Fleas, ears, Shakespeare and a Medieval French Idiom...

Fleas, ears, Shakespeare and Medieval French idiom: a recipe for sexual euphemism and corrupted mentality? If that premise doesn’t tickle your fancy, I don’t know what will. Having spent much of this week investigating idioms across my languages of study, it became clear that the origins of each idiom are almost as tenuous as their wording. However, having scrolled through page after page of French and Italian vernacular, one small phrase immediately caught my interest: “mettre la puce à l’oreille”. In plain English this phrase can be translated as “to put a flea in [one’s] ear”.

Whilst this may not be a phrase which many British people are familiar with, Google informs me that our friends across the pond use it fairly frequently, more commonly in the form “to put a bug in your ear”. A modern understanding, certainly in the French and Italian phrase (mettere una pulce nell'orecchio), implies that a doubt or suspicion is being planted in the ‘victim’s’ head. To exemplify this, one could say that Nigel Farage’s outrageous pre-referendum claims about Post-Brexit plans were putting a flea into the ear of the electorate! (I never promised political impartiality…)

When focusing upon the English connotations of the phrase I investigated, firstly, on associations with ears in English literature and culture. It was this line of investigation which permitted Shakespeare’s entry into the discussion. Perhaps one of the most famous expressions involving ears (a rather niche category, I admit…) lies in the famous Shakespearean tragedy that is Hamlet. A ghost, who is in fact Hamlet’s father, kindly informs Hamlet that his brother, and Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, had murdered him by pouring a “leperous distilment” into the “porches of [his] EARS” (I.v.61-64). Beyond this Jeremy Kyle-worthy plot, the significance of ears is emphasized further within Shakespearean drama. Whilst the ear is a physical channel into which poison can destroy the brain in Hamlet, in Othello jealousy is the poison that is whispered into the ears of the “noble” Othello. By planting the smallest doubt in Othello’s mind, by commenting “ha, I like not that” upon seeing Cassio and Desdemona together, Othello descends into a madness whereby he suspects his wife to be an adulteress eloping with Cassio. This small ‘flea’ in his ear creates an entire Shakespearean tragedy constructed and orchestrated by Iago, who I shall christen ‘The ear invader’. Similarly, the use of insects to describe mental corruption is reflected in the play when Iago claims that “with as little a web as this will I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio” having orchestrated the appearance of Cassio and Desdemona’s relationship. Cassio is a “great fly” caught in Iago’s web, whom he shall use to taunt and poison Othello to the point of destruction. Cassio is the metaphorical flea in the plot. Iago comments that “jealousy is the green-eyed monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on”, which carries out the same action of feeding on human bodies as that of a flea, thus the idiom connects rather strongly to Shakespearean concepts.

However, it is important to look at the root of the phrase, which can be first traced back to 14th century French poetry. Most notably, the writer Jean de la Fontaine described his ‘Contes’, how “[la] Fille qui pense à son amant absent” has “la puce à l’oreille”. Thus in the original French version of the idiom, the flea reflects sexual frustration, an irritating and niggling sensation in the closest orifice to the brain. Perhaps the proximity to the mind also suggests that the flea is not only a sensation, but a persistent thought that will not stop “s’agiter” and prevents the woman from sleeping “durant toute la nuit”. The poet writes about placing ‘un puce’ in the woman’s ear in order to cause a sensation of intense sexual desire. Within Shakespearean drama, the use of ears as an innuendo is also common.

In Othello, act 4 scene 1, having descended into madness, Othello cries,

“Pish! Noses, ears, and lips. / --Is't possible? -- Confess--handkerchief!--O devil!”

The crude innuendo is part of Othello’s change in speech, morphing from noble verse, pentameter and flattering epithets into ‘common’, uncontrolled prose, which emphasizes the effect of jealousy on his character and his mental deterioration. Equally, John Donne, the 16th century poet uses the conceit of a flea as an image of sexual fulfilment in his poem ‘The Flea’. He claims that the way the flea “suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, / And in this flea our two bloods mingled be” means that the pair have reached sexual consummation by being bitten by the same flea, as the belief of the time period was that consummation resulted in the mingling of blood.

Whether the phrase is an innuendo or simply the planting of suspicion remains ambiguous and context-dependent. Yet the way in which the idiom is rooted in the vocabulary of many European languages, transcending national borders and cultural difference surely emphasizes the importance of French literature across Europe. Once again this is an example of another piece of the puzzle that makes up ‘British’ culture, as it lies as part of the vernacular of an English superhero; William Shakespeare.

THE FLEA.

by John Donne

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is ;

It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.

Thou know'st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;

And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.

Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,

And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that self-murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?

Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou

Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.

'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;

Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,

Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

Jean de la Fontaine’s ‘Contes’

"Elle ne dormit point durant toute la nuit, Ne fit que s’agiter, et mena tant de bruit, Que ni son père ni sa mere Ne purent fermer la paupière Un seul moment. Ce n’était pas grande merveille: [Fille qui pense à son amant absent, Toute la nuit, dit-on, a la puce à l’oreille, Et ne dort que fort rarement.]”

Translation:

[A longing girl

With thoughts of sweetheart in her head,

In bed all night will sleepless twirl.

A flea is in her ear, ’tis said.]