1.Hermia calls Helena a “painted maypole” - presumably because she is tall, thin, and wears a lot of makeup in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
2. Maria calls Malvolio “a time-pleaser, an affectioned ass” - a follower of fashion and a pretentious idiot in Twelfth Night.
3. The Welsh Captain describes Pistol as a “rascally, scald [scabby], beggarly, lousy, pragging [show-off] knave” in Henry 5.
4. Sebastian calls the Boatswain a “bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog” in The Tempest.
5. Kent says Oswald is a “knave, beggar, coward, pander [pimp], and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch” in King Lear.
6. Antonio describes Claudio and Don Pedro as “scambling, outfacing, fashion-monging boys” - quarrelsome, bluffing, and dandified in Much Ado About Nothing.
7. Sir Toby calls Sir Andrew “an ass-head, and a coxcomb, and a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull!” - a simpleton in Twelfth Night.
8. Kent describes Oswald as a “base foot-ball player” - a game of the gutter that nobles would never dream of playing in King Lear.
9. Prince Hal calls Falstaff a “whoreson impudent embossed rascal” - literally, the son of a prostitute, and moreover one who’s swollen or bulging out, like a boil in Henry IV Part 1.
10. Doll harangues the Beadle who is about to arrest her: “thou damned tripe-visaged rascal … thou paper-faced villain” in Henry IV Part 2.
All these insults and much more can be found in David and Ben Crystal’s stunningly useful book the Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary.
