'Don't Expect Me To Call The Day After' And Other Modern Shakespeare Quote Translations

Most of us have been shushed by teachers while chuckling during a Shakespeare reading. When the clown in "Twelfth Night" jested of "well hanged" men, high school English classrooms everywhere filled with muffled laughter. Same story when Mercutio speaks of "pricks" and "pricking," and Petruchio suggests putting his "tongue" in Katherine's "tail."

It's true that one of the Bard's many talents was his ability to mask racy puns with rosy prose. But Scott Roeben's hilarious website reveals possible hidden meanings behind even the most innocuous statements. Here are some of our favorites:

Comments

[Patrick Wm Connally]

12:23 PM on 09/25/2011

'The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.'
That is an old device; and it was play'd
When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.

Mid Summer Night Dream

[Erewhon7]

08:56 PM on 09/24/2011

What trick, what device, what starting-hole canst thou now find out, to hide thee from this open and apparent shame? Henry IV.

[Erewhon7]

08:54 PM on 09/24/2011

It would be funnier if it weren't all about sophomoric s e x jokes.
Low-brow... to the max.

[triplettam]

11:40 AM on 09/22/2011

Boo on number 2. The rest? Meh.

[Lorindol]

11:35 AM on 09/22/2011

"Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart."

[colonelsun68]

07:41 AM on 09/22/2011

Good thing HP didn't put this under Comedy, because it sure isn't funny.

[triplettam]

11:39 AM on 09/22/2011

That's for sure.

[Mary Senger]

12:09 AM on 09/22/2011

Decent English classes don't teach modernized Shakespeare (aside from spelling, of course. None of this "aduersaries" and "vndoubted" and "iust"). I think it's unnecessary to try to find inappropriate meaning in his words - when he's talking about sex, it's pretty obvious. Some of these stretch the limits, and only apply when taken out of context. They're not even amusing. Shakespeare is funny by himself - Falstaff, Mercutio! They don't need translations.

[Cold in Michigan]

12:54 PM on 09/23/2011

Exactly...he was not shy about saying what he wanted and said it well.

[CVales]

08:19 PM on 09/21/2011

This is lame. Almost none of these quotes lend themselves to this type of interpretation. Quote-mining at its worst.

[MrsManarlican]

06:58 PM on 09/21/2011

I don't know what's worse, the slideshow and translations or the Shakespeare-snob commenters.

[AZLibDem]

01:52 PM on 09/21/2011

This is what you get when Shakespeare is interpreted by someone raised on "Jackass."

[PerryLogan]

01:13 PM on 09/21/2011

HAMLET: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.

[thebigbike]

12:59 PM on 09/21/2011

I think it's great HuffPo is giving blog room to 7th graders !

[Bruckley]

12:42 PM on 09/21/2011

Remember it was a villain who said kill all the lawyers

[Tim Haselden]

01:19 PM on 09/21/2011

A long held truism.
Voltaires' famous quote: "A man has led a good life if at its end he can count the visitations of both the doctor & lawyer on the same hand."

[JoeyDee2]

12:16 PM on 09/21/2011

The following great line needs no translation:
"“The funeral meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage table.”

Hamlet tells his friend, Horatio that his mother remarried too soon following the King’s death. The Bard knew his sarcasm—it has a modern bite to it.

Shakespeare is on the verge of not being taught at any level. When it is “translated” into “modern” English to make it accessible for students, it sounds ridiculous and they still don’t read it. In a hundred years or less, the works of Shakespeare, read or performed, will be virtually unknown.

[Skygazer]

01:27 PM on 09/21/2011

Nah. Total Poppycock tis it is you speakth...

[Cold in Michigan]

12:56 PM on 09/23/2011

agreed...when we teach to our lowered expectations we loose so much.

[Tim Haselden]

12:11 PM on 09/21/2011

William Shapespeare...... the bane of every schoolchild for the last 400 years. Who's prose made those long hours in O-level Eng Lit drag and instilled an aversion to anything by him till well into my 30's.

[broui]

12:29 PM on 09/21/2011

Unfortunately, many of my colleagues who teach high school English do so as if Shakespeare wrote for the priveleged or the educated.

He didn't.

I teach it different. His gift was his study of and understanding of basic human nature - which has never changed. Sure the turn of phrase is amazing as well as the fact that he added over 30k words to the language, but at its core his body of work is a study of human nature.

Listening for the off color jokes is fun too.

[Tim Haselden]

01:12 PM on 09/21/2011

Then you are a lot better than the teacher who first introduced the bard to me. A lot like the "approved way" in Dead Poets' Society. It destroyed any fascination with his work before it had a chance to take root.
It's only in later years I discovered the depth & magic of his work.