Vulgar Tongues Read online

  This sounds harsh, yet the Dictionary of National Biography states that Greene’s work was in fact an influence on the Bard, and that Shakespeare later ‘drew affectionately on Pandosto [Greene’s prose romance from 1588] and the coney-catching pamphlets in The Winter’s Tale (1610–11)’.

  Groping for trouts in a peculiar river

  BY THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE, the English language had developed an astonishing range of expressions. His plays are the second most frequently quoted source for words in the Oxford English Dictionary (second only to The Times, which has had upwards of two hundred years of publication, whereas the Bard’s writing career lasted just twenty-four). It is impossible at this stage to determine how many of the thousands of words or phrases which make their first written appearance in Shakespeare’s plays were ones which he himself coined, as opposed to those which were already part of common speech. In Othello (1603), for instance, Iago tells Desdemona’s father, Brabantio, that his daughter has been sleeping with Othello:

  Sir, y’are rob’d, for shame put on your Gowne,

  Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soule

  Even now, now, very now, an old blacke Ram

  Is tupping your white ewe.

  Here, the playwright is using the word tup – an existing agricultural expression for the mating of sheep – in its slang sense as a term for human sexual intercourse, but he was not the first writer to do this (it also appears in Sir Thomas Chaloner’s 1549 English translation of The Praise of Folie by Erasmus). Later in the same scene, Iago uses another sex metaphor: ‘your daughter and the Moore, are making the Beast with two backs’. Shakespeare’s use seems to be the first recorded in English, yet it appears to derive from an older French slang phrase, faire la bête à deux dos, which occurs in the prologue to Gargantua (1534) by Rabelais – although the first English translation of that work did not appear until fifty years after Othello was written. (Of course, other playwrights of the time were also using slang terms: for example, in Volpone (1606), Shakespeare’s contemporary Ben Jonson has noddle for head, and four eyes for spectacles).

  Shakespeare’s cosmopolitan audience, hearing this kind of speech in the very first era of England’s licensed theatre, would have been well able to negotiate and decode such language. Whether his own coinages or not, they provide a rich record of vocabulary and phrases in Elizabethan and Jacobean English. Characters talk of the Neapolitan bone-ache (syphilis) in Troilus and Cressida (1602), and of someone having his pond fished by his next neighbour (being cuckolded) in The Winter’s Tale (c. 1610/11), which is similar to a slang expression for sex in Measure for Measure (1603/04), groping for trouts in a peculiar river.

  Small wonder that puritanical 19th-century editors such as Harriet Bowdler and her brother Thomas hacked their way through Shakespeare’s works like novice chainsaw owners let loose in the Amazon rainforest, rooting out anything they considered even potentially smutty – often erroneously, as the Monthly Review commented at the time of the 1818 edition of the Bowdler Family Shakespeare:

  We cannot, however, avoid remarking that the editor has sometimes shewn the truth of the old saw, that the nicest person has the nastiest ideas, and has omitted many phrases as containing indelicacies which we cannot see, and of the guilt of which our bard, we think, is entirely innocent.

  The English Rogue

  THE 17TH CENTURY IN ENGLAND saw civil war, a growth in literacy, and an increasing stream of pamphlets and broadsides – many of which dealt with the lives of notorious characters. Perhaps inspired by the enthusiasm of the reading public for such material, a sometime bookseller called Richard Head decided to begin writing his own sensationalist fare, which he then sold from his London premises. His biggest success, by far, was a rambling, episodic adventure novel called The English Rogue (1665), narrated by its dissipated hero, Meriton Latroon, using a wide variety of cant expressions. On one occasion, meeting a prostitute of his acquaintance, Latroon describes their sexual encounter entirely in nautical terms:

  I knew not whether this Frigate was English or Flemish built, but at last, hailing whence she was, I boarded her, and made her a lawful prize: mistake me not, I rummag’d not in her Hold, fearing she was a Fire-ship.

  The last phrase, fire-ship, was a current term for one afflicted with venereal disease, and this is arguably its first appearance in print, although Head drew many of his other expressions from Thomas Harman’s Caveat.

