{"id":967,"date":"2014-07-02T17:36:04","date_gmt":"2014-07-02T16:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=967"},"modified":"2014-07-01T17:39:48","modified_gmt":"2014-07-01T16:39:48","slug":"shakespeare-blamed-for-skin-conditions-stigma-a-poxy-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=967","title":{"rendered":"Shakespeare blamed for skin conditions’ stigma. A poxy idea?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is the sort of headline that makes you do a double take: “Shakespeare accused of causing misery to people with skin conditions,”\u00a0says the Independent<\/a>; “Is Shakespeare to blame for our skin worries? Insults about sores, boils and moles may be behind lasting stigma, claims study”,\u00a0adds the Daily Mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The stories are based on a\u00a0research paper from dermatologists [PDF]<\/a>\u00a0in Nottingham, Leicester and Derby, “Is Shakespeare to blame for the negative connotations of skin disease?” Shakespeare, they point out, was no stranger to insults derived from skin troubles: “Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle,” we hear in King Lear, while rhinophyma \u2013 I had to look that up,\u00a0it’s a big red nose<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 “seems to have triggered Shakespeare’s sense of humour: likening the resultant erythema to the glow of a lantern: ‘thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire night. Thou has saved me a thousand marks in links and torches’ (Henry IV)”.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare “uses these negative undertones to his advantage, employing physical idiosyncrasies in his characters to signify foibles in their behaviour: ‘since the heavens have shaped my body so, let hell make crook’d my mind to answer it’ (Richard III); ‘patch’d with foul moles and eye-offending marks \u2026 then I should not love thee, no, nor thou become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown’ (King John).”<\/p>\n

Disease, the researchers state, “was rife in Elizabethan England; visible signs of illness led to stigmatisation and pejorative connotations followed.” Shakespeare’s works, meanwhile, “have survived the intervening centuries”, leading them to ask: “has his success led to the perpetuation of Elizabethan negativity towards skin disease?”<\/p>\n

Well \u2013 it’s a stretch, isn’t it? And it sort of assumes we might not have noticed that skin diseases aren’t exactly the most pleasant thing in the world, if it wasn’t for Mercutio gasping “A plague on both your houses”, etc. As\u00a0the blogger Shakespeare Geek puts it<\/a>: “In other news, Shakespeare’s popularity is also responsible for cross-dressing, bed-tricks and the occasional regicide.”<\/p>\n

It does give me a chance, though, to roll out probably\u00a0my favourite Shakespearean insult<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 also from King Lear and addressed by the Earl of Kent to the villanous Oswald. I seriously don’t think it can be topped.<\/p>\n

“A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
\nbase, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
\nhundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
\nlily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
\nglass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
\none-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
\nbawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
\nthe composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
\nand the son and heir of a mongrel bitch.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Poor old Oswald. Time for a paper on whether Shakespeare is to blame for our poor perception of knaves, maybe?<\/p>\n

The Guardian Book Blog 1\/7\/2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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