What a shame, Sir John Falstaff. The Royal Shakespeare Company has ruled that Prince Hal’s buxom companion was the victim of “bullying in the form of body shaming” in its new production of The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Falstaff is one of the Bard’s most objectionable characters, entertaining disreputable people in dodgy taverns and embezzling funds intended for the army, among many other misdeeds – but even the fat knight needs to be protected by a trigger warning. It’s unclear how many people have been offended by jokes about their environment over the last 400 years.
This is the latest example of modern productions warning about Shakespeare’s, ahem, more problematic writings. Shakespeare’s Globe warned us earlier this year that Antony and Cleopatra contained “depictions of suicide, scenes of violence and war, and references to misogyny”; Donmar’s last production of Macbeth, led by David Tennant, told bosses that the play “contained post-war and misogynistic references”. postpartum health problems”.
Here, in the spirit of the age, are ten trigger warnings (probably) coming soon to a Shakespeare production near you.
1. May contain examples of ageism
Not only is Falstaff the victim of body shaming (the medieval equivalent of being told to take Ozempic), he is also the subject of Hal’s anti-ageist taunts in Henry IV, Part II. Henry V, now King, rejects his old friend in the climactic scene of the play. “I don’t know you, old man. Close yourself in your prayers / How stupid and clown the white hair becomes!” Discrimination against gray hair is apparently known as achromotrichiaphobia.
There is now more ageism from Elsinore, where Hamlet describes Polonius and the other adults as “these dull old fools.” Not only that, but the Danish prince is a misogynist (when he tells Ophelia, “You speak with a lisp and a lisp, you call God’s creatures by names, and you make your depravity your ignorance”) and takes on a strange demeanor, mocking those who bicker with him. Mental health problems.
2. It may disturb those with religious tendencies
Hamlet even tells poor Ophelia that she should not have children, even though he once loved her, and says, “Take you to a nunnery!” Why are you the breeder of sinners?” Not only is this insulting to habitual viewers, it can also be seen as blasphemous.
3. It can annoy the stinking rich
We should also be warned about the terrible slander that Polonius himself directs at poor people working in banks and building societies. “There is neither borrower nor lender / For the lender often loses both himself and his friend / And borrowing dulls the sharpness of animal husbandry.”
4. Are you fat? Bad luck
Even the Bard’s comedies are not a safe space. The Comedy of Errors features a long, long, fat joke between Antipholus and Dromio that is also Europhobic. Dromio says: “Marry me, sir, she is a kitchen maid and all fat; and I don’t know what use you can make of it other than to make it into a lamp and run away from it with its own light. I guarantee that his rags and the tallow in them will burn a Polish winter: if he lives to the end, he will burn a week longer than the whole world.”
5. Greek? Bad luck
It certainly won’t be long before Julius Caesar is given a trigger warning. Not for the bloody assassination, but for the casual Hellenophobia that Casca, the senator who stabbed Caesar, displays when Cassius asks her what Cicero said in a speech. “No, I’m telling you this, I will never look at your face again,” comes the reply. “But those who understood him smiled and nodded to each other; but from my perspective it was Greek to me.”
6. Welsh? Bad luck
Shakespeare was a vocal advocate for our friends across the border. Or at least, he definitely talked about them a lot – but usually in jest. Consider his treatment of the folk hero Owain Glyndör, Wales’s most beloved son. Henry IV is a complete windbag in Part One, obsessed with signs and prophecies, boring everyone to delirium with lectures about “the stars that reign in my birthday.” There is further anti-Welsh humor in Henry V when Fluellen forces Pistol to eat a leek: “If you can make fun of a leek / You can eat a leek”. This will show them.
7. A woman? Now you’re in real trouble
As You Like Jacques’ famous speech reinforces a harmful patriarchy as well as being implicitly sexist. “All the world is a stage, and all men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man plays many parts in his time, His deeds are seven ages.” All seven ages speak only of “he” and “his”!
8. Vegans beware: may contain animal parts (and incestuous cannibalism)
Titus Andronicus can be seen as a trigger for both vegans and cannibals. Empress Tamora unknowingly eats the cake served by the protagonist in which her sons were baked. Before stabbing him, Titus shouts: “Behold, they are both baked in this pie, This pie that their mother carefully fed, They eat the meat that she herself raised.” It’s a familiar feeling to anyone who’s eaten a handful of Haribo without realizing it contains animal gelatin.
9. Hmm… furries?
Maybe it’s a niche topic, but A Midsummer Night’s Dream may be triggering for people in the “furry fandom” (i.e., those who like the idea of being with anthropomorphic animals). Bottom’s head is turned into a donkey by the mischievous Puck. Titania, the fairy queen, puts the furry people to shame by complaining, “I thought I was in love with a donkey.”
10. Exit followed by common sense
And although it’s a stage direction rather than a spoken phrase, “Exit, being followed by a bear” is sure to trigger anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of being followed by a bear.