Tail vs Tale (Two Gentlemen of Verona)
LAUNCE.
For fear thou should’st loose thy tongue.
PANTHINO.
Where should I loose my tongue?
LAUNCE.
In thy Tale.
PANTHINO.
In thy Tail.
Tail vs Tale (The Taming of the Shrew)
PETRUCHIO.
Who knows not where a Wasp does wear his
sting? In his tail.
KATHERINA.
In his tongue.
PETRUCHIO.
Whose tongue?
KATHERINA.
Yours if you talk of tales,
and so farewell.
PETRUCHIO.
What, with my tongue in your tail.
Nay, come again, good Kate, I am a
Gentleman,
Benedick vs Benedict (Much Ado About Nothing)
LEONATO.
You must not (sir) mistake my Niece, there
is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick, and her: they
never meet, but there’s a skirmish of wit between them. . . . [The name Benedick
is not italicized here.]
BEATRICE.
O Lord, he will hang upon him like a
disease: he is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently
mad. God help the noble Claudio, if he have caught the Benedict,
it will cost him a thousand pound ere he be cured.
[The word benedict (blessed by mildly
laxative) appears only once here in the 1623 folio. The 1632, 1664, and 1685 folio
change this line to “if he have caught the Benedick.”]
. . .
MARGARET.
Get you some of this distilled carduus benedictus
and lay it to your heart, it is the only thing for a qualm. [carduus
benedictus: holy thistle, a kind of medicine.]
HERO.
There thou prick’st her with a thistle.
BEATRICE.
Benedictus, why benedictus?
you have some moral in this benedictus. [benedictus: a wordplay of “to benedict”
us.]
Rome vs Roam (Henry VI, Part 1)
BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.
Rome shall remedy this.
WARWICK.
Roam thither then.
My Lord, it were your duty to forbear.
Main and Maine (Henry VI, Part 2)
SALISBURY.
Then let’s make haste away,
And look unto the main.
WARWICK.
Unto the main?
Oh Father, Maine is lost,
That Maine, which by main
force Warwick did win,
And would have kept, so long as breath did
last:
Main-chance father you
meant, but I meant Maine,
Which I will win from France, or else be
slain.
Medler vs Meddler (Timon of Athens)
APEMANTUS.
There’s a medler for thee,
eat it. [Medler is a variant of medlar]
TIMON.
On what I hate, I feed not.
APEMANTUS.
Dost hate a Meddler?
TIMON.
Ay, though it look like thee.
APEMANTUS.
And thou had’st hated Meddlers
sooner, thou should’st have loved thyself better now. What man did’st thou ever
know unthrift, that was beloved after his means!
Banquo vs Banque (The Tragedy of Macbeth)
DUNCAN.
True worthy Banquo: he is
full so valiant,
And in his commendations, I am fed:
It is a Banquet to me.
Goats vs Goths (As You Like It)
TOUCHSTONE.
Come apace good Audrey, I will
fetch up your
Goats, Audrey: and
how Audrey am I the man yet?
Does my simple feature content you?
AUDREY.
Your features, Lord, warrant us: what features?
TOUCHSTONE.
I am here with thee, and thy Goats,
as the most capricious Poet honest Ovid was among the Goths.
Dollar vs Dolour (The Tempest)
GONZALO.
When every grief is entertained,
That’s offered comes to the entertainer.
SEBASTIAN.
A dollor. [a variant of dollar]
GONZALO.
Dolour comes to him indeed,
you have spoken truer than you purposed.
Chough vs Chaff (The Winter’s Tale)
AUTOLYCUS.
So that in this time of Lethargy, I picked
and cut most of their Festival Purses: And had not the old-man come in with a
Whoo-bub against his Daughter, and the King’s Son, and scared my Choughs
from the Chaff, I had not left a Purse alive in the whole Army.
Lethargy vs Lechery (Twelfth Night)
OLIVIA.
Cousin, Cousin, how have you come so early
by this Lethargy?
TOBY.
Lechery, I defy Lechery:
there’s one at the gate.
Five vs Fie (The Merry Wives of Windsor)
BARDOLPH.
Why sir, (for my part) I say the Gentleman
had drunk himself out of his five sentences.
HUGH EVANS.
It is his five senses: fie,
what the ignorance is.
Capital vs Capitol (The Tragedy of Hamlet)
POLONIUS.
I did enact Julius Caesar, I was
killed in the Capitol: Brutus killed me.
HAMLET.
It was a bruit part of him, to kill so Capital
a Calf there.