4.3: ‘bloody, / Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, / Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin / That has a name’ (4.3.57–60). This description makes of Macbeth ‘This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues’ (4.3.12). Macduff calls for Macbeth, shouting ‘Tyrant, show thy face’ (5.7.14): the term has become a word of abuse which is given a spectacular presence when he imagines Macbeth’s after-life: Then yield thee, coward, And live to be the show and gaze o’th’ time: We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, Painted upon a pole, and underwrit, ‘Here may you see the tyrant.’ (5.8.23–7) In AYL , Rosalind ironically applies the term to Phoebe to characterize the ‘cruel style’ of her letter: ‘She Phoebes me. Mark how the tyrant writes’ (4.3.39). This echoes Silvius referring to ‘Phoebe’s cruelty’ (4.3.38). ‘To Phoebe’ then means ‘to rail like a cruel tyrant’, which is reminiscent of Bottom’s comment on the difference between a ‘lover’ and a ‘tyrant’: ‘Ercles’ vein, a tyrant’s vein; a lover is more condoling’ (MND 1.2.37–8). In Rom, the term appears in one of Juliet’s oxymoronic addresses to an absent Romeo: ‘Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical’ (3.2.75). In WT , Paulina uses the term against Leontes, showing the political impact that branding a ruler with the name of ‘tyrant’ may have: Paulina:

[. . .] I’ll not call you tyrant; But this most cruel usage of your queen, Not able to produce more accusation Than your own weak-hinged fancy, something savours Of tyranny and will ignoble make you, Yea, scandalous to the world.

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Leontes:

On your allegiance, Out of the chamber with her! Were I a tyrant, Where were her life? She durst not call me so If she did know me one. Away with her! (2.3.114–22)

The exchange shows how grave the accusation of tyranny is and how it can lead to a death-sentence. Once Apollo has confirmed he is ‘a jealous tyrant’ at 3.2.131, Paulina openly calls Leontes ‘tyrant’ (3.2.204), imagining the torments he may devise for her to answer her accusation of tyranny: What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me? What wheels, racks fires? What flaying, boiling In leads or oils? What old or newer torture Must I receive, whose every word deserves To taste of thy most worst? (3.2.172–6) Paulina’s voice reveals the tyranny that lies behind the jealousy. In Tem, Caliban curses Prospero: ‘A plague upon the tyrant that I serve’ (2.2.159) before describing him as ‘a tyrant, / A sorcerer, that by his cunning hath / Cheated me of the island’ (3.2.40–2). Prospero thus appears as a usurper, which gives Caliban’s rebellion a political dimension. Ironically ‘Tyrant’ (4.1.257) is the name of one of the spirits he calls to chase Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano off stage, suggesting Caliban cannot escape the ‘Tyrant’ anyway. (C) See Bushnell.

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U urinal (A) A glass vessel employed to receive urine for medical examination. Hollyband has ‘Vn Vrinal, a champer pot, an vrinall’ and Cotgrave has ‘Vrinal: m. An Vrinall; also, a Iordan, or Chamberpot.’ (B) In MW , the Host of the Garter tells Doctor Caius: ‘Thou art a castalian king urinal – Hector of Greece, my boy!’ (2.3.30–1). The phrase oscillates between praise and dispraise as it is intended to boost the self-confidence of the French doctor who is about to engage in a duel with Evans, the Welshman but at the same time it associates the French doctor with the inglorious world of urine. The various ways editors organize and elucidate these words are enough to show that this ever-unstable text is a challenge to interpretation. It is one of the ‘extravagancies’ (Tudeau-Clayton) that are to be found in MW , this cabinet of verbal curiosities. Much has been written on the passage (see Vienne-Guerrin, 2008), but I would like to suggest that one key to this passage may be Harington’s A New discourse of a Stale subject Called the Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596) where Harington/Misacmos writes: I doubt not but some pleasant witted Courtier of either sex, would grace me so much at least; as to say, that I were worthy for my rare invention, to be made one of the Privie [. . .] Chamber, or if they be learned and have read Castalios Courtier they will say, I am a proper scholer, and well seene in latrina lingua. (Harington, ed. Donno, 61–2) Here appears the link between ‘Castalion’ and ‘Urinal’ as Harington is alluding to a passage from Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (1561), which describes a verbal game based on the addition or omission of a letter or syllable: There is yet another sorte called in Italian Bischizzi, and that consisteth in chaungynge or encreasinge, or diminishinge of a letter or syllable. As he that saide: Thou shouldest be better learned in the latrine tunge (lingua latrina in the Italian original) then in the greeke. (Book 2, Tiiiir) In Harington’s mock-encomium, Ajax is called ‘a warrier of Graecia’ (67) and ‘this noble captain of the Greasie ones (the Grecians, I should say)’ (71), which allows to understand the otherwise meaningless ‘Hector of Greece’. Caius is ironically proclaimed a master in lingua latrina, which is confirmed by the preceding lines ‘What says my Aesculapius, my Galen, my heart of Elder, ha? Is he dead, bully stale, is he dead?’ 421

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(2.3.25–7). Esculapius is the God of medicine whose Latin name is Asclepios, related to Asclepiades, a doctor (second century BC ) whom Pliny calls ‘the cold water physician’. (See Harington, ed. Donno, 156). It is tempting to prefer the Q version ‘escuolapis’, which is evocative of pisse. Galen represents the medical science of humours that are so present in MW . By transforming the proverbial ‘heart of oak’ into a ‘heart of elder’, the Host debunks the image of a brave Caius, as the elder was supposed to be tender-hearted (?Dent, E105.1), but it also conveys a tree that is known for its bad smell. ‘Stale’ means urine. Thus all these elements pave the way to the supreme title of ‘Castalian King Urinal’. Doctor Caius is crowned master-king in the art of ‘casting urines’. The insulting title that is given to Caius is ironically used by Evans as a threat: ‘How melancholies I am. I will knog his urinals about his knave’s costard’ (3.1.13–14); ‘I will knog [knock] your urinal about your knave’s cogscomb [coxcomb]’ (3.1.79–80). The image of the urinal is prolonged by the nickname ‘Monsieur Mockwater’: Host: [. . .] A word, Monsieur Mockwater. Caius: Mockvater? Vat is dat? Host: Mockwater, in our English tongue, is valour, bully. Caius: By gar, then I have as much mockvater as de Englishman. (2.3.52–7) Shakespeare shows us Caius ironically integrating the insult and returning it to ‘de Englishmen’. (C) For a more detailed analysis of this crux and its link with A New discourse of a Stale subject Called the Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), a treatise on the water-closet, written by Harington, the Queen’s godson, under the pseudonym of ‘Misacmos’ (‘hater of filth’) and addressed to his ‘friend and Cosin’, Philostilpnos (‘lover of cleanliness’), see Vienne-Guerrin (2008).

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V vagabond (A) One who has no fixed abode or home, and who wanders about from place to place. Related to Old French vagabond (fourteenth century) or to Latin vagābundus, deriving from vagārī, to wander. Florio (1598) reads: ‘Vagabondo, a vagabond, wandring, gadding, ranging, rouing or roguing idly about or vp and downe. [. . .]’. Cotgrave has: ‘Vagabond: m. A vagabond, roamer, faitour, earth-planet, wandering idlesbie, ranging or gadding rogue.’ (B) In AW , Lafew tells Parolles: Go to, sir. You were beaten in Italy for picking a kernel out of a pomegranate. You are a vagabond and no true traveller: [. . .] You are not worth another word, else I’d call you knave. I leave you. Exit. (2.3.258–63) Lafew confirms that Parolles was ‘created for men to breathe themselves upon [him]’ (2.3.254–5). The Elizabethans were requited to travel with an official licence. Otherwise they were considered as vagabonds (tramps). Calling Parolles a ‘vagabond’ amounts to calling him a ‘rogue’. In R3, Richard denigrates his adversaries by reducing them to being ‘A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways’ (5.3.316), three terms that are almost synonymous and insist upon social-hence-moral baseness and vileness. The word ‘vagabond’ is defined in the lines that follow which refer to the punishments that Elizabethan statutes prescribed against vagabonds: whipping and the return to their place of origins: Let’s whip these stragglers o’er the seas again, Lash hence these overweening rags of France, These famished beggars, weary of their lives, Who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit, For want of means, poor rats, had hanged themselves. If we be conquered, let men conquer us, And not these bastard Bretons, [. . .] (5.3.327–33) Richard’s oration consists in insulting the adversary to motivate his own troops, claiming that the ‘bastard Bretons’ are no ‘men’. (C) ‘Straggler’ (the only occurrence of which is found in R3) also refers to a wandering fellow, as described by Puttenham in his definition of the ‘Parecnasis, or the Stragler’ (or

423

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Latin ‘digression’): ‘we also call him the straggler by allusion to the souldier that marches out of his array, or by those that keepe no order in their marche, as the battailes well ranged do’ (240). On vagrants and vagrancy laws, see Pugliatti; Drouet. See Statute 14 Eliz. cap. 5, ‘An Act for the Punishment of Vagabondes, and for the releefe of the poore and impotent’. See Innes, 533–4. See rogue. Vanity (A) That which is vain, futile and worthless. An allegorical character from the Morality plays. The term derives from Old French vein, veyn, vain (French vain), from Latin vānus empty, void, idle. Thomas has ‘Vānĭtas [. . .] Vanitie, lightnes, leasing, lying, follie, vnconstancie.’ Cotgrave has ‘Boursoufflade: f. Windie pride, idle vanitie’, ‘Bragardise: f. Brauerie, gaynesse, flaunting, proud vanitie; also, bragging, vaunting, swaggering’ and ‘Lanternerie: f. Cogging, foisting; vanitie, foolerie; loytering, nightwalking, night-reuells.’ (B) In 1H4, Hal, impersonating his father in the play that is improvised in the tavern, calls Falstaff ‘that reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity, that father Ruffian, that Vanity in years’ (2.4.441–2). Vice, Vanity, Iniquity and Ruffian are names taken from Morality plays. Scott Kastan glosses ‘aged pride’, but the term may encapsulate all the features that are mentioned in (A). The combination of age and vanity is oxymoronic as age should be associated with Wisdom. The string of names points to the discrepancy between Falstaff’s age and his behaviour. The image of Vanity conveys an emptiness that stands in contrast with Falstaff’s being stuffed with guts and midriff. When King Henry IV chides his son Hal for having prematurely put the royal crown on his head, he ironically uses the same image of vanity: Harry the fifth is crown’d! Up, vanity! Down, royal state! All you sage counsellors, hence! And to the English court assemble now From every region, apes of idleness! (4.5.119–22) Henry IV here predicts the triumph of Vanity, which is contradicted when Hal repudiates Vanity himself, telling him ‘I know thee not, old man’ (2H4 5.5.47). In KL , Kent refers to Goneril as ‘Vanity the puppet’ (2.2.35), which may suggest that she is gorgeously clothed. In Rom, Capulet uses names borrowed from morality plays when he satirically calls her ‘My Lady Wisdom’ and ‘Good Prudence’ (3.5.170–1). (C) On 1H4 as a political morality play, see R. Potter, 129–38. vapour (A) A steamy or imperceptible exhalation. Florio (1598) has: ‘Vapore, a vapour, a smoke, a fume, an exhalation, a steaming, a reaking, a hot breath.’ From Latin vapōr-, vapor, steam. Denotes something unsubstantial and worthless. (B) Timon calls his false friends ‘Cap-and-knee slaves, vapours and minute-jacks!’ (Tim 3.7.96), thus suggesting that his friends lack substance and are worthless. The term 424

varlet/varlot/varletto

associates Timon’s false friends with the ‘smoke and lukewarm water’ (3.7.88) that he is literally throwing at their faces by serving them a mock-feast. ‘Smoke and lukewarm water / Is your perfection’ (3.7.88–9), he says, which means both that the vaporous feast suits them perfectly and that the mock feast is a perfect expression of what they are: mock-friends, the mere semblance of friends. The insult ‘vapours’ is evocative of the image of Timon who ‘sprinkles in your faces / Your reeking villainy’ (3.7.91–2). His friends are ‘reeking’ friends, easily dissolved and also probably stinking. The term ‘vapour’ is often associated with negative words in Shakespeare’s plays as appears in the following examples: ‘vapours that offended us’ (CE 1.1.89), ‘the foul and ugly mists / Of vapours’ (1H4 1.2.192–3), ‘In their thick breaths, / Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded / And forced to drink their vapour’ (AC 5.2.210–12), ‘the vapour of a dungeon’ (Oth 3.3.275). Timon’s friends can be compared to what Hamlet calls ‘a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours’ (Ham 2.2.268–9). varlet/varlot/varletto (A) Derived from Old French varlet or valet (still in use in modern French), itself coming from vassellitus in popular Latin, diminutive of Latin vassalus, meaning ‘servant’ which has given ‘vassal’ (DHLF ). The word may also have a military meaning and designate an attendant on a knight or any other important person in the army (Edelman, 2000, 379–80). The word, meaning ‘menial’ and ‘groom’, is full of derogatory connotations and synonymous with ‘villain’, ‘rogue’, ‘rascal’ or ‘knave’. This negative connotation is in the word Valetaille that one finds in Cotgrave, defined as ‘A rascallie crue of campe-following boyes, or drudges; also, a companie of groomes, or meaner seruants’. (B) In MM , Elbow uses the word several times to inveigh against the bawd Pompey Bum: Varlet, thou liest! Thou liest, wicked varlet [. . .] O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked Hannibal! [. . .] Thou seest, thou wicked varlet now, what’s come upon thee. Thou art to continue now, thou varlet, thou art to continue. (2.1.163–88) What makes the insult all the more comic is that Elbow has just mistakenly applied the word to Escalus and Angelo; when addressing Pompey, he says: ‘Prove it before these varlets here, thou honourable man, prove it’ (2.1.84–5). ‘Misplacing’ (2.1.86) the words ‘varlet’ and ‘honourable man’, Elbow unwittingly abuses Angelo and Escalus and turns the moral world of the play upside down. His mistake ironically and tellingly blurs the frontier between varlets and honourable men in the play. In Cotgrave, the French word Paillard is related to the word ‘varlet’ as it is translated as: ‘A lecher, wencher, whoremunger, whorehunter; also, a knaue, rascall, varlet, scoundrell, filthie fellow’. The word Pimpreneau of which, I suggest, the word ‘pimp’ could derive, means ‘a knaue, rascall, varlet, scoundrell’ (Cotgrave). In MM , the sexual reading is convincing since the word appears near to ‘Hannibal’, a likely malapropism for ‘cannibal’, that is to say flesh-monger. In TC , the term (5.1.15) spelt ‘varlot’ (in QF ), which may, according 425

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to Bevington (TC , 370) ‘underscore an implied rhyme with “harlot” ’, takes on an explicit sexual meaning in the exchange between Patroclus and Thersites: Thersites: Patroclus: Thersites:

[. . .] Thou art thought to be Achilles’ male varlet. Male varlet, you rogue? What’s that? Why, his masculine whore. [. . .] (5.1.15–17)

The word ‘varlet’ or ‘varlot’ here conveys the homosexual relationships for which Patroclus and Achilles were known in a long literary tradition. Schmidt notes that the word ‘varlot’ here ‘is used in a kind of hermaphroditical form, between varlet and harlot (to denote a person being on his forepart a varlet, and in his hindpart a harlot’ (II , 1310). Patroclus’ question ‘What’s that?’ shows that Thersites’ word of abuse is not transparent and needs deciphering. The word here both bears a military meaning and refers to a sexual attendant, a reading that is confirmed when Thersites exclaims a little later ‘Nothing but lechery! All incontinent varlets!’ (5.1.95–6) and when he calls ‘That dissembling abominable varlet, Diomed’ (5.4.2–3) ‘that Greekish whoremasterly villain’ (5.4.6–7). The word ‘varlot’ perfectly epitomizes the telescoping of the sexual and the military in TC . In other plays, the word simply means ‘knave’ or ‘villain’, as in Cym, when Cloten, who is so proud of his high status, calls Guiderius ‘Thou precious varlet’ (4.2.83), giving the word a socially debasing content. In MW , the Host insultingly calls Bardolph ‘varletto’ (4.5.62), thus Italianizing the English word of abuse that is applied twice to Falstaff in absentia by Pistol (‘varlet vile’, 1.3.91) and by Mistress Page (‘dishonest varlet’, 4.2.97). Melchiori notes that the correct form would be ‘valletto’, meaning ‘personal male attendant or usher, with no derogatory implication’ (MW , 264). The word is part of the abundant multilingual games that occur in this play. In MA , Dogberry calls Conrade ‘Thou naughty varlet!’ (4.2.74). In 1H4, Falstaff, mimicking the King in the play he performs ‘extempore’ in the tavern, calls Hal ‘thou naughty varlet’ (2.4.419). In the context of the scene, these words of abuse betray Falstaff’s identity as Hal notices when he asks ‘Dost thou speak like a king?’ (2.4.421). Bevington quotes Kittredge’s comment: ‘bad boy. Falstaff suddenly drops the elaborate preaching style and speaks like an ordinary father scolding a youngster who has misbehaved’ (Bevington, 1H4, 200). Such words of abuse are unworthy of a kingly speech. In 2H4, Falstaff applies the word to Fang and Snare who have come to arrest him, exclaiming ‘Away, varlets!’ (2.1.46), which is appropriate to convey both their position as sergeants and their low status. In KL , the word means ‘rogue’ when Kent exclaims, addressing Oswald: ‘What a brazen-faced varlet art thou, to deny thou knowest me?’ (2.2.27–8). This is only one of the numerous words by which Kent throws Oswald’s menial status into relief. In the same scene, Oswald is also described as ‘one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch’ (2.2.19–22). In such a context, one may feel traces of a sexual meaning in the word ‘varlet’. When seeing Oswald a little later, Lear exclaims ‘Out, varlet, from my sight!’ (2.2.376). 426

