Shakespeare常见短语总结(5)

Meaning

Literal meaning.

Origin

The phrase has no allusory meaning and, apart from when quoting Shakespeare or Jack the Giant Killer, there's little reason ever to use it.

It is best known from the nursery rhyme - Jack the Giant Killer:

Fee-fi-fo-fum I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead I'll grind his bones to make my bread.

The source is anonymous and the date is unknown. It must have been before 1596. It is referred to by the English dramatist Thomas Nashe, in Have with you to Saffron-walden, 1596:

"O, tis a precious apothegmatical Pedant, who will find matter enough to dilate a whole day of the first invention of Fy, fa, fum, I smell the blood of an English-man".

How true. Let's not spend the whole day on this and finish with Shakespeare's alternate version, from King Lear, 1605-6:

"Child Roland to the dark tower came, His word was still, Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man."

Meaning

Respond to an attack by using a similar method as one's attacker.

Origin

When we 'fight fire with fire' we are likely to employ more extreme methods than we would normally do. That was what Shakespeare was referring to in King John, 1597:

Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire; Threaten the threatener and outface the brow Of bragging horror

The Bard may have been the first to put the notion on paper, but he didn't coin the phrase 'fight fire with fire', that came much later.

The source of this phrase was actual fire-fighting that was taken on by US settlers in the 19th century. They attempted to guard against grass or forest fires by deliberately raising small controllable fires, which they called 'back-fires', to remove any flammable material in advance of a larger fire and so deprive it of fuel. This literal 'fighting fire with fire' was often successful, although the settlers' lack of effective fire control equipment meant that their own fires occasionally got out of control and made matters worse rather than better. One such failure was recorded in Caroline Kirkland's novel, based on her experiences of frontier Michigan in the 1840s, A New Home - Who'll Follow? Or, Glimpses of Western Life (written under the pseudonym of Mrs. Mary Clavers):

The more experienced of the neighbours declared there was nothing now but to make a "back-fire!" So home-ward all ran, and set about kindling an opposing serpent which should "swallow up the rest;" but it proved too late. The flames only reached our stable and haystacks the sooner,

The method has continued to be used however and foresters now routinely create roads or unplanted areas to act as fire-breaks in woodland that is at risk of fire.

The term 'backfire' is now more often applied to plans that fail in a way that weren't intended. This might be assumed to derive from the faulty 'flash in the pan' tendency of early flintlock weapons. That isn't the derivation in fact. 'Backfire' wasn't used in that negative sense until the early 20th century and derives from the popping explosions that used to be commonly heard from the exhausts of motor vehicles, not from guns, which weren't said to backfire until WWI, or from forest 'back-fires' which ran out of control.

The earliest usage of 'fight fire with fire' that I've found in print is in the US author Henry Tappan's 1852 reminiscence A Step from the New World to the Old, and Back Again:

Smoking was universal among the men; generally cigars, not fine Havanas, but made of Dutch tobacco, and to me not very agreeable. I had some Havanas with me, and so I lighted one to make an atmosphere for myself: as the trappers on the prairies fight fire with fire, so I fought tobacco with tobacco.

Meaning

Indefinitely.

Origin

Of course, for ever and a day is an dramatic construct with no literal meaning - for ever is for ever, we can't add days to it. This form of dramatic emphasis has been used many times, a recent example being The Beatles' song 'Eight Days a Week'.

Shakespeare coined this and used it in The Taming of the Shrew, 1596:

BIONDELLO   I cannot tell; expect they are busied about a       counterfeit assurance: take you assurance of her,       'cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum:' to the       church; take the priest, clerk, and some sufficient       honest witnesses: If this be not that you look for,       I have no more to say, But bid Bianca farewell for       ever and a day.

He must have liked it as he used it again in As You Like It, 1599:

ROSALIND: Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her. ORLANDO: For ever and a day.

Meaning

Alluding to the alleged inherent weakness of character of women.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1603:

Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month - Let me not think on't - Frailty, thy name is woman! - A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body...

Hamlet is angry that his mother, Gertrude, has married his uncle Claudius within a month of his father's death. The speech generalizes the attribution of weakness of character from one particular woman to womankind.

Meaning

Dishonest or treacherous behaviour; also violent conduct.

Origin

'Foul play' is a 16th century idiom. Nowadays we often use this phrase in regard to 'fouls' that are committed in sports, i.e. actions which are outside the particular sports' rules. This is itself quite an old usage. For example, from boxing - The Sporting Magazine, 1797:

"His antagonist having struck him two foul blows."

