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I is for Insults, Shakespearean Style!

My daughter is teaching a Jr. High English Class. True to her nature, she is doing it with humor, lacing the lesson in and amongst the laughter. I think kids learn better when they are having fun. When learning English can be fun, they read more, write more. And we all know the world is a better place.

Okay, I’m a mom. So, I think she’s brilliant. She’s the kind of teacher I wish I had in school.

You all know Jr. High is such an interesting time in a child’s life. Halfway between adulthood and childhood, at any one time they phase between the two at will, depending on the circumstance. But give them a chance to learn how to insult someone properly, well, let’s say they are enjoying themselves.

They are learning about Shakespeare, learning the meaning of the English but nonetheless foreign words. Kids in California don’t go running around quoting the great bard. With prior permission, my daughter was able to get them to be able to get liberal with the colorful expressions. They wrote notes to each other. And to other teachers, which was the highlight of the lesson. Remember I said she’d gotten prior permission.


Shakespearean “Conversations”

An Insulting Conversation

  1. A:  Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat.

  2. B:  Let’s meet as little as we can.

  1. A:  More of your conversation would infect my brain.

  2. B:  Away! Thou art poison to my blood.

  1. A:  Why, thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene
    greasy tallow-catch.

  2. B:  Hang yourself, you muddy conger, hang yourself!

  1. A:  Thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows.

  2. B:  Go forward, and be choked with thy ambition!

  1. A:  Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born to signify thou came to bite the world.

  2. B:  Your heart is crammed with arrogancy, spleen and pride.

  1. A:  Thou art a boil, a plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood

  2. B:  There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell as thou shall be.

  1. A:  Ah, you whoreson loggerhead! You were born to do me shame.

  2. B:  Come, you are a tedious fool.

  1. A:  Beg that thou may have leave to hang thyself.

  2. B:  Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit; for I am sick when I do look on thee.

  1. A:  Vile worm, thou wast o’erlook’d even in thy birth.

  2. B:  Go thou and fill another room in hell.

  1. A:  Heaven truly knows that thou are as false as hell.

  2. B:  Thou lump of foul deformity.

  1. A:  Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death.

  2. B:  A way, you three-inch fool.

  1. A:  Hang cur! hang, you whoreson, insolent noisemaker.

  2. B:  Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!

  1. A:  Go to, you’re a dry fool; I’ll no more of you.

  2. B:  Go rot! 

    I know some of you historical readers are probably a lot more familiar with some of these terms than I ever will be. But it tickled me no end to envision these teenagers going about their day trading insults, and learning the beauty and power of the spoken/written word. 

    Thanks to all the creative, wonderful teachers out there, who do so much for our kids, and for us all. You guys are my heroes today.

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