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(C) Edelman (2000), 379–80; Rubinstein, 294. vassal (A) A slave. Derived from Old French vassal, vasal and medieval Latin vassallus, man-servant, domestic. In the feudal system, one holding lands from a superior on conditions of homage and allegiance. Hence a servant, a base or abject fellow. (B) In LLL , Ferdinand, reading Armado’s letter calls Costard ‘that shallow vassal’ (1.1.244), meaning he is a base slave, a slavish fellow. The comedy of the insult comes from the fact that Costard recognizes himself in it (asking ‘Still me?’ 1.1.245), even before he is named and identified in the letter. Coriolanus reminds his mother of the way she used to debase the common people: I muse my mother Does not approve me further, who was wont To call them woollen vassals, things created To buy and sell with groats, to show bare heads In congregations, to yawn, be still and wonder When one but of my ordinance stood up To speak of peace or war. (3.2.8–14) The term is in keeping with the way Coriolanus regularly addresses the people as ‘slaves’ and the warrior’s words detail the behaviour of such ‘woollen vassals’, suggesting they wear woollen clothes, spend insignificant sums of money, show their low status by removing their caps and are in a state of inactivity until authority tells them what to do. King Lear calls Kent ‘vassal’ striving to put him back in his place as a servant and to reaffirm his authority. By exclaiming ‘O vassal! Miscreant!’ (1.1.162), he paradoxically shows his lack of authority. The vassal owed fidelity to his master and Lear thinks Kent is unfaithful to him because he contradicts him and thus shows disobedience. (C) See Cowell (1607), ‘vassall (vassallus)’ and Cotgrave. See slave. velvet. See baldpate. Vice/vice (A) Depravity or corruption of morals; evil, immoral, or wicked conduct; indulgence in disgraceful pleasures or practices. Derived from Latin vitium, fault, defect, failing. A comic personification of evil, the Vice is a traditional character in the medieval morality plays, often wearing a dagger of lath (a wooden dagger) and thus often a jester or buffoon. (B) In 1H4, Hal, impersonating his kingly father in the play performed extempore in the tavern, calls Falstaff, to his face ‘that reverend Vice’, then enumerating several Vice figures: ‘that grey Iniquity, that father Ruffian, that Vanity in years’ (2.4.441–2). The following lines provide a very detailed description of what Vice would be: 427

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Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? Wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? Wherein cunning, but in craft? Wherein crafty, but in villainy? Wherein villainous, but in all things? Wherein worthy, but in nothing? (2.4.442–7) The comedy of the scene comes from the fact that Falstaff asks Hal/the King to put a name on his portrait: Falstaff: I would your grace would take me with you. Whom means your grace? Prince: That villainous, abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan. (2.4.448–51) Falstaff’s answer to the abuse is the counter-portrait he gives of himself as the embodiment of Virtue when he re-names himself as ‘sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being as he is old Jack Falstaff’ (2.4.462–5). The sequence thus dramatizes the conflict between two visions of Falstaff as Vice and Virtue, although Falstaff presents himself as a Vice earlier in the scene when he tells Hal: ‘If I do not beat thee out of thy kingdom with a dagger of lath and drive all thy subjects afore thee like a flock of wild-geese, I’ll never wear hair on my face more. You, Prince of Wales!’ (2.4.130–3) The image of Falstaff chasing everyone with a dagger of lath is reminiscent of the part played by the Vice in morality plays and interludes, which is alluded to by Feste in TN who compares himself to ‘the old Vice, / [. . .] Who with dagger of lath, in his rage and his wrath / Cries ‘Aha!’ to the devil’ (4.2.123–6). In 2H4, Falstaff calls Shallow in absentia, ‘this Vice’s dagger’ (3.2.314), which refers to his lean, lath-like aspect and to his display of bombast. In the closet scene, Hamlet calls Claudius ‘a vice of kings’ (3.4.96), which can mean that he is the supreme example of a vicious king but which is also evocative of the Vice of the morality plays, Hamlet the actor-director, casting his step-father as the Vice in his play-like life. The description of Claudius as ‘A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, / That from a shelf the precious diadem stole / And put it in his pocket!’ (3.4.97–99), conveys the symbolic gestures that could probably be found in Morality plays as well as in the dumb show that Hamlet is about to orchestrate. The theatrical conventions may also be found behind the image of ‘a king of shreds and patches’ (3.4.99), which is evocative of a poor clownish (‘patch’) costume. Vice personified crops up again when Hamlet ironically declares that ‘Virtue itself of Vice must pardon beg’ (3.4.152). (C) See Harsnett (1603), 114–15 (quoted by Elam, TN , 316, and Humphreys, 2H4, 114). On the Vice figure, see, Spivack. See Iniquity, Ruffian, Vanity. villain (A) A base, vile fellow. A key-word of Shakespearean insult. One of the words that are used to ‘re-vile’ a person. Originally meaning a low-born rustic, ‘villain’ (also spelt ‘villein’) refers to a peasant who lives on a strip of land he pays for, with the duties of a vassal. It is one of the status words that have undergone a ‘moralization’ 428

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(Lewis, 21–3), referring to a man of ignoble ideas or instincts and to an unprincipled or depraved scoundrel as well as to a man disposed to base actions and involved in disgraceful crimes. Originally the same word as ‘villein’, ‘villain’ is one of the terms that have what Lewis calls a ‘dangerous sense’ (d.s.), that is a dominant sense that lies ‘uppermost on our minds’ but that can be deceptive and ‘lure us into misreadings’ (Lewis, 13). The word originally refers to one who is not free, ‘a serf, an un-free peasant attached to an estate which had once been called villa’, ‘Frank and villain (or frans and vilains) is the essential contrast’ (Lewis, 118). Lewis notes that the term ‘has dwindled into a term of abuse, and finally into a term of mere (i.e. unspecified) abuse: villain (d.s.), a synonym for ‘bad man’, useless except as a technical term in dramatic criticism (for “Shakespeare’s villains” is a convenient enough expression)’ (Lewis, 118). In the Elizabethan drama, Lewis notes, ‘villain, and the associated words, are, so to speak, treacherous’. Thus it is important to consider the occurrences in their specific contexts. (B) There are too many ‘villains’ in Shakespeare’s plays (about three hundred occurrences) for us to study them all. ‘Villain’ is a key-word of Shakespearean insult and we here focus on a few examples to show how the playwright makes such a common term memorable. In 2H6, Cade is the target of social insults. Stafford incites the ‘rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent’ (4.2.113), to leave the base Cade whom he calls ‘this groom’ (4.2.115) and ‘this base drudge’ (4.2.141). When Cade declares that he is ‘rightful heir unto the crown’ (4.2.122), Stafford reminds him of his vile origins: ‘Villain, thy father was a plasterer, / And thou thyself a shearman, art thou not?’ (4.2.123–4). The ‘villain’ here refers to Cade’s low social status in a play that dramatizes the battle of the low and the high. In Rom, ‘villain’ is key to the economy of the play as it is the word that leads to the fight and to Mercutio’s and Tybalt’s deaths. Tybalt:

Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford No better term than this: thou art a villain. Romeo: Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee Doth much excuse the appertaining rage To such a greeting. Villain am I none, Therefore farewell; I see thou knowest me not. (3.1.59–64) Romeo first avoids giving the lie to the insult ‘villain’, which Mercutio considers as ‘calm, dishonourable, vile submission!’ (3.1.72). Once Mercutio is dead, Romeo answers Tybalt’s insult: ‘Now, Tybalt, take the “villain” back again / That late thou gavest me’ (3.1.127–8). ‘Villain’ is one of the conventional terms that lead to duels, as appears in MA when Benedick challenges Claudio: You are a villain. I jest not. I will make it good how you dare, with what you dare and when you dare. Do me right, or I will protest your cowardice. (5.1.143–6) 429

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Shakespeare obviously plays on the ambivalent, social and moral, meaning of the word when Oliver and Orlando quarrel at the beginning of AYL : Oliver: Orlando:

Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain? I am no villain. I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys; he was my father, and he is thrice a villain that says such a father begot villains. Wert thou not my brother I would not take this hand from thy throat till this other had pulled out thy tongue for saying so. Thou hast railed on thyself. (1.1.52–8)

While Oliver uses the term in its modern sense, Orlando hears the old social meaning of ‘villein’ and considers it is an insult not only to himself but also to his father and, ironically to his brother, as the word suggests that they are ‘ig-noble’, that they lack nobility and are of low birth. Dusinberre (AYL , 153) explains ‘thrice a villain’: ‘First, if Orlando is a villain, i.e. a peasant, so is his brother Oliver; secondly he is a villain for slandering his father; thirdly he is (in Elizabethan thinking) a villain and a villein because illegitimate.’ Ironically, the passage that follows suggests Orlando has been raised as a ‘villain’ indeed: [. . .] My father charged you in his will to give me good education. You have trained me like a peasant, obscuring and hiding from me all gentleman-like qualities. The spirit of my father grows strong in me, and I will no longer endure it! Therefore allow me such exercises as may become a gentleman, or give me the poor allottery my father left me by testament; with that I will go buy my fortunes. (1.1.62–70) Orlando is indeed a ‘villein’, that is a man who lives in servitude, who lacks the status of a noble, gentle-man and has to fight for his freedom. In Oth, Brabantio, from the start provides the key to the play when he tells Iago: ‘Thou art a villain!’. Iago’s answer, ‘You are a senator!’ (1.1.116), ironically reveals that Iago is a ‘villain’ indeed, as clearly as Brabantio is a ‘senator’. Iago’s answer objectifies Brabantio’s insult and transforms it into a fact. Othello will need five acts to formulate what Brabantio says at the very beginning and to finally put the right word on the right person, Iago: ‘O villain!’ (5.2.310). Cassio’s characterization of the villain Iago as ‘Most heathenish and most gross!’ (5.2.310) reveals Othello’s blindness which has prevented him from seeing such a ‘gross’, that is ‘obvious’ villain. In KL , Gloucester ironically misapplies the term to the virtuous Edgar: O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter. Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain – worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him. I’ll apprehend him. Abominable villain, where is he? (1.2.75–8) Addressed to the true villain Edmund, Gloucester’s words sound highly ironical, revealing his blindness. ‘Where is he?’: the question is emblematic of Gloucester not 430

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seeing, not ‘apprehending’ where and who the ‘villain’ really is in the play. Edmund manages to reverse his status with his brother’s, as it is now Edgar who is associated with disgraceful ‘baseness’ (1.2.10) and ‘branded’ with villainy. Through Gloucester’s exclamations, one can see that ‘Edmund the base / Shall top the legitimate’ (1.2.20–1). In AC , Enobarbus reviles himself by stating ‘I am alone the villain of the earth’ (4.6.31). Comparing his ‘turpitude’ (4.6.34) to Antony’s noble bounty, Enobarbus ‘will go seek / Some ditch wherein to die’ (4.6.38–9), seeking a vile base (Latin turpis) place for the vile base man he considers himself to be: ‘the foul’st best fits / My latter part of life’ (4.6.39–40). Enobarbus thus strives to become a byword for villainy. In Cym, Posthumus puts a strong emphasis on the word when he declares: ‘every villain / Be call’d Posthumus Leonatus, and / Be villainy less than ’twas’ (5.5.223–5). Posthumus wants to inscribe his name in language as collective memory and to become a ‘type’ of villainy that redefines the term itself. Cloten is the character that uses the word the most frequently, in a mainly social sense, as he is obsessed by rank and noble birth. With Posthumus, the term definitely goes from a social meaning to a stronger moral meaning that transforms him into the vilest figure ever who deserves the punishment due to villains: ‘Spit, and throw stones, cast mire upon me, set / The dogs o’th’ street to bay me’ (5.5.222–3). The image of the dogs is reminiscent of the Machiavellian ‘villain’, Richard III , who notes: ‘dogs bark at me as I halt by them’ (R3 1.1.23). The word is so often used that it seems insufficient to express the extremes of villainy, as appears when Macduff says to Macbeth: I have no words; My voice is in my sword: thou bloodier villain Than terms can give thee out! (5.8.6–8) The word is so often used that its offensive meaning is erased and it can be used as a term of endearment as is the case in 2H4, when Doll calls Falstaff ‘you whoreson little valiant villain, you!’ (2.4.208) and then addresses him as follows: Ah, you sweet little rogue, you! Alas, poor ape, how thou sweat’st! Come, let me wipe thy face. Come on, you whoreson chops! Ah, rogue, i’faith, I love thee. Thou art as valorous Hector of Troy, worth five of Agamemnon, and ten times better than the Nine Worthies. Ah, villain! (2.4.215–20) Doll’s words of endearment colour the term ‘villain’ that in fine becomes a caressing term. (C) Cowell (1607) emphasizes the legal dimension of the term (‘villein’). See Cotgrave. On French ‘villain’, see Ragueau (mentioned by Cotgrave), Indice des droicts royaux et seigneuriaux (1583), 344–6. On ‘Frank and Villain’, see Lewis, 117–24. On the legal sense of ‘villein’, see Sokol and Sokol, 397–400. For definitions, see Rawson, 405; Hughes (2006), 483. 431

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viper (A) A venomous serpent. W. Thomas (1550) has ‘Vipereo, of the viper, whiche of all others is the moste venimouse serpent.’ Florio (1598) reads ‘Inuiperare, to become venimous as a viper’. ‘To nourish a viper (snake) in one’s bosom’ was proverbial (Tilley, V68), which is to be related to one of Aesop’s fables that tells the story of a farmer who finds a snake almost dead from cold and warms it in his breast. The snake, revived by the heat, recovers its strength and fatally wounds its benefactor. Vipers were believed to eat through their mother’s wombs at birth, as appears in Pliny’s Natural History (10.82). (B) In R2, Richard, believing he has been betrayed, expostulates against his former friends: O, villains, vipers damned without redemption! Dogs easily won to fawn on any man! Snakes, in my heart-blood warmed, that sting my heart! (3.2.129–31) Aesop’s fable is not far and is again alluded to when York fears that pity might prove ‘A serpent that will sting thee [Aumerle] to the heart’ (R2 5.3.57). In 2H6, York uses the same image: ‘I fear me you but warm the starved snake / Who, cherished in your breasts, will sting your hearts’ (3.1.342–3). In R2, The image also echoes a passage from the Bible, ‘O serpents, the generation of vipers, how shulde ye escape the damnacion of hel!’ (Matthew 23:33), an expression that is echoed in TC (3.1.127–8). In the enigma read by Pericles, the viper is described as the one who feeds ‘On mother’s flesh which did me breed’ (1.1.65–6), ‘an eater of mother’s flesh’ (1.1.131). It is thus an emblem of ingratitude and treachery. In H5, Pistol calls Nym ‘O viper vile!’ (2.1.47), making the exclamation memorable through the use of alliteration. In Oth, the term is applied to Iago when Lodovico asks: ‘Where is that viper?’ (5.2.282). The image here conveys the motif of the double, venomous, forked tongue that has poisoned Othello’s spirit, an idea that can be found in the ‘viperous slander’ that cuts Imogen’s throat in Cym (3.4.38). Sicinius exclaims against Coriolanus: Where is this viper, That would depopulate the city, and Be every man himself? (3.1.265–7) He then refers to him as ‘This viperous traitor’ (3.1.288), which makes clear that the viper is here an emblem of malignant treachery. The image announces Volumnia’s words when she tries to make Coriolanus yield to her supplication: if her son marches to ‘assault’ his country, it will amount to treading on his ‘mother’s womb / that brought [him] to the world’ (5.3.123–5). (C) See Topsell (1608), 290–306. Yoder, 18. vixen. See fox. 432

W wagtail (A) A bird characterized by the jerky movements of its tail. An obsequious person. A womanizer’ (Williams, 3, 1495). Elyot (1538) has ‘Motacilla, a byrd called a wagtayle.’ Huloet has ‘Wagtayle a byrde. Cauda tremula. Motacilla, ae. Guignequeue, battemare.’ See also Cotgrave. (B) Kent calls Oswald ‘you wagtail’ (KL 2.2.65). Foakes (KL , 229) reads the term as ‘a contemptuous allusion to Oswald’s obsequiousness, or readiness to bow and scrape and wag his tail’, which is confirmed, he suggests, when Kent describes him as ‘Knowing naught, like dogs, but following’ (2.2.78) and when Cornwall declares that Kent is worse than ‘twenty silly-ducking observants / That stretch their duties nicely’ (2.2.101– 2), ‘ducking’ meaning ‘bowing’. One may infer that Cornwall is ironically putting Oswald in the category of ‘silly-ducking’ servants. Hunter (KL , 226) explains the word in another way: ‘G. L. Kittredge suggests that Oswald is too scared to stand still, and therefore reminds Kent of the uneasy tail-jerking of the wagtail. The word was often used in this period to mean “wanton”.’ Other words in the scene confirm the bawdy reading of the ‘wagtail’: Oswald is called ‘a bawd in way of good service’ (2.2.19), a ‘pander’ (2.2.21), ‘barber-monger’ (2.2.32). (C) For Harting (156), wagtail ‘would doubtless denote a pert, flippant fellow’. See the story of the wagtail and a pheasant (‘on accusing another’), in Blague (1569), 10. On the sexual meaning of the image (‘a light woman’ when applied to a woman; ‘womanizer’ when applied to a man; ‘penis’), see Williams, 3, 1495–6. Williams notes that it is one of the most frequently used term for ‘whore’ used in the seventeenth century (1496). wanton (A) Lascivious, given to amorous dalliance (Williams, 3, 1499), unruly. The term can be used as an adjective or noun and has several degrees of offensiveness. Applied to a woman it means a prostitute, a sexually loose creature. The word is etymologically related to ‘untowe(n)’ (untaught, unmannered) and is based on the prefix wan- (the equivalent of un-) and ‘towen’, past participle of ‘tee’ (to draw, conduce, lead, teach). Hollyband has ‘Rageux, a wanton, lasciuious.’ And Cotgrave reads: ‘Rageux: m. euse: f. Wanton, lasciuious, lustfull.’ It can apply to children, especially boys, meaning frisky, frolicsome and it can be found in poetic evocations. ‘As wanton as a calf (or a kid, or a whelp)’ (Dent, W38.1) was proverbial. (B) In 1H6, Gloucester accuses the Bishop of Winchester of being ‘Lascivious, wanton – more than well beseems / A man of thy profession and degree’ (3.1.19–20), which is in keeping with the image of the ‘Winchester goose’ he applies to him, playing 433

