WS ABC Part 17 Shakespearean Curses -1

OUR FRIEND MR. SHAKESPEARE WAS DEFINITELY NOT A GENTLEMAN, at least, when it came to using, er, ripe language, curses and bawdy in his plays. Many academic tomes and popular works have been written about this, but within the next few paragraphs, I'm going to just give a cursory outline about this salacious aspect of the Bard's writings. 

Language changes. In Shakespeare's time, cursed or curst usually meant: bad-tempered, cantankerous, cross and irascible.
For example, the peevish Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew is referred to as, Kate the curst and Lady Percy in Henry IV (Part 1) talks about thick-ey'd musing and curs'd melancholy,when referring to how her husband has been treating her.

Bearing this in mind, it should also be remembered that our William was one of a dozen shareholders in the Globe theatre. That meant that if they were to show a profit, they would have to pack the crowds in. The population of London during his lifetime was about 200,000. This meant that a) his theatre had to have a fast turnover of plays, b) it had to show plays that were attractive so as to rival other theatres and forms of public entertainment, such as bear-baiting and c) the plays themselves had to be 'crowd-pullers.' As the saying goes, "bums on seats is cash in pockets." This was as true then as it is today when it comes to talking about public entertainment - as well as for financing colleges and courses etc.

To make sure that the crowds would indeed be pulled in, apart from writing some of the finest English that has ever existed, our William had to appeal to the lowest common denominator and write some pretty humourously ribald scenes which contained colourful curses, intimate insults and extreme execrations. Without going into the subject too deeply, these expletives were not deleted and a large percentage of them were to do with sex, love and marriage.

On the first page of one of my favourite Shakespeare reference books, Shakespeare's Insults: Educating Your Wit, Wayne F. Hill & Cynthia J. Ottchen say, "People need insults. Most people behave so abominably that they cry out for abuse. Charity moves us to meet this need. Abuse is a form of attention, and a little accommodating attention makes anyone feel human again." The authors go on to say that "Shakespeare gets the last word," and he certainly does. Who else could include enough blasphemous gems such as valiant flea, foul and ugly witch and whoreson cullionly barbermonger to fill a 308 page book? It is true that many of the Bard's choicest obscenities are dated. Who today would feel insulted if someone hurled king of codpieces at them or called them a most profane coxcomb?

However, it is only recently that we have been able to appreciate and be fully aware of, i.e. to see, hear and read the full range of the Bard's oath-filled quill. When another of my favourite Shakespearean reference books, Shakespeare's Bawdy was published in 1947, its editor, Eric Partridge, wrote in the 1968 edition, that when this book first appeared, only one thousand copies were printed at the cost of two guineas per copy. Partridge noted that for this sum you could then buy forty-two Penguin paperbacks.  Fortunately this book sold well and today it is easily accessible via your local bookstore, as where I bought mine or through Amazon etc.

A result of this prude attitude meant that school copies of Shakespeare's plays were heavy bowdlerised while scholarly editions of this period often omitted sexual glosses. Even the first edition of the important and (almost) all inclusive Oxford English Dictionary (1888-1928) ignored much of WS's more evocative sexual vocabulary. (On a personal note, my own school 1955 edition of Macbeth was given this treatment in II.iii when the Porter praises and curses the effect of strong liquor, saying that it makes and mars the drinker, it sets him on, and it takes him off...it makes him stand to, and not stand to.") It was only in the 1960s that a more liberal attitude to the Bard's sexual references and ripe language became more accessible in school editions and other academic works.   

Next time: A cursed WS play and how Shakespeare's own  personal curse affected an American school mistress.

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