Forbidden words in history of literature
February 27, 2021 5:44 PM Subscribe
The "F" word is not a word that was used in literature during the early 20th century. It was considered outside the pale. Was this kind of prohibition an anomaly in the history of literature? Were there words in e.g. Shakespeare's time that he would not have included in his plays?
As noted by forthright, Shagsper, playing to the groundlings, often used naughty words as insider jokes:
Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia: No, my lord.
Hamlet: I mean my head upon your lap.
Ophelia: Aye, my lord.
Hamlet: Or did you think I meant country matters
In Henry V Act III sc 4 he tries it bilingual
[of all the things to want translated, K sets it up]
KATHERINE Comment appelez-vous le pied et la robe?
[for A's spike]
ALICE “Le foot,” madame, et “le count.”
In the Branagh film version, Geraldine McEwan and Emma Thompson carry off the ambiguity of gown/con/count so well.
To answer the question, I think in Shaxspere's time religious cursing was more off-limits than sexual.
Québécois is frighty of the Catholic church and so tabarnak, câlice, baptême, and cimetière have a charge that is absent in metropolitan France.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:19 AM on February 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia: No, my lord.
Hamlet: I mean my head upon your lap.
Ophelia: Aye, my lord.
Hamlet: Or did you think I meant country matters
In Henry V Act III sc 4 he tries it bilingual
[of all the things to want translated, K sets it up]
KATHERINE Comment appelez-vous le pied et la robe?
[for A's spike]
ALICE “Le foot,” madame, et “le count.”
In the Branagh film version, Geraldine McEwan and Emma Thompson carry off the ambiguity
To answer the question, I think in Shaxspere's time religious cursing was more off-limits than sexual.
Québécois is frighty of the Catholic church and so tabarnak, câlice, baptême, and cimetière have a charge that is absent in metropolitan France.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:19 AM on February 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
Cultures seem to vary in what words are considered taboo. Either words pertaining to sex are considered the worst, or words pertaining to religion.
I have read that in Shakespeare's time they were going through a cultural phase where religion was the stronger taboo. If you look closely there is very little religion in his plays and writings, only what might be necessary for the sake of the plot such as the clergy person who gets caught up in the secret marriage between Romeo and Julliet. There are some religious cusses used in Shakespeare but they are of the shoot and sugar variety rather than out and out religious terms. He used words such as Zounds and Egad, not words such as Christ and Jesus.
Bible is one of those words Shakespeare did not use. Instead the word he would have substituted was book. Shakespeare also seems to have dodged censorship or censure by inventing words and idioms to express those thoughts and forceful emotions that might have brought unwanted attention and disapproval. Mind you his work was so heavily edited by the first people to issue his plays as printed editions, that anything is actually possible. We don't actually have his fair copies let alone his foul papers.
The word fuck is very old and went through a period of being archaic. The word swive was the one that likely would have been used in Shakespeare's time, because using fuck would have been something that people who liked obscure words used and it would have sounded strange and mealy mouthed, like referring to a penis today as a member will cause most people to do a double-take and likely wonder what you are referring to but get what you mean from context. But in 1960 member was a common term considered suitable when telling of colour jokes in from of your grandmother because it wasn't crude and it was so old it was a nod to the sensibilities we attribute to old people.
Somehow, as often happens to words, the word fuck got rehabilitated and started being the mark of a really crude guy. It came back into being the common term around World War Two, and was ubiquitous among guys in the armed forces. But because it became common vernacular for men serving in gender segregated situations it became a word that only men used which in turn made it into a much harsher and more offensive word.
In the century previous (1800's) words pertaining to religion were considered shocking, and terms like Damn and Bloody were considered cacemphaton when used in literature. If you character referred to something as a "Damned nuisance" he was not necessarily a bad guy, but he was certainly meant to be a hard character. Of course by 1930 putting the same term into a character's mouth turned him into a restrained sort of fellow from the older generation. But in the 1800's you would se D----d as a non-offensive way to indicated that someone had used the unacceptable world. In fact the euphemism "dashed" as in "I'll be dashed if I do!"entered into the spoken vocabulary, rather the way that people will say lol nowadays and carried the same touch of humour when they did. The use of the word dashed by a character indicated they were a nice person but did not entirely grasp the intention behind the word.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:35 AM on February 28, 2021 [9 favorites]
I have read that in Shakespeare's time they were going through a cultural phase where religion was the stronger taboo. If you look closely there is very little religion in his plays and writings, only what might be necessary for the sake of the plot such as the clergy person who gets caught up in the secret marriage between Romeo and Julliet. There are some religious cusses used in Shakespeare but they are of the shoot and sugar variety rather than out and out religious terms. He used words such as Zounds and Egad, not words such as Christ and Jesus.
