Could Shakespeare Be Responsible For Our Obsession With Perfect Skin?

You can blame William Shakespeare for a good many things, such as mind deadening English literature lectures, bad actors and overtly enthusiastic drama teachers, but can you really blame old Shakey for the world’s obsession with perfect skin?

Well according to new research recently revealed at the annual conference of the British Association of Dermatologists, you probably can.

Apparently it all stems from the obsession during the Elizabethan period with perfect, blemish free, pale skin.

Obviously a lot of people alive in those distant, dark and pre plastic-surgery days, were most definitely a pock-marked sight for sore eyes.

Obviously given such a wealth of raw, festering, and pus-riddled material to work with, the world famous playwright was bound to include a lot of unsavory descriptions in his long-winded masterpieces.

Shakespeare also had something of an acid tongue and dry wit, which was given free reign when it came to insulting people – especially in regard to a person’s appearance.

From “foul moles and eye-offending marks” to “a plague sore and embossed carbuncle,” Shakespeare who once snarled in King Lear, “Thou are a boil,” had a keen eye for physical imperfection.

Which is just as well because in the disease-riddled realm of Elizabethian England where Shakespeare reflected upon the many facets of life from a dreamy opium haze, skin imperfections were seen as a warning sign of contagious diseases.

Dr Catriona Wootton, Dermatologist at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, told the Daily Mail:

“Rat-infested and with open sewers, overcrowding and sexual promiscuity, Elizabethan London was a melting pot for diseases such as plague, syphilis and smallpox.

“Many of the diseases of the time involved lesions or sores on the skin, so skin imperfections were seen as a warning sign for contagious disease. This was not limited to signs of infection, but to any blemishes or moles, which were considered ugly and signs of witchcraft or devilry.”

Yet fast forward a few hundred years, and researchers are criticizing the bard for the less than tolerant descriptions found in Shakespeare’s plays of people with skin disease.

Researchers from Nottingham, Leicester and Derby believe that, old chestnuts like this from Henry IV Part I such as, “I scorn you, scurvy companion’ may be fueling the ongoing stigma surrounding skin disease due to Shakespeare’s status as the world’s most famous playwright.

But when you hear Shakespeare’s description of a man with a red nose in Henry IV part I as “an everlasting bonfire-light and knight of the burning lamp,” isn’t your first reaction just to laugh, rather than worry about how it might offend some teenager with a few pimples?

Nina Goad of the British Association of Dermatologists said:

“It is interesting to note that much of the Elizabethan stigma over disfiguring skin disease still persists today.

“Over the last few decades dermatologists have tried to address the effect this can have on patients.However, even now, many examples exist in films and literature where visible disfigurements are used to represent villainy or malice.

“Nobody is suggesting that we edit Shakespeare but maybe we should ensure that new films and books don’t reinforce this stereotype”

Such a notion was lambasted by Professor Michael Dobson, the director of Birmingham University’s Shakespeare Institute, who believes the solution is as simple as a pimple and told the Independent:

“Has any writer in history ever suggested that the symptoms of skin disease are attractive? And have audiences for the last 400 years really been coming out of theaters saying “Ah yes – I’d nearly forgotten – pox is to be avoided.

“What a genius Shakespeare was!’ Next week: has the fairy tale of Snow White been creating a misleadingly favorable impression of dwarfism?”