In my last post I mentioned that I remembered learning that the musk gland of the civet cat was used as a perfume fixitive in Shakespeare’s time. This I had been told about in school.
As You Like It was the play I did for the Inter (about 44 years ago!) so off I went googling through it to find the reference.
I was pleased to find it in a little bit of rapartee between Touchstone (the clown) and Corin (a rustic).
They are having a little debate about which is the cleaner, court or country.

What really surprised me was the piece of dialogue directly following the reference; about animal copulation and about Corin’s part in it. This was certainly reckoned unseemly for our young ears and firmly censored in the school edition.

No wonder most of us thought Shakespeare boring.

Corin
Not a whit, Touchstone: those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court. You told me you salute not at the court, but you kiss your hands: that courtesy would be uncleanly, if courtiers were shepherds.

Touchstone
Instance, briefly; come, instance.

Corin
Why, we are still handling our ewes, and their fells, you know, are greasy.

Touchstone
Why, do not your courtier’s hands sweat? and is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? Shallow, shallow. A better instance, I say; come.

Corin
Besides, our hands are hard.

Touchstone
Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow again.
A more sounder instance, come.

Corin
And they are often tarred over with the surgery of our sheep: and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier’s hands are perfumed with civet.

Touchstone
Most shallow man! thou worms-meat, in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed! Learn of the wise, and perpend: civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd.

Corin
You have too courtly a wit for me: I’ll rest.

Touchstone
Wilt thou rest damned? God help thee, shallow man!
God make incision in thee! thou art raw.

Corin
Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.

Touchstone
That is another simple sin in you, to bring the ewes and the rams together and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether, and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou beest not damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how thou shouldst ’scape.

Corin
Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mistress’s brother.