To abuse or not to abuse: that is not the question

 

To abuse or not to abuse: that is not the question. Abuse one must as a response to any name-calling, cursing, profanities, epithets, or expletives which seek to demean the recipient. The question is, how to do it tellingly? Perhaps not through the befuddled Hamlet, but otherwise, Shakespeare can certainly be a good teacher of this skill. 

In Henry IV, Part 2, authorities have come to arrest Falstaff at the suit of Mistress Quickly, the recently-widowed hostess, the innkeeper of the tavern which Falstaff and his licentious chums haunt; the suit being that Falstaff had run up a large debt and made a fraudulent proposal of marriage. A brawl ensues and the following vituperative conversation stands out:

Hostess: …Wilt thou, thou bastardly rogue?... Ah, thou honeysuckle villain…Ah, thou honeyseed rogue, thou art a honeyseed, a man-queller, and a woman-queller…Thou wot, wot thou wot, wot ta? Do, do, thou rogue! do, thou hemp-seed!

Page: Away, you scullion, you rampallian, you fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe.

Honeysuckle, honeyseed, and hemp-seed appear to be malapropisms for homicidal intent or homicide but uttering these distorted or mistaken cuss words is surely more gratifying to the abuser and peskier to the abused. Queller is also more forceful than a mere killer, right? A scullion is a derogatory term for a lackey who does menial work, so it is eminently annoying when used for any toady underling. A rampallian is simply a ruffian, but far more verbally vexing. Fustilarian, however, takes the cake as a tool for vilification; it is basically a combination of fusty, meaning smelly and stale, and lug, a noun or verb associated with slow movement due to overweight. Put together, you have a smelly, obese, and unattractive person. And this “tickle your catastrophe” will indeed tickle you; catastrophe here is the buttocks, and the act of tickling them may not be as rough as kicking ass, but it surely amounts to giving the posterior a soft, mortifying comeuppance.

Without foraying too far into the Bard’s world, in Henry IV, Part 1, the same Falstaff rants about how he and his crew were robbed by a hundred thieves after they themselves had robbed the king’s exchequer; Prince Hal eggs him on and finally calls him a fat liar. This upsets the former and then some of the choicest insolence emerges from this champion of boastful insults:

Prince: …This sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horse-backbreaker,
this huge hill of flesh—

Falstaff:  ’Sblood, you starveling, you elfskin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stockfish! O, for breath to utter what is like thee! You tailor’s yard, you sheath, you bowcase, you vile standing tuck—

What the prince utters is simple disparaging of a slothful, corpulent man, a bed-presser is a lazy fellow who loves his bed. But Falstaff is far more imaginative; he begins with an oath and then gives the prince a whole lot sobriquets, which are nothing more than resentful bugbears for the latter, till he is literally breathless! A stravelling is someone starving and therefore a weakling, an elf-skin, perhaps another malapropism of eel-skin, a wilted shrivelled body, both referring to the prince’s feeble and lank figure. He continues in the same line; a domesticated bovine tongue, and therefore, shrunken, is a neat’s tongue and cured, un-salted and dried fish is stockfish. In between you have the supreme epithet, bull’s pizzle, which is a bull’s manhood, arguably more parched and shriveled than the objects in the other four abusive analogies.

Not as elegant as this, but for a short, scrawny person, a simple damnation—clear even to the meanest intelligence—can be borrowed from Curtis as he dismisses Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew: “Away, you three-inch fool…”.

Hark, all ye aspiring vilipenders! The Bard was not only about flowery romantic dialogues, dignified conversation, famous quotes, outstretched speeches and intriguing soliloquies, he was also a master craftsman of derision, affording us a treasure trove, a great resource for you to search for and catch vivid stings and vitriolic putdowns that truly befit the situation. After all, can there be a fountainhead of insults matching the one which has “A most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality.” (All’s Well That Ends Well) to “Villain, I have done thy mother” (Titus Andronicus).

