What I like most about it, though, is the opening exchange. Possibly the best description of a hangover I’ve ever read:

NED: Come Wil. Unstring and pay thy groat, for I am confident thou wast fuddled last night, thou look’st so thin and small-beerish this morning.

WIL: Fuddled, quoth’a, I would that were the worst on’t Ned, for then a Nap might do one’s business, and set a body to rights again; But I tell thee my Head’s broke, my Brains are split, i am distracted and my senses are turned the wrong side outwards;

We’ve all had days like that…

The Swearing-master: Or, a Conference Between Two Country-Fellows Concerning the Times. Ned and Wil
Publisher N.T., 1681

 ”During WWII, when women were employed in large numbers in war industries, notices devised by women were occasionally seen, testifying to the thoughtfulness with which they used their new-found privilege. A typical notice seen in an aircraft factory (by a reporter for the the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, Sept 16th 1942), read: ‘No swearing. There may be gentlemen about.’”

Beseech your majesty,
Forbear sharp speeches to her: she’s a lady
So tender of rebukes that words are strokes
And strokes death to her.

Cymbeline III, v

This is most brave,

That I, the son of a dear father murdered,

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words

And fall a-cursing like a very drab,

A scullion!

But cherish the use of the weaseling phrase
That never quite says what you mean!
You’d better be known for your hypocrite ways
Than as vulgar, impure, and obscene.

Let your morals be loose as an alderman’s vest
If your language is always obscure
Today, not the act, but the word is the test
Of the vulgar, obscene, and impure.