Vulgar words in Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher (Page 1)
This book at a glance
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"The Devil Is An Ass."
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For instance,-to express woods, not on a plain, but clothing a hill, which overlooks a valley, or dell, or river, or the sea,-the trees rising one above another, as the spectators in an ancient theatre,-I know no other word in our language (bookish and pedantic terms out of the question), but _hanging_ woods, the _sylvæ superimpendentes_ of Catullus; yet let some wit call out in a slang tone,-"the gallows!" and a peal of laughter would damn the play.
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Shakespeare never intended to exhibit him as a buffoon; for although it was natural that Hamlet-a young man of fire and genius, detesting formality, and disliking Polonius on political grounds, as imagining that he had assisted his uncle in his usurpation-should express himself satirically, yet this must not be taken as exactly the poet's conception of him.
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Shakespeare never intended him for a buffoon, &c. Another excellence of Shakespeare, in which no writer equals him, is in the language of nature.
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It would be, I own, an audacious and unjustifiable change of the text; but yet, as a mere conjecture, I venture to suggest "bastards," for "'bated."
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Why should the king except the then most illustrious states, which, as being republics, were the more truly inheritors of the Roman grandeur?-With my conjecture, the sense would be;-"let higher, or the more northern part of Italy-(unless 'higher' be a corruption for 'hir'd,'-the metre seeming to demand a monosyllable) (those bastards that inherit the infamy only of their fathers) see," &c. The following "woo" and "wed" are so far confirmative as they indicate Shakespeare's manner of connection by unmarked influences of association from some preceding metaphor.
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This belongs to human nature as such, independently of associations and habits from any particular rank of life or mode of employment; and in this consists Shakespeare's vulgarisms, as in Macbeth's- "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon!"
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The Fool is no comic buffoon to make the groundlings laugh,-no forced condescension of Shakespeare's genius to the taste of his audience.
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Edmund's speech:- ... "He replied, Thou unpossessing bastard!"
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_Ib._- "The spirit that I have seen, May be a devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps Out of my weakness, and my melancholy (As he is very potent with such spirits), Abuses me to damn me."
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I think Tyrwhitt's reading of "life" for "wife"- "A fellow almost damn'd in a fair _wife_"- the true one, as fitting to Iago's contempt for whatever did not display power, and that intellectual power.
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"The Devil Is An Ass."
~ ~ ~ Sentence 2,513 ~ ~ ~
Meercraft's speech:- "Sir, money's a whore, a bawd, a drudge."
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Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,-most abominable stuff indeed!
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you may be, and I trust you are, an angel; but you were an ass.
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Seward's note and alteration to- "'Twixt the cold bears, far from the raging lion"- This Mr. Seward is a blockhead of the provoking species.