What Does Being Horny Have To Do With Shakespeare? Quite A Lot, Actually

Now a popular category on any pornography site, the word ‘cuckold’ finds its origins in the 13th century. The word first appears in the English language in 1250 within the anonymous poem ‘The Owl and the Nightingale’.

The term was derived from the ‘cuckoo’ bird, a creature that has an infamous habit of laying their eggs in the nests of other birds, to describe a man made foolish by his wife’s infidelity. By the 16th to 17th century, it’s fair to say that Europe was obsessed with cuckolding. Calling a man a ‘cuck’ or ‘cuckold’ was the most popular (and offensive) insult. A gender alternative of ‘cuckquean’ also came on the market in 1562 (#equality), though it didn’t enjoy the same degree of usage.

At some stage during this time, the figure of the cuckold was also linked with horns – literary and artistic depictions of men who had unwittingly grown horns of shame atop their head become increasingly common across European countries. There is some ambiguity as to how this came about: some suggest they were ram’s horns, which indicate the presence of a challenge during ‘mating season’, or that they were the horns of an ox (a castrated bull) to depict their emasculation; others have suggested the connection to the powdered rhinoceros horns that were sold as an aphrodisiac in Asia, or they were perhaps a visual depiction of the Devil and sin.

Whatever the reason, the horned cuckold became commonplace, and many of the terms which link infidelity to horns are still incredibly prevalent in language today: for example, in Portugal, ‘cabrão’ (big goat) is used to insult a man whose wife is unfaithful, and ‘poner los cuernos’ is a Spanish expression which means ‘to put horns’ (to cheat) on someone. Once you become aware of the meaning of horns back in the day, you begin to see it everywhere in famous works of literature.

In Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice talks about the fact that if God were to send her a husband, He would almost certainly also send a pair of horns as well (implying she will make a cuckold out of him).

We find the figure in the Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales:

(This carpenter had recently wedded a wife, Whom he loved more than his life;
She was eighteen years of age.
Jealous he was, and held her narrowly in confinement, For she was wild and young, and he was old
And believed himself likely to be a cuckold.)

While Bottom the ass is not a horned creature, I think we can also see Shakespeare playing with the ‘cuckold’ legend in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. To humiliate his ‘disobedient’ wife, Titania, the fairy king Oberon orders she be placed under the thrall of a spell that will cause her to fall in love with the first person she sees – which happens to be a man who has been charmed to possess the head of a donkey (perhaps the fairy version of the human’s horned figure). The fairy queen thus becomes infatuated and sleeps with this appropriately named Bottom. Humiliated upon being released from the spell, Titania has learned her lesson and reunites with her ethically appalling husband:

Think back to your own school days (or perhaps just to a recent drunk occasion with friends). Everyone is huddled together, your camera-shy friend has offered to take a picture, someone decides on a random (and far-too-difficult-to-say-in-unison) word to all say together on the count of three. And just as you’re doing the countdown to the picture, the urge strikes you, an urge stronger than any 11-year-old (or someone 11 drinks in) can resist … You make ‘bunny ears’ behind the head of your poor friend, Jeffery, and spoil what might otherwise have been a lovely picture of the group together.
But while the ‘bunny ears’ photobomb is a playful (if highly annoying) trend today, it was once far from innocent. In fact, if you were caught pulling the bunny ears out on someone in the 16th century, you could well find yourself on the duelling ground.

Making the symbols of horns at someone was yet another way to brand them as a cuckold. In François Bunel’s (1522–1599) painting Actors of the Commedia dell’Arte, for instance, we can see the ‘trickster’ character placing ‘bunny ears’ (cuckold horns) behind the unwitting man next to him, while making a silly face at the painter, much to the amusement of the other figures. The painting can feel so jarring to us today – if you place it next to the previously imagined modern group photo, there would be an uncanny similarity. The largest difference, however, is that when we snuck bunny ears behind poor Jeffery, we likely didn’t mean to imply his partner was regularly cheating on him and he was a fool for not seeing the truth (though I don’t want to make any assumptions!). This photobomb hasn’t lost its original connotations everywhere; in some places in Brazil, it’s still referred to as ‘corno’ (horns) and used to imply (if jokingly) the infidelity of the victim’s partner.

It may well also be the case that this connection of horns with sex brought us one modern term that remains in frequent circulation – horny. In the late 18th century, the phrase ‘having the horn’ was connected to becoming aroused (and thus a man’s ‘horn’ appearing), with horny as its own word appearing in the 19th century. It’s more than plausible that ‘the horn’ became used in this context because the likes of Shakespeare were throwing around phrases such as ’thou wouldst be horn-mad’86 in connection with extramarital sex in the centuries before. And I truly hope that from now on you think about, and are grateful to, the esteemed English bard every time you are horny.

Text from Kinky History by Esmé Louise James, Pantera Press Australia RRP $34.99, available in bookstores across Australia.