Although it’s not very polite, one can still say nowadays that someone is looking a bit ‘haggard’. Unfortunately, what we use the word to mean – “Wild-looking, applied [...] to the injurious effect upon the countenance of privation, want of rest, fatigue, anxiety, terror, or worry.” (OED) – is not the same as Shakespeare’s aim, as this passage from The Taming of the Shrew makes clear:

HORTENSIO Would all the world but he had quite forsworn!
For me, that I may surely keep mine oath,
I will be married to a wealtlly widow
Ere three days pass, which hath as long lov’d me
As I have lov’d this proud disdainful haggard.

Here Hortensio abandons his attempts to woo Kate (the eponymous ‘shrew’ of the play), taking leave of a woman he finds “proud, disdaindul”, and a “haggard”: that is to say, not ‘run-down’, but rather “wild”, or, better yet, “untamed”. “Haggard”, although it evolved to mean ‘wild-looking’, actually originates in falconry, where it means “a wild (female) hawk caught when in her adult plumage” (OED). Thus Petruchio, following what was once a common, euphuistic, metaphor, describes his plans for Kate, his shrewish future wife:

PETRUCHIO [...] Another way I have to man my haggard,
To make her come, and know her keeper’s call,
That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites
That bate and beat, and will not be obedient.

Peculiarly, this way of describing people in Shakespeare is only ever applied to women, and often carries overtones of male domination. Petruchio’s is ultimately comic, but Othello’s talk of haggards certainly is not. Enthralled by Iago, he promises that “If I do prove her haggard, / Though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings, / I’d whistle her off, and let her down the wind / To prey at fortune.” Removing the metaphor, one could paraphrase as folllows, ‘If I find out that she’s disobedient, then – no matter what the cost – I’d cut all ties (jesses) between us.’

Last but not least in this swift flight over Shakespeare’s falconry, we have a woman using the word “haggard”. However, this woman is Twelfth Night’s Viola and she uses the word when disguised as a man. Continuing the gender-bending, she even portrays a man, and not a woman, “haggard”. That man is Feste, whom she likens to the touchy “haggard” who “check[s] at every feather / That comes before his eye”. The Fool of the play, unconstrained by decorum, reminds us of the wildness and hence the particular dramatic potential within this word in Shakespeare’s falconing time.

Everyone knows that this word refers to the most insignificant piece on the chessboard, and from this, it is tempting to understand Kent’s use of the word in his pledge of loyalty to an irate King Lear in a particular way:

KENT My life I never held but as a pawn
To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it,
Thy safety being the motive.

The tempting paraphrase of this, and the one given in the No Fear Shakespeare (and in many translations), is “I never considered my life as anything more than a chess pawn for you to play off against your enemies”. This is, however, quite likely to be wrong. The word ‘pawn’ never refers to a chess piece in any of Shakespeare’s twenty-eight other uses of the word. Instead, it often appears as a verb, and often in close proximity to the word “honour”. There are several other meanings of the word pawn in the OED. The chess term, going back to 1400 and the Anglo-Norman for foot-soldier (paun), is the first; but the sense that interests me here, and the sense that Shakespeare uses widely, is the third, from the Middle French pant:

The state or condition of being given or held as a pledge, or as security for the repayment of a loan; chiefly in at pawn, in pawn, †to pawn, etc. Also fig.

This is quite clearly what the Hostess of King Henry IV part II is talking about when she complains that Falstaff has been running up a tab of such proportions that she will have to “pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my dining-chambers”, even though she eventually softens up and serves him, regardless of the fact that she might have to “pawn [her] gown” to pay for it.

Returning to questions of honour, and loftier characters than the Hostess, the word “pawn” as noun or verb is everywhere: Tarquin is described “Pawning his honour to obtain his lust” in The Rape of Lucrece; the history plays are full of challenges in which the throwing of the guantlet is accompanied by the words “There is my honour’s pawn”; an Old Athenian begs for Timon’s approbation with the words “Pawn me to this your honour”; and Imogen, agreeing to keep a chest of jewels in her bedchamber (with – unbeknownst to her Iachimo – hidden inside), says, with some dramatic irony, that she will “pawn my honour for their safety”.