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with his name: ‘Winchester goose, I cry, a rope, a rope’ (1.3.53). The public stews of Southwark were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester and the bubo in the genitals known as the ‘Winchester goose’ was one of the symptoms of syphilis. In MND , Oberon, addressing Titania, exclaims: ‘Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?’ (2.1.63): this means both that she is rebellious and unruly and that she is lewd and unchaste as she has ‘forsworn’ (2.1.62) Oberon’s bed and thus must be in someone else’s. As Holland suggests (MND , 157), Titania uses the word in a more poetic way when she refers to the ‘wanton green’ (2.1.99) and the ‘wanton wind’ (2.1.129). In MW , when Mistress Ford tells Falstaff ‘Lord, Lord, your worship’s a wanton!’ (2.2.54), the term has several layers of meanings: it suggests that Falstaff is a merry, jovial man but also that he is a naughty, lascivious man and it may announce his becoming a woman when he disguises himself as the woman of Brentford. In MA , Claudio, convinced that Hero ‘knows the heat of a luxurious bed’ (4.1.39) publicly explains that he means ‘Not to be married, not to knit [his] soul / To an approved wanton’ (4.1.42–3). It is one of the slandering terms that symbolically kill Hero in the church scene, together with ‘rotten orange’ (4.1.30). The term is given more impact when Claudio details what he means: But you are more intemperate in your blood Than Venus, or those pampered animals That rage in savage sensuality. (4.1.58–60) The use of the word ‘rage’ is evocative of a wanton behaviour and is to be related to the French rageux, meaning ‘wanton, lustful, lascivious’ (see Cotgrave and Hollyband). In WT , Leontes addresses Mamillius his boy with: ‘How now, you wanton calf! / Art thou my calf?’ (1.2.126–7): the term means the boy is frisky and frolicsome but the question shows that Leontes has another ‘wanton’ in mind, Hermione whom he has just described as ‘still virginalling’ upon Polixenes’ ‘palm’ (1.2.125–6). The very question he asks his son (‘art thou my boy?’) is an insult to the mother (1.2.120). By using the term ‘wanton’ Leontes transfers the insult from the mother to the son. (C) See Williams, 3, 1499; Findlay (2010), 426–8. wasp (A) An insect with a powerful sting. Applied to irascible, malignant, irritating persons. ‘As angry as a wasp’ was proverbial (Tilley, W76). (B) In TS , Petruccio says to Kate ‘Come, come, you wasp, i’faith you are too angry’ (2.1.210). Following Petruccio’s phrase, Tilley records ‘women are wasps if angered’ (Tilley, W705) as proverbial. Peele, The Old Wife’s Tale (1595) reads ‘as curst as a wasp’ (l. 224). The insult derives from the preceding puns on ‘be/bee’, ‘buzz’ and ‘buzzard’ (2.1.207–9), which naturally lead to the image of another buzzing insect. Kate strikes back by using the image against Petruccio: 434

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Katherina: Petruccio: Katherina: Petruccio: Katherina: Petruccio: Katherina: Petruccio:

If I be waspish, best beware my sting. My remedy is then to pluck it out. Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies. Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail. In his tongue. Whose tongue? Yours, if you talk of tails, and so farewell. What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, good Kate, I am a gentleman – (2.1.211–20)

The word ‘tail’ is pregnant with bawdy innuendoes, as the word could both refer to the vulva and the penis (Williams, 3, 1355–8), and the text also plays with the homophony with ‘tale’ (rumours, gossip). Hodgdon (TS , 206) notes that ‘Bees that have honey in their mouths have stings in their tails’ was proverbial (Tilley, B211). Beyond the obscene content of the dialogue, Kate appears, through the image of the wasp as an annoying woman whose sting is in her unruly and hurtful tongue. In Tit, Tamora, giving her son directions, uses the term ‘wasp’ to refer to Lavinia: But when ye have the honey we desire, Let not this wasp outlive, us both to sting. (2.2.131–2) The ‘honey’ refers to the ‘sexual sweets’ that Chiron and Demetrius will steal from Lavinia by raping her. She is then seen as a honey-less wasp that could sting. By cutting the wasp-Lavinia’s tongue, the two ravishers ensure that she lose her ‘sting’. The image is to be related to Luc, where Lucrece describes her rape to Collatine: My honour lost, and I, a drone-like bee, Have no perfection of my summer left, But robbed and ransacked by injurious theft. In thy weak hive a wand’ring wasp hath crept, And sucked the honey which thy chaste bee kept. (Luc 836–40) Here the wasp is the ravisher who has put his ‘tongue’ (penis) in the bee’s honey. Seen under that light, Petruccio’s ‘tongue’ (penis) in Kate’s ‘tail’ (vulva) is evocative of a symbolic rape. In 1H4, Northumberland denounces Hotspur’s deafness: Why, what a wasp-stung (F ‘Waspe-tongu’d’) and impatient fool Art thou to break into this woman’s mood, Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own! (1H4 1.3.234–6) This wasp is again associated with the unruly, biting, stinging tongue of a woman. 435

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(C) On wasps, see Topsell (1608), 83–92; On wasps as the enemies of bees, see Butler, The Feminine Monarchy or A Treatise concerning bees (1609), H6v. waterfly. See fly. Welsh/Wales. See cheese, goat and nation. whore (A) A prostitute. Florio (1598) has ‘Prostituito, abandoned to euery mans abusing for monie, forsaken, set to sale, giuen ouer to others pleasure, plaid the whore, the harlot, the bawde, or common strumpet. Also one that for monie suffereth himselfe to be abused.’ See Cotgrave. Verstegan (1605) explains the etymology of the word as follows: ‘Hoor. I fynd this anciently written Hure and I fynd hure to bee also vsed and written for the woord hyre and because that such incontinent women do comonly let their bodyes to hyre, this name was therefore aptly applied vnto them’ (335). (B) There are many ways of calling a woman a whore without uttering the word and there are many words that are synonymous with ‘whore’. If one focuses on the word itself, one has to focus on the play in which it is the most recurrent: Othello. About a quarter of the occurrences of the word are found in Oth, in which the term and its insulting effect are an object of metalinguistic comments. ‘Am I that name, Iago?’ (Oth 4.2.120): here is what Desdemona, stunned by Othello’s words, asks Iago. For Desdemona, the term ‘whore’ is so insulting, so disgraceful, that she cannot utter it. Desdemona: Iago: Desdemona:

Am I that name, Iago? What name, fair lady? Such as she said my lord did say I was. (4.2.120–1)

The long periphrasis shows that she refuses to repeat the offensive word, thus trying to avoid being ‘bewhored’ (4.2.117), as when she denies Othello’s accusation with ‘I am sure I am none such’ (4.2.125). The insult has made her ‘half asleep’ (4.2.99) and she ironically tries to find comfort and truth in the character who has prompted the very word to Othello: Iago, a character who is the master in the art of distorting language. A few lines later, she again shows her repulsion at the word itself: ‘I cannot say whore: / It does abhor me now I speak the word’ (4.2.163–4). The pun on ‘whore’ and ‘abhor’ suggests that even if one tries to avoid the term, it comes back anyway in the ‘abhor’, blotting one’s name forever. The question asked by Desdemona ‘Am I that name?’ is essential when it comes to exploring the pragmatic effect of abuse and the performative impact of words. Does calling a woman a ‘whore’ make a whore of her? The text suggests that it is the case when Emilia comments: Alas, Iago, my lord hath so bewhored her, Thrown such despite and heavy terms upon her That true hearts cannot bear. (4.2.117–19) 436

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The word ‘bewhored’ indicates that Othello has done something with the word, has transformed his wife into a ‘whore’. Being called a whore amounts to becoming a whore; calling Desdemona a whore amounts to making a whore of her. When Othello tells Iago ‘be sure thou prove my love a whore’ (3.3.362), he shows that the word does not amount to the thing. Iago’s deception consists in having Othello believe that the word is the thing. So that when Othello asks Desdemona ‘What, not a whore?’ (4.2.88), the question is full of irony and the interrogative form does not attenuate the impact. The same irony is found when Othello declares: ‘I took you for that cunning whore of Venice / That married with Othello’ (4.2.91–2), a sentence which is a trap as it cannot be denied: if Desdemona says ‘no, I am not’, she denies that she has married Othello; if she says ‘yes, I am’, she confirms that she is a whore. The sentence cuts both ways. Emilia’s reaction ironically contributes to enhancing the insult, as rumour would do, as she repeats the word several times, articulating what Desdemona cannot formulate: He called her whore. A beggar in his drink Could not have laid such terms upon his callat. (4.2.122–3) Hath she forsook so many noble matches, Her father, and her country, and her friends, To be called whore? would it not make one weep? (4.2.127–9) Why should he call her whore? who keeps her company? What place, what time, what form, what likelihood? (4.2.139–40) In Oth, Iago refers to Bianca as Cassio’s ‘whore’ (4.1.174) and calls Emilia ‘Villainous whore!’ (5.2.227), which contributes to blurring the feminine figures and making them indistinguishable, as is the case when Othello says ‘This is a subtle whore’ (4.2.21), not making clear whether ‘This’ refers to Emilia or Desdemona. The play dramatizes the insulting effect the term has on Desdemona, which finds its clearer dramatic expression in her tears. Othello, still abusing her and making a ‘triple-turned whore’ of her (AC 4.12.13), comments on her weeping: ‘Sir, she can turn, and turn, and yet go on / And turn again. And she can weep, sir, weep. / And she’s obedient’ (4.1.253–5) and Iago orders her ‘Do not weep, do not weep’ (4.2.126) and ‘Go in, and weep not; all things shall be well’ (4.2.173), which is obviously particularly ironic. All things shall not be well. When Othello asks ‘Was this fair paper, this most goodly book / Made to write “whore” upon?’ (4.2.72–3), he reveals the brand that his words literally leave on the fair book, Desdemona, which may be reminiscent of the brands with which rogues were marked in Shakespeare’s days. In the same way as Edmund asks ‘Why brand they us / With base?’ (KL 1.2.9–10). Desdemona’s questions amount to asking ‘Why brands he me with whore?’ In AC , the word is used to characterize Cleopatra. Echoing Octavius’ comment that ‘He hath given his empire / Up to a whore’ (3.6.67–8), Antony exclaims against 437

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Cleopatra: ‘Triple-turned whore! ’Tis thou / Hast sold me to this novice’ (4.12.13–14): the phrase means that she has turned from Julius Caesar to Pompey, from Pompey to Antony, and from Antony, so he believes, to Octavius. It also may be related to the way Othello uses the word ‘turn’ against Desdemona when he publicly declares: ‘Sir, she can turn, and turn, and yet go on / And turn again’ (Oth 4.1.253–4). It finally has an ironic ring as she has sold him, and thus has symbolically turned him into a whore. The word comes back when Cleopatra imagines herself as the object of public slander and scorn: ‘and I shall see / Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness / I’th’ posture of a whore’ (5.2.218–20). When Antony refers to Cleopatra as ‘she here – what’s her name / Since she was Cleopatra’ (3.13.103–4), one can feel the name ‘whore’ is in the air. In TC , both Helen and Cressida are called whores and are two essential whore figures beyond the play itself. The play dramatizes the very process through which ‘Cressid’ becomes a byname for ‘whore’ when Cressida herself ironically creates a proverbial ‘As false as Cressid’ (3.2.191). (C) Findlay (2010), 438–44; Williams, 3, 1526–33. On ‘Defamation and Desdemona’s case’, see Jardine. On ‘Hamlet’s Whores’ see Stanton (1994). On ‘Male and Female use of the Word “Whore” in Shakespeare’s Canon’, see Stanton (2000). On ‘Shakespeare’s whores’, see Stanton (2014). Standish Henning, in his ‘Branding Harlots on the Brow’ (2000) suggests that there is no evidence that harlots were branded on the brow, contradicting Greenblatt’s assertion that ‘Prostitutes among other criminals, were branded on the forehead during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ (Norton, 1720n). On defamation cases involving accusations of whoredom, see Brinkworth, Shakespeare and the Bawdy Court of Stratford (1972) and Emmison (1970 and 1973). See Wells (2010), chap. 9 ‘Whores and Saints’, 217–37. whoreson (A) Literally the son of a whore, a bastard son. The term is commonly used as a coarse term of reprobation, abuse, dislike, or contempt but sometimes also of jocular familiarity. The word can be used as a noun but is more often used as an adjective. It rarely literally means ‘son of a whore’. It usually emphasizes the moral and social baseness of the one who is insulted, but also tells a lot about the insulter. It offers a wide range of tones and effects, from the truly offensive to a function as intensifier or an expression of affection. That is what makes it a truly carnivalesque because ambivalent and reversible insult, such as those words of praise-abuse described by Bakhtin in Rabelais and his World. It is more of a swear-word than an insult. (B) In Shakespeare’s plays, the term is used both by the high and low. It is often a decorative adjective that means ‘wretched’, ‘detestable’, ‘abominable’, ‘vile’ (Onions) and that does not have the force of ‘son of a whore’ that one finds in Middleton and Rowley’s A Fair Quarrel, for example. It is easily grafted onto any string of abuse. Thus at the beginning of Tem, Antonio addresses the ‘boatswain’: ‘Hang, cur! Hang, you whoreson, insolent noise-maker!’ (1.1.42–3), the insult being ironically part of the noise that opens the play and that Antonio blames the boatswain for. It is used as an intensifier in TGV , where Speed calls Lance ‘thou whoreson ass’ (2.5.41) and Proteus calls him 438

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‘you whoreson peasant’ (4.4.42), or in LLL where Berowne calls Costard ‘you whoreson loggerhead’ (4.3.200). In Cym, Cloten exclaims against an absent man he calls ‘a whoreson jackanapes’ (2.1.3) and a ‘whoreson dog’ (2.1.14). Petruccio uses the word three times when cursing his servants, calling them ‘You peasant swain, you whoreson malthorse drudge’ (TS 4.1.115), ‘You whoreson villain’ (4.1.141), ‘A whoreson beetleheaded, flap-eared knave’ (4.1.143). The word is naturally integrated into Kent’s long series of insults against Oswald, again to emphasize his baseness: ‘a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue’ (2.2.16–18), ‘you whoreson cullionly barber-monger’ (2.2.32), and ‘Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter!’ (2.2.62). ‘Whoreson’ contributes to debasing the character both morally and socially, but it also allows Kent to void his choler. Lear, furious because Oswald does not recognize him as the King, uses the term earlier, calling him ‘you whoreson dog, you slave, you cur!’ (1.4.78–9). In KL , this common, banal use is given a specific ring as the whole story is based on the grudge displayed by Edmund, whom Gloucester ‘brands’ with baseness (1.2.9) by calling him ‘the whoreson’ at the beginning of the play when he declares that ‘the whoreson must be acknowledged’ (1.1.22–3). Thus, the play reveals the impact that such a banal word can have on society, rediscovering the original insulting and disturbing content of the word. In TC , ‘whoreson’ again works as an intensifier when Ajax calls Thersites ‘You whoreson cur!’ (2.1.39) or when Patroclus calls him ‘you whoreson indistinguishable cur’ (5.1.27–28). Here the image of the dog makes the use of the word even more natural. The term is part of the dialect of the tavern in H4 where it is almost a verbal tic that is emblematic of the festive brawls that characterize the two plays. It is a ‘Falstaffian’ word, as appears when the fat man expostulates against the travellers he is robbing, calling them ‘Ah, whoreson caterpillars’ (1H4 2.2.82), or when he regularly uses the term in 2H4, calling the Page ‘Thou whoreson mandrake’ (2H4 1.2.14–15) or Master Dommelton ‘A whoreson Achitophel!’ (1.2.35). Hal uses the word several times against Falstaff, successively calling him ‘you whoreson round man’ (1H4 2.4.134), ‘thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch’ (2.4.220–1) and ‘thou whoreson, impudent, embossed rascal’ (3.3.155–6). The Prince who wants to ‘drink with any tinker in his own language’ (1H4 2.4.17–18), knows that ‘whoreson’ is part of the language of the tavern that he must master. The term is used as a term of affection when Falstaff welcomes Hal: ‘Thou whoreson mad compound of majesty, by this light flesh and corrupt blood [Leaning his hand upon Doll], thou art welcome’ (2H4 2.4.294–6). The term loses its insulting meaning to become a marker of endearment. Hal answers in an echo, calling Falstaff ‘You whoreson candle-mine you’ (2.4.300). Falstaff even applies the term to the King’s disease, alluding to ‘this same whoreson apoplexy’ (2H4 1.2.108) or ‘a whoreson tingling’ (2H4 1.2.113), in the same way as Bullcalf says he’s caught ‘a whoreson cold’ (2H4 3.2.181), or Pandarus speaks of ‘a whoreson phthisic, a whoreson rascally phthisic’ (TC 5.3.101–2), or the gravedigger speaks of ‘your 439

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whoreson dead body’ (Ham 5.1.162). Thus in 2H4 the term loses its insulting potential to become a verbal tic. Doll uses it to express her affection for Falstaff, calling him ‘you whoreson little valiant villain, you!’ (2.4.208), ‘you whoreson chops!’ (2.4.217) and ‘Thou whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig’ (2.4.230). Doll is the only woman who uses the term. ‘Whoreson’ is a man’s word in Shakespeare’s plays, which renders the character of Doll Tearsheet all the more unusual. In Rom, Capulet refers to his servant as a ‘merry whoreson’ (4.4.19), just to say he is a merry fellow. (C) Hughes (1991) describes the history of the word starting from Middle English, showing how the term has lost its literal force (89). Winchester. See goose. wit(ted) (A) Mental, intellectual capacity, quickness of intellect. The term may have a bawdy meaning, referring to semen or pudendum, ‘conversation’ being a witty way of referring to sexual intercourse. (B) A lot of characters target their enemies’ dullness of wit and lack of understanding. Suffolk addresses Warwick as ‘Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanor!’ (2H6 3.2.210), which is the only example of the compound word in Shakespeare. Richard III ‘gnaws his lip’ (4.2.27), complaining because, he says in an aside, he ‘will converse with iron-witted fools’ (R3 4.2.28). Richard II , irritated by John of Gaunt’s long speech, interrupts him: Gaunt:

[. . .] Landlord of England art thou now, not king. Thy state of law is bondslave to the law, And thou – King Richard: A lunatic lean-witted fool, Presuming on an ague’s privilege! (R2 2.1.113–16) Richard answers Gaunt’s insulting ‘frozen admonition’(2.1.117) by associating him with madness and by applying the leanness of his ‘gaunt’ and diseased body to his wit. In 1H4, Hal says to Falstaff that he is ‘fat-witted with drinking of old sack’ (1H4 1.2.2), applying the fatness of his body to his wit. Beyond these compound adjectives, the word ‘wit’ is at the heart of many insulting phrases that often have a comic impact. Thus in LLL when Costard the Clown calls Moth ‘that handful of wit! (4.1.146) and ‘thou halfpenny purse of wit’ (5.1.67–8), the words have a comic and ironic ring, since Costard, as his name (meaning ‘head’) suggests, is the ‘whoreson loggerhead’ (4.3.200) in the play. The ‘halfpenny purse’ image is in keeping with Costard obsessively mentioning ‘remuneration’ (3.1). When Berowne greets Costard with ‘Welcome, pure wit!’ (5.2.484), the address is full of irony. Comic irony is also present in 2H4 where Doll Tearsheet and Falstaff talk of Hal and Poins without knowing that the Prince and his friend overhear their back-biting words: 440

