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.
96
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
97
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Spell It Out by David Crystal(35846)
Professional Troublemaker by Luvvie Ajayi Jones(29419)
We're Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union(18631)
The Secret History by Donna Tartt(18157)
Cat's cradle by Kurt Vonnegut(14757)
The Goal (Off-Campus #4) by Elle Kennedy(13193)
The Social Justice Warrior Handbook by Lisa De Pasquale(11951)
The Break by Marian Keyes(9075)
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan(8886)
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher(8451)
The remains of the day by Kazuo Ishiguro(8393)
Educated by Tara Westover(7689)
The handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood(7447)
Win Bigly by Scott Adams(6827)
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin(6808)
This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz(6435)
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion(5836)
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty(5825)
The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish(5414)