Bible is one of those words Shakespeare did not use. Instead the word he would have substituted was book. Shakespeare also seems to have dodged censorship or censure by inventing words and idioms to express those thoughts and forceful emotions that might have brought unwanted attention and disapproval. Mind you his work was so heavily edited by the first people to issue his plays as printed editions, that anything is actually possible. We don't actually have his fair copies let alone his foul papers.
The word fuck is very old and went through a period of being archaic. The word swive was the one that likely would have been used in Shakespeare's time, because using fuck would have been something that people who liked obscure words used and it would have sounded strange and mealy mouthed, like referring to a penis today as a member will cause most people to do a double-take and likely wonder what you are referring to but get what you mean from context. But in 1960 member was a common term considered suitable when telling of colour jokes in from of your grandmother because it wasn't crude and it was so old it was a nod to the sensibilities we attribute to old people.
Somehow, as often happens to words, the word fuck got rehabilitated and started being the mark of a really crude guy. It came back into being the common term around World War Two, and was ubiquitous among guys in the armed forces. But because it became common vernacular for men serving in gender segregated situations it became a word that only men used which in turn made it into a much harsher and more offensive word.
In the century previous (1800's) words pertaining to religion were considered shocking, and terms like Damn and Bloody were considered cacemphaton when used in literature. If you character referred to something as a "Damned nuisance" he was not necessarily a bad guy, but he was certainly meant to be a hard character. Of course by 1930 putting the same term into a character's mouth turned him into a restrained sort of fellow from the older generation. But in the 1800's you would se D----d as a non-offensive way to indicated that someone had used the unacceptable world. In fact the euphemism "dashed" as in "I'll be dashed if I do!"entered into the spoken vocabulary, rather the way that people will say lol nowadays and carried the same touch of humour when they did. The use of the word dashed by a character indicated they were a nice person but did not entirely grasp the intention behind the word.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:35 AM on February 28, 2021 [9 favorites]
The word "fuck" and variations thereon appear quite a few times in Ulysses, which is arguably the most famous novel of the early 20th century, and it's not the use of this word that got the book banned. That is to say, I'd be very careful about making the generalization that founds your question. If you look at the Oxford English Dictionary usage examples for the word, you'll see that it appears in quite a few literary contexts in the early 20th century, mostly in dialogue, and spoken by characters who you'd expect to talk in a more vernacular, slangy, and even crude register. Also, delightfully, you will learn that the expression "fuck a duck" dates to the 1930s.
As Jane the Brown notes, the word wasn't as widely used at the time, so writers would think carefully about which characters' mouths it would fit in, as well as which kinds of scenes it would belong in--as they would with any word. But that doesn't mean that "fuck" was forbidden from literature (literature loves to go "beyond the pale"), just that it would be used only when a specific (titillating or shocking or what have you) effect was intended. Literature reflects the world in which it is written, and people just didn't say "fuck" then as much as we do now. It doesn't make sense to imagine Mrs. Dalloway going to "buy the fucking flowers herself," but it certainly makes a lot of sense for the soldiers in e. e. cummings's novel The Enormous Room or really any Beckett character to swear with abandon.
posted by dizziest at 10:27 AM on February 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
As Jane the Brown notes, the word wasn't as widely used at the time, so writers would think carefully about which characters' mouths it would fit in, as well as which kinds of scenes it would belong in--as they would with any word. But that doesn't mean that "fuck" was forbidden from literature (literature loves to go "beyond the pale"), just that it would be used only when a specific (titillating or shocking or what have you) effect was intended. Literature reflects the world in which it is written, and people just didn't say "fuck" then as much as we do now. It doesn't make sense to imagine Mrs. Dalloway going to "buy the fucking flowers herself," but it certainly makes a lot of sense for the soldiers in e. e. cummings's novel The Enormous Room or really any Beckett character to swear with abandon.
posted by dizziest at 10:27 AM on February 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: @Jane the Brown. Fascinating, I didn't consider that religion would be taboo. I did do a keyword search for "Christ" in Shakesepeare's plays. It does appear but only half a dozen times - e.g. in Henry IV, Richard III.
"Bible" is definitely missing. "Jesus" is used four times, again in Henry IV and Henry VI. Interesting that these occurrences are all in the earlier history plays.
posted by storybored at 6:19 PM on February 28, 2021
"Bible" is definitely missing. "Jesus" is used four times, again in Henry IV and Henry VI. Interesting that these occurrences are all in the earlier history plays.
posted by storybored at 6:19 PM on February 28, 2021
Religious taboo swearing is something we have a little bit of in today's English, though we treat it much more mildly than many other past cultures. Things like "zounds" or "swounds" (God's wounds), would have gone along with "damn/goddamn/hell" at various times.
But sexual cursing was definitely something in Shakespeare. Act II, Scene 5, of Twelfth Night has this:
Malvolio. By my life, this is my lady's hand these be her
very C's, her U's and her T's and thus makes she her
great P's. It is, in contempt of question, her hand.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Her C's, her U's and her T's: why that?
