I explain to my students that biting ones thumb at another person is just as insulting as flipping someone your middle finger. In the first scene of the first act, a servant of Capulet insults a servant of Montague by biting his thumb at him. The thumb-biting hand gesture has variants, used in various parts of the world. 'Do you bite your thumb at us, sir' My students and I just started reading Romeo and Juliet. Sampson: I do not bite my thumb at you, sir but I do bite my thumb, sir. The exact name of the gesture is known as “making the fig.” It was already a widespread insult in Shakespeare’s time, as he used it in Act I, Scene I of Romeo and Juliet. The precise form is to make a fist with your thumb thrust out between the index and middle fingers and bite the thumb. If that was not punishment enough, he then had to replace the fig in the mule’s fundament to be ready for extraction by the next miscreant.Ĭhirico explains this as background for understanding a particular hand gesture:įor decades the incident was used to humiliate and insult the Milanese. He would then bring it to the executioner saying, “ Ecco il fico” (translated as “Here is the fig”-but you knew that). The prisoner had to extract it with his teeth. GREGORY: Say better: here comes one of my masters kinsmen. SAMPSON: If you do, sir, I am for you: I serve as good a man as you. GREGORY: Do you quarrel, sir ABRAHAM: Quarrel sir no, sir. The fly in the ointment, so to speak, was that the fig had been stuck in the ass of the Empress’s ass-er, mule. SAMPSON: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir. Do you quarrel, sir Quarrel, sir No, sir. No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir. According to the chronicler Giambattista Gelli, Frederick got them back for the mule debacle, and then some: “The Emperor, justly incensed, urged the besieged to yield, which they at last did… he received them with mercy upon this condition: that every person who desired to live should, with their teeth, take a fig out of the genitals of a mule.” That is to say, Barbarossa gave the ringleaders a choice of being hanged (or beheaded), or saving themselves by presenting a fig to the executioner as a token of ransom. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir, aside to Gregory Is the law of our side if I say Ay, aside to Sampson No. SAMPSON 50 No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, 51 but I bite my thumb, sir. 47 Is the law of our side, if I say 48 ay GREGORY Aside to Sampson. ABRAHAM 46 Do you bite your thumb at us, sir SAMPSON Aside to Gregory. The year was 1162 when he returned and easily subdued the revolt. 44 Do you bite your thumb at us, sir SAMPSON 45 I do bite my thumb, sir.