You are here

"meddle", "yard", "last", "pencil"
Innuendo
Act 1,
Scene 2
Lines 38-44

The words "meddle", "yard", "last" and "pencil" are given sexual connotations in myShakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 2.

Servant

Find them out whose names are written here! It is
written that the shoemaker should meddle with his
yard, and the tailor with his last, the fisher with          
his pencil, and the painter with his nets. But I am
sent to find those persons whose names are here
writ, and can never find what names the writing
person hath here writ. I must to the learned  —  in good time.

The servant has a problem: his lord expects him to know what's written on the paper, but he can’t read. To express his exasperation he tries to recite from memory something he knows is written down. It’s a famous passage by the playwright John Lyly, a competitor of Shakespeare, who wrote in a very elegant, literary manner. Shakespeare makes fun of his rival by having the servant garble the sophisticated passage, inadvertently using words with bawdy meanings.