Despite this wordplay, and lots of bawdy content, the word itself spelled with the letters, C, U, 'n T doesn't seem to actually appear in any plays. So it's taboo enough to be joked about, but it's still not to be said on stage.
posted by pykrete jungle at 10:35 PM on February 28, 2021
But sexual cursing was definitely something in Shakespeare. Act II, Scene 5, of Twelfth Night has this:
Malvolio. By my life, this is my lady's hand these be her
very C's, her U's and her T's and thus makes she her
great P's. It is, in contempt of question, her hand.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Her C's, her U's and her T's: why that?
Despite this wordplay, and lots of bawdy content, the word itself spelled with the letters, C, U, 'n T doesn't seem to actually appear in any plays. So it's taboo enough to be joked about, but it's still not to be said on stage.
posted by pykrete jungle at 10:35 PM on February 28, 2021
If you want to know the words that Shakespeare was forbidden to use on stage, take a look at the Act to Restrain Abuses of Players (1606). Any stageplayer who 'jestingly or profanely' referred to 'the holy Name of God, or of Christ Jesus, or the Holy Ghost, or of the Trinity' would be fined £10 for every offence. £10 was roughly the amount that a playwright might have earned for writing a play, and not far short of an actor's yearly income.
Some of Shakespeare's best-known plays were first performed and printed before the 1606 Act, and then reprinted in the First Folio in 1623. By comparing the two versions, we can see how the texts were changed to take out the offensive words. 'God' was changed to 'Heaven'. 'By my faith' and 'By my troth' were changed to 'Trust me'. 'Zounds' (= God's wounds) and 'Sblood' (= God's blood) were changed to 'Yes'. It's not always done consistently, but there's enough of it to show that the regulations were taken seriously. Nobody wanted to be hit with a £10 fine.
No playwright could have got away with putting 'fuck' into a play. But that doesn't mean the word wasn't used off-stage. Here I have to disagree with the comment above: 'fuck' would certainly not have sounded strange, or archaic, or mealy-mouthed, to Shakespeare or his contemporaries. We know this from the records of the church courts, which dealt with sexual offences, including sexual insults. Church court cases often hinged on who said what to whom, and the clerks therefore had to write down the exact words that were used, which makes the records incredibly useful as a historical source.
Here's an example I found last year, on one of my last research trips before the pandemic came along and closed all the archives. It's 1600, late one night in the village pub in Stogursey, in Somerset. One of the villagers gets drunk and starts shouting at the pub landlord: 'Thy wife fucketh in every corner with every knave that cometh to thy house'. The clerk adds an explanatory note: 'meaning thereby that she lived incontinently, for that this word fuck is in common construction and understanding of the people taken for a word of that signification'.
posted by verstegan at 2:31 AM on March 1, 2021 [6 favorites]
Some of Shakespeare's best-known plays were first performed and printed before the 1606 Act, and then reprinted in the First Folio in 1623. By comparing the two versions, we can see how the texts were changed to take out the offensive words. 'God' was changed to 'Heaven'. 'By my faith' and 'By my troth' were changed to 'Trust me'. 'Zounds' (= God's wounds) and 'Sblood' (= God's blood) were changed to 'Yes'. It's not always done consistently, but there's enough of it to show that the regulations were taken seriously. Nobody wanted to be hit with a £10 fine.
No playwright could have got away with putting 'fuck' into a play. But that doesn't mean the word wasn't used off-stage. Here I have to disagree with the comment above: 'fuck' would certainly not have sounded strange, or archaic, or mealy-mouthed, to Shakespeare or his contemporaries. We know this from the records of the church courts, which dealt with sexual offences, including sexual insults. Church court cases often hinged on who said what to whom, and the clerks therefore had to write down the exact words that were used, which makes the records incredibly useful as a historical source.
Here's an example I found last year, on one of my last research trips before the pandemic came along and closed all the archives. It's 1600, late one night in the village pub in Stogursey, in Somerset. One of the villagers gets drunk and starts shouting at the pub landlord: 'Thy wife fucketh in every corner with every knave that cometh to thy house'. The clerk adds an explanatory note: 'meaning thereby that she lived incontinently, for that this word fuck is in common construction and understanding of the people taken for a word of that signification'.
posted by verstegan at 2:31 AM on March 1, 2021 [6 favorites]
Renaissance Drama is a foggy memory, but I think it was in the Jacobian Period when epithets with "God" were replaced by "Jove". I'm not sure that was due to concerns with blasphemy or whether it was merely a fad.
posted by jwhite1979 at 12:33 PM on March 1, 2021
posted by jwhite1979 at 12:33 PM on March 1, 2021
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posted by forthright at 6:13 PM on February 27, 2021 [4 favorites]