All this and more suggests that the correct reading of those lines from King Lear has nothing to do with chess. Rather,

KENT My life I never held but as a pawn
To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it,
Thy safety being the motive.

Means: ‘I considered my life as something to be pawned, to be pledged on my honour, in order to secure thy safety’. The word “wage”, which might mislead here by evoking the language of combat too strongly, nevertheless means also, to quote the OED once more, “To deposit or give as a pledge or security”. Kent’s life is no chess piece, but rather something with a clear value in terms of both his own sense of honour and his service to Lear.

Given that it’s been a while since I last wrote about Shakespeare and fire, I decided to return to the topic with this thrice-occurring word. Although we now talk about the ‘brim’ or edge of an object, the first syllable of today’s word is a distant descendant of the verb ‘burn’, as can be seen in the German for brimstone, bernstein (incidentally, also the surname of the composer behind the famous adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story).

Brimstone is another word for sulphur, since sulphur is highly inflammable. The term used to be very common, and, tellingly, made it into the first English translation of the Bible. At one end of the good book, Genesis 19:24 talks about “brimstone and fire” that God rained on Sodom and Gomorrah; and, at the other end, Revelations 19:20 describes how idolators and those with the mark of the beast “were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone”.

Given these Biblical overtones, it is unsurprising to find two out of the three uses of “brimstone” in Shakespeare’s works involve oaths. Sir Toby, never one to speak with much refinement, bursts out with “Fire and brimstone!” when he overhears Malvolio’s daydreams about his employer and Toby’s sister, Olivia, for the first time. Elsewhere, Othello shouts, “Fire and brimstone!” when Desdemona unwittingly mentions how fond she is of Cassio. Given that Othello normally speaks with great polish, his slip into the same language as Sir Toby gives us a sense of how strikingly vulgar his emotional explosion must appear.

One last instance, again from Twelfth Night but this time from Sir Toby’s companion, Fabian, explaining to Sir Andrew Aguecheek that Olivia’s behaviour towards the disguised Viola/Cesario was obviously only intended to “ put fire in your heart and brimstone in your liver”. Although, as soon becomes clear, Aguecheek’s wrath is far from possessing divine proportions…

In Latin, the word ‘falx’ means sickle, the sharp but relatively small and harmless object whose name has – through vulgar Latin falcion-em, Italian falcione, Old French fauchon and Middle English fauchoun – come to mean a broad sword, often slightly curved with the edge on the convex side. The word ‘falchion’ (pronounced with a soft ‘ch’, f-’or-l-sh-u-n) thus comes from peaceful origins to appear eight times in some of the most bloody scenes of Shakespeare.

York, in Henry VI part III describes how “oft Edward came to my side / With purple falchion painted to the hilt”; Anne tells Richard (currently Duke of Gloucester but future Richard III) that “Queen Margaret saw / Thy murderous falchion smoking in [her husband’s, the same Edward York is talking about] blood”; and a dying King Lear recalls that “I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion, I would have made them skip”. Elsewhere, The Rape of Lucrece accounts for half of all Shakespeare’s uses of the word, fittingly enough as ‘falchion’ is noted by the OED as often being a poetic synonym for the monosyllabic “sword”. Shakespeare’s concentration on Tarquin’s “falchion” in his long poem, however, hints at another meaning:

His falchion on a flint he softly smiteth,
That from the cold stone sparks of fire do fly;
Whereat a waxen torch forthwith he lighteth,
Which must be lode-star to his lustful eye;
And to the flame thus speaks advisedly:
‘As from this cold flint I enforced this fire,
So Lucrece must I force to my desire.’

The coordintation of Tarquin’s falchion, the sparks of its sharpening, and the fires of lust in this stanza underline a link between the Roman man’s weapon and his libido. Indeed, what is obvious here can be glimpsed in King Lear’s regret that he was no longer sufficiently strong and manly to wield a falchion in defence of Cordelia. Taking this connection between falchions and the phallus in a different direction brings us to Shakespeare’s last use of the word, and the only one from a comedy. Boyet, joining in the group mocking of Holofernes at the end of Love’s Labour’s Lost, tells the poor man that his face resembles “The pommel of Caesar’s falchion”, by far the least impressive part of this weapon.

