[lit-ideas] With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino

why on earth is shakespeare so interested in nonnies

hey nonnie  nonnie
ho nonnie nonnie
come nonnie nonnie
sit nonnie nonnie
wag  your aspirant tail nonnie nonnie

what was a nonnie anyway


---
 
Well, the OED provides some earlier quotes than Shakespeare. There's
 

1533  J. HEYWOOD JPlay of Wether sig. Diii, 
 
          Gyue  boys wether quoth a nonny nonny.
 
1535 COVERDALE Goostly Psalmes  Introd. Epist. sig. iiv, 
They shulde be better occupied, then with hey nony nony, hey  troly loly,
 
One quote is Scottish:
 
c1550 Complaynt Scotl.  (1979) vi. 51 
The lang nounenou. 
 
The OED suggest that the hidden meaning of the nonny is "the vulva" -- and  
they quote from
 
1611 J. FLORIO 
Queen Anna's New  World of Words, 
Fossa... Vsed also for a womans pleasure-pit,  nony-nony or pallace of 
pleasure.
 
[-- a meaning which can be traced back earlier than Shakespeare to:
 
1593 M. DRAYTON  Idea iii. sig.  C3, 
These noninos of filthie ribauldry.]
 
So I would be more careful with your spontaneous refrains alla Elizabethan,  
'come nonny nonny' and such. 

In a way, reminds me of Formby and his 'fanny' -- which was OKAY in the  
England, but tabooed in USA. 
 
-- I would think that the 'nonny' is related to the 'nun', or the 'nunny'  -- 
given that these places were not co-ed (but purely female) and Hamlet is  
constantly advising Ophelia to go to a nunnery (and leave him alone). Where the 
 
'filthy ribaldry' of nunneries come from Geary may provide us with a  
first-hand.
 
There's also this PhD dissertation which I found in the UMI database
 
Gupta, I. R. The Bearded Nonny: Shakespeare's mysoginy from a homosocial  
Sedgwickian perspective. University of Warwick. -- which traces the nonny -- 
the  
abstract reads -- the the Medousa myth of the Greeks -- later developed by 
Jung  and Freud, as the unknown -- for a male -- and often unknownABLE 
territory 
of  female sexuality. 
 
Gupta does textual criticism on couple of Shakespearian texts. The first is  
<NOB SHAKESPEARE A.Y.L. v. iii, 

(1) With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino. 

In this first interjection, Gupta propoes to replace 'hey' for 'phallus',  
and 'ho' for prostitute'; 'nony-no' becomes the negation of the vulva. This the 
 
becomes:
 
(1') With priapic energy, and a woman of license, and another priapic  
energy, but no vulva.
 
-- the meaning of which is unclear.
 
The second interjection Gupta uses is from  1619 Two Wise Men VII. i.  87 
 

(2) Hey niny, nony no. Hey niny no. Hey noniny nonino, Hey  ninyno.

 
Here, she notes, the 'nony' is unnegated, and appears as female sexuality  in 
its pure form. In her rewrite, this becomes:
 
(2') Priapic energy, vulva, a little one -- a big one, no. Priapic energy  
little vulva (sometimes no). Priapic energy, no-vulva, no-vulva. Priapic energy 
 
little-vulva no.
 
Gupta concludes that Shakespeare's fears towards the 'nonny' and his  
frequents rejections of it "nonny? no!" can be traced back to his unfulfilled  
sexual 
relationships with Anna Hattaway.
 
Cheers,
 
J. L.
    Buenos Aires, Argentina
 




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