  Slang phrases for sexual activity, or for drink and its effects, were of course nothing new. Libertines in earlier times spoke of doing the flesh’s service (1315), of chamber-work (1450), and the shaking of the sheets (1577), while anyone interested in strong ale might have requested merry-go-down (1500), mad dog (1577) or lift-leg (1587). After a hard night of indulgence, the result would probably be a hangover, but since that word dates only from the start of the 20th century, the sufferer would have complained rather of ale-passion (1593) or a sensation known as the pot verdugo (1616).

  Richard Head’s English Rogue would have been no stranger to any of these as he stalked Restoration London in search of new sensations and old pleasures. In common with many writers looking to bring a selection of supposedly authentic criminal argot to the discerning public, the author – and his narrator – are at pains to establish that although he has had dealings with thieves, he is at least a man with an education, and something not too far from a gentleman. As with the Elizabethan pamphleteers, the task of preserving and recording the slang which has come down to us from the 17th century largely fell to those who had an interest in this world, but were not themselves truly a part of it. Like a modern tabloid newspaper reporting a drunken orgy – in shocked tones, but over several full-colour pages – they present their evidence for the benefit of a readership which might never have experienced that world directly, but enjoyed hearing of it second-hand:

  Having even wearied ourselves with drinking and singing, we tumbled promiscuously together, Male and Female in Straw, not confining ourselves to one constant Consort, we made use of the first that came to hand; by which means incests and adulteries became our pastimes.

  This scene appears directly inspired by a passage in Thomas Harman’s work of the previous century, and many of the words contained in Head’s short list of cant terms are drawn from the same source, such as fencing cully (‘one that receives stollen goods’), heave a booth (‘to rob an House’) and shop-lift (‘one that steals out of shops’).

  In the light of the great success of the English Rogue, which ran to five editions in his lifetime, Head further explored the language in a book of 1673, reusing much of his previous material under the following title, which deserves quoting in full:

  The canting academy, or, The devils cabinet opened wherein is shewn the mysterious and villanous practices of that wicked crew, commonly known by the names of hectors, trapanners, gilts, &c.: to which is added a compleat canting-dictionary, both of old words, and such as are now most in use: with several new catches and songs, compos’d by the choisest wits of the age

  Clearly it was felt that the reading public was by now conversant with a selection of such language, well used to talk of hectors (bullies or thugs), trapanners (con men) and gilts (burglars), and if they were tiring of the subject, there was little sign of it. Although Richard Head died in 1686, drowning on the short sea journey from the mainland to the Isle of Wight, his successors were already waiting in the wings.

  When not reading books or pamphlets – or, indeed, attempting to avoid the plague (1665) and the Great Fire (1666) – many Londoners of the time of Charles II were avid playgoers. This was entirely understandable, since the theatres had only recently reopened after Cromwell’s joyless puritans outlawed such entertainments during their time in power. Samuel Pepys records in his diary of the 1660s many visits to the playhouses, sometimes to see long-suppressed works of Shakespeare (‘June 4,1661: . . . thence to the Theatre and saw “Harry the 4th,” a good play’), but also to view early examples of what
have become known as Restoration Comedies. In the latter plays, the language was explicit, knowing and slang-heavy. The leading male character in William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675) has the surname Horner, because he makes a sport of cuckolding husbands, putting the horns on them under the guise of being impotent, and thus above suspicion. At one point, Horner goes offstage into another room to meet Lady Fidget, after conducting the following conversation in front of the closed door of the room with her husband Sir Jasper:

  Horner. Now, is she throwing my things about, and rifling all I have, but I’ll get into her the back way, and so rifle her for it –

  Sir Jasper. Hah, ha, ha, poor angry Horner.

  Horner. Stay here a little, I’ll ferret her out to you presently,

  I warrant.

  [Exit Horner at t’other door]

  Sir Jasper. Wife, my Lady Fidget, Wife, he is coming into you the back way.

  Lady Fidget. Let him come, and welcome, which way he will.

  Sir Jasper. He’ll catch you, and use you roughly, and be too strong for you.

