The Little Book of Shakespeare's Insults

Away, you scullion, you rampallion, you fustilarian!

Along with penning some of the most sublime passages in all of English Literature, Shakespeare was a master when it came to casting a wicked comeback or hurling a barbed insult. Whether it’s Prospero calling Caliban a ‘freckled whelp, hag-born’ in The Tempest or King Lear railing against his daughter Goneril with the damning words, ‘Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood’, Shakespeare didn’t hold…