I trust you have a cite for your extraordinary statement that there are more ethnicities in the UK than the US because frankly it sounds like balderdash to me.
As for the ‘ever divergent path’ of the Scots, Irish, etc that too is nonsense. If anything, the trend is in the other direction, owing to the universal influence of American TV, movies, etc.
It does? As a cartographer I would have never made that connection, rather I see it as a fart. No I don’t know what else they were talking about around that, but if someone said that to me I’d be heading for the hills.
The biggest reason I see for teaching Shakespeare is because so many thing reference him, from other books to TV and music.
I had a regrettable English associate professor (working on a Ph.D. at the time, I believe) who made the same association. He thought the whole damn thing was about body sounds, body cavities, and that sort of sophmoric humor. I dropped the class out of my complete disgust at such silliness.
The allusion to the Four Winds makes much more sense at the time, I suppose, when the concept of almost animate winds was not such a remote idea.
I thought Shakespeare’s work was rife with humour like that? Why is it silly?
You’re thinking of Chaucer.
I don’t think Shakespeare made any “fart” jokes. He wasn’t above the odd crude metaphor now and again but he tended to be a bit more…classy…about it.
Maybe someone can come up with a Shakespeare fart joke but, off the top of my head, I don’t think there ever was one.
No fart jokes, but I recall:
Aguecheek. These are her very C’s her U’s her T’s and thusly doth she make her great P’s.
That’s as near as I can remember it. I don’t have my Shakespeare with me now. Anyway as I recall this was a bawdy joke about the female anatomy. There was another in Henry V in the English lesson for the French Princess. Anyway Shakespeare did have to play to the Groundlings. If they got bored, I don’t see much chance of anyone else enjoying the play.
Comedy of Errors III,i
Dromio E. Dro. E. A man may break a word with you, sir, and words are but wind:
Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind.
I’m sure that isn’t the only fart joke in the canon.
Here’s another fart joke from the pen of the Bard.
Othello Act III, Sc.1
Clown:
Are these, I pray you, wind-instruments?
First Musician:
Ay, marry, are they, sir.
Clown:
O, thereby hangs a tail.
First Musician:
Whereby hangs a tale, sir?
Clown:
Marry. sir, by many a wind-instrument that I know.
It’s silly in the Lear context. The poor old man is out at night in the worst storm in history, and he’s about one inch away from a complete nervous breakdown as he stands there and defies the weather to do its worst. A fart joke at that point is just dumb.
But if you can work it in as a double-meaning and get away with it you might be tempted. It’s no worse than the ‘count-ry’ bit from Hamlet.
I admit, I was aware of the line and had understood it’s more straightforward meaning but had also always interpreted it as a fart joke as well. The double-meaning’s the thing!
According to Word Origins:
So, we’re comparing all the words in Shakespeare’s entire oeuvre to the words that your average schmoe uses each week?
And I can tell you fo shizzle that US English evolves. Consider yourself 0wNzored.
Daniel