wiki-illiam #108: q8

[dubdobdee]

8:

1: Of what fishes was who declared the Triton?
2: Who likened the haberdasher's offering to a bivalve?
3: Who was likened to which dried clupeid without his roe?
4: Who reminded Goodfellow of hearing a mermaid on whose back?
5: Who suggested that land might be purchased as cheap as what malodorous fish?
6: Who intoned about whose jaws, mixed with a poisonous root and a lupine tooth?
7: Who, in alluding to age, refers to what creature progressing in reverse?
8: Who chose to play the fool and alluded to a small bait-fish?
9: Whose face had pimples, described as what gastropods?
10: Who found that what soused fish caused flatulence?

Comments

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

Are these Shakespearian similes?

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

I don't know about similes, but I think they are all Shakespearean references to seafood. #6 is the Third Witch, who in Macbeth 4:1 begins her part of the spell:

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark...

I think the creature in #7 is a crab, but I can't remember whose speech it appears in.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

You're right! It is Hamlet going doolally and believes Polonius is a fishmonger rather than his girlfriend's dad:

LORD POLONIUS: [Aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my
daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I
was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and
truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for
love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.
What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET: Words, words, words.

LORD POLONIUS: What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET: Between who?

LORD POLONIUS: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

HAMLET: Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here
that old men have grey beards, that their faces are
wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and
plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of
wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir,
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet
I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for
yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab
you could go backward.

LORD POLONIUS: [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method
in 't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET: Into my grave. <--- MASSIVE GOTH

LORD POLONIUS: [makes twirling finger sign next to his head to denote 'batshit dude over there'] Indeed, that is out o' the air.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I think it's fair to say we can narrow the theme further to aquatic animal similies - herring, mackerel, salt-sea shark, dolphin, minnows, oysters....

[petra jane (from livejournal.com)]

The schoolboy in the 'seven ages of man' speech from As You Like It is described as being like a snail, creeping unwillingly to school - though I'm not sure that's the intended answer for 9.9 (Shakespeare's schoolboy's complexion is "shining" rather than spotty).

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

4. Goodfellow is Robin 'Puck' Goodfellow - he's having a chin-wag with Oberon who says:

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberest
Since once I sat upon a promontory
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the seamaid’s music?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

And 1. is from Coriolanus - titular dude is a soldier-turned-politician, and is having a massive beef with Brutus and Sicinius (who, to be fair, have been inciting a riot against him) and he accidentally-on-purpose calls the rioting proletariat 'rank-scented' and other PR-unfriendly things (bad luck Coriolanus). His mates try and say he doesn't mean it but C won't put down his shovel now he's started digging, and B&S egg him on:

BRUTUS: You speak o' the people,
As if you were a god to punish, not
A man of their infirmity.

SICINIUS: 'Twere well
We let the people know't.

MENENIUS: What, what? his choler?

CORIOLANUS: Choler!
Were I as patient as the midnight sleep,
By Jove, 'twould be my mind!

SICINIUS: It is a mind
That shall remain a poison where it is,
Not poison any further.

CORIOLANUS: Shall remain!
Hear you this Triton of the minnows? mark you
His absolute 'shall'?

COMINIUS: 'Twas from the canon. (<--- ROCKISM)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

#2: Could this be Richard II?

He is our cousin, cousin; but 'tis doubt,
When time shall call him home from banishment,
Whether our kinsman come to see his friends.
Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here and Green
Observed his courtship to the common people;
How he did seem to dive into their hearts
With humble and familiar courtesy,
What reverence he did throw away on slaves,
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles
And patient underbearing of his fortune,
As 'twere to banish their affects with him.
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;
A brace of draymen bid God speed him well
And had the tribute of his supple knee,
With 'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends;'
As were our England in reversion his,
And he our subjects' next degree in hope.

I guess Richard is talking about Henry Bolingbroke? Or should I say sechsy Thorin Merlin Guy of Winter Is Coming etc etc Absolutely no clue why he's bringing oyster-wenches into it.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Aha - #3 is definitely Romeo. Mercutio is moaning about him being soppy over a GURL (and running away from last night's Capulet disco) when there is serious business of a duel with Tybalt to be dealt with...

Without his roe, like a dried herring: flesh, flesh,
how art thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers
that Petrarch flowed in: Laura to his lady was but a
kitchen-wench; marry, she had a better love to
be-rhyme her; Dido a dowdy; Cleopatra a gipsy;
Helen and Hero hildings and harlots; Thisbe a grey
eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior
Romeo, bon jour! there's a French salutation
to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit
fairly last night.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

#5 is Falstaff in Henry IV part 1, yakking on with Henry's son Prince Hal:

FALSTAFF: I grant ye, upon instinct. Well, he is there too,
and one Mordake, and a thousand blue-caps more:
Worcester is stolen away to-night; thy father's
beard is turned white with the news: you may buy
land now as cheap as stinking mackerel.

LOKI PRINCE HAL: Why, then, it is like, if there come a hot June and
this civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maidenheads
as they buy hob-nails, by the hundreds.

(sorry for hogging these but I am enjoying looking them all up)