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Doll Tearsheet: They say Poins has a good wit. Falstaff: He a good wit? Hang him, baboon! His wit’s as thick as Tewkesbury mustard; there’s no more conceit in him than is in a mallet. (2.4.239–42) The analogy with Tewkesbury mustard is surprising as the proverb goes that ‘He’s as sharp, as if he liv’d upon Tewkesbury mustard’ (Tilley, M1333). Falstaff then seems to be reinventing and reversing the proverb. According to Fitzpatrick (2011), ‘Tewkesbury mustard, the most famous mustard during Shakespeare’s time, was a coarse mustard that also contained horseradish’ (292), which may explain Falstaff’s words. In MA , Beatrice and Benedick play a battle of wits in which each other’s art is an object of scorn. Shakespeare plays on complex dramatic situations and uses the art of indirection when he has Beatrice say to Benedick himself during the masked ball scene: That I was disdainful, and that I had my good wit out of the Hundred Merry Tales! Well, this was Signor Benedick that said so. (2.1.117–19) The allusion to ‘A Hundred Merry Tales’ is derogatory as the reference to the book of jests suggests Beatrice has a low level of witticism and lacks sophisticated humour. McEachern (MA , 186) notes that the collection of comic stories and jokes was printed by John Rastell in 1526 and was apparently popular. Again it is through reported speech that we have access to Beatrice’s assessment of Benedick’s wit, as Don Pedro describes: I’ll tell thee how Beatrice praised thy wit the other day. I said thou hadst a fine wit. ‘True,’ said she, ‘a fine little one.’ ‘No,’ said I, ‘a great wit.’ ‘Right,’ says she, ‘a great gross one.’ ‘Nay,’ said I, ‘a good wit.’ ‘Just,’ said she, ‘it hurts nobody.’ ‘Nay,’ said I, ‘the gentleman is wise.’ ‘Certain,’ said she, ‘a wise gentleman.’ [. . .] Thus did she an hour together, trans-shape thy particular virtues. Yet at last she concluded, with a sigh, thou wast the properest man in Italy. (5.1.156–68) Don Pedro here becomes the author of another ‘Merry Tale’, which sounds like an answer to the insulting jest book allusion by systematically debunking Benedick’s wit. In TC , Thersites contrasts wit and sinews. His lampooning of Ajax keeps harping on his lack of wit. He calls him ‘thou mongrel beef-witted lord!’ (2.1.11–12). The expression may mean ‘ox-brained’, that is ‘stupid as an ox’ but editors also note that it was traditionally supposed that a diet of beef dulled the wits, as appears in TN when Sir Andrew says: ‘I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit’ (1.3.83–4). This was a proverbial idea (Dent, B215.1). When Ajax tells him ‘I will beat thee into handsomeness’, Thersites answers ‘I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness’ (2.1.13–15). He continues with: 441

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[. . .] Thou sodden-witted lord, thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; an asinico may tutor thee. Thou scurvy-valiant ass, thou art here but to thrash Trojans, and thou art bought and sold among those of any wit, like a barbarian slave. [. . .] (2.1.42–6) Thersites answers Ajax’s blows with words: Ajax: Thersites:

Therefore I beat thee. Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! His evasions have ears thus long. I have bobbed his brain more than he has beat my bones. I will buy nine sparrows for a penny, and his pia mater is not worth the ninth part of a sparrow. This lord, Achilles – Ajax, who wears his wit in his belly and his guts in his head – I’ll tell you what I say of him. Achilles: What? Thersites: I say, this Ajax – [Ajax threatens to beat him; Achilles intervenes.] Achilles: Nay, good Ajax. Thersites: Has not so much wit – Achilles [to Ajax]: Nay, I must hold you. Thersites: As will stop the eye of Helen’s needle, for whom he comes to fight. Achilles: Peace, fool! Thersites: I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not – he there, that he. Look you there. Ajax: O thou damned cur, I shall – Achilles [to Ajax]: Will you set your wit to a fool’s? Thersites: No, I warrant you, for a fool’s will shame it. (2.1.65–85) Mŏdĭcum, means ‘A litle or small thing’ and the pia mater is ‘the caules or filmes of the braine’ that is the ‘thin skin wrapping the brain’ (Thomas, 1587). The reference to Helen’s ‘needle’ can be read bawdily and is thus an invitation to hear ‘wit’ as a sexual allusion. ‘Do not set your wit against a fool’s’ was proverbial (Dent, W547) and derived from Proverbs 26:4: ‘Answer not a foole according to his foolishnes, lest thou also be like him’. The sequence dramatizes the battle of body (Ajax) and wit (Thersites), which is emphasized when Thersites sets to attack Achilles: Thersites:

Achilles:

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[. . .] A great deal of your wit, too, lies in your sinews, or else there be liars. Hector have a great catch, an ’a knock out either of your brains. ’A were as good crack a fusty nut with no kernel. What, with me too, Thersites? (2.1.96–100)

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Then Thersites mentions ‘old Nestor – whose wit was mouldy ere your grandsires had nails on their toes’ (2.1.101–2). This battle between wit and muscles or between intellectual and physical violence finds another illustration a few lines later: Ajax: Thersites:

I shall cut out your tongue. ’Tis no matter, I shall speak as much as thou afterwards. (2.1.107–9)

Thersites leaves the stage and concludes with: I will see you hanged, like clotpolls ere I come any more to your tents. I will keep where there is wit stirring and leave the faction of fools. (2.1.114–16) Thersites is obsessed with ‘that little, little, less than little wit’ (2.3.12) that they all seem to have. In KL , behind the lack of wit described by the Fool, one can already discern Lear’s tragic folly. ‘Thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gav’st thy golden one away’ (1.4.155–6); ‘Thou hast pared thy wit o’both sides and left nothing i’the middle’ (1.4.177–9): the fool’s words suggest that Lear has lost reason. (C) On the sexual meaning of ‘wit’, see Williams, Glossary, 340–41. On ‘Shakespeare’s Lusty Punning’ in Love’s Labour’s Lost, see Ellis (1973). See Lewis, Studies in Words (1960), 86–110. witch (A) A sorceress, a charmer, a hag, an enchantress. Derived from Old English wicce (feminine), wicca (weak masculine). The witch is in congress with fiends and evil spirits and often associated with ugliness and old age. Allegations of witchcraft could lead those accused to trial and execution. (B) The word is applied to women in Shakespeare’s plays. In 1H6, Joan Puzel is insultingly called ‘witch’. ‘Devil, or devil’s dam’, ‘thou art a witch’ (1.5.5–6), Talbot tells her before stating that if his troops lose their battles, it is because they are enchanted by a witch: ‘A witch by fear, not force, like Hannibal, / Drives back our troops and conquers as she lists: [. . .]’ (1.5.21–2). He then calls her ‘that witch, that damned sorceress’ (3.2.37), ‘that railing Hecate’ (3.2.63), thus transforming her into the queen of the witches. Talbot calls her ‘Foul fiend of France and hag of all despite’ (3.2.51), Burgundy calls her ‘vile fiend and shameless courtesan’ (3.2.44). At the end of the play she is again compared to a witch: York:

Damsel of France, I think I have you fast. Unchain your spirits now with spelling charms And try if they can gain your liberty. A goodly prize, fit for the devil’s grace. See how the ugly witch doth bend her brows As if, with Circe, she would change my shape. Pucelle: Changed to a worser shape thou canst not be. (5.2.51–7) 443

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Annoyed by Joan’s madedictions, York finally wants to stop her mouth: ‘Fell banning hag, enchantress, hold thy tongue!’ (5.2.63). In 1H6, the figure of the witch goes together with that of the whore and that of the shrew whose tongue must be ruled. Finally York calls her ‘Thou foul accursed minister of hell!’ (5.3.93). York summarizes her life as ‘Wicked and vile’ (5.3.16), concluding that ‘she hath lived too long, / To fill the world with vicious qualities’ (5.3.34–5). The figure of the witch seems to be reincarnated in R3 in the figure of Margaret whom Richard, from the start, calls ‘foul wrinkled witch’ (1.3.163) and ‘thou hateful withered hag’ (1.3.214). In R3, the focus is on the witch’s unruly tongue that keeps cursing and lives to ‘fill the world with words’ as was announced at the end of 3H6 (5.5.44). The play dramatizes the battle between the devil (Richard) and the witch (Margaret), two figures that have much in common as is shown when Richard, in 3H6 applies the verb ‘witch’ to himself, announcing he will ‘witch sweet ladies with [his] words and looks’ (3.2.150). He thus reveals the witch’s two main weapons: words and looks. In CE , Antipholus of Ephesus rejects the Courtesan with ‘Avaunt, thou witch’ (4.3.77), an exclamation which shows that he does not understand what happens to him, but that also reveals how the figures of the witch and the courtesan overlap. This exclamation of rejection is typical of the fearful and defensive modes of address characters use with witches and devils, as appears in the expression ‘Aroint thee, witch’ that is found both in KL (3.4.120) and Mac (1.3.6, ‘Aroynt thee, witch!’), which may be a term of Midlands dialect (KL , 280). Antony refers to Cleopatra as ‘the witch’ (4.12.47) showing her power of enchantment. In MW , Falstaff is the ‘witch’, when he appears disguised as the woman of Brentford. Anticipating her husband’s violent reaction, Mistress Ford dresses Falstaff ‘like the witch of Brentford’ (4.2.93), which leads to Ford’s banishing him/her from his house: A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean! Have I not forbid her my house? She comes of errands, does she? We are simple men, we do not know what’s brought to pass under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by charms, by spells, by the figure, and such daubery as this is, beyond our element: we know nothing. – Come down, you witch, you hag, you! Come down, I say! (4.2.162–9) Ford goes on insulting him/her a few lines later: ‘Out of my door, you witch, you rag, you baggage, you polecat, you runnion, out, out! I’ll conjure you, I’ll fortune-tell you’ (4.2.174–6), ‘Hang her, witch!’ (4.2.181). Ironically Ford uses a witch’s formulas against the witch herself. The series of abusive words that he hurls at the ‘witch’ are once more characteristic of the way the figures of the witch and the whore meet and overlap. Sir Hugh Evans’s reaction adds to the comic effect when he notices signs of manhood under Falstaff’s disguise, saying, with his Welsh accent: ‘By yea and no, I think the ’oman is a witch indeed. I like not when a ’oman has a great peard [beard] – I spy a great peard under her muffler’ (4.2.182–4). Paradoxically, the signs of Falstaff’s 444

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manhood confirm the idea that he is a witch. When Falstaff tells his story to Hostess Quickly, his tale shows how serious the accusation of witchcraft is in Shakespeare’s world, even if the playwright uses it comically here: What tellst thou me of black and blue? I was beaten myself into all the colours of the rainbow, and I was like to be apprehended for the witch of Brentford. But that my admirable dexterity of wit, my counterfeiting the action of an old woman, delivered me, the knave constable had set me i’the stocks, i’the common stocks, for a witch. (4.5.107–13) ‘Witch’ is undoubtedly an actionable word in Shakespeare’s world. Such an insult is a serious accusation and may lead one to severe punishment. In WT , Leontes violently rejects Paulina Out! A mankind witch! Hence with her, out o’ door: A most intelligencing bawd. (2.3.65–7) Pitcher (WT , 210) glosses mankind as ‘mannish, unwomanly’ and comments on the word ‘witch’: ‘common term of abuse for women who were a threat to men, because they might overwhelm male authority with magic. Leontes also means Paulina is a repulsive old hag.’ This is confirmed when Leontes calls her ‘crone’ (2.3.75) and ‘A gross hag’ (2.3.106). In contrast, Polixenes later associates witchcraft with Perdita whom he addresses as ‘thou, fresh piece / Of excellent witchcraft’ (4.4.427–8). Even if the witchcraft is characterized as ‘excellent’, the use of the term nevertheless shows that the loss of manly power and authority is at stake here too, as Polixenes reproaches Perdita with having enchanted his son Florizel. The figure of the whore is not far and the expression hovers between praise and abuse. (C) See Gibson and Esra, 15–16; Easting, ‘Johnson’s Note on “Aroynt thee, Witch!” ’ (1988); on the ‘demonic’, see Fernie (2013). For an anthology of texts on witchcraft, see Rosen. On ‘the idea of Witcraft in Early Modern Europe’, see Clark and Sharpe. See devil. wittol (A) A complaisant cuckold. A cuckold who knows he is a cuckold and does nothing about it, which is disgraceful in the eyes of the Elizabethan society. A conniving cuckold or one resigned to his wife’s infidelity. The word may derive from ‘woodwall’ (a bird identified as the golden oriole or the woodpecker) or from ‘wetewold’, formed after ‘cokewold’ (cuckold), ‘wete’ meaning ‘wit’ (Williams, 3, 1541). Cotgrave has ‘Iannin: m. A wittall; one that knowes, and bears with, or winkes at, his wiues dishonestie’ and ‘Sotart: m. A noddie peake, wittall, cockscombe, woodcocke, dotterell, ninnihammer’. Minsheu explains that a ‘wittall’ is ‘cuckold that wits all, or knowes all, that is knowes himself to be a cuckolde, which commonly is the last man of the parish that wits or knowes the same’. 445

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(B) The word only appears in MW . Ford puts the term at the top of the scale of ‘abominable terms’ (2.2.280) when he expostulates against Falstaff who has just referred to him as ‘the jealous wittolly knave’ (2.2.258): Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer, well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils’ additions, the names of fiends. But cuckold! Wittol! Cuckold! The devil himself hath not such a name. (2.2.281–4) The situation of enunciation is full of irony as we have just seen Falstaff unwittingly slandering Ford to his face, believing he was addressing Master Brook. Once he is alone on stage, Ford shows that he cannot swallow the insult and ironically thus magnifies it by repeating it. Ford’s soliloquy allows the spectators to measure the insulting effect Falstaff’s words have on him. The irony is increased when at the end of the play, Falstaff becomes the buck, the horned beast, the gull, the cuckold of the story. In LLL , Shakespeare plays on the pun wit-old/wittol: Armado: Moth: Holofernes: Moth:

[…] True wit! Offered by a child to an old man – which is wit-old. What is the figure? What is the figure? Horns. (5.1.56–60)

(C) For the story of a wittol, see Tarltons newes out of purgatorie (1590), 21–2. The anonymous The cobler of Caunterburie (1590), provides a list and description of the ‘eight orders of the cuckold’: ‘Machomite, Hereticke, Lunaticke, Innocent, Incontinent, By consent, By Act of Parliament, Quem Facit Ecclesia’ (14–16): Cuckold by consent, is he that of al other Cuckolds is most infamous, who is not only headed as bravely as the rest, and hath one of light conversation, but fostereth his wife up in hir folies, and is content to keepe the doore to his wives lascivious wantonnesse, consenting to more than the strumpet is ashamde to performe. (15) See Williams, 3, 1543–4; Brand, 2, 180–202, (‘cornutes’, ‘cuckold’), esp. 182; Hughes (2006), 107–10. See cuckold, horns. wolf/wolvish (A) A ravenous animal. A large canine animal noted for its fierceness and rapacity. Hence also, ‘a rauenous, greedie, cruell, vniust, fell, harsh companion’ (Cotgrave) or ‘A cruell and sauage Beast, delighting in slaughter, bloud, and deuouring’ (Wilson). Often contrasted with the meekness of the lamb. ‘As hungry as a wolf’ is proverbial (Tilley, W601), ‘Speak of the wolf and he well appear’ (Tilley, W607), ‘A wolf in a lamb’s (sheep’s) skin’ (Tilley, W614) are proverbial. The term also has strong sexual connotations. The wolf is associated with lust as exemplified in Latin lupa, 446

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she-wolf, prostitute, a connexion one finds in French lupanar (a brothel). Thus it can mean whore or whoremonger (Williams, 3, 1542–4). Elyot (1538), Withals, and Thomas define lupa, as she-wolf, hence a whore or harlot. Cotgrave reads ‘Danse du loup (la queuë entre les jambes.) Lecherie.’ (B) In 1H6, Gloucester calls the Bishop of Winchester ‘Thou wolf in sheep’s array’ (1.3.55): he thus echoes the proverb, as well as Matthew 7:15 ‘Beware of false prophetes, which come to you in shepes clothing, but inwardely they are ravening wolves’ (quoted by Burns, 1H6, 146). Gloucester emphasizes the Bishop’s fell nature, but also suggests, through the use of the term ‘wolf’, that he is a whoremonger. This is in keeping with the allusion to the ‘Winchester goose’ (1.3.53) and with the fact that the Bishop of Winchester had authority over the Southwark brothels, where she-wolves (lupa) dwelt (French lupanars). He is a wolf in more senses than one. In 3H6, York, before dying, addresses the cruel Margaret: She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France, Whose tongue more poisons than the adder’s tooth! (3H6 1.4.111–12) Obviously the image combines two meanings. York denounces Margaret’s cruelty, the verbal violence she indulges in with her poisonous tongue but also her ravenousness which reappears when he compares her to the ‘tigers of Hyrcania’ (1.4.155) and describes her as a ‘tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide’ (1.4.137). Calling her ‘shewolf’, he also suggests that she is a prostitute, as is confirmed when he compares her triumph to that of an ‘Amazonian trull’ (1.4.114). In Oth, Iago imagines Cassio and Desdemona ‘As salt as wolves in pride’ (as lecherous as wolves on heat, 3.3.407). The sexual meaning of the image appears in TC where Ajax calls Thersites ‘thou bitch wolf’s (female wolf) son’ (2.1.10). This refers to the Latin lupa (prostitute) and thus amounts to saying ‘thou whoreson’, in a play where Ulysses describes ‘appetite’ as ‘an universal wolf’ (TC 1.3.121). In MV , Shylock is several times compared to a cruel, bloody dog and the image finds its climax when Antonio compares him to a ‘wolf’ (4.1.72) and Gratiano to a sort of werewolf: Thou almost mak’st me waver in my faith, To hold opinion with Pythagoras That souls of animals infuse themselves Into the trunks of men. Thy currish spirit Governed a wolf, who, hanged for human slaughter, Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, And, whilst thou layest in thy unhallowed dam, Infused itself in thee; for thy desires Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous. (4.1.129–37) 447

