Mother of all Bard jokes ...

QUESTION Are there any ‘yo momma’ jokes in William Shakespeare’s plays?

‘Yo momma’ jokes form a game, dating from the 19th century, played by african-american men in which two contestants trade insults, with bystanders egging them on until one gives up.

an example is: ‘Yo momma is so fat, when she sat on an iPod, she made the iPad!’

The first known example of a maternal insult is from thousands of years ago. a Babylonian tablet translated in 2012 contained a joke fragment: ‘. . . of your mother is by the one who has intercourse with her. What/who is it?’

and Shakespeare did use such insults in his plays. In Timon of athens, Painter says: ‘Y’are a dog.’ To which apemantus replies: ‘Thy mother’s of my generation. What’s she, if I be a dog?’

Titus andronicus features this exchange — Demetrius: ‘Villain, what hast thou done?’ aaron: ‘That which thou canst not undo.’ Chiron: ‘Thou hast undone our mother.’ aaron: ‘Villain, I have done thy mother.’

Stewart Hargreaves, Leamington Spa, Warks. QUESTION The Rolling Stone review of the 1969 Led Zeppelin album stated: ‘[Jimmy Page is] a very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs.’ Which other reviewers have got it so wrong? FurTher to earlier answers, 1973’s Berlin by Lou reed was a dark concept album telling the story of a doomed couple’s descent into drugs, domestic violence and suicide.

rolling Stone’s Stephen Davis couldn’t handle it, describing it as a ‘distorted and degenerate demimonde of paranoia, schizophrenia, degradation, pillinduced violence and suicide . . .

‘There are certain records that are so patently offensive that one wishes to take some kind of physical vengeance on the artists that perpetrate them.’

Ian Ball, Malvern, Worcs.