Breaking Down the Bard - Tarry, rash wanton!

The first Shakespeare play I ever did was A Midsummer Night's Dream, when I was in sixth grade. I've done it several times over as an adult, and there is one line that was completely butchered - in meaning AND pronunciation - in two of the productions I've done: Tarry, rash wanton!

These are three words that are pretty much extinct in our modern world, strung together. It's not really surprising that it trips people up all the time, but since Midsummer is among the most popular of Shakespeare's plays in both schools and professional theatre, you should definitely know what it means.

Tarry means "stay". Rash means "hasty" or "impulsive". Wanton is not to be confused with the delicious Chinese food dumpling (wonton); and it is pronounced WAHN-tuhn. Wanton has a few different meanings, ranging from a wild and carefree person, to a tomboy, to a sexually promiscuous woman. If you want to learn how to use Alexander Schmidt's Lexicon, which can help you understand just about any word as used by Shakespeare in the contexts of his plays, I have a step-by-step guide here.

Each production can choose which interpretation of wanton they prefer, but a loose "translation" could be:

"Hang on, you reckless skank!"

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