Sir John Harington told a story in 1596 about a lady at court asking her gentlewoman to inquire which Mr Wingfield was asking to see her. On being told that it was Mr Jaques Wingfield, the gentlewoman blushed and came back with the genteel answer that it was Mr Privie Wingfield.
The story depended on Jaques being pronounced in those days like jakes, meaning ‘lavatory’ or ‘privy’. Harington took the joke to extremes, writing a whole book on lavatories called the Metamorphosis of Ajax, a punning title. Shakespeare might have been making the same joke as Harington’s when, in As You Like It, he had Touchstone referring in front of Audrey to Jaques as ‘Master What-ye-call-it’.
A whole linguistic world is anatomised by David Crystal in his new 600-page Oxford Dictionary of Original Shakespearean Pronunciation. It comes with a password to an online audio pronunciation dictionary.
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