What is a nonce? The OED offers us two meanings: the first (going back to 1175 and the original Old English root of ‘anum’) appears to be something to do with the number one; the second (origin unknown but possibly Lancastrian slang) is that of “a sexual deviant”, especially someone convicted of child abuse, and, as it only appeared in the late twentieth century, can be safely left out of this discussion.

You normally find the word ‘nonce’ in phrases with ‘for’, and Shakespeare gives us two of these. The most famous by far occurs at the end of Hamlet, when Claudius reveals one of the measures he will take to ensure Laertes victory in the upcoming duel between him and Claudius’ son-in-law.

CLAUDIUS When in your motion you are hot and dry,–
As make your bouts more violent to that end,–
And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepar’d him
A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venom’d stuck,
Our purpose may hold there.

Here, “for the nonce” means ‘for the particular purpose’ or, more likely, ‘for the particular occasion’. Both phrases depending on the original Old English sense of nonce as ‘one’ and thus also translatable as ‘for that one purpose’ or ‘for that one occasion’. The second of Shakespeare’s uses of the word ‘nonce’ – in – illustrates this clearly, as Pointz explains how he will camouflage his and Prince Hal’s clothes, for the express purpose of surprising Falstaff and the others on Gad’s Hill even more effectively: “sirrah, I have cases of buckram for the nonce, to immask our noted outward garments.”

One final nonce, that occurring in Henry VI part I. An Auvergnat Countess has taken the British captain Talbot prisoner, and is more than a little puzzled by the way in which her captive laughs and jokes about his being only Talbot’s “shadow”, since the captain is without his soldiers.

COUNTESS This is a riddling merchant for the nonce;
He will be here, and yet he is not here:
How can these contrarieties agree?

The ‘nonce’ here is probably best glossed as the third sense of the phrase ‘for the nonce’: quite simply, ‘verily, indeed’.

This is a very old word, going back certainly to before the Norman invasion, and thus to before Christmas was celebrated in the British Isles. The word ‘wassail’ comes from an Anglo-Saxon toast, “be thou healthy (hale)”, to which the correct response was apparently “drink healthy”. Old as the word is, though, Shakespeare still manages to anachronistically plant it in the mouth of Octavius Caesar (63BC – 14AD) about a quarter of the way through Antony and Cleopatra. Speaking to Antony, and disapproving with the Roman’s Egyptian love, he pleads, “Antony, / Leave thy lascivious wassails.”

As Octavius’ comments make clear, “wassail” is often not too highly regarded. Originally, the practice of wassailing involved a trip from door to door singing carols; however, this pleasant activity could easily become less cheery when the carollers requested alms and drink or, after having received their drink, then became rowdy. This is the sense of wassail most often found in Shakespeare (is Shakespeare a grinch? Again, the question seems relevant). Take this famous passage from Hamlet as an example, where “wassail” is synonymous with unruly behaviour:

HAMLET The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.

Similarly, it is with drink and “wassail” that Lady Macbeth plans to befuddle the guards around King Duncan, thus allowing her husband a chance at regicide.

Not to finish on a dismal note, I leave you with the last two occurrences of Shakespeare’s five mentions of “wassail”. Falstaff, being rather fat, compares himself to a “wassail candle” since he, like such objects, is made of “tallow”. In Love’s Labour’s Lost Berowne, last seen talking about Christmas, also gives us a reference to wassail, describing Boyet as “wit’s pedlar, and retails his wares / At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs [...]”.

Shakespeare has five turkeys in his works, scattered across the comedies and histories. There are no turkeys in the tragedies, perhaps because it was still rather rare to kill a turkey at Christmas in Shakespeare’s time, and a turkey thus led a less tragic life then than it does nowadays.

Indeed, one may suspect that the turkey was a rare sight in London, since Shakespeare is often careful to make clear that he is talking about the bird, especially when comparison to this particular avian is used as an insult. When the welshmen, Gower and Fluellen, see Pistol in Henry V, they describe him “swelling like a turkey-cock”. When Fabian wants to capture the hoodwinked Malvolio’s state of mind, he too reaches for the Christmas bird, saying that “Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock” out of Olivia’s steward. These two examples suggest a link between the turkey and pride, perhaps based on the ostentation of serving this delicacy at one’s table. Certainly, Gremio, reflecting on what makes him an eligible batchelor is very proud of another import, this time actually coming from the Middle East (whereas turkeys came from the New World), namely his “Turkey cushions”.