  Lady Fidget. Don’t you trouble yourself, let him if he can.

  The canting crew and other frolicks

  THE GAUNTLET THROWN DOWN by the English Rogue was picked up in fine style at the close of the century by an anonymous writer known only as B.E., whose landmark work, A new dictionary of the terms ancient and modern of the canting crew, in its several tribes of gypsies, beggers, thieves, cheats &c., was published in London in 1699. Its preface gives much of the credit for this type of speech to gypsies, but the author – a gentleman, naturally, according to the title page – claims that it will be ‘useful for all sorts of People (especially Foreigners) to secure their Money, and preserve their Lives’. B.E. himself, while clearly part of the literate class, was more likely also one of the growing breed of Grub Street journalists who turned out the lurid pamphlets advertised alongside the quack remedies and religious tracts in the back pages of emerging news-sheets such as the Weekly Advertiser, the Daily Courant or the Post Boy. There was a ready market for anything which told of the exploits of notorious thieves, and a canting dictionary offered a window into that murky but fascinating world. While much of the language in this particular work was said to have come directly from the lower classes, the author admitted that he could not resist the inclusion of a scattering of high-society slang:

  If some Terms and Phrases of better Quality and Fashion, keep so ill Company, as Tag-Rag and Longtail; you are to remember, that it is no less then Customary, for Great Persons a broad to hide themselves often in Disguises among the Gypsies; and even the late L. of Rochester among us, when time was, among other Frolicks, was not ashamed to keep the Gypsies company.

  Viewed today, many of the expressions in this compilation of outsider language have passed so thoroughly into everyday usage that they are unrecognisable as slang. Few people would be surprised that a biggot is defined as ‘an obstinate blind Zealot’, or that to be jilted is to be ‘deceived or defeated in ones Expectation, especially in Amours’. Some of these words appeared here for the first time in any printed source, such as land-lubber as a derogatory sailor’s name for those on shore, skin-flint for a ‘griping, sharping, close-fisted fellow’, or harridan as a term of abuse for a woman, ‘one that is half Whore, half Bawd’.

  This is the language of the streets, the drinking dens and the brothels, set out for the entertainment of an ever-more literate society in which newspapers and gossip-sheets were proliferating, freed from excessive government censorship by an act of 1695. Whether sitting in an alehouse, tavern or one of the numerous coffee houses which had sprung up since the 1650s, the gentleman-about-town could brush up his knowledge of all kinds of terms for criminal activities, drunkenness, fighting and whoring. They might, perhaps, count themselves among the libertines, defined by B.E. as ‘Pleasant and profuse Livers, that Live-apace, but wildly, without Order, Rule, or Discipline, lighting the Candle (of Life) at both Ends’. These would be people who were familiar with London’s vaulting academies (brothels), occasionally pick up a flapdragon or the Spanish gout (a dose of the clap) and sometimes put a Churl upon a Gentleman (drink ale or malt liquor immediately after wine). However, persons of their social standing would probably be unlikely to cloy the clout (steal a handkerchief), wear the wooden ruff (be put in the pillory) or have a final appointment with the nubbing cove (public hangman).

  The Canting Crew dictionary, however much it may have been aimed at the affluent reading public, was written from the point of view of the criminal or itinerant classes. The word booze still had an outsider’s cachet when it was used by the 1940s Los Angeles biker gang the Booze Fighters, but in fact it was quoted in as respectable a source as the Daily Telegraph as early as 1895, and had been an all-purpose term for alcohol under its variant spellings bouse and bowse for at least three hundred years. Here, the members of the canting crew, safe in their favourite bowsing-ken (alehouse), recall a piece of good fortune:

  The Cul tipt us a Hog, which we melted in Rumbowse – the Gentleman gave us a Shilling, which we spent in Strong Drink

  After which, they very likely raised a toast to the gentleman in question, a word which made its first recorded appearance here (‘Tost – to name or begin a new Health’). When it was all over, the table would be littered with dead-men (‘empty Pots or bottles on a Tavern-table’), another first usage which survives to this day.

