Reseña de How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England por Josh

I found this book delightful. On the one hand, it is a guide to the things that people in Elizabethan England found offensive, disgusting, outrageous, or otherwise distasteful.

It includes a guide to verbal insults, which come to us both via literary works and via court cases which record the many creative insults that ordinary people came up with when they got into altercations on the street. It also includes extensive discussion of the ways in which people unintentionally gave offense, such as by accidentally violating rules of etiquette.

The book is more than just a catalogue of unpleasant behavior though. Goodman has many interesting insights into what bad behavior can tell us about the culture of a time and place that shed light on modern “bad behavior.”