Yesterday April 26 was Shakespeare’s birthday, well, it was the day he was baptized. Nobody knows the exact date when he was born but traditionally it was celebrated on April 23. I can tell you that on either day there was no Google Doodle for him and “Shakespeare” was not on the Twitter trending topic list.
So there’s that.
I did celebrate yesterday by playing with this randomizer for Shakespeare’s insults: The Shakespearean Insulter
And I have been trying to memorize as many of the insults as I could. You never know when one will come in handy.
Idol of idiot-worshippers!
Be put in a cauldron of lead and usurer’s grease, amongst a whole million of cutpurses, and there boil like a gammon of bacon that will never be enough.
We leak in your chimney.
Thou cockered onion-eyed clack-dish!
Thou art essentially a natural coward without instinct.
Thou froward common-kissing scut!
Thou odiferous dizzy-eyed fustilarian!
Thou qualling elf-skinned foot-licker!
Thou puny lily-livered death-token!
Thou loggerheaded fat-kidneyed pumpion!
Thou roguish fat-kidneyed horn-beast!
Thou dissembling folly-fallen hedge-pig!
Thou bawdy earth-vexing whey-face!
Thou paunchy bat-fowling apple-john!
I will be getting up at 4 am to take the first flight out for yet another business trip. A pox upon thee!
While I am away, please try and memorize as many of Shakespeare’s gems and use them on each other.
For the Bard: This is one of the most revealing scenes about the power of theatre I have seen. (And it is from my favorite TV show ever Sports Night. I am still waiting for it to come back the way I am waiting for a chance to see Freddie Mercury live…)
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.
— Oscar Wilde, himself a gifted word master excelling at the art of insult