To Curse or Not to Curse? On Teaching the F-Bomb and Other Colorful Words

I don’t run shrieking when students use certain taboo vowel-consonant combinations. The way I see it, 21st century moral “commandments” should focus on far more “evil” “sins” than cursing, coveting a neighbor’s ass (as in donkey), and other Bronze Age no-no’s. Instead of washing my own child’s mouth out with soap to make him or her “moral,” I’ll be preaching a new set of commandments about 21st century sins – things like as “Thou shalt not drive a gas-guzzler,” “Thou shalt not buy blood-diamonds,” and “Thou shalt not be a selfish and socially uninformed consumer-drone.” No combination of “f” and “k,” “sh” and “t,” or “g” and “d” phonemes is in the same moral ballpark as earth-destroying habits.

So that’s the relevance argument.

Then there’s the hypocrisy argument, which goes like this: the vast majority of adults curse. So does the vast majority of high school young adults, imitating their elders in this as in the “21st century sins” mentioned above. And I’m known to engage in the occasional use of what, in the U.S. Army, we called “colorful language” myself. (Let’s not even get started on our entertainment industry’s attitude toward all of this.)

I mention this because yesterday I read the first drafts of my AP Literature classes’ modern prose adaptations of Shakespeare’s King Lear. For those of you who’ve sinned against your own aesthetic lives by not experiencing the power of this greatest of Billy S.’s tragedies, you should know that cursing occurs repeatedly throughout it – and does so as high art. Here’s an example: Lear cursing the womb (!) of his treacherous oldest daughter, Goneril –

KING LEAR:
Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!

Some of you cursing purists will say that the above is not in the same class as today’s more vulgar, four-letter word variety, and you have a point. Lear curses with style and grace, as befits a king. But Kent, his chief knight – Lear’s “Army Chief of Staff,” as it were – curses, as befits a career soldier, with much more salt and directness. Check out his classic “cussing out” of the slimy Oswald, servant of Goneril –

OSWALD:
What dost thou know me for?

KENT:
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of they addition. (Act II, Sc. 2, ll. 14-24)

If your Elizabethan English is rusty, and you don’t hear the vulgarity and sexual insult sloshing in practically every line, download the free “Answers” Firefox addon, and click the unknown words while holding down “alt” on your Mac for an instant popup definition and more (PC users, you’re on your own – maybe “ctrl”?). Kent calls Oswald a pimp, son of a bitch, bastard, son of a whore, “wussy,” a suck-up, and more, and then says, in today’s language, “Deny one word, and I’ll kick your disgusting little donkey” (substitute the King James Bible word for donkey here).

It’s depressing, isn’t it, how the art of cursing has degenerated in our own modern age? Our four-letter words are so unimaginative and artless by comparison.

So if you were me, how would you guide students to translate these curses? Having Kent abuse Oswald by hissing,

You bad person, I’m going to kick your bottom.
You son of a bad woman, you sissy, you person born out of wedlock,
You big meanie, etc

just doesn’t strike me as a faithful literary adaptation. (It does strike me as schooliness, though. Some teachers, like Wilde’s classic Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest, would give such a bowdlerizing an “A,” I’ve no doubt.)

So I told the class, if they have a passage in which modern-day cursing seems the best choice for literary faithfulness to the original, then go ahead and let their character curse. I also warned them that they’d be assessed and graded based on how judicious and mature they were with their choices.

It’s only the first draft for these teams, and we’ve only adapted the first Act or so, but already there’s some interesting stuff happening. I share it partly for laughs, and partly because, pedagogically and socially, there are openings here for explorations into social contexts of using curse words – when to use them, and when not to.

I’ll shut up now, and paste a few passages of the Shakespeare first, followed by the translations. I’m curious to hear your reactions to these literary performances. Oh, one more caveat: my “Street Talk” and “Shakespeare in the Hood” unit name caused one student pair to do a sort of hip-hop, gangster translation. Which one will jump out at you as you read

CORDELIA (original)
I yet beseech your majesty,–
If for I want that glib and oily art,
To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend,
I’ll do’t before I speak,–that you make known
It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,
No unchaste action, or dishonour’d step,
That hath deprived me of your grace and favour;
But even for want of that for which I am richer,
A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue
As I am glad I have not, though not to have it
Hath lost me in your liking.

CORDELIA (adapted)
But, let me say a word, Dad.
If you want me to suck up and say all the bullshit
You wanna hear, then
You just don’t understand me at all.
Its not all that fucking chaos
That made me break our bond,
And even without your dough, I’m still good.
I’m fine without the sucking up and
Attempting to steal your dough.
I do what I want, even if you care.

***

KING LEAR (original)
Thou hast her, France: let her be thine; for we
Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see
That face of hers again. Therefore be gone
Without our grace, our love, our benison.
Come, noble Burgundy.

KING LEAR (adapted)
Well she’s yours now, cause
I don’t have such as bitch as my daughter
And I don’t wanna see her again.
So just get the fuck out of my house.
Come here, Burgundy.

The above opened up an interesting discussion on that wiki page in which I asked (typing with one finger because I was eating a sandwich, thus unable to capitalize),

is cordelia’s f-bomb realistic? think about it – would a loving, good daughter use strong curse words to her father, or would she express her emotions with different, more respectful language? how does your dialogue change the characterization of cordelia in the audience’s eyes?

and one of the two authors replied with this, which I find revealing (he’s Korean, remember – and I’m adding the emphasis below):

well if it’s normal life English (like a typical American family English) we’re talking about, yes in my opinion I thought that it would be okay. I mean, after homestaying at an American house for 8 months, I had a feeling that from what I’ve seen from my past that it was similar and that the f-bomb was an okay idea.

Cordelia’s appearance, I guess to keep the same audience appeal as it did centuries ago, when Shakespeare first showed this play to his first audience, I think the dialogue did change the character in a more aggressive manner but still kept the same appeal that she had hundreds of years ago.

Not a bad beginning for these discussions as the unit continues.

This is getting longer than I’d intended, so I’ll close with a student paraphrase of the stunning soliloquy of the villain Edmund, bastard son to good Gloucester (and notice today we would agree with Edmund that society and conventional morality is criminal here, and he is an innocent victim of it – which I’m convinced Shakespeare realized as well, great social critic that he was):

EDMUND (original)
Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got ‘tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,–legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

EDMUND (adapted)
I will do whatever it takes to reach the top, just like all else in nature. Why should I let traditions screw me over? Just because I’m a year younger than my brother why do they call me bastard? Even when I am good as my brother, why does society treat me like shit? With shittiness? Shit? shit? At least I was born out of passion, unlike the losers like my brother. Well, then, brother, I’m going to take your land. Dad loves you more than me. Legitimate is such a good word. Well, so-called legitimate, if this letter works as planned and everything goes out fine, Edmund the Shit, will be more powerful than you. I’m going to get rich. God bless me.

Call me a knave if you will, but in my book, this is a pretty faithful and effective first draft!

1. Shaking Up Shakespeare: an AP Literature Mash-Up _King Lear_ Project
2. Overdrive: That Classroom Blogging Grail, and How Teaching and Grading Obstruct It
3. Fear-Based Curriculum: A Language Arts Tragedy (More on Teaching Lolita)
4. Yet Another Student Voice on Wiki-Learning: "It helped a lot to improve my writing skills…."

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