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Department of English
North Dakota State University
322 F Minard Hall
NDSU Dept. 2320
FARGO, ND 58108-6050

Phone: (701) 231-7152
E-mail: verena.theile@ndsu.edu

 

 
 

Curse Like the Bard: Shakespearean Insults
 
 

1. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rareAs any she belied with false compare. (Sonnet 130)

2. The lunatic, the lover, and the poetAre of imagination all compact. (A Midsummer Night’s Dream 5.1)

3. She’s able to freeze the god Priapus, and undo a whole generation. (Pericles 4.6)

4. Your villainy goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up. (Henry V 3.2)

5. Assume a virtue, if you have it not. (Hamlet 3.4)

6. Thy food is such as has been belch’d on by infected lungs. (Pericles 4.6)

7. More validity, more honorable state, more courtship lives in carrion flies. (Romeo & Juliet 3.3)

8. You’ll surely sup in hell. (2 Henry IV 5.1)

9. Do you amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life. (1 Henry IV 3.3)

10. His complexion is perfect gallows. (The Tempest 1.1)

11. Whatsoever cunning fiend it was
That wrought upon thee so preposterously
Hath got the voice in hell for excellence. (Henry V 2.2)

12. Sell when you can, you are not for all markets. (As You Like It 3.5)

13. More of your conversation would infect my brain. (Coriolanus 2.1)

14. More matter with less art. (Hamlet 2.2)

15. Dost dialogue with thy shadow? (Timon of Athens 2.2)

16. There will little learning die then that day thou art hang’d. (Timon of Athens 2.2)

17. You show yourself highly fed and lowly taught. (All’s Well That Ends Well 2.2

)18. He sweats to death, and lards the lean earth as he walks along. (1 Henry IV 2.2)

19. You are not worth the dust which the rude wind blows in your face. (King Lear 4.2)

)20. Thy back, I prithee. (Timon of Athens 4.3.

 
Source: Viner, Michael, and Stefan Rudnicki. Barbs from the Bard. Beverly Hills: New Millennium P, 2000.
 
Last updated November 2007