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Drakakis (MV , 338) draws a link between the image of the wolf and usury by quoting Wilson’s A discourse vppon vsurye (1572) which reads: ‘so ye vsurer (like vnto hel mowth) doth deuower & gnaue, vpon euery mans goods, as longe as ther is a peny, or half peny worth in the world to be had’ (fol. 142). The usurer appears as a devourer of human flesh, an image which is put into literal action by Shylock who wants to feed on the merchant’s flesh. Timon oxymoronically calls his false friends ‘affable wolves’ (Tim 3.7.94), while Juliet exclaims against Romeo she describes as a ‘wolvish-ravening lamb’ (Rom 3.2.76). (C) On the werewolf, see Verstegan (1605): ‘Were-wulf. This name remaineth stil known in the Teutonic, & is as much to say as man-wolf; the greeks expressing the very lyke, in Lycanthropos.’ See Wilson’s A discourse vppon vsurye (1572). Yoder (1947) explains the image of the were-wolf (34–5). Drakakis, 343. woman (A) A common insult, meaning you are merely a woman. ‘To be a woman’ is proverbial (Dent, W637.1). A mistress, a whore, a ‘common’ woman. (B) In 2H6, Queen Margaret chides Suffolk because he refuses to resist and she exclaims: ‘Fie, coward woman and soft-hearted wretch! / Hast thou not spirit to curse thine enemies?’ (3.2.307–8). The ‘woman’ here is a symbol of weakness and softness, but ironically the Queen asks Suffolk to use a weapon that is often attributed to women rather then men: the tongue. In 1H4, the word has an insulting effect on Hostess Quickly: Falstaff: Hostess: Falstaff:

[. . .] Go to, you are a woman, go. Who, I? No, I defy thee. God’s light, I was never called so in mine own house before. Go to, I know you well enough. (3.3.60–3)

The term is the object of a complex game of insult. Being hurled at a woman, the term should not be insulting; yet it is, as the hostess’s reaction shows. Hostess Quickly’s reaction creates the abuse as much as Falstaff’s words. The comedy of the insult also comes from the fact that the Hostess’s part was played by a man, which makes the denial of her womanhood comically inadequate and adequate at the same time. The metatheatrical effect of the term reappears when Falstaff tells her that ‘for womanhood, Maid Marian may be the deputy’s wife of the ward to thee’ (3.3.114–15), referring to the clownish character from the Morris dance that was usually played by boys. The play with the term ‘know’, which prolongs the ambivalent allusion to the Hostess who ‘lies’ and to Bardoll who lost ‘many a hair’ (a symptom of venereal disease) (3.3.58–9), all this suggests that there is an accusation of whoredom behind Falstaff’s word, which the Hostess perfectly understands as such. For her, Falstaff’s ‘woman’ means ‘whore’ and that is why she wants to claim that she is an ‘honest man’s wife’ (3.3.119). In the same way, she hears a bawdy innuendo when Falstaff rejects her with ‘Go, you thing, go’ (3.3.115). 448

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(C) For an overview of the qualities and defects attributed to woman in Shakespeare’s plays, see Findlay (2010), 464–73. On ‘woman’ as ‘mistress, whore’, see Williams, 3, 1544–6. On a seditious remark on Queen Elizabeth as a (mere) ‘woman’, see Cressy, Dangerous Talk, 77–79 (‘Because she is a woman’). woodcock (A) A dupe, a simpleton. The woodcock, a small game bird, is proverbially stupid because easily duped and caught. ‘A springe to catch a woodcock’ means ‘a snare (for catching birds) to catch a fool’ (Tilley, S788), the ironical ‘As wise as a woodcock’ means ‘without any wit’ (Tilley, W746); ‘To play the woodcock’ (Tilley, W748) means to be duped, gulled. Hollyband translates both une becasse and une asse as ‘Woodcocke’. Cotgrave has ‘Beccassé: m. ée: f. Gulled, abused, woodcockised, made a woodcocke’ and ‘Beccasse: f. A Woodcocke. [. . .] Beccasse petite. A Snite, or Snipe.’ See also Baret. (B) In TS , Grumio, Petruccio’s groom says about Gremio, old suitor to Bianca, ‘O, this woodcock, what an ass it is!’ (1.2.158), ironically echoing Gremio’s ‘O this learning, what a thing it is!’ and meaning that Gremio is being duped by Lucentio. In LLL , Berowne applies the term to himself and his three friends when he says in an aside ‘Four woodcocks in a dish!’ (4.3.79), acknowledging that they have been foolish to hope they could resist love, but also announcing the trap in which they are going to fall. In MA , after Benedick has challenged him, Claudio tries to turn the dialogue into a witty skirmish of wit. When Don Pedro asks ‘What, a feast, a feast?’ (5.1.150), Claudio summarizes Benedick’s challenging words in terms of food: Claudio:

I’ faith, I thank him, he hath bid me to a calf’s head and a capon, the which if I do not carve most curiously, say my knife’s naught. Shall I not find a woodcock too? Benedick: Sir, your wit ambles, it goes easily. (5.1.151–5)

Calf, capon and woodcock are examples of feasting food but they are also insults: the calf’s head is a fool, the capon is a figure of cowardice, and the woodcock is a figure of stupidity. The words ‘carving’ and ‘knife’ are euphemisms for ‘killing’ and ‘sword’. In TN, Fabian compares Malvolio to a woodcock, in an aside: ‘Now is the woodcock near the gin’ (2.5.82). Malvolio is like a bird approaching a lure or a snare, a motif that is also conveyed when Sir Toby exclaims: ‘And with what wing the staniel checks at it!’ (2.5.112), again referring to Malvolio’s gullibility. Malvolio is later associated with the ‘woodcock’ when Sir Topas/Feste tells him: ‘Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness. Thou shalt hold th’opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well’ (TN 4.2.56–9). The image is applied to Parolles in AW before he is ‘crush’d with a plot’ (4.3.319), when the lord says: ‘We have caught the woodcock’ (4.1.90). It also appears in the tragic context of Hamlet. When Ophelia tells her father Polonius about the ‘countenance’ of Hamlet’s speech, made of ‘holy vows’, he answers her: ‘Ay, 449

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springes to catch woodcocks’ (1.3.112–14), suggesting, through the proverbial phrase, that Ophelia is a fool because she is easily gulled by the Prince. Ironically, Laertes uses the same image at the end of the play. When Osric asks him ‘How is’t Laertes?’, he answers: ‘Why, as a woodcock to mine own springes, Osric: / I am just killed with mine own treachery’ (5.2.290–2). Laertes here combines two proverbs: ‘The fowler is caught in his own net’ (Tilley, F626) and ‘A springe to catch a woodcock’ (Tilley, S788). In Oth, Iago calls Roderigo a ‘snipe’ (1.3.384), meaning a woodcock, a dupe. In 3H6, Clifford uses the term when he catches York who struggles, ironically commenting: ‘Ay, ay, so strives the woodcock with the gin’ (1.4.61). (C) Parrot, Laquei ridiculosi: or Springes for woodcocks (1613); Fitzpatrick (2011), 432–3. woolsack (A) A large package or bale of wool. From Latin saccus, bag, sack. (B) The only occurrence appears in 1H4 where Hal asks Falstaff: ‘How now, woolsack, what mutter you?’ (2.4.129). The image is suggested by the mention of a weaver in Falstaff’s preceding lines: ‘I would I were a weaver; I could sing psalms or anything’ (2.4.126–7). The term of address is also in keeping with other insults that present Falstaff as a ‘bag’: he is called ‘that stuffed cloak-bag of guts’ (1H4 2.4.439–40), ‘bag of flax’ (WIV 5.5.150), designations that characterize him as ‘my sweet creature of bombast’ (1H4 2.4.318). Bombast refers to the untreated cotton used for stuffing quilts and jackets, and is thus particularly relevant for Falstaff who is called ‘Jack’ numerous times and ‘blown Jack’ and ‘quilt’ (4.2.48), two insults that associate him with stuffed clothes. wretch (A) A vile, despicable person, a contemptible creature. Derived from Old English wrecca, exile, adventurer, knight errant. Originally referring to one driven out of his native country, the term can express pity for a poor, unfortunate, miserable fellow or even be a term of endearment. As a noun, it is often, though not always, a derogatory term and an expression of contempt. Hollyband reads: ‘Piteux, one that is to bee pitied, a wretch.’ Florio (1598) has ‘Cacauincigli, a base abiect fellow, a miserable wretch, an idle lubber.’ The two meanings of commiseration and contempt often overlap, the word expressing a mixture of wickedness and misery. The term applies both to men and women. (B) In 1H6, the Countess, thinking she has vanquished Talbot asks him ‘Laughest thou, wretch?’ (2.3.43). The word is part of the Countess’s debasing strategy which will find an ironical issue when Talbot recovers all his strength and power a few lines later, showing he is far from being a ‘wretch’. Joan Puzel calls the man who claims to be her father ‘Decrepit miser, base ignoble wretch’ (5.3.7), thus striving to show she is of noble blood. In 2H6, Margaret exclaims against Suffolk who refuses to resist: ‘Fie, coward woman and soft-hearted wretch!’ (3.2.307). In 3H6, Margaret expresses her contempt for her husband Henry VI by calling him ‘wretched man’ (1.1.216) and ‘timorous wretch’ (1.1.231). 450

wretch

When Coriolanus exclaims against Sicinius ‘Thou wretch, despite o’erwhelm thee’ (3.1.164), the word is obviously offensive rather than an expression of pity. Ironically, Coriolanus himself becomes a ‘wretch’, an exile, a knight errant himself later, when he is banished from Rome. Refusing to become a wretch, he turns Rome into a band of wretches by reversing the perspective in saying ‘I banish you’ (3.3.122). Lear refers to Cordelia as ‘a wretch whom nature is ashamed / Almost t’acknowledge hers’ (KL 1.1.213–14). One can see the insulting impact of a word through which Lear debases and rejects his younger daughter, but the link with its etymological root clearly appears as Cordelia becomes an exile (wrecca) indeed, banished from her father’s world. In Cym, Cloten, obsessed with rank, calls Posthumus, in absentia ‘that base wretch, / One bred of alms, and foster’d with cold dishes, / With scraps o’th’ court’ (2.3.114–16), thus detailing what the status as a wretch implies for him. When Othello calls Desdemona ‘Excellent wretch!’ (3.3.90), one can hear the word as a term of abuse or as a term of endearment. The tension within Othello’s feelings can already be felt in the use of the word, which in itself announces what follows: ‘perdition catch my soul / But I do love thee! and when I love thee not / Chaos is come again’ (3.3.90–2). The word ‘wretch’ already contains and expresses the chaos and perdition imagined by Othello.

451

452

Y yard (A) A rod. A measuring instrument. A measure of length equal to three feet or thirty-six inches. The man’s ‘yard’ is the ‘penis’. Florio (First Fruits, 1578) has ‘verga: a yard’. Thomas has ‘Virga, gæ, [. . .] A rodde, a yard, a twigge, or young branch, a streike, a whip or scourge, the yard of a man or boy [. . .]’ (B) In TS , Petruccio calls the little tailor ‘Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail’ (4.3.110): he progressively reduces the yard to the dimension of a nail, thus symbolically castrating the tailor before threatening to beat him by ironically turning his own tailor’s tool against him: ‘I shall so bemete thee with thy yard [. . .]’ (4.3.114). This suggests that once Petruccio has defeated the tailor, he will measure the inanimate body that will be lying on the floor, as in KL when Kent says to Oswald ‘if you will measure your lubber’s length again, tarry’ (1.4.89–90). The homophony of ‘mete’ (measure) and ‘meat’ makes the bawdy quibble obvious to a modern ear. In 1H4, Falstaff calls Hal ‘you tailor’s yard’ (2.4.240), meaning ‘yardstick’. Tailors were often accused of being thin and of lacking in virility. There is also a quibble on yard as ‘penis’ (see Williams and Partridge), which debunks Hal’s ‘yard’ while calling him a ‘vile standing tuck’ (2.4.241) and ‘bull’s pizzle’ (2.4.239), which creates a mixture of effeminacy and virility. While debunking Hal’s virility, Falstaff ironically seems to affirm it. The tailor in MND is called ‘Robin Starveling’ and ‘Francis Feeble’ is the woman’s tailor in 2H4 (3.2.150–1) and is described as ‘as valiant as the wrathful dove, or most magnanimous mouse’ (2H4 3.2.160–1). Feeble thus appears as feeble and yet Falstaff suggests that he has put many ‘holes’ in a ‘woman’s petticoat’ (3.2.154–6). In 1H4, the image is part of the battle of Carnival (Falstaff) and Lent (Hal), of the lean and the fat. (C) On the sexual meaning of ‘yard’ as penis, see Williams, 3, 1555–7. yea-forsooth (A) An utterance that is typical of persons who only use mild oaths, a sign of bourgeois and puritan behaviour. (B) In 2H4, Falstaff expostulates against Master Dommelton because he refuses to do him credit and calls him ‘A rascally yea-forsooth knave’ (1.2.34–6), meaning that he behaves and speaks like a puritan merchant who refuses to utter good ‘mouth-filling oaths’ (1H4 3.1.250). The lesson in swearing that Hotspur gives to his wife in 1H4 explains what Falstaff means:

453

yea-forsooth

Hotspur: [. . .] Come, Kate, I’ll have your song too. Lady Percy: Not mine, in good sooth. Hotspur: Not yours, in good sooth! Heart, you swear like a comfit-maker’s wife: ‘Not you, in good sooth,’ and ‘As true as I live!’ And ‘As God shall mend me!’ and ‘as sure as day!’ And givest such sarcenet surety for thy oaths As if thou never walk’st further than Finsbury. Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art, A good mouth-filling oath, and leave ‘in sooth’ And such protest of pepper-gingerbread To velvet-guards and Sunday-citizens. Come, sing. (1H4 3.1.241–53)

454

Z zany (A) The name of servants who act as clowns in the commedia dell’ arte. From Italian zanni, zani. The Venetian and Lombardic form of Gianni, Giovanni (John). Bullokar has ‘Zanie. A foolish imitator to a tumbler, or such like.’ A comic performer who imitates his master’s acts in a ludicrously awkward way; a clown’s or mountebank’s assistant. (B) In LLL , when Berowne realizes that Boyet has warned the Ladies about the men’s disguised approach (as ‘Muscovites’, 5.2.121), thus ‘dashing’ the men’s ‘merriment’ (5.2.461–2), he levels at the princess’s attendant: Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany, Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick That smiles his cheek in years and knows the trick To make my lady laugh when she’s disposed, Told our intents before; [. . .] (5.2.463–7) The expression means ‘a low assistant’, but it also refers to the ‘pantaloon’s rustic assistant in the commedia dell’ arte’ (Woudhuysen, LLL , 268). Boyet is here turned into the ladies’ buffoon. The image is particularly relevant in a play that cultivates masks. In TN , Malvolio, addressing Olivia in her fool’s presence, describes Feste as a ‘barren rascal’ (1.5.80) and reproaches Olivia with laughing at his jokes: ‘I protest I take these wise men that crow so at these set kind of fools no better than the fools’ zanies’ (1.5.84–5). The insult to Feste goes together with a ‘discourteous stab’ at Olivia for ‘laughing uncritically at the “barren fool” ’ (Elam, TN , 189). She becomes the fool’s ‘zany’, hence a fool herself. (C) See Blount (1656). zed (A) Name of the letter Z, the last letter of the alphabet. (B) In KL , Kent calls Oswald ‘Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter’ (2.2.62). It is part of what Marvin Rosenberg describes as the ‘comic verbal pyrotechnics of Kent’s catalogue of denigrations’ (Rosenberg, 146). This insult is hurled by Kent disguised as Caius at a menial character that the folly of Lear’s world has placed at the centre of society. Kent/Caius aims at putting Oswald back to his place, at the margin of the world, by relegating him to the margins of dictionaries. Shakespeare makes the meaning of a word that could be obscure explicit by subtitling the insult and providing 455

zed

a sort of explanatory footnote. This shows that even when it is reduced to a syllable, there is meaning behind this word. The word ‘zed’ is insulting because in the Elizabethan world, it was considered as a useless letter, that did not exist in Latin and was often replaced by S. According to Mulcaster (1582, 123), ‘Z, is a consonant much heard amongst vs, and seldom sene. I think by reason it is not so redie to the pen as s, is, which is becom lieutenant generall to z.’ Few English words start with z, as this very dictionary shows, which suggests it is a negligible letter.

