THE man who has just boasted of killing your father stands proudly before you. Furious, grief-stricken, vengeful, you search for an insult worthy of his depravity. You muster all your destructive rage, only to find that what comes out of your mouth is—‘hedgehog’.
When Shakespeare’s Lady Anne denounces Richard III as a spiny creature, modern audiences have every reason to feel perplexed. After all, aren’t hedgehogs the nation’s favourite wild animal? Not for Shakespeare, clearly. The insult in isn’t some momentary aberration: the Bard has form when it comes to hedgehog abuse. The fairies of protect Titania from snakes and ‘thorny
