Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing (45 page)

Thomas Speght’s 1598 edition
: The Workes of our Antient and lerned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer (London, 1598), Early English Books Online. The preface I quote was actually written by Francis Beaumont, the playwright famous for his theatrical collaborations with John Fletcher, but since it appears in Speght’s edition, for simplicity’s sake I refer to it as Speght’s preface.

It is thus something of a surprise to read
: The Whole Works of Homer (London, 1616), Early English Books Online. Chapman had previously published several editions of the
Iliad
alone and called someone a “Windfucker” there too. My point is that it is surprising to find that word in a work that is supposed to be the definitive edition of a respected author.

here is a tiny, tiny sampling:
All quotes are from
The Riverside Shakespeare
, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).
The Merry Wives of Windsor:
IV, I; III, iii;
Henry V:
III, iv;
Hamlet:
III, ii; “tun-dish” in
Measure for Measure:
III, ii; “bauble” in
Romeo and Juliet
: II, iii; “cod’s head” in
Othello:
II, i. Gordon Williams gives the most plausible interpretation, that the “cod’s head” refers to a foolish husband, and the “salmon’s tail,” a delicacy, to a lover. See his
A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature
, 3 vols. (London: Athlone Press, 1994), 493.

Shakespeare never employs a primary obscenity:
In Act II, scene I of
Romeo and Juliet
, Mercutio teases Romeo by wishing that Rosaline “were an open-”
something
. It is clear from the text that Mercutio means “open-arse,” a medlar, but no edition of the play prints the word, preferring the euphemism “open et caetera” (Q1) or, as in the Folio, leaving it blank, “O that she were an open, or thou a Poprin Pear.” I think the actor must have said “open-arse” on stage, given the kind of obscene language Shakespeare’s contemporaries were employing, although it is also possible that the actor could have hinted at “arse” yet not said it. For more on this, see the following chapter.

Other Renaissance dramatists:
“windfucker”:
Epicene, or the Silent Woman
(1609), I, iv; “Turd in your teeth”:
Bartholomew Fair
(1614, pub. 1631), I, iv; “Marry, shit o’ your hood”:
Bartholomew Fair
, IV, iv; “Kiss the whore”:
Bartholomew Fair
, V, v.

Plays were licensed for performance:
For more about the master of the revels, see Richard Dutton,
Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama
(London: Macmillan, 1991).

In
The Famous Victories
:
The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth
(London, 1598), Early English Books Online.

For more about the expurgation of oaths in Shakespeare, see Gary Taylor’s “‘Swounds Revisited,” in
Shakespeare Reshaped, 1606–1623
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 51–106. I have simplified what is actually a complicated situation.

Sir Henry Herbert is so concerned
: The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, ed. Joseph Quincy Adams (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917), 22.

Herbert once burns a play:
Scholars debate whether he burned the play solely because of the obscenity. Most think that he probably had another reason, e.g., anti-Catholic satire that was presented in a bawdy way. See Richard Dutton,
Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England
(New York: Palgrave, 2000), 51–61.

The first acknowledged case:
Karen Harvey,
Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 36–38; Deana Heath,
Purifying Empire: Obscenity and the Politics of Moral Regulation in Britain, India, and Australia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 51. Curll is the first person prosecuted for “obscene libel,” an entirely new category that made obscenity subject to legal regulation under common law. Printers had suffered fines for printing “obscene and lascivious books” before, starting around 1680, but this had been as a result of the pre-publication licensing system. Rochester’s
Sodom
(1684) and
The School of Venus
(1680) were banned as obscene and lascivious as a result.

a religious group from the 1650s:
For more on the Ranters, see Christopher Hill,
The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution
(New York: Penguin Books, 1991); A. L. Morton,
The World of the Ranters: Religious Radicalism in the English Revolution
(London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1970); J. C. Davis,
Fear, Myth, and History: The Ranters and the Historians
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

“
The fellow creature which sits next”
: The Ranters Ranting (London 1650), 4, Early English Books Online.

“
it put the woman into such a fright
”: The Ranters Ranting, 6.

Chapter 5

In 1673, John Wilmot:
All Rochester poems are from
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: The Poems and Lucina’s Rape
, ed. Keith Walker and Nicholas Fisher (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).

“
boxing the Jesuit
”: Francis Grose,
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
(London: S. Hooper, 1785), 18.

Rochester abducted the fourteen-year-old Elizabeth:
Walker and Fisher, introduction to
John Wilmot
, xviii; Arthur Malet,
Notices of an English Branch of the Malet Family
(London: Harrison & Sons, 1885), 48–49.

they are now ranked among the mildest:
Tony McEnery,
Swearing in English: Bad Language, Purity and Power from 1586 to the Present
(London: Routledge 2006), 36, 50, and n. 59.

