SHAKESPEARE AND THE WASP

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 51, 23 November 1928, Page 13

SHAKESPEARE AND THE WASP

Sir, —In your article headed “The Curious. Wasp,” wherein Alfred Percival Graves tells us that only the female wasp stings, I am reminded that Shakespeare knew this fact long before him. The great bard frequently uses the words “wasp” and “waspish,” in nearly every case there is a distinct feminine gender attachable to the term. Petruchio, in “The Taming of the Shrew,” calls Katharina “waspish, and she replies: “If I be waspish, best beware my sting.” Brutus, when Cassius speaks of “That rash humour which my mother gave me,” tells him, “I’ll use you for mv mirth, yea, for my laughter when you are waspish.” Juliet, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” when she tears the letter from Proteous, Refers to her feminine hands. “Oh, hateful hands, to tear such loving words. Injurious wasps to feed on such sweet honey, . ~ And kill the bees that yield It with your stints M Silvius, in “As You Like It,” in giving Rosalind the letter from Phebe, says: “My errant is to you, fair youth; Mv gentle Phebe did bid me give you this; I know not its contents, but, as I guess By the stern brow and waspish action Which she did use as she was writing it, It bears an angry tenour.” In “Titus Andronicus,” the Queen of the Goths, in condemning Lavinia, says: “But when ye have the honey ye desire. Let not this wasp outlive us both to sting.” Thus the wisdom of Shakespeare more than three hundred years ago, when he said: “For wisdom cries out in the street, and no man regards it."—-I am, etc., UNCLE SANDY. Wellington, November 19.