456

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Index of Shakespeare’s Works

NB : the italics signal that the words do not appear as insults in the plays but that they are used to explain specific insults in other plays All’s Well That Ends Well bauble, cat, commoner, companion, cuckoo, damn(able), filthy, foul, hen, jackanapes, knave, liar, lousy, naughty, nut, patch, scurvy, strumpet, tailor, vagabond, woodcock

garment, giglot, groom, hilding, jackanapes, lout, mountaineer, murderer, nothing, pandar, pantler, Posthumus Leonatus, robber, runagate, rustic, slave, spider, strumpet, tailor, thief, thing, toad, varlet, villain, viper, wretch

Antony and Cleopatra adulterous, ass, base, Benedick, boy, cuckoo, diminutive, dog, dull, dwarfish, earth, enchanting, fly, foul, fragment, gipsy, horse (nag), infectious, Jack, kite, leprosy, liar, mechanical, morsel, nag, puppet, Ruffian, salt, saucy, scold, serpent, spell, vapour, villain, whore, witch

Hamlet adder, adulterate, arrant, bastard, bawdy, beard, beast, buzz, common, cutpurse, damned, drab, drunkard, dull, fish-monger, fly, hobby-horse, infidel, kite, knave, liver, muddy, murderer, nation, naught, Nero, nothing, nunnery, patch, peasant, pernicious, porcupine, scullion, solus, sponge, vapour, vice, whore, whoreson, woodcock

As You Like It acorn, Ajax, ape, bawd, bell-wether, boy, burr, butcher, cipher, clown, damnation/damned, dog, dull, egg, Ethiope, fool, foul, horn, lie, medlar, natural, nothing, nut, parrot, runnion, shallow, sirrah, slut, snail, stone, thing, thou, toad, Turk, tyrant, villain Comedy of Errors (The) anatomy, ass, baggage, barren, capon, coxcomb, cuckold, dotard, drone, drunkard, elm, globe, harlot, horn, horse, idiot, juggler, knave, minion, mome, parrot, patch, peasant, pernicious, Ruffian, Satan, sheep, slave, slug, snail, sot, stigmatical, thread, vapour, witch Coriolanus abhor(red), base, blockhead, boy, braggart, cat, companion, cur, dastard, disease, fox, fragment, garlic-eater, goat, goose, groat, head, hound, Hydra, infection, kite, liar, Martius, mechanical, minnow, rascal, recreant, rotten, scab, serpent, slave, thing, traitor, vassal, viper, wretch Cymbeline abhor(red), acorn, base, bauble, beggar, Benedick, capon, chicken, clotpoll, cricket, dog, drudge, earth, egregious, fool,

Julius Caesar baboon, barren, block, companion, kite, mechanical, murderer, naughty, stone, thing King Henry IV, Part 1 ab(h)ominable, Althaea’s dream, ape, apple-john, arrant, ass (anon), bacon, bare-bone, base, beast, bed, bedlam, blown (swollen), Bolingbroke, bolting-hutch, bombard, bombast, bow-case, brach, butter, candle-mine, cankered, caterpillar, chewet, chops, companion, conger, counterfeit, coward, cozener, cuckoo, cut, drunkard, eel-skin, elm, face, flea, foul, fox, fustilarian, goose, gorbellied, guts, hare, harlot, head, hen, herring, hogshead, horse, infidel, Iniquity, Jack, jester, Jew, knave, Lady, lie, liver, Lucifer, Maid Marian, Manningtree, Moorditch, muddy, naughty, neat’s tongue, nothing, otter, pagan, parrot, pate, paunch, pizzle, popinjay, pudding, quilt, rascal, rebel, rogue, Ruffian, salamander, Satan, senator, shallow, sheath, starveling, stewed, stockfish, tallow, thing, thou, trifler, tun, Turk, Vanity, vapour, varlet, Vice, wasp, whoreson, wit, woman, woolsack, yard, yea-forsooth 477

Index of Shakespeare’s Works

King Henry IV, Part 2 ab(h)ominable, Achitophel, Althaea’s dream, a(na)tomy, ape, apple-john, arrant, baboon, base, bloodhound, boar(-pig), bolting-hutch, bottle, bung, candle-mine, captain, censer, chewet, chops, common, companion, conger, cutpurse, drunkard, dunghill, elm, face, fig, filthy, foul, foutre, fustian, fustilarian, globe, Hannibal, hen, hilding, hogshead, homicide, horse (nag), hound, jester, juggler, knave, knight-errant, little, Lucifer, mandrake, Manningtree, mechanical, mouldy, muddy, nag, nothing, nut-hook, pagan, pantler, pish, pizzle, quean, rabbit, rampallian, rascal, rebel, recreant, rogue, Ruffian, scab, scullion, scurvy, shallow, stale, stewed, stockfish, swaggerer, tailor, tallow, tennis-balls, thing, Trojan, tun, Turk, varlet, Vice, villain, whoreson, wit, yard, yea-forsooth King Henry V arrant, ass, Barbason, base, bastard, bedlam, bottle, boy, braggart, counterfeit, coward, craven, Cressid, cullion, cur, cutpurse, damned, dog, drone, egregious, face, fig, flea, goat, groat, hilding, horse, hound, inhuman, jack, jester (jest), kite, leek, lousy, monster, mountain, nation, pandar, parrot, pate, peasant, pish, rascal, scald, scurvy, shallow, slave, solus, tennis-balls, traitor, Trojan, Turk, tyke, viper King Henry VI, Part 1 base, bastard, beard, bloody, child, Circe, courtesan, coward, craven, dastard, drab, dunghill, dwarf, enchantress, envy (envious), face, fiend, giglot, goose, groom, hag, homicide, hypocrite, Jack-a-Lent, miscreant, muleteer, naughty, owl, peasant, pernicious, proditor, saucy, shrimp, strumpet, tawny, wanton, witch, wolf, wretch King Henry VI, Part 2 adder, Althaea’s dream, barbarous, base, basilisk, Basimecu, bastard, beard, beggar, besonian, blood-sucker, bloody, buckram, butcher, callet, captain, caterpillar, chicken, churl, companion, crab, crooked, cullion, dastard, dirt, drone, drudge, dunghill, fig, filth, foul, groom, herring, kite, lump, mechanical, minion, monstrous, paltry, peasant, pernicious, pirate, Pool, porcupine, raven, rebellious, Ruffian, scum, serge, serpent, 478

stigmatic, swain, traitor, villain, viper, wit, woman, wretch King Henry VI, Part 3 adder, basilisk, bastard, beggar, bloody, butcher, callet, child, coward, crookback, dastard, deformity, dog, face, foul, inhuman, lump, murderer, naughty, owl, poltroon, rebel, scold, stigmatic, toad, trull, wolf, woodcock, wretch King Henry VIII cur, tallow, tawny King John anatomy, ass, bastard, bedlam, blasphemous, borrowed, boy, carrion, dunghill, eel-skin, face, groat, hare, idiot, juggling, Knob, little, lout, Lucifer, monstrous, Nero, noddy, raven, recreant, Ruffian, scold, slanderer King Lear ab(h)ominable, abhor(red), Ajax, arrant, barbarous, barber-monger, base, bastard, beard, bedlam, beggar, bitch, boarish, brach, braggart, caitiff, clotpoll, coward, cullion, cur, deformity, disease, dog, dotard, dunghill, epileptic, face, fiend, filth(y), fool, football player, fox, gall, goose, groom, hag, herring, kite, knave, liver, lubber, milksop, miscreant, mongrel, naught, nothing, O, pander, puppet, rascal, recreant, rogue, Ruffian, senator, serpent, sirrah, slave, sot, (joint-)stool, tailor, thief, toad, tyke, Vanity, varlet, vassal, villain, wagtail, whore, whoreson, wit, witch, wretch, yard, zed King Richard II base, camel, caterpillar, coward, dastard, earth, jack, Judas, lie, miscreant, pagan, parasite, Pilate, recreant, Richard, slander, traitor, Turk, viper, wit King Richard III ape, basilisk (cockatrice), bastard, beggar, Benedick, block, blood-sucker, bloody, boar, bottled, buzzard, cacodemon, caitiff, counterfeit, crookback, deformity, devil, dog, face, fiend, foul, hag, harlot, hedgehog, hell, homicide, hound, infection, Iniquity, jack, kite, little, liver, lump, milksop, owl, painted, paltry, peasant, pirate, rag, runagate, runaway, slander, slave, slug, spider, stigmatic, stone, toad, traitor, Turk, tyrant, vagabond, wit, witch

Index of Shakespeare’s Works

Love’s Labour’s Lost ab(h)ominable, ass, barren, beast, censer, cipher, consonant, coxcomb, cuckoo, dull, dunghill, egg, Ethiope, face, flap-dragon, foul, goose, head, hell, hoobyhorse, horn, Jew, Judas, minnow, monster/ monstrous, nit, O, owl, painted, pander, patch, quantity, shallow, sheep, shrimp, sirrah, stool, swain, Trojan, vassal, whoreson, wit, wittol, woodcock, zany Macbeth abhor(red), adder, butcher, chicken, cricket, cut-throat, damned, devil, dog, egg, face, fiend, filthy, goose, hag, hell, hen, hound, idiot, Jew, juggling, kite, liar, liver, patch, rampallian, runnion, traitor, tyrant, witch Measure for Measure adulterous, Baldpate, bawd, beast, beggar, burr, caitiff, dog, drab, elbow, fleshmonger, French (pox), giglot, Hannibal, hypocrite, knave, loon, morsel, naught, nothing, pate, pernicious, punk, rascal, rotten, saucy, scurvy, shallow, sheep-biting, stewed, stockfish, thief, thing, varlet Merchant of Venice (The) bankrupt, beard, bloody, carrion, cat, cuckoo, cut-throat, devil, dog, drone, drudge, head, idiot, inexecrable, infidel, inhuman(e), Jew, liver, milksop, naughty, pagan, parrot, patch, pirate, rotten, wolf Merry Wives of Windsor (The) ab(h)ominable, Amaimon, ass, baboon, baggage, Banbury cheese, Barbason, base, bell-wether, bilbo, blown, bombast, butter, carrion, cheese, chops, cornuto, cozening, cricket, cuckold, damned, devil, drunkard, dunghill, face, fig (fico), Flemish, fox, goat, guts, hag, horn, humidity, Hungarian, Jack(’nape), Jack-a-Lent, lie, Lucifer, Manningtree, mechanical, Mephostophilus, mountain, mussel-shell, nation, paunch, peasant, polecat, pudding, punk, quean, rag, rascal, rotten, runnion, Satan, scald, scum, scurvy, shallow, sirrah, slut, sot, stale, tallow, thief, Trojan, tun, Turk, urinal, varletto, wanton, witch, wittol, woolsack Midsummer Night’s Dream (A) acorn, adder, ass, barren, bead, braggart, burr, canker, cat, counterfeit, coward, cuckoo, dwarf, elm,

Ethiope, fox (vixen), garlic-eater, goose, Jew, juggler, knot-grass, little/low, maypole, mechanical, minimus, ninny, nothing, painted, patch, potion, puppet, raven, recreant, runaway, serpent, Tartar, tawny, thief, thing, tyrant, wanton Much Ado about Nothing ape, ass, bastard, beard, beast, Benedick, block, boy, braggart, canker, capon, common, coward, coxcomb, devil, dotard, dull, Ethiope, foul, harpy, hobby-horse, horse, infection, infidel, jack, jester, Jew, Lady, little, liver, milksop, naughty, orange, parrot, rotten, scab, shallow, stale, Turk, varlet, villain, wanton, wit, woodcock Othello bawd, beast, black, bombast, caitiff, callat, commoner, coxcomb, cozening, cuckold, damnation/damned, devil, dirt, dog, dolt, drunkard, dull, enchantress, face, filth, fool, foul, goat, gull, hell, hen, hobby-horse, horn, inhuman, loon, minion, minx, Moor, murderer, parrot, pernicious, pish, polecat, pudding, scurvy, senator, slanderer, slave, strumpet, thief, toad, Turk, vapour, villain, viper, whore, wolf, woodcock, wretch Pericles baboon, coistrel, drone, eel-skin, enchantress, harpy, hell, loon, pagan, Pander, patch, traitor Rape of Lucrece (The) bare-boned, bawd Romeo and Juliet baggage, bauble, bawd, beard, beast, boy, braggart, butcher, carrion, cat, churl, consort, cricket, damnation, dog, earth, Ethiope, face, fiddler (fiddlestick), fly, fool, gipsy, goose, green-sickness, herring, hilding, Lady, lie, mammet, minion, princox, raven, rebellious, scurvy, slug-a-bed, tallow, thumbbiting, toad, tortoise, Vanity, villain, whoreson, wolf Sonnets canker Taming of the Shrew (The) ass, baggage, boy, brach, buzz, buzzard, censer, coxcomb, crab, craven, (winter-)cricket, cullion, dirt, dotard, drudge, face, fellow, fiddler, fiend, filthy, flea, fool, groom, head, hilding, horse, Jack, kite, lie, 479

Index of Shakespeare’s Works

minion, monstrous, movable, nail, nit, nothing, peasant, puppet, quantity, rag, rebel, remnant, Ruffian, scold, shrew, (joint-)stool, swain, tailor, thimble, thread, wasp, whoreson, woodcock, yard Tempest (The) abhor(red), adder, beast, blasphemous, devil, disease, dull, earth, filth, fish, hag(-seed), head, jester (jesting), monkey, monster, mountaineer, natural, ninny, patch, raven, scurvy, slave, sot, stockfish, thing, tortoise, tyrant, whoreson Timon of Athens arrant, ass, baboon, beast, beggar, bitch, caitiff, chicken, churl, disease, dog, dotard, filthy, fly, fool, fragment, harlot, inexecrable, infection, jack, knave, leprosy, medlar, monster, paint, parasite, rag, rascal, rogue, salt, serpent, stone, toad, vapour, wolf Titus Andronicus adulteress, barbarous, beast, black, Cimmerian, coward, devil, dog, enchantress, fiend, foul, idiot, inhuman, minion, Moor, murderer, painted, Semiramis, tadpole, tawny, toad, trull, wasp

fragment, gall, goose, herring, horse, idiot, jester, juggling, knave, leaven, lousy, lubber, mongrel, mouldy, naughty, owl, paltry, Pandar, parrot, porcupine, rascal, rudeness, Ruffian, scab, scurvy, slanderer, stale, stool, strumpet, thing, thou, toad, toadstool, tyke, varlot, whore, whoreson, wit, wolf Twelfth Night barren, bilbo, bottle, clod-pole, coistrel, coward, coxcomb, cut, drunkard, elephant, fool, fox, fustian, gall, goose, gull, head, herring, horse, idiot, Jezebel, knave, lie, liver, lubber, minx, natural, pirate, raven, Ruffian, Satan, scab, scurvy, shallow, sheepbiter, shrew, sot, stale, stone, swaggerer, Turk, Vice, wit, woodcock, zany Two Gentlemen of Verona (The) block, counterfeit, cur, Ethiope, head, Jew, lout, lubber, minion, noddy, peasant, pish, Ruffian, sheep, whoreson Two Noble Kinsmen (The) baboon, cuckoo, minnow Venus and Adonis foul

Troilus and Cressida Ajax, Althaea’s dream, ass, bastard, batch, botchy (see batch), bitch, blockish, bowels, boy, brach, bran, broker, burr, camel, cappochia, carrion, cat, cheese, clotpole, cobloaf, core, coward, Cressid, cuckold, cur, damned, diminutive, dirt, dolt, drab, egg, elbow, elephant, envy, Ethiope, fiddler, filthy, fly, fool,

480

Winter’s Tale (The) adulteress, bastard, bawd, bed, callat, churl, cricket, crone, cuckold, dotard, earth, enchantment, hag, harlot, hen, hobby-horse, kite, Lady, liar, lout, lozel, rustic, spider, thing, traitor, tyrant, wanton, witch

Index of Shakespeare’s characters

Aaron (Tit) 27, 28, 48, 60, 104, 105, 147, 148, 155, 185, 245, 249, 291, 315, 316, 364, 373, 397 Abraham (Rom) 271, 404, 406 Achilles (TC ) 7, 42, 72, 75, 76, 88, 99, 100, 107, 116, 122, 132, 136, 152, 172, 174, 175, 194, 195, 201, 217, 239, 245, 317, 359, 402, 408, 418, 426, 442 Adam (AYL ) 154 Adriana (CE ) 30, 131, 173, 223, 236, 263, 286, 324, 351, 380, 385 Aeneas (TC ) 177, 288 Agamemnon (TC ) 41, 71, 116, 194, 359 Ajax (TC ) 7, 8, 17, 19, 41, 59, 63, 71, 72, 78, 88, 89, 99, 107, 109, 116, 117, 122, 136, 152, 172, 174, 189, 194, 205, 217, 339, 245, 268, 277, 288, 313, 317, 331, 350, 358, 359, 364, 388, 399, 400, 408, 439, 441, 442, 443, 447 Alarbus (Tit) 28 Albany (KL ) 28, 40, 146, 185, 188, 274, 285, 368 Alcibiades (Tim) 50, 86, 160, 356, 378 Alençon (Duke of, 1H6) 296 Alexander (TC ) 8, 88, 172, 388 Alonso (Tem) 290 Amiens (AYL ) 193 Angelo (MM ) 6, 49, 85, 86, 172, 192, 244, 325, 335, 386, 399, 425 Antigonus (WT ) 88, 129, 160, 219, 229, 268, 276 Antipholus of Ephesus (CE ) 10, 17, 18, 24, 159, 163, 223, 260, 263, 286, 325, 357, 371, 403, 444 Antipholus of Syracuse (CE ) 17, 260, 263, 357 Antonio (MA ) 11, 73, 77, 159, 253, 285 Antonio (MV ) 26, 27, 48, 95, 139, 149, 157, 256, 257, 303, 320, 327, 349, 447 Antonio (Tem) 61, 438 Antonio (TN ) 327 Antony (AC ) 6, 57, 74, 134, 151, 174, 198, 201, 209, 246, 262, 292, 293, 351, 356, 358, 361, 368, 381, 431, 437, 438, 444

Antony (JC ) 21, 30 Apemantus (Tim) 19, 21, 50, 51, 55, 59, 86, 100, 101, 104, 155, 189, 196, 197, 246, 248, 265, 269, 283, 284, 316, 317, 339, 348, 387, 408 Archbishop of Canterbury (H5) 162 Archbishop of York (2H4) 344 Ariel (Tem) 166, 169, 188, 254, 289, 305, 322, 377, 380, 400, 409 Armado (LLL ) 1, 19, 105, 106, 115, 164, 167, 171, 190, 234, 236, 286, 306, 337, 370, 372, 374, 392, 427, 446 Arragon (Prince of, MV ) 224, 225, 245 Arthur (KJ ) 69, 375 Audrey (AYL ) 198, 378, 401 Aufidius (Cor) 2, 3, 74, 75, 77, 113, 137, 144, 241, 272, 281, 349, 368, 376, 401, 412 Aumerle (Duke of, Earl of Rutland, R2) 432 Austria (Limoges, Duke of, KJ ) 15, 221, 225, 273, 276, 344, 345, 351 Autolycus (WT ) 354 Bagot (R2) 98 Baptista (TS ) 159, 232, 361, 383 Bardolph/Bardoll (1H4, 2H4, H5 and MW ) 9, 26, 67, 172, 180, 181, 233, 277, 337, 339, 448 Bassanio (MV ) 149, 163, 249, 256, 274, 285, 349 Basset (1H6) 175, 287, 288 Bassianus (Tit) 5, 6, 60, 104, 105, 291 Bastard of Orleans (1H6) 39 Bawd (Per) 142, 170 Beatrice (MA ) 47, 50, 56, 57, 62, 63, 122, 147, 164, 165, 176, 199, 223, 224, 239, 247, 254, 267, 273, 311, 320, 441 Bedford (Duke of, 1H6) 143 Belarius (Cym) 294, 352 Benedick (MA ) xix, 11, 40, 46, 50, 56, 57, 63, 73, 77, 91, 92, 122, 153, 164, 165, 199, 223, 224, 234, 239, 247, 254, 256, 267, 268, 273, 320, 370, 429, 441, 449 481

