Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England was a place of vitality, experimentation, expanding horizons and lots of small-minded, petty, badly mannered, irritating and irreverent oiks, guls, gallants and harridans. And I love them all.
‘clown’ and ‘ass’ were excellent shouting terms.
Humphrey Richardson cannot have enjoyed being called a ‘lousy rogue, nitty britch knave, and scurvy nitty britch knave’ in 1610.
Bad behaviour can be so much more illuminating than the world of the respectable conformist, for it is those who push against the boundaries of cultural etiquette who most accurately define where the lines are drawn.
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