Abuses, but not starkly foul language, abound. The Bard was a rare playwright of his era who did not use explicitly foul language or taboo four-letter words. Although some commentators have declared him prudish, it is not correct as they fail to see that he employed biting insults and covert profanities liberally. He did avoid obscenities but cleverly managed crudity using euphemism. Let us call it very creative as he avoided run-of-the-mill abuses and commonplace swear words but developed his own style of insults and abuses without writing anything explicit.

Here are some more: in Elizabethan days, ‘nothing’ also meant ‘no thing’, with ‘thing’ meaning the male private organ, and the Bard used ‘nothing’ to represent the corresponding female organ. So, in Hamlet, when Hamlet tells Ophelia that nothing was a fair thought between a maid’s legs, he was alluding to her vulva in a crooked manner. Quite amusingly then, what would you make of Much Ado About Nothing? Remember, the play is cast around two romantic pairings, Benedick tricked into confessing his love for Beatrice, and vice versa, and Claudio fooled into believing that Hero was not a virgin. All the comedy and intrigue about ‘nothing’!

Enjoy such hilarious ones as, and ‘Thou art as fat as butter’ (Henry IV Part 1), ‘Thine face is not worth sunburning’ (Henry V, even the sun thinks you are ugly), ‘Go, prick thy face, and over-red thy fear, Thou lily-liver'd boy’ (Macbeth, an abuse advising to cut one’s face to draw some blood to give a life-like red colour to someone with white, instead of red, showing lack of courage) and ‘I'll beat thee, but I would infect my hands’ and ‘Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon’ (both, Timon of Athens) and ‘His wit's as thick as Tewksbury mustard’ and ‘Do thou amend my face, and I'll amend my life’ (both, Henry IV Part 2, Tewksbury mustard is a blend of horseradish root and mustard flour, a very thick kitchen condiment, developed around that time and amending your face conveys something impossible so a jaunty way of telling someone to scoot and mind their own business), ‘Thou prating, paper-faced pantaloon!’ (Henry IV, Part 2, an officer, a geezer with white face) and ‘Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood’ (King Lear, carbuncle being a severe abscess) and ‘That kiss is as comfortless as frozen water to a starved snake’ (Titus Andronicus).

If you prefer subtle or campy ones, you would find many. To begin with, this one, perhaps falsely attributed, but I will cite it nevertheless, through which one can run down the other in a dialogue requiring intelligence by saying, ‘I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed’ But these are all certainly authentic, ‘More of your conversation would infect my brain’ (Coriolanus), ‘I am sick when I do look on thee’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), ‘The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes’ and ‘No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip, she is spherical, like a globe; I could find countries in her’ (both, The Comedy of Errors), ‘You have such a February face, So full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness’ (Much Ado About Nothing) and ‘She hath more hair than wit, and more faults than hairs, and more wealth than faults’ (The Two Gentlemen of Verona).

Where does all this potent stuff from the Bard leave a rookie researcher like me who is trying to juxtapose the Bard with our chachā (uncle), particularly as the one that shimmered in my cerebrations was this one:

Vaañ gayā bhī maiñ to un kī gāliyoñ kā kyā javāb

yaad thiiñ jitnī duā.eñ sarf-e-darbāñ ho ga.iiñ

(gāliyāñ: abuses, sarf-e-darbāñ:  for use by doorkeeper. Even if I go to her, how would I deal with her insults? All the blessings and entreaties that I had gathered for her got spent on the doorkeeper. The underlying sense is the lofty and refined sentiment of giving blessings as a payback for insults, which he considers as a given natural response, but is puzzled that, having consumed all the blessings, he has nothing more to reply with).

The chachā has been, after all, way out of line. Sample this:

Na suno gar burā kahe koī

na kaho gar burā kare koī

Do not listen, if someone says something bad or speaks ill (of you or someone else) and do not speak out if someone does something bad or wrong to someone.