Index of Shakespeare’s characters

Berowne (LLL ) 18, 19, 49, 123, 179, 181, 198, 225, 226, 259, 316, 439, 440, 449, 455 Bertram (AW ) 96, 97, 111, 112, 141, 310, 322, 394 Bianca (Oth) 87, 233, 287, 330, 389, 437 Bianca (TS ) 135, 184, 232, 286, 308, 344, 449 Bigot (Lord, KJ ) 166 Biondello (TS ) 159 Blanche (KJ ) 15 Boatswain (Tem) 61, 62, 438 Bolingbroke (Henry, Earl of Derby, R2) 98, 122, 144, 259, 271, 287, 345, 346, 376, 380, 411 Bolt (Per) 110, 142, 170, 228, 275 Borachio (MA ) 11, 303, 359, 370, 383 Bottom (MND ) 16, 20, 30, 133, 173, 206, 212, 257, 305, 306, 307, 322, 419 Boyet (LLL ) 18, 49, 109, 179, 225, 259, 314, 318, 394, 455 Brabantio (Oth) 59, 142, 174, 198, 228, 291, 315, 265, 399, 430 Brutus (Cor) 89, 247 Brutus (JC ) 113, 296 Buckingham (Duke of, H8) 137 Buckingham (Duke of, R3) 62, 130, 148, 155, 156, 182, 227, 251, 252, 386 Bullcalf (Peter, 2H4) 293, 439 Burgundy (1H6) 107, 119, 126, 184, 324, 443 Bushy (R2) 98, 159 Cade (Jack, 2H6) 34, 37, 78, 79, 98, 113, 143, 144, 162, 166, 188, 216, 231, 290, 324, 343, 365, 410, 429 Caesar (Julius, JC ) 21, 296 Caesar (Octavius, AC ) 19, 74, 76, 201, 293, 336, 351, 438 Caius (Doctor, MW ) 252, 363, 380, 383, 399, 421, 422 Caliban (Tem) 2, 5, 49, 151, 153, 166, 169, 170, 188, 189, 190, 219, 226, 254, 289, 290, 291, 302, 305, 322, 364, 377, 380, 381, 400, 409, 420 Camillo (WT ) 44, 233, 276, 413 Caphis (Tim) 196, 197 Capulet (Rom) 24, 73, 94, 182, 195, 213, 214, 232, 267, 279, 286, 333, 396, 424, 440 Capulet’s wife (Rom) 214, 232 Carlisle (Bishop of, R2) 315, 417 Cassandra (TC ) 9 Cassio (Oth) 87, 149, 163, 182, 202, 233, 287, 320, 330, 334, 389, 390, 417, 430, 437, 447 482

Cassius (JC ) 113 Celia (AYL ) 4, 80, 165, 301, 302, 309 Chamberlain (1H4) 295 Charles the Dolphin (1H6) 119, 143, 174 Charmian (AC ) 19 Chatillon (KJ ) 69 Chiron (Tit) 5, 28, 60, 120, 249, 315, 371, 414, 435 Citizens (Cor) 63, 137, 201, 206, 212, 225, 247, 283, 342, 359 Clarence (George of, 3H6) 361 Claudio (MA ) 11, 46, 56, 73, 77, 91, 92, 112, 122, 159, 176, 199, 234, 247, 253, 254, 268, 285, 311, 312, 325, 349, 383, 429, 434, 449 Claudio (MM ) 49 Claudius (Ham) 6, 45, 48, 138, 139, 142, 163, 262, 307, 322, 428 Cleon (Per) 224 Cleopatra (AC ) 6, 19, 35, 57, 76, 151, 154, 165, 168, 174, 192, 198, 201, 209, 240, 246, 262, 270, 283, 292, 293, 299, 336, 351, 356, 358, 361, 368, 381, 437, 438, 444 Clifford (Old, 2H6) 129, 198, 278, 410 Clifford (Young, 2H6) 198, 385 Cloten (Cym) 32, 33, 55, 92, 107, 108, 153, 154, 195, 201, 206, 207, 216, 232, 247, 253, 294, 308, 318, 319, 346, 347, 352, 353, 354, 377, 382, 395, 399, 408, 426, 431, 439, 451 Clown (WT ) 354 Cobweb (MND ) 90 Conrade (MA ) 11, 16, 123, 303, 359, 426 Constance (KJ ) 10, 15, 38, 53, 95, 221, 273, 289, 344, 345, 361, 375 Cordelia (KL ) 28, 153, 154, 159, 200, 205, 303, 308, 386, 451 Corin (AYL ) 45, 56, 108, 142, 143, 171, 370 Coriolanus (Caius Martius, Cor) 2, 3, 74, 75, 77, 89, 113, 137, 144, 205, 210, 211, 212, 215, 225, 241, 243, 248, 261, 262, 272, 281, 282, 283, 287, 345, 349, 359, 368, 376, 400, 401, 412, 413, 427, 432, 51 Cornwall (KL ) 8, 30, 77, 166, 181, 189, 200, 264, 376, 433 Costard (LLL ) 109, 115, 123, 167, 171, 190, 198, 225, 257, 286, 305, 314, 370, 374, 388, 392, 422, 427, 439, 440 Countess of Auvergne (1H6) 101, 102, 167, 373, 374, 450 Courtesan (CE ) 357, 444

Index of Shakespeare’s characters

Cressida (TC ) 78, 80, 90, 91, 127, 128, 152, 158, 161, 171, 260, 304, 317, 318, 332, 390, 438 Curtis (TS ) 183, 193, 361 Cymbeline (Cym) 32, 55, 352, 400 Dame Mortimer (1H4) 67 Dauphin (2H6) 37 Demetrius (MND ) 4, 5, 77, 121, 122, 211, 306, 333, 344, 352, 366 Demetrius (Tit) 5, 60, 120, 147, 155, 185, 249, 286, 315, 370, 393, 414, 435 Desdemona (Oth) 44, 87, 88, 111, 142, 149, 150, 152, 165, 174, 182, 188, 195, 198, 211, 227, 228, 229, 286, 287, 315, 328, 334, 375, 389, 390, 399, 436, 437, 438, 447, 451 Diana (AW ) 111, 112, 253 Dick the Butcher (2H6) 81, 231 Diomedes (TC ) 95, 127 Dionyza (Per) 224 Dogberry (MA ) 11, 16, 17, 75, 123, 303, 369, 370, 426 Doll Tearsheet (2H4) 1, 11, 12, 22, 66, 67, 69, 70, 79, 80, 88, 93, 94, 98, 103, 112, 113, 114, 127, 128, 138, 182, 187, 189, 198, 202, 209, 233, 234, 235, 240, 241, 260, 262, 265, 266, 274, 281, 282, 293, 295, 299, 310, 318, 319, 320, 341, 347, 363, 383, 384, 391, 400, 416, 431, 439, 440, 441 Dommelton (Master, 2H4) 3, 323, 439, 453 Don John (MA ) 40, 90, 383 Don Pedro (MA ) 11, 46, 57, 73, 77, 92, 112, 165, 223, 234, 253, 254, 273, 285, 311, 383, 441, 449 Dromio of Ephesus (CE ) 17, 18, 91, 123, 131, 163, 223, 236, 239, 240, 245, 263, 288, 321, 324, 357 Dromio of Syracuse (CE ) 17, 91, 123, 161, 209, 239, 240, 245, 288, 321, 357, 371, 377, 378, 379, 380 Duchess of York (R3) 36, 37, 227, 408 Dull (Anthony, LLL ) 30, 31, 50, 164, 289, 321, 322, 369 Dumaine (LLL ) 18, 123, 177, 179, 259 Edgar (KL ) 1, 2, 8, 39, 41, 53, 55, 76, 136, 166, 185, 189, 288, 408, 430, 431 Edmund (KL ) 2, 33, 35, 39, 40, 41, 53, 60, 188, 200, 262, 317, 408, 430, 431, 437, 439 Edward (Earl of March, 3H6) 54, 87

Elbow (MM ) 43, 85, 171, 172, 222, 303, 369, 425 Eleanor (2H6) 87, 286 Eleanor (Queen, KJ ) 38, 53, 69, 289, 361, 375 Elizabeth (Queen, R3) 70, 86, 148, 198, 316, 327, 381, 382, 408 Emilia (Oth) 87, 88, 111, 123, 124, 142, 149, 152, 158, 165, 188, 198, 217, 228, 296, 325, 363, 389, 436, 437 Emilia (WT ) 44 Enobarbus (AC ) 165, 170, 201, 431 Escalus (MM ) 43, 85, 208, 425 Escalus (Prince, Rom) 343 Evans (Sir Hugh, MW ) 82, 99, 210, 252, 294, 330, 360, 363, 421, 422, 444 Exeter (Duke of, H5) 397 Fabian (TN ) 449 Falstaff (1H4, 2H4 and MW ) xix, 1, 3, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 22, 23, 24, 26, 30, 32, 34, 35, 48, 51, 52, 53, 56, 58, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 81, 82, 89, 98, 99, 100, 103, 113, 114, 117, 121, 124, 131, 132, 134, 138, 142, 163, 166, 167, 170, 172, 173, 180, 181, 191, 198, 199, 200, 203, 209, 210, 212, 213, 217, 220, 221, 222, 226, 229, 230, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 241, 242, 249, 252, 253, 254, 256, 263, 271, 272, 274, 277, 279, 280, 281, 282, 284, 292, 293, 295, 297, 303, 304, 307, 312, 313, 318, 319, 320, 322, 323, 324, 328, 329, 330, 334, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 347, 348, 349, 350, 351, 353, 355, 357, 358, 359, 362, 363, 369, 370, 384, 385, 386, 391, 393, 395, 396, 400, 402, 414, 415, 416, 417, 424, 426, 427, 428, 431, 434, 439, 440, 441, 444 Fang (2H4) 326 Fastolfe (Sir John, 1H6) 120, 126, 143 Feeble (Francis, 2H4) 293, 393, 453 Ferdinand (King of Navarre, LLL ) 177, 286, 370, 392, 414, 427 Ferdinand (Tem) 400 Feste (TN ) 31, 32, 224, 231, 232, 263, 277, 302, 358, 381, 386, 415, 428, 449, 455 Fitzwater (Lord, R2) 271 Flaminius (Tim) 153 Flavius (JC ) 63, 282, 303 Flavius (Tim) 155 Florizel (WT ) 104, 174, 445 Fluellen (Captain, H5) 14, 20, 53, 118, 127, 135, 181, 186, 187, 210, 215, 253, 268, 269, 275, 294, 300, 301, 341, 360, 363, 379, 412, 414 483

Index of Shakespeare’s characters

Gadshill (1H4) 22, 103, 121, 295, 347, 384 Gardener (R2) 169 Gaunt (John of, Duke of Lancaster R2) 98, 440 Gertrude (Ham) 6, 38, 112, 138, 322, 325 Ghost (Ham) 6, 14, 45, 48, 142 Gloucester (Duchess of, R2) 345 Gloucester (Duke of, 1H6) 38, 47, 166, 182, 211, 215, 244, 324, 325, 333, 358, 396, 433, 447 Gloucester (Humphrey, Duke of, 2H6) 36, 64, 81, 87, 161, 215, 325, 343, 367 Gloucester (KL ) 1, 2, 30, 39, 41, 47, 55, 166, 189, 200, 288, 303, 430, 431, 439 Gloucester (Richard, 3H6) 81, 102, 144, 145, 361 Goneril (KL ) 28, 29, 40, 47, 66, 76, 146, 153, 159, 185, 188, 205, 262, 274, 285, 317, 336, 368, 387, 388, 424 Gonzalo (Tem) 61, 294 Gower (Captain, H5) 14, 20, 69, 117, 121, 138, 187, 269, 300, 301, 360 Gower (Per) 162 Gratiano (MV ) 65, 246, 248, 447 Green (R2) 259 Gregory (Rom) 231, 271, 404, 406 Gremio (TS ) 17, 184, 361, 449 Grey (Lord, R3) 64 Grumio (TS ) 17, 152, 162, 182, 183, 193, 240, 272, 323, 361, 392, 400, 449 Guiderius (Cym) 107, 108, 207, 294, 346, 347, 353, 354, 377, 382, 395, 399, 408, 426 Guildenstern (Ham) 307

209, 217, 221, 222, 226, 235, 238, 249, 252, 254, 263, 271, 274, 281, 292, 303, 304, 312, 313, 318, 319, 320, 322, 323, 328, 334, 338, 340, 341, 347, 350, 351, 357, 369, 370, 384, 385, 386, 395, 396, 397, 398, 402, 414, 424, 426, 427, 428, 439, 440, 450, 453 Hamlet (Ham) 5, 6, 14, 30, 45, 47, 51, 65, 82, 83, 112, 138, 139, 142, 161, 163, 165, 182, 190, 193, 234, 254, 262, 263, 274, 295, 301, 303, 305, 307, 308, 309, 322, 324, 325, 341, 362, 380, 382, 383, 425, 428, 449 Hastings (Lord, 2H4) 369 Hastings (William, Lord, R3) 62, 65, 84, 131, 262, 377, 378, 410 Hector (TC ) 75, 95, 117, 151, 177, 189, 263, 288, 341, 359, 364, 314, 421, 442 Helena (AW ) 112, 272 Helena (MND ) 46, 90, 97, 118, 168, 176, 200, 260, 266, 273, 282, 285, 316, 333, 335, 342, 398 Hermia (MND ) 4, 5, 45, 46, 80, 90, 97, 118, 167, 168, 176, 177, 200, 260, 266, 273, 282, 285, 316, 333, 335, 336, 342, 343, 352, 366, 369, 396, 397, 398, 400 Hermione (WT ) 6, 7, 38, 44, 52, 88, 129, 219, 229, 413, 434 Hero (MA ) 56, 62, 112, 267, 268, 311, 312, 349, 383, 434 Holofernes (LLL ) 1, 18, 19, 30, 31, 98, 106, 114, 115, 164, 171, 179, 190, 225, 226, 236, 258, 259, 289, 321, 337, 371, 372, 373, 374, 446 Horatio (Ham) 14, 193, 263 Horner (2H6) 166, 186, 282 Hortensio (TS ) 19, 135, 183, 184, 251, 383 Host of the Garter Inn (MW ) 19, 284, 297, 360, 383, 421, 422, 426 Hostess Quickly/ Mistress Quickly (MW ) xix, 10, 11, 14, 48, 64, 93, 95, 128, 172, 198, 199, 203, 222, 229, 234, 235, 263, 266, 279, 312, 313, 328, 330, 334, 337, 340, 347, 362, 384, 391, 395, 401, 445, 448 Hotspur (Henry Percy, 1H4) 12, 53, 67, 76, 90, 125, 180, 211, 226, 239, 248, 285, 315, 320, 331, 343, 347, 365, 369, 413, 435, 453, 454

Haberdasher (TS ) 188 Hal (Prince Henry, 1H4 and 2H4) xix, 1, 12, 14, 23, 30, 51, 52, 53, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 89, 100, 113, 114, 121, 134, 138, 170, 172, 173,

Iachimo (Cym) 163, 332, 400 Iago (Oth) 22, 59, 68, 87, 88, 111, 123, 124, 125, 141, 142, 144, 150, 151, 152, 156, 158, 163, 165, 188, 195, 211, 217, 225, 228, 229,

Flute (Francis, MND ) 257, 305 Fool (KL ) 14, 76, 195, 196, 200, 205, 263, 308, 311, 374, 387, 388, 443 Fool (Tim) 100, 101, 196, 197 Ford (Frank, MW ) 1, 10, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 56, 81, 95, 117, 124, 131, 132, 142, 147, 181, 191, 200, 210, 220, 236, 237, 238, 271, 277, 282, 284, 301, 323, 324, 330, 334, 338, 339, 341, 348, 349, 353, 357, 415, 444, 446 Francis (1H4) 13, 19, 320, 322, 347 Friar Laurence (Rom) 73 Friar Peter (MM ) 363

484

Index of Shakespeare’s characters

237, 249, 275, 287, 328, 334, 363, 365, 375, 376, 389, 390, 399, 417, 430, 432, 436, 437, 447, 450 Imogen (Cym) 32, 33, 42, 55, 195, 206, 207, 216, 232, 294, 296, 308, 318, 319, 332, 390, 400, 432 Iras (AC ) 283, 336 Isabella (MM ) 6, 49, 86, 192, 208, 244, 325, 399, 401 Jailer (TNK ) 287 Jaques (AYL ) 8, 106, 193, 270 Jessica (MV ) 94, 256, 257, 315 Jeweller (Tim) 265 Joan Puzel (1H6) 32, 64, 106, 107, 119, 160, 174, 184, 208, 119, 235, 287, 288, 323, 388, 443, 444, 450 Julia (TGV ) 176, 286 Juliet (Rom) 24, 44, 94, 104, 141, 143, 169, 176, 182, 185, 195, 213, 214, 230, 232, 271, 279, 280, 286, 342, 378, 396, 419, 448 Kate (1H4) 211, 320, 413, 454 Katherina (Kate, TS ) 18, 24, 82, 83, 97, 99, 122, 123, 125, 126, 152, 162, 183, 184, 188, 190, 215, 232, 240, 251, 262, 286, 294, 295, 299, 308, 323, 335, 344, 351, 361, 373, 383, 387, 392, 403, 434, 435 Katherine (LLL ) 49, 311 Kent (KL ) 7, 29, 32, 55, 59, 77, 120, 135, 136, 137, 153, 175, 181, 182, 188, 189, 196, 197, 212, 213, 216, 264, 274, 277, 288, 290, 317, 336, 341, 345, 348, 351, 374, 376, 377, 393, 394, 424, 426, 427, 433, 439, 453, 455 King Edward IV (3H6) 351, 361 King Henry the Fifth (2H4 and H5) 126, 127, 173, 199, 249, 253, 255, 268, 289, 307, 369, 397, 398, 412 King Henry the Fourth (1H4 and 2H4) 51, 65, 67, 100, 173, 222, 249, 254, 281, 303, 331, 343, 344, 350, 351, 357, 365, 424, 426, 427, 428, 439 King Henry the Sixth (1H6, 2H6 and 3H6) 36, 54, 64, 79, 120, 145, 227, 278, 305, 325, 330, 331, 333, 343, 367, 368, 410 King John (KJ ) 53, 61, 69, 245, 260, 361 King Lear (KL ) xxi, 28, 87, 107, 136, 153, 154, 155, 159, 166, 181, 185, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 205, 216, 219, 228, 262, 263, 288, 303, 308, 311, 325, 336, 341, 345, 365, 368, 374,

