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

[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....