With this sermonising, is Ghālib, like Jesus (and later to come, Gandhi), enumerating some universally valid principles of ethical behaviour, which promote better social harmony, what is described as 'Wisdom Literature' by Stephen Covey, with rules basically forbidding slander. ‘A tooth for a tooth and an eye for eye' is the ancient code in the Old Testament. Quite logical too and satisfies the custom of reciprocal justice. But Jesus rose above this and said, 'If someone striketh thee on one cheek offer him thy other.' Does it mean that wrongdoers should go unpunished if the message is not to bear any malice towards them? Does it gel with you, reader, or even the image of Ghālib that you have? 

Perhaps a moral high ground of ignoring someone’s abusive words but not to speak out if someone would do something bad? It is a bit incongruous, so let us look for an alternate sense of the first sher with Ghālib prescribing a strategy of behaving in a manner that obviates unpleasantness; if your listening provokes someone to become slanderous, better not listen and if your speech can prompt someone to act sinfully, better not speak. And if you still nurture doubts, the chachā also wrote:

Jo mudda.ī bane us ke na mudda.ī baniye

jo nā-sazā kahe us ko na nā-sazā kahiye

(mudda.ī: enemy, opponent, nā-sazā: improper, offensive. Do not harbour enmity towards someone who tries to be your enemy, and do not speak offensively with someone who speaks to you abusively.)

So, you are sure disappointed that our chachā, the king of repartee and witty humour is so meek when it comes to some robust insults, a mere also-ran behind the Bard. Well, let us redeem him a bit and prefer to read it as a grand rhetoric concerning the beloved, either addressing himself or commiserating with the rival.

Nobody should purchase enmity of the beloved, irrespective of her open display of animosity, and therefore, nobody should speak offensively to her in spite of her insulting you with vituperations. And why? Because she otherwise is so adorable and captivating or she has the power to inflict so much more pain upon her poor besotted lover(s). In continuation, do recall:

Kitne shīrīñ haiñ tere lab ki raqiib

gāliyāñ khā ke be-mazā na huā

(shīrīñ: sweet, gentle, raqiib: rival in love, be-mazā: loss of taste. The beloved's lips are so sweet that the lecherous rival (who is bereft of any meaningful passion), did not find any distaste even on hearing abusive words from her. In one go, Ghālib tauntingly praises the luscious lips of the beloved and decries the fake lover, who is deprived of the relish of true passion, as even the bitterness of expletives hurled at him could not disgust him. Tauntingly because there are left-handed compliments: the beloved is of refined manners but not ashamed to abuse, while the rival has a peculiar sense of honour that he gladly accepts the foul-mouthed beloved. Or, is the lover cautioning the beloved that while such misconduct may work on a base lover, it would not on him and she would end up distraught.

The lowly rival persists despite his depthless and lewd disposition but only a true lover is worthy of the gratification in involvement with the beloved. The true lover is fully poised to suffer invectives from the beloved as a part of this involvement; it is another matter that the imperious and cruel beloved may not grant him this pleasure.

Do notice some nice wordplay here as gāliyāñ khānā (eating abuses, like swallowing it, in English) is employed both as a metaphor in receiving abuse as well literally in eating it, to go with the thought of something distasteful but at once, not devoid of good taste due to the sweetness of the beloved's lips.

A bit of diversion from the diffident Ghālib, who would not abuse, and the skilful abuser Shakespeare- in The Tempest, Miranda admonishes Caliban that she had worked hard to teach him to speak and find words to make his point understandable but he had bad blood and no matter how much was taught to him, good people could not stand to be near him. Caliban replies that she failed to teach him to read or write, so being able to speak was of no use to him except for abusing:

“You taught me language, and my profit on ’t

Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you

For learning me your language!”

I conclude with some ambivalence. Abuse, if you must, but do it with the Bard’s finesse or hold your peace, merely conveying that you sit at the high pedestal of refinement which bars foul words:

Hai kuchh aisī hī baat jo chup huuñ

varna kyā gāliyāñ nahīñ aatī

…