377, 380, 386, 388, 400, 418, 426, 427, 439, 443, 451, 455 King Philip of France (KJ ) 53, 61, 69, 276, 361 King Richard II (R2) 5, 33, 34, 89, 90, 144, 169, 253, 254, 346, 375, 411, 412, 432, 440 King Richard III (Gloucester, R3) 36, 37, 39, 49, 54, 55, 62, 66, 70, 85, 130, 131, 145, 146, 148, 155, 256, 182, 184, 185, 219, 223, 226, 227, 235, 241, 247, 250, 251, 252, 273, 278, 285, 313, 317, 324, 327, 339, 351, 352, 363, 374, 375, 376, 378, 381, 382, 385, 386, 407, 408, 410, 411, 417, 418, 423, 431, 440, 444 Lady Anne (R3) 37, 49, 66, 146, 148, 184, 185, 198, 226, 227, 235, 247, 278, 382, 407 Lady Macbeth (Mac) 142, 185 Lady Macduff (Mac) 410 Lady Percy (1H4) 12, 76, 211, 454 Laertes (Ham) 38, 450 Lafew (AW ) 96, 97, 112, 113, 189, 230, 264, 265, 303, 310, 363, 364, 394, 417, 423 Lancaster (King John of, 2H4) 344, 369 Lancaster (Lord John of, 1H4) 344, 369 Lance (TGV ) 62, 126, 135, 136, 225, 255, 276, 277, 323, 328, 438 Lancelet (Clown, MV ) 148, 149, 162, 246, 315, 320, 322 Lavatch (a Clown, AW ) 42, 96, 97, 133, 199, 265 Lavinia (Tit) 5, 6, 27, 48, 60, 286, 291, 296, 364, 414, 435 Le Fer (Monsieur, a French soldier, H5) 210, 324 Leonato (MA ) 46, 47, 73, 176, 234, 303, 311, 349 Leontes (WT ) 7, 38, 52, 88, 129, 132, 160, 219, 222, 229, 233, 268, 272, 276, 382, 401, 413, 419, 420, 434, 445 Lepidus (JC ) 30 Lewis (the Daupin, KJ ) 53, 74, 276, 304 Lieutenant (2H6) 92, 152, 162, 215, 216, 329, 392 Lodovico (Oth) 142, 156, 228, 432 Longaville (LLL ) 179, 392 Lord Saye (2H6) 78, 79, 188, 365 Lorenzo (MV ) 320 Louis the Dauphin (H5) 240, 255, 369, 397, 398 Luce (CE ) 24, 286 Lucentio (TS ) 17, 19, 135, 159, 183, 184, 449 Lucetta (TGV ) 286 Luciana (CE ) 17, 161, 377, 378, 380 485

Index of Shakespeare’s characters

Lucio (MM ) 25, 26, 44, 55, 80, 154, 192, 201, 202, 264, 284, 293, 307, 323, 326, 334, 335, 342, 349, 358, 363, 372, 386, 401 Lucius (Tim) 50, 51 Lucius (Tit) 27, 48, 147, 148, 155, 185, 245 Luculllus (Tim) 153 Lysander (MND ) 4, 45, 46, 77, 80, 97, 118, 121, 167, 176, 177, 211, 266, 273, 285, 306, 307, 333, 335, 342, 343, 344, 352, 366, 396, 397, 399, 400 Lysimachus (Per) 142 Macbeth (Mac) 2, 81, 100, 121, 137, 139, 150, 155, 158, 171, 181, 182, 185, 189, 212, 218, 228, 241, 260, 261, 272, 274, 275, 322, 419, 431 Macduff (Mac) 100, 150, 171, 228, 229, 261, 419, 431 Macmorris (Captain, H5) 269, 300 Maecenas (AC ) 6 Malcolm (Mac) 81, 150, 185, 228, 419 Malvolio (TN ) 31, 32, 138, 194, 217, 245, 258, 287, 359, 370, 372, 373, 386, 449, 455 Mamillius (WT ) 129, 434 Marcus Andronicus (Tit) 291 Margaret (MA ) 56 Margaret (Queen, 2H6) 28, 54, 64, 81, 87, 135, 216, 343, 448, 450 Margaret (Queen, 3H6) 5, 54, 81, 87, 120, 129, 130, 182, 249, 296, 305, 361, 385, 407, 414, 444, 447, 450 Margaret (Queen, R3) 65, 66, 70, 85, 86, 130, 148, 155, 156, 182, 185, 198, 219, 226, 227, 241, 278, 316, 327, 339, 375, 376, 381, 382, 408, 418, 444 Margareton (TC ) 40 Maria (LLL ) 198, 314, 318 Maria (TN ) 31, 110, 138, 194, 217, 245, 263, 287, 302, 373 Mariana (AW ) 189 Mariana (MM ) 6, 192, 208, 307, 325, 334, 335 Marina (Per) 21, 110, 142 Mayor (R3) 417 Menelaus (TC ) 96, 132, 231, 407 Menenius (Cor) 113, 205, 206, 247, 248, 272, 342, 359, 412 Merchant (Tim) 265 Merchant (TS ) 159 486

Mercutio (Rom) 42, 44, 47, 77, 81, 96, 115, 116, 128, 141, 154, 184, 193, 209, 213, 230, 232, 271, 284, 310, 363, 405, 429 Miranda (Tem), 49, 151, 190, 291, 400 Mistress Ford (Alice, MW ) 82, 124, 237, 241, 242, 253, 415, 416, 434, 444 Mistress Page (MW ) 163, 167, 191, 217, 241, 253, 323, 334, 341, 415, 416, 426 Montano (Oth) 142 Mortimer (Lord Edmund, 1H4) 67 Mote (MND ) 90 Moth (LLL ) 105, 106, 114, 115, 171, 190, 234, 236, 257, 305, 306, 337, 371, 372, 374, 392, 440, 446 Mouldy (Ralph, 2H4) 293, 294 Mowbray (Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, R2) 122, 144, 271, 287, 288, 345, 371, 376, 380, 411 Murellus (JC ) 63, 386 Mustardseed (MND ) 90 Nathaniel (LLL ) 30, 31, 164, 321, 322, 374, 388 Nestor (TC ) 8, 100, 152, 205, 239, 317, 375, 384, 408, 443 Nim (MW ) 22, 26, 284 Northumberland (Earl of, 3H6) 249 Northumberland (Henry Percy, Earl of, 1H4) 345 Northumberland (Henry Percy, Earl of, R2) 33, 34, 346 Nurse (Rom) 44, 141, 185, 195, 267, 363, 378, 407 Nurse (Tit) 60, 147 Nym (H5) 29, 77, 127, 135, 142, 157, 158, 171, 241, 243, 328, 379, 418, 432 Oberon (MND ) 434 Octavia (AC ) 6, 165, 168, 246 Oliver (AYL ) 72, 106, 154, 430 Olivia (TN ) 31, 217, 231, 258, 271, 343, 351, 386, 455 Ophelia (Ham) 14, 190, 214, 303, 307, 308, 309, 449, 450 Orlando (AYL ) 4, 72, 73, 106, 165, 283, 309, 320, 379, 430 Orleans (Duke of, 1H6) 191 Orsino (TN ) 327, 343 Osric (Ham) 193, 450 Oswald (KL ) xxi, 8, 29, 32, 55, 59, 77, 107, 120, 135, 136, 159, 166, 175, 181, 189, 197, 212, 213, 216, 264, 274, 277, 288, 290, 317,

Index of Shakespeare’s characters

336, 341, 348, 351, 365, 374, 376, 377, 380, 393, 394, 426, 433, 439, 453, 455 Othello (Oth) 44, 49, 59, 68, 87, 111, 123, 125, 142, 149, 150, 152, 158, 163, 165, 175, 182, 188, 195, 198, 211, 217, 225, 227, 228, 237, 286, 287, 291, 292, 296, 315, 325, 328, 376, 389, 390, 399, 407, 417, 430, 436, 437, 438, 447, 451 Overdone (Mistress, MM ) 43, 293 Oxford (Earl of, R3) 235 Page (2H4) 9, 12, 203, 280, 339, 340, 362, 439 Page (George, MW ) 167, 217, 237, 323, 334 Page (Tim) 155 Painter (Tim) 59, 155, 189, 265, 316, 317, 342 Pandarus (TC ) 17, 78, 80, 88, 90, 91, 152, 158, 171, 211, 304, 317, 414, 439 Pander (Per) 142, 170 Paris (Rom) 24, 73, 94, 141, 279, 286 Paris (TC ) 9, 95, 152 Parolles (AW ) 96, 97, 113, 141, 189, 230, 253, 264, 265, 272, 303, 310, 363, 394, 423, 449 Patroclus (TC ) 75, 76, 107, 132, 136, 142, 151, 152, 171, 174, 192, 194, 195, 205, 321, 341, 402, 426, 439 Paulina (WT ) 44, 88, 129, 160, 219, 229, 268, 419, 420, 445 Peaseblossom (MND ) 90 Perdita (WT ) 104, 174, 229, 276, 445 Pericles (Per) 413, 432 Peter (Rom) 45 Peter Thumb (2H6) 166, 186, 282 Peto (1H4) 52, 347 Petruccio (TS ) 18, 24, 82, 83, 99, 122, 123, 125, 126, 128, 129, 152, 162, 182, 188, 189, 190, 191, 215, 225, 240, 262, 272, 289, 294, 295, 299, 305, 323, 335, 337, 339, 346, 351, 361, 387, 392, 393, 400, 403, 434, 435, 439, 449, 453 Philip (of Faulconbridge, the Bastard, KJ ) 15, 38, 53, 214, 221, 266 Philo (AC ) 209 Phoebe (AYL ) 81, 177, 417, 419 Phrynia (Tim) 223, 317, 356, 378 Pinch (Doctor, CE ) 10, 159, 260, 325, 403 Pisanio (Cym) 42, 207, 318, 332, 390 Pistol (1H4, 2H4, H5 and MW ) 14, 22, 29, 34, 35, 53, 58, 69, 70, 77, 79, 80, 93, 113, 117, 118, 121, 127, 128, 129, 135, 136, 138, 142,

157, 158, 166, 167, 171, 182, 186, 187, 189, 198, 199, 201, 202, 203, 210, 215, 217, 220, 233, 236, 240, 241, 242, 243, 260, 262, 268, 269, 275, 282, 284, 286, 293, 294, 297, 299, 300, 301, 324, 328, 329, 334, 339, 341, 345, 347, 348, 360, 363, 377, 378, 379, 383, 384, 391, 414, 415, 416, 418, 426, 432 Poet (Tim) 342 Poins (2H4) 22, 112, 114, 172, 173, 209, 318, 319, 398, 440, 441 Poins (Edward, Ned, 1H4) 14, 19, 68, 103, 121, 323, 347 Polixenes (WT ) 52, 104, 174, 222, 434, 445 Polonius (Ham) 82, 83, 161, 190, 214, 449 Pompey (AC ) 134, 201, 293, 356, 438 Pompey (JC ) 63, 386 Pompey Bum (MM ) 43, 44, 85, 154, 161, 172, 192, 220, 221, 392, 425 Posthumus Leonatus (Cym) 2, 32, 33, 42, 55, 57, 100, 163, 170, 171, 206, 207, 216, 232, 294, 296, 318, 319, 332, 377, 390, 395, 400, 431, 451 Prince Edward (3H6) 64, 65, 81, 103, 130, 361 Prince Edward (R3) 377 Princess of France (LLL ) 259, 311, 455 Prospero (Tem) 2, 49, 151, 153, 166, 169, 170, 188, 190, 219, 305, 377, 380, 381, 400, 409, 420 Proteus (TGV ) 117, 135, 176, 276, 277, 306, 323, 350, 371, 438 Puck (MND ) 30, 77, 80, 121, 122, 212, 260, 282, 322, 333, 336, 342, 344, 352, 396, 399 Queen (Cym) 206, 208 Queen Isabel (R2) 169, 319 Quince (Peter, MND ) 206, 305 Rambures (Lord, H5) 191 Ratcliffe (Sir Richard, R3) 64 Regan (KL ) 28, 30, 76, 159, 189, 200, 205, 264, 303, 311 Richard (of York, 2H6) 64, 98, 129, 166, 198, 282, 290, 327, 343, 410, 432 Richard of Gloucester (2H6) 278, 385 Richard of Gloucester (3H6) 37, 41, 54, 65, 81, 102, 103, 129, 130, 144, 145, 156, 278, 361, 385 Richmond (R3) 65, 66, 156, 198, 226, 235, 285, 317, 351, 352, 363, 378, 386, 418 487

Index of Shakespeare’s characters

Rivers (Lord, R3) 64 Robert Faulconbridge (KJ ) 38, 170, 180, 214, 266 Robin (MW ) 253 Roderigo (Oth) 22, 141, 156, 249, 334, 450 Romeo (Rom) 44, 73, 94, 104, 115, 116, 141, 154, 169, 176, 184, 185, 187, 213, 230, 271, 279, 333, 342, 405, 409, 419, 429, 448 Rosalind (AYL ) 4, 11, 80, 108, 165, 177, 283, 301, 302, 309, 320, 379, 417, 419 Rosaline (LLL ) 311 Rosencrantz (Ham) 382, 383 Rugby (John, MW ) 252, 399 Salanio (MV ) 94, 320 Salarino (MV ) 94 Salisbury (2H6) 351, 367, 368 Samson (Rom) 231, 271, 403, 404, 406 Scarus (AC ) 240, 270, 299 Schoolmaster (TNK ) 21 Scroop (Henry, Lord Scroop of Masham, H5) 249 Scroop (Sir Stephen, R2) 259 Sebastian (Tem) 61 Seleucus (AC ) 35, 154 Servant (Mac) 212, 274, 275 Servants (Tim) 19, 100, 101, 196 Servilius (Tim) 50 Shadow (Simon, 2H4) 180, 293 Shallow (Robert, 2H4 and MW ) 13, 19, 58, 167, 170, 199, 280, 293, 359, 369, 370, 386, 428 Shepherd (1H6) 32, 119, 160, 323 Shepherd (WT ) 104, 354 Shylock (the Jew, MV ) 26, 27, 48, 65, 94, 95, 96, 139, 149, 157, 162, 246, 248, 249, 256, 257, 303, 315, 322, 327, 349, 447, 448 Sicinius (Cor) 200, 210, 243, 247, 287, 349, 400, 412, 432, 451 Silence (Justice, 2H4) 167, 345, 369 Silvia (TGV ) 117, 135, 136, 176, 350 Silvius (AYL ) 81, 419 Simonides (Per) 413 Simple (Peter, MW ) 252, 297 Sir Andrew Aguecheek (TN ) 31, 107, 110, 124, 138, 182, 194, 205, 213, 217, 226, 238, 239, 258, 263, 271, 274, 302, 364, 373, 391, 401, 441 Sir Toby Belch (TN ) 107, 110, 123, 124, 138, 163, 182, 205, 213, 217, 226, 231, 238, 239, 488

258, 263, 271, 274, 302, 351, 359, 364, 370, 373, 381, 391, 401, 449 Slender (Abraham, MW ) 26, 58, 284, 297 Sly (TS ) 24, 76 Snare (2H4) 326 Speed (TGV ) 62, 225, 255, 276, 277, 306, 371, 438 Stafford (Sir Humphrey, 2H6) 162, 188, 216, 343, 363, 429 Stanley (Lord, R3) 66 Starveling (Robin, MND ) 453 Stephano (Tem) 188, 226, 289, 290, 302, 381, 386, 409, 420 Sufffolk (R2) 315 Suffolk (2H6) 28, 35, 36, 40, 57, 58, 64, 81, 92, 93, 103, 104, 125, 152, 162, 188, 215, 216, 261, 317, 325, 326, 327, 329, 367, 368, 392, 440, 448, 450 Surrey (Duke of, R2) 271 Surrey (Earl of, H8) 397, 398 Tabot (Lord, 1H6) 38, 39, 101, 102, 103, 107, 119, 120, 126, 143, 167, 184, 219, 253, 296, 305, 313, 373, 374, 388, 443, 450 Tailor (TS ) 99, 128, 182, 190, 191, 272, 289, 299, 305, 335, 337, 339, 346, 393, 400, 403, 453 Talbot (Young, 1H6) 38, 39, 119, 208 Tamora (Tit) 5, 6, 27, 28, 48, 6, 104, 105, 147, 155, 174, 185, 198, 291, 296, 364, 414, 435 Thersites (TC ) 7, 8, 17, 40, 41, 42, 59, 71, 75, 76, 88, 89, 95, 96, 99, 100, 107, 109, 110, 116, 117, 132, 136, 143, 151, 152, 153, 161, 171, 172, 174, 184, 189, 192, 194, 195, 201, 205, 217, 231, 239, 245, 254, 260, 263, 268, 275, 288, 313, 314, 321, 331, 341, 350, 358, 359, 364, 375, 379, 384, 388, 400, 402, 407, 408, 418, 426, 439, 441, 442, 443, 447 Theseus (MND ) 176, 211, 306 Thidias (AC ) 262, 292, 358 Timandra (Tim) 223, 290, 317, 356, 378 Timon (Tim) 14, 26, 50, 51, 55, 86, 100, 101, 104, 112, 154, 155, 169, 189, 193, 223, 246, 248, 252, 265, 269, 283, 284, 290, 316, 317, 319, 339, 342, 348, 356, 378, 387, 407, 408, 424, 425, 448 Titania (MND ) 90, 434 Titus Andronicus (Tit) 249, 291

Index of Shakespeare’s characters

Ulysses (TC ) 63, 172, 174, 194, 239, 254, 277, 375, 447

Wart (Thomas, 2H4) 293, 359 Warwick (Earl of, 2H6) 40, 64, 81, 103, 104, 125, 161, 325, 440 Westmorland (Earl of, 3H6) 120, 331 Whitmore (Walter, 2H6) 216, 326, 327, 329 William (AYL ) 108, 109 Winchester (Bishop of, 1H6) 38, 47, 211, 215, 244, 324, 333, 358, 396, 433, 434, 440, 447 Winchester (Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of, 2H6) 215, 325, 351 Wolsey (Cardinal, H8) 397, 398 Worcester (Thomas Percy, Earl of, 1H4) 100, 343, 344

Valentine (TGV ) 117, 350, 371 Verges (MA ) 11 Vernon (1H6) 287 Vincentio (Duke, MM ) 6, 25, 26, 43, 44, 55, 80, 86, 192, 202, 244, 264, 307, 323, 325, 334, 335, 342, 358, 363, 372 Vincentio (TS ) 159 Vintner (1H4) 322 Viola (TN ) 107, 120, 231 Volumnia (Cor) 96, 200, 215, 345, 427, 432

York (Duke of, Richard Plantagenet, 3H6) 81, 120, 129, 182, 249, 330, 331, 343, 414, 447, 450 York (Edmund of Langley, Duke of, R2) 346 York (Richard Plantagenet, later Duke of York, 1H6) 106, 107, 119, 174, 219, 289, 388, 443, 444 Young Macduff (Mac) 410 Young Siward (Mac) 2, 150, 228, 419

Touchstone (AYL ) 8, 45, 47, 56, 106, 108, 109, 141, 142, 143, 165, 171, 198, 270, 271, 283, 301, 302, 309, 353, 370, 378, 386, 401 Tranio (TS ) 135, 159 Trinculo (Tem) 68, 188, 189, 190, 226, 254, 255, 289, 290, 302, 305, 322, 364, 381, 386, 400, 409, 420 Troilus (TC ) 78, 88, 90, 91, 122, 127, 151, 152, 158, 171, 304, 317 Tybalt (Rom) 73, 77, 81, 96, 115, 116, 184, 193, 271, 333, 405, 429

489

490