"Do you bite your thumb at me?"

As we near a discussion of the Hermia vs Helena battle royale, I thought I might share something I came upon. In my Teaching Reading and Writing Coure we are about to do a "workshop" on teaching Shakespeare. So, we have been scouring the Internet for resources. Obviously, there are a lot of resources for teaching Shakespeare out there. But, one source I really enjoyed was this site, which deals with teaching Shakespeare to reluctant learners. Teaching Shakespeare the "fun way" talks about acting it out, assigning roles and the such. But, my favorite part is the insult generator. I don't believe it was on this site, but another said one of the best ways to teach Shakespeare is to not hide the dirty jokes from students and let them know of the humor of it. In my first go around with Shakespeare, finding these jokes made what can be heavy reading (especially for students that don't like to read as much as we do!) made the work more enjoyable.

So, it is in that vein that I present the Shakespeare Insult Generator.

The quote for the title of this post comes from Romeo and Juliet (which I am reading for an upcoming post). Its kind of a funny scene where two men of House Capulet come upon two men from House Montague and decide to bite their thumbs at them. Abraham asks Sampson "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" Sampson confers with Gregory that the law would not be on their side. So, he says that he bites his thumb, but not at them.

These insults and little verbal wars are fun to read. I think its a good example of where Shakespeare shows his wit.

At any rate, enjoy coming up with your insults, you loggerheaded elf-skinned flap-dragons.

Alan