Cuckoldry

1. Cuckoldry Animal Imagery and Sexual Imagery in Much Ado About Nothing

2. Origins of the term - cuckold • Cuckold is derived from the Old French for the cuckoo, cucu, with the pejorative suffix -old. The females of certain varieties of cuckoo lay their eggs in other bird’s nests, freeing themselves from the need to nurture the eggs to hatching.

3. While the cat’s away: The danger of women’s sexual appetite sees her consorting with the devil

4. While the hapless man remains ignorant to the fact the world knows exactly what his wife is doing.

5. Wearing the horns Cuckolds have sometimes been written as "wearing the horns of a cuckold" or just "wearing the horns". This refers to the fact that the man being cuckolded is the last to know of his wife's infidelity. He is wearing horns that can be seen by everybody but him. This also refers to a tradition claiming that in villages of unknown European location, the community would gather to collectively humiliate a man whose wife gives birth to a child recognizably not his own. According to this legend, a parade was held in which the hapless husband is forced to wear antlers on his head as a symbol of his wife's infidelity. Whether or not this actually happened is unknown but the phrase has survived.

6. Animal Imagery - Othello Although Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy we should never forget that one of the underlying understandings of comedy is its potential for tragedy. In Othello, Othello’s jealous servant Iago tricks him into believing his wife is unfaithful. Don John can be seen as a precursor to Iago’s character. And while in Much Ado the tragedy is averted, in Othello sexual jealousy ultimately sees Othello murder his wife before he discovers her innocence and kills himself. I have toldthee often, and I re-tell thee again and again, Ihate the Moor: my cause is hearted; thine hath noless reason. Let us be conjunctive in our revengeagainst him: if thou canst cuckold him, thou dostthyself a pleasure, me a sport. ~ Iago O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;It is the green-eyed monster which doth mockThe meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in blissWho, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger; Iago “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram~ Is tupping your white ewe.” ~ Iago I will chop her into messes: cuckold me!~ Othello

7. Animal Imagery King Lear Animal imagery shows that human greed and lust for power, as well as other negative qualities, turn people into rapacious or poisonous beasts. It also demonstrates that the dilemmas people create for themselves can lower them to the status of beasts. Among the animals to which characters are compared are rats, wolves, sheep, goats, horses, dogs, cats, mice, owls, wild geese, bears, monkeys, crabs, snails, an ass, a hedge-sparrow, a cuckoo, and each of the following: Kite: It feeds on small land animals, fish, garbage, and carrion. In Act I, Scene IV, Lear speaks this line to Goneril: "Detested kite! thou liest" (Line 284).  Vulture: In Act II, Scene IV, Lear bemoans Goneril's behavior by saying that “she hath tied / sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here [points to his heart]” (Lines 136-137).  Serpent: In Act II, Scene IV, Lear says Goneril "struck me with her tongue, / Most serpent-like, upon the very heart" (Lines 162-163). Pelican: In Act III, Scene IV,  Lear "scolds" himself for fathering Regan and Goneril, saying “‘twas this flesh begot those pelican daughters” (Lines 76-77). Tiger: In Act IV, Scene II,  the Duke of Albany condemns Regan and Goneril for their treatment of Lear, comparing them to tigers. The use of animal imagery in King Lear prompted critic G.B. Harrison to write, "It is as if Shakespeare wished to portray a world in which most men and women are beasts, and only the exceptional few [are fully human]."–G.B. Harrison, ed. Shakespeare: The Complete Works. New York: Harcourt, 1952 (Page 1139)

8. Significance for us: Horns show up consistently in the play as a symbol of marriage (and the corollary notion of a husband becoming subservient in marriage, a man to be scorned for his wife’s infidelity). The inevitable horns that come with marriage (remember Beatrice jokes that if God sent her a man, He’d have to send horns too) represents marriage as a process by which wild animals are tamed.

