Sunday Literary-ism

Attacking and belittling plaintiffs is an age-old game. Lest anyone think that making fun of people who bring lawsuits is merely a feature of present-day pop-culture and the tort-reform wars, I submit this passage from King Lear. I’m including a lot more of the dialogue than is strictly necessary for the legal reference, because this also happens to be some of the best verbal abuse to be found in literature:

OSWALD:
Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.

KENT:
Fellow, I know thee.

OSWALD:
What dost thou know me for?

KENT:
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of thy addition.

(Act II, scene ii)