In a 2006 study of speakers:
Timothy Jay, “The Utility and Ubiquity of Taboo Words,”
Perspectives on Psychological Science
4, no. 2 (2009): 156.

“
My Lord, why, what the Devil?”
Alexander Pope,
The Rape of the Lock
, 2nd ed. (London: Bernard Lintott, 1714), 37.

Francis Grose’s 1785
Classical Dictionary
: Grose,
A Classical Dictionary
, 182, 43, 61.

Eighty years later:
John Hotten,
The Slang Dictionary: or, The Vulgar Words, Street Phrases, and “Fast” Expressions of High and Low Society
, 3rd ed. (London: John Camden Hotten, 1865).

“
How do you do, sir?”
Basil Hall,
Fragments of Voyages and Travels
, second series (Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1832), II:234.

religion occupied a less central role:
For more on the decline of religion in the eighteenth century, see Roy Porter,
English Society in the Eighteenth Century
(London: Penguin, 1990) and Joss Marsh,
Word Crimes: Blasphemy, Culture, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century England
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

“
The terrors of supernatural vengeance
”: Keith Thomas,
Religion and the Decline of Magic
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), 65.

But in 1847, Lionel de Rothschild, a Jew:
“Bank to Westminster: Lionel de Rothschild’s Journey to Parliament, 1847–1858,” The Rothschild Archive (online), accessed July 29, 2012;
Reports of State Trials
, ed. John E. P. Wallis, new series (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1898), VIII:114.

In 1880, the people of Northampton chose someone:
Marsh,
Word Crimes
, 135; Adolphe S. Headingley,
The Biography of Charles Bradlaugh
, 2nd ed. (London: Freethought, 1883), 177.

“
the sacredness of oaths
”: “Popery in the Nineteenth Century,”
Black-wood’s Edinburgh Magazine
, February 1851, 252.

“
that from the earliest times of a Christian Legislature
”:
The Annual Register, or a View of the History and Politics of the Year 1850
(London: F. & J. Rivington, 1851), 183.

“
Deny the existence of God”: The Westminster Review
, vol. CXIII, January-April 1880, American ed. (New York: Leonard Scott), 183.

As literary critic and historian:
Marsh,
Word Crimes
, 50.

Rothschild finally took his seat in Parliament: The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record
, ed. Isidore Singer (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1906), 5:172.

in 1888 he secured the passage:
Edward Royle,
Radicals, Secularists and Republicans: Popular Freethought in Britain, 1866–1915
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), 266.

George Washington undercut:
Forrest Church,
So Help Me God: The Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle over Church and State
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008), 448. Some scholars deny that Washington actually added the words. For this view, see Peter R. Henriques, “‘So Help Me God’: A George Washington Myth that Should Be Discarded,” George Mason University’s History News Network (online), accessed July 29, 2012.

“
the naked and plaine truth
”: John Aubrey,
Aubrey’s Brief Lives
, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine, 1999), cxiii, 107, 271.

“
he calls a fig a fig
”: Desiderius Erasmus,
Adages
, trans. R. A. B Mynors, in
Collected Works of Erasmus
, ed. Craig R. Thompson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 33:132, 133.

“
will strike the hearer as rather
”: Desiderius Erasmus,
Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style
, trans. Betty I. Knott, in
Collected Works of Erasmus
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), 24:309.

“
Telling of a Roman army
”: D.J. Enright,
Fair of Speech: The Uses of Euphemism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 38.

The Greek actually means:
Erasmus,
Adages
, 384.

In a 2005 study:
Eric Rassin and Simone van der Heijden, “Appearing Credible? Swearing Helps!”
Psychology, Crime & Law
11, no. 2 (June 2005): 177–82.

“
hardly anyone called a spade
”: Marsh,
Word Crimes
, 218.

“
Generally, people now call
”: William Dean Howells,
Criticism and Fiction
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1891), 154.

“
Call a spade a spade
”: Henry Alford,
A Plea for the Queen’s English
, 2nd ed. (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1864), 278.

John Ruskin, the eminent Victorian art critic:
For Ruskin, I consulted Timothy Hilton,
John Ruskin: The Early Years, 1819–1859
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Wolfgang Kemp,
The Desire of My Eyes: The Life and Work of John Ruskin
, trans. Jan van Heurck (London: Harper Collins, 1990); Peter Gay,
The Education of the Senses
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); Phyllis Rose,
Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages
(New York: Knopf, 1983).