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Tuesday, July 9, 2013

I’ll Tickle Your Catastrophe

You may be asking why I used valuable time to do this. The answer, as it frequently happens to be, is “procrastination!!!” Well, that and the strange feeling that the end of this one line of Falstaff’s from Henry IV — “Away, you scullion! you rampallian! you fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe” — sounds remarkably more like a Belle & Sebastian lyric than an actual threat. Hence…

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In a column on Shakespearean insults, Angela Tung says this use of catastrophe refers to the butt, but Falstaff is actually threatening to kick the addressee’s bottom, not tickle his anus. Just FYI.

Original llama image via.

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