Do Ants Have Assholes? by Jon Butler

Author:Jon Butler
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781402218187
Published: 2009-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

British sheep. He earned his two thousand guineas, and

Stevenson made his fortune shipping millions of tiny

tropical sheep to Liverpool, where they immediately

tripled in value in the cooler British weather.

mAry pEtErS, knIttErS’ CIrClE, tImbuktu

¦

Why do people, when they want to be

offensive, say, “no offense, but…”? or

when they want to be funny, say, “I’m

not being funny, but…”?

aMy roWe, crouch end

Both phrases date back to Elizabethan times, where

they were used by actors to soften and ritualize their

frustrated responses to the heckles of the paying public.

Under a constant rain of apple cores, dried turds, gravel,

and mice, working conditions in the average Jacobean

theater were enough to try the patience of even the most

experienced of actors; as a result, as we can see in the

index to the First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s works,

a long list of set responses was drawn up to address

specific audience complaints. These responses were

intended to be learned by rote and repeated without

thinking by a young actor under pressure.

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Thus the sound of someone’s personal message

bell being rung by a servant outside the theater—the

precursor of the modern mobile phone—would be met

with a hoarse shout of: “Marry sir, I wish thee no offense,

though I doubt thee as a noddy and a dog fingerer!”

(“Footballer” was another favorite insult.) In response

to repeated mutterings breaking up the performance:

“I aspire not to comedy with my words, but today’s

performance is much like wading through country

soup” (the coarse pun is clear to all). Perhaps the most

famous recorded example of this usage, however, was

during the private performance of a masque for the ten-

year-old King Edward VI, who repeatedly bleated to

his mother, “Is it nearly finished yet?” at five-minute

intervals throughout the performance. The famous actor

Richard Burbage is said to have responded, “I wish his

Majesty no harm, but whilst a true artist strives to create

beauty, couldst some kind fellow not gag and bind the

little shit?”

Burbage’s comment is said to have drawn merry

laughter from much of the court, though just an hour

after the curtain fell he was summarily beheaded,

minced, and fed to the ravens in the Tower.

ChArlES StAnforth, profESSor of thEAtEr StuDIES,

¦

GhEnt unIvErSIty

Both these phrases actually came to popular use in the

late 1950s thanks to a minor character from the popular

and long-running Little Rascals shorts. Early episodes

featured a character named Teddy Ripley, who was

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