Summer Sale! Save 25% off a BookBrowse Membership, offer ends soon!

Shakespearean Insults

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

Hag-Seed

Hogarth Shakespeare series

by Margaret Atwood
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • First Published:
  • Oct 11, 2016, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • May 2017, 320 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Shakespearean Insults

This article relates to Hag-Seed

Print Review

"You taught me language. And my profit on't is, I know how to curse." That's the lament of Caliban, the resident savage of Shakespeare's The Tempest, but it's also the the savvy modern reader's takeaway of Shakespeare's plays. Among the linguistic legacies of Shakespeare, eloquent and eclectic cursing and insults must certainly be included.

The man knew how to cut someone down to size ("Away, you three inch fool!") with a dazzling array of metaphorical maliciousness ("You are now sailed into the north of my ladies opinion, where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard.") and poeticized putdowns ("Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch!")

As Eric Partridge noted in his classic study Shakespeare's Bawdy, impolite situations seemed to bring out a side of Shakespeare that is "broad, ribald, healthily coarse, unsqueamishly natural, and unaffectedly humorous." That blend of coarseness and humor is put to good use in Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed, as the plot involves prisoners who are performing Shakespeare–but they must agree not to use any curses in prison that don't come from Shakespeare ("Memorize them and then learn how to spell them," the director tells them. "Those will be your special swear words.")

And there's certainly no shortage of ingenious invective from the Barb of Avon. Here's just a sample of some of his celebrated curses and insults:

"Thou bawdy, motley-minded rudesby!"
"Thou brazen, raw-boned canker-blossom!"
"Thou art a sottish, clay-brained nut-hook!"
"Thou art a waggish, horn-mad dogfish!"
"Thou art a hideous, eye-offending, hedge-pig!"

Sometimes the playwright demonstrated in his cursing the brevity that is the soul of wit: "Fie upon it!" "Zounds!" or the catch all "Go to!" At other times, he seemed to absolutely revel in the fulsomeness of his fulminations:

Thou art a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, 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, pandar, and the son and heir of a mungril bitch.— King Lear

It's hard not to love such vile verbal volleying. But then again, as Shakespeare well knew, some people and things are just hard to love: "I do wish thou were a dog, that I might love thee something."

Filed under Books and Authors

Article by James Broderick

This article relates to Hag-Seed. It first ran in the October 19, 2016 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Lamplighter's Bookshop
    by Sophie Austin
    The Lost Bookshop meets The Lost Apothecary in a beguiling novel full of secrets…

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Ordinary Love
    by Marie Rutkoski

    A riveting story of class, ambition, and bisexuality—one woman risks everything for a second chance at first love.

  • Book Jacket

    Making Friends Can Be Murder
    by Kathleen West

    Thirty-year-old Sarah Jones is drawn into a neighborhood murder mystery after befriending a deceptive con artist.

Who Said...

A few books well chosen, and well made use of, will be more profitable than a great confused Alexandrian library.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

B a L

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.