The final reference to a turkey in Shakespeare is the most banal, two salesmen in Henry IV part I, in a scene often excised, complain about their wares, and especially their far-from-festive turkeys…

2. CAR. I have a gammon of bacon and two razes of ginger, to be delivered as far as Charing-cross.
1. CAR. ‘Odsbody! the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved.

Shakespeare was, I’m sure, no grinch, but he does only mention ‘Christmas’ a mere three times, twice in the same play. That play is Love’s Labour’s Lost, and within it, Berowne is the xmas-obsessed character. Near the start of the play, as the King of Navarre and his friends prepare to vow themselves to celibacy, Berowne carps about such an oath, arguing – just before giving in to peer-pressure – that this is a bad idea since the time for celibacy is later, and that all things have their time, including festive weather:

BEROWNE Why should I joy in any abortive birth?
At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled shows;
But like of each thing that in season grows;
So you, to study now it is too late,
Climb o’er the house to unlock the little gate.

Of course, though, Christmas is about more than weather, and, as Berowne’s ‘everything in its time’ argument suggests, there were a host of traditional things to do. Eat turkey (as Henry VIII was one of the first to do), munch pies and make merry until Epiphany (or Twelfth Night) marked the climax of festivities. As regards specific entertainment, Berowne, speaking of his failed plan to impress the ladies two-thirds of the way through the play, mentions one such activity:

BEROWNE I see the trick on’t: here was a consent,
Knowing aforehand of our merriment,
To dash it like a Christmas comedy.

”A Christmas comedy” refers to the many plays put on to entertain revellers in the Christmas season, and may even refer to a specific performance of The Comedy of Errors at Gray’s Inn on 28th December 1598, which, ending in uproar, did not go well at all.

My final reference to Christmas comes from another of Shakespeare’s comedies, The Taming of the Shrew, and this time reveals a rather low opinion of the festive period. A troop of actors arrive at Christopher Sly’s house in an attempt to cheer him up; surprised, he questions his servants about their intent.

SLY. Marry, I will; let them play it. Is not a commonty a Christmas gambold or a tumbling-trick?
PAGE. No, my good lord; it is more pleasing stuff.

This word only appears once in Shakespeare’s works, but, I feel, nevertheless merits attention. It makes its appearance in the enormous third scene of Richard III, when Richard (currently Duke of Glo[uce]ster) enters a verbal duel with (the former) Queen Margaret. Given that Richard killed King Henry at the end of Henry VI part III, his wife does not hesitate to throw all manner of insults at him, interrupting his superficial piety.

GLOSTER. To fight on Edward’s party for the crown;
And for his meed, poor lord, he is mew’d up.
I would to God my heart were flint, like Edward’s,
Or Edward’s soft and pitiful, like mine:
I am too childish-foolish for this world.

QUEEN MARGARET.Hie thee to hell for shame and leave this world,
Thou cacodemon! there thy kingdom is.

The fact that Richard and those others on stage not only ignore this reference but go on to talk openly of how the one of Shakespeare’s most famous villains would be followed “if [he] should be our king” turn what might have been a biting interjection from the former queen into a proof of her waning power and Richard’s waxing strength. Just what, though, is a cacodemon?

Well, the word means ‘evil spirit’ and so might be adequately translated by lopping off its prefix and just using ‘demon’ (as the ‘No Fear Shakespeare’ does). ‘Demon’, in our AD society is always negative so the prefix caco-, meaning bad and found, for example, in cacophony (bad sound) and cacogastric (bad digestion), would seem to be redundant.

I’m not so sure, though. Shakespeare could have written ‘Thou art a demon’ and preserved his meter, but chose instead the pagan form, dating from the time when a demon or daimon could be good (eudaimon or agathodaimon) or bad (our cacodaimon). I think he did this to capture something superlative about Richard: as his actions in the play will prove, this character is not just diabolic, but superlatively so, evil even amongst other evils, and thus truly, as the ignored Margaret puts it, a caco-demon.