9. Love horns Horns are joked about throughout the play, but over the course of the action they become less fearsome as the characters come around to viewing horns as an ornament of love. At the end of the play, Claudio promises that Benedick will have horns, but they’ll be gold-tipped, like Jove’s horns were during his lusty conquest of Europa. Horns are thus a thing of wild animals, but as the characters learn to accept and be excited about marriage, they come to symbolise the bawdy pleasantries of marriage.

10. DON PEDRO Well, as time shall try: 'In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.'BENEDICK The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull's horns and set them in my forehead: and let me be vilely painted, and in such great letters as they write 'Here is good horse to hire,' let them signify under my sign'Here you may see Benedick the married man.'CLAUDIO If this should ever happen, thou wouldst be horn-mad.

11. LEONATO By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband, if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue.ANTONIO In faith, she's too curst*. (*ill-natured) BEATRICE Too curst is more than curst: I shall lessen God's sending that way; for it is said, 'God sends a curst cow short horns;' but to a cow too curst he sends none.LEONATO So, by being too curst, God will send you no horns. If, as the proverb says, God says a 'curst' cow short horns to limit the damage it can inflict, then, by implication, He will send a 'curst' woman a short-horned (small-penised) husband. But if Antonio says she is 'too curst', she will be sent 'no horns', i.e. no husband at all, which is just fine by her'.

12. LEONATO Well, then, go you into hell?BEATRICE No, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliverI up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for theheavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, andthere live we as merry as the day is long.ANTONIO [To HERO] Well, niece, I trust you will be ruled by your father.

13. CLAUDIO All, all; and, moreover, God saw him when he was hid in the garden.DON PEDRO But when shall we set the savage bull's horns on the sensible Benedick's head?CLAUDIO Yea, and text underneath, 'Here dwells Benedick the married man'?

14. DON PEDRO Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what's the matter,That you have such a February face,So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?CLAUDIO I think he thinks upon the savage bull.Tush, fear not, man; we'll tip thy horns with goldAnd all Europa shall rejoice at thee,As once Europa did at lusty Jove,When he would play the noble beast in love.BENEDICK Bull Jove, sir, had an amiable low; And some such strange bull leap'd your father's cow,And got a calf in that same noble featMuch like to you, for you have just his bleat. Phoenician Princess Europa who became the first princess of Crete was seduced/ravished by Zeus

15. Notes recap from yesterday Claudio changes Benedick from a laboring farm animal, a bull straining under a yoke, to a wild god, empowered by his bestial form to take sexual possession of his lady. While the bull of marriage is the sadly yoked, formerly savage creature, the bull that Claudio refers to comes from the classical myth in which Zeus took the form of a bull and carried off the mortal woman Europa. This second bull is supposed to represent the other side of the coin: the bull of bestial male sexuality.

16. Another possible meaning? One critic suggests that the cuckold was a metaphor for the changes in social and economic class relationships of the time. In this view, the worry about becoming a cuckold expresses indirectly the anxiety the growing merchant class felt about private property. Because of this economic connection the horns of the cuckold are derived from beasts of burden, the horns of the ox and the horn-like ears of the ass (Bruster, D., " The Horn of Plenty: Cuckoldry and Capital in the Age of Shakespeare," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 30, No. 2, Spring 1990.]

17. Horses • BORACHIO The poison of that lies in you to temper. Go you to the prince your brother; spare not to tell him that he hath wronged his honour in marrying the renowned Claudio--whose estimation do you mightily hold up--to a contaminated stale, such a one as Hero. • CLAUDIO Out on thee! Seeming! I will write against it:You seem to me as Dian in her orb,As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;But you are more intemperate in your bloodThan Venus, or those pamper'd animalsThat rage in savage sensuality..... • DON PEDRO What should I speak?I stand dishonour'd, that have gone aboutTo link my dear friend to a common stale.

18. Animal warfare: Edited • BEATRICE I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. • BENEDICK Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.BEATRICE A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours. • BENEDICK I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, andso good a continuer. But keep your way, i' God'sname; I have done. • BEATRICE You always end with a jade's trick: I know you of old.