Wayne F. Hill and Cynthia J. Ottchen, two Americans abroad pursuing postgraduate degrees at Cambridge University, were coming out of a performance of "Twelfth Night" several years ago when they began to exchange Shakespearean insults, along the lines of "Out, hyperbolical fiend."
They were so pleased with their repartee that they started combing through Shakespeare's plays for more examples, compiling a complete list.The pair identified 10,000 insults (with some repeats) in 38 plays, pared them down to 5,000, and produced a 308-page paperback through a printer they discovered in the British equivalent of the Yellow Pages. After distributing a handful of books to local bookstores, they went on vacation. When they returned, Hill and Ottchen found that interest in their book had gone beyond Cambridge.
They got themselves on the radio and on televison. So much demand for the books followed, Hill said in an interview from his office in Cambridge, that to date more than 50,000 copies of "Shakespeare's Insults" have been sold in Britain and the United States, many in schools, where teachers are using the insults to introduce teenagers to Shakespeare.
"Shakespeare's Insults" at one point found its way to best-seller lists here. It continues to sell, even after nine printings.
"We've sold it in a major way," said David Wilkerson, manager of general books at Heffer's, a bookstore in Cambridge.