  The parson’s mouse-trap

  THE 18TH CENTURY PROVED EVERY BIT as fond of slang and its uses and practitioners as its predecessor. That great hit of the London stage, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728), featured characters based on notorious highwaymen and criminals, who were given fictional names drawn from thieves’ cant. One of the gang is called by the self-explanatory name Filch, while another is Nimming Ned (to nim was to steal, deriving from the German nehmen, to take). The female associates of the gang, unsurprisingly, are given surnames such as Doxy and Trull, both of which were slang terms meaning whore. The dialogue, too, is larded with choice expressions and ripe terms of abuse: ‘You baggage! You hussey! You inconsiderate jade! Had you been hanged it would not have vexed me . . .’

  Few of these low-life words would have been unknown to the packed houses at the Lincoln’s Inn Theatre watching Gay’s work. Many such expressions had been set out for the early Georgian public during the previous decade by a gentleman who wrote sensationalist memoirs of famous criminals under the name Captain Alexander Smith. One such, A Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Foot-pads, Shop-Lifts, and Cheats of both Sexes in and about London, appeared in an expanded version in 1719 with a slang dictionary appended:

  The 5th Edition, with the addition of near 200 Robberies lately committed. To which is added the Thieves New Canting Dictionary, explaining the most mysterious Words, Terms, Phrases and Idioms used at this Time by our modern Thieves.

  While the Complete History was essentially a series of short life-stories, similar to the pamphlets of malefactors’ confessions issued by the Ordinary of Newgate for the previous half-century, Smith’s Canting Dictionary at the end of the book contained a selection of old and newer underworld phrases, which ranged from the expressive to the bleak, such as:

  Dup the boozing-ken, and booze a gage, i.e. go into the ale-house and drink a pot

  Will ye raise a cloud, i.e. will ye smoke a pipe

  The gentry mort has rum ogles, i.e. that lady has charming black eyes

  Backt, dead: as, he wishes the old man backt, that is, he longs to have his father on six men’s shoulders

  Wap, to lie with a man. If she won’t wap for a winn, let her trine for a make, i.e. if she won’t lie with a man for a penny, let her hang for a halfpenny

  Cant words also came to the attention of people whose interest in language was of a less sensational nature. The London-born lexicographer and schoolmaster Nathan Bailey, who published his Universal Etymological English Dictionary in 1721, updated that volu
me in 1727 to include, among other things, an appendix entitled A Collection of the Canting Words and Terms, both ancient and modern, used by Beggars, Gypsies, Cheats, Housebreakers, Shop-lifters, Foot-pads, Highwaymen, &c. This naturally drew in part upon earlier works, including that of Captain Smith, and was certainly not prudish or censorious in the manner of some later dictionaries. Bailey’s books reached a wide audience, remaining in print for well over a century, and those who later made use of them included statesmen such as William Pitt the Younger and Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps most important of all, it was the 1727 edition of Nathan Bailey’s Universal Etymological English Dictionary which Doctor Johnson used as the model for his own Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

  Readers of this particular edition of Bailey’s work were informed that To Blow off the loose corns meant ‘To lie now and then with a woman’, Oliver’s Skull – as in Cromwell – was a chamber pot, and The Parson’s Mouse-Trap was marriage. While these expressions have long passed out of everyday use, some still have a contemporary ring, such as Jayl-Birds meaning ‘prisoners’, Tipsy for ‘almost drunk’ or Peepers for ‘eyes’.

  Dissertations on the art of wheedling

  IN TANDEM WITH THE PROLIFERATION of dictionaries and criminal history broadsides, the 18th century saw the rise of the English novel as an art form. These naturally also shine a light on the language of the day, but there are pitfalls here. For instance, in Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) can be found the phrase smart-money, which strikes a deceptively modern note. These days, this would refer to a likely bet, the sensible course of action, but in Fielding’s time this was simply a form of payment made to members of the armed forces who had been wounded, the word smart used in the sense of pain, not intelligence. There are, however, genuine cant expressions in the novel: in a discussion of ‘certain philosophers’, the narrator slyly refers to them as finders of gold, which sounds like a compliment, but was also a slang name for those who cleaned out cesspits.