... and from billiards - The Field, January 1882:

"Thus, at billiards, if a player makes a foul stroke and scores, his adversary has the option of not enforcing the penalty."

These were preceded by Shakespeare's use, and probably his coinage, of the phrase in a non-sporting context, simply to mean 'unfair behaviour'. For example, Love's Labours Lost, 1594:

BIRON: Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief; And by these badges understand the king. For your fair sakes have we neglected time, Play'd foul play with our oaths.

Shakespeare used this phrase in several plays, including Henry IV, The Tempest and Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

Meaning

Dependable men, of rank and honour. The phrase was adapted later to 'twelve good men and true', indicating the twelve (originally all men, now both sexes) of a criminal jury.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, 1600:

DOGBERRY: Are you good men and true? VERGES: Yea, or else it were pity but they should suffer salvation, body and soul.

7. Good riddance

Meaning

An expression of pleasure on being rid of some annoyance - usually an individual.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, 1609:

THERSITES I will see you hanged, like clotpoles, ere I come any more to your tents: I will keep where there is wit stirring and leave the faction of fools. PATROCLUS: A good riddance.

The phrase is often extended and emphasized as to good riddance to bad rubbish, or as it was first coined good riddance of bad rubbish. Charles Dickens was the first author to record that in print, in his 1848 novel Dombey and son:

"A good riddance of bad rubbish!" said that wrathful old lady [speaking of Susan Nipper]. "Get along with you, or I'll have you carried out!"

Meaning

Envy.

Origin

Green is a colour associated with sickness, possibly because people's skin takes on a slightly yellow/green tinge when they are seriously ill. Green is also the colour of many unripe foods that cause stomach pains.

The phrase was used by, and possibly coined by, Shakespeare to denote jealousy, in The Merchant of Venice, 1600:

Portia: How all the other passions fleet to air, As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair, And shuddering fear, and green-eyed jealousy! O love, Be moderate; allay thy ecstasy, In measure rein thy joy; scant this excess. I feel too much thy blessing: make it less, For fear I surfeit.

In Othello, Shakespeare also alludes to cats as green-eyed monsters in the way that they play with mice before killing them.

Iago: O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger; But, O, what damned minutes tells he o'er Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!

Meaning

In Shakespeare's Cymbeline, Cloten uses lewd language to talk about Cymbeline. In an attempt to use musicians to court her, he calls on them to play 'a wonderful sweet air'. The hark, hark!... line is chosen to represent sweetness and refinement, as a counterpoint to the previous crudities.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Cymbeline:

CLOTEN: I would this music would come: I am advised to give her music o' mornings; they say it will penetrate.

[Enter Musicians]

Come on; tune: if you can penetrate her with your fingering, so; we'll try with tongue too: if none will do, let her remain; but I'll never give o'er. First, a very excellent good-conceited thing; after, a wonderful sweet air, with admirable rich words to it: and then let her consider.

[Song]

Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phoebus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chaliced flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes: With every thing that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise: Arise, arise.

Shakespeare used images of birds, especially larks, to represent sweetness and freshness in several plays. For example, in the song Spring, in Love's Labour's Lost:

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws, And maidens bleach their summer smocks

The image of 'Heaven's gate', as a figurative nearness to God has been used subsequently by many authors, notably William Blake:

I give you the end of a golden string; Only wind it into a ball: It will lead you in at Heaven's gate, Built in Jerusalem's wall.

The term Heaven's Gate didn't have such pleasant associations in the 20th century. In 1980, a film of that name directed by Michael Cimino was very badly received by critics and lost most of the $45 million it cost to make. It is credited with almost ruining United Artists, the studio that funded it, and with seriously damaging Cimino's previous high standing as a film-maker.

From there the associations get worse still. Marshall Applewhite was the founder and leader of a religious cult, known as Heaven's Gate, based near San Diego, USA. In 1997, he convinced his followers that the Hale-Bopp comet obscured the view of a spacecraft, which was coming to take them to salvation after death. Applewhite and thirty eight followers committed suicide. If ever there was a confirmation of the phrase there's one born every minute, it must be the dupes who decided to follow the dangerously insane Applewhite into the next world.

Meaning

Literally, pay the devil what you owe him. Used figuratively to mean 'give back what you owe', either money or favours.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1:

Constable: I will cap that proverb with 'There is flattery in friendship.' Orleans: And I will take up that with 'Give the devil his due.'