Where the heck did "Pox on both your houses" come from?

[cthulu2016]

'Cause it sure ain't Shakespeare.

MERCUTIO (from Romeo and Juliet): I am hurt. A plague o' both your houses!

This is a "Play it again, Sam" thing... an instance of a misquotation becoming the norm. I have seldom, if ever, heard someone on TV say it correctly.

[Fumesucker]

1. Doesn't "pox" refer to smallpox? n/t

[cthulu2016]

2. The problem is that Shakespeare wrote in English.

Elizabethan English, but English none the less.

In a translated work it would be easy to see how some word could be translated variously as plague or pox or pestilence.

There is, however, little mystery as to which word Shakespeare chose to use.

And even if one clung to an updating of Elizabethan English as explanation, it would fail. Pox is antique while plague remains in use today.

[pinboy3niner]

3. You're doomed if you do and doomed if you don't

[Fumesucker]

4. Quotes get warped in the quoting on a fairly consistent basis

My ex simply could not quote a cliche, she would come out with something that meant the same thing but was definitely not the original words just about every time and it wasn't a deliberate act, it was just the way she thought, the specific words were unimportant but she understood the idea and could convey it in her own words.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Pox is still in use as well, Chicken being the current most pop pox in our neck of the woods.

nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. 'pox' on its own also mean syphilis

It generally means a disease that leave pockmarks. But the use on its own as syphilis was going by Shakespeare's time, and he does use 'a pox of/on' at least twice. The OED:

I. Senses relating to diseases characterized by pocks.
1.
a. Any of several infectious diseases characterized by a rash of pustules (pocks), esp. smallpox, cowpox, and chickenpox. See also chickenpox n., cow-pox n., smallpox n.
1476 in C. L. Kingsford Stonor Lett. & Papers (1919) II. 10 The eyre of poxe is ffull contagious.

b. Syphilis. Freq. with distinguishing word, as French, great pox, etc.: see the first element.
1503 in N. H. Nicolas Privy Purse Expenses Elizabeth of York (1830) 105 A surgeon whiche heled him of the Frenche pox.
1529 in Ld. Herbert Henry VIII (1649) 267 The foule, and contagious Disease of the Great Pox.

2.
a. In various imprecations or exclamations of irritation and impatience, as a pox on (also †of, †take) , † O pox, etc. Cf plague n. 5. Now arch.
a1592 R. Greene Frier Bacon (1594) sig. B3v, A poxe of all coniuring Friers.
1598 Shakespeare Love's Labour's Lost v. ii. 46 A Poxe of that iest, and I beshrow all Shrowes.
a1616 Shakespeare All's Well that ends Well (1623) iv. iii. 277 A pox on him, he's a Cat still.

[msanthrope]

9. No. Syphilis. nt

[el_bryanto]

5. The Plague Lobby - the Tea Party Republicans of their time - wanted to push the idea

that plagues were beneficial to people. They realized they had a branding issue with plague, so they rebranded plague to pox in hopes that people would not associate pox with negative things but with positive things. Like more food as your relatives pass away.

The actual phrase comes from the 1694 play "The Good Fairy gives Everybody the Pox" and within that context it's a gift she gives to two particularly nice families.

Bryant

[Bluenorthwest]

6. Not only is it 'plague' Mercutio says 'A plague o' both your houses' three times in the course

of his last speech, which ends with just 'Your houses'.