Satisfying Shakespearean Ways To Tell Someone To Go Away #4: Avaunt!

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There are times when each of us needs to tell someone to go away. Adding a Shakespearean flavour to it lends both style and emphasis to any ejection of a bothersome person. It can also deliver a most satisfying sense of accomplishment to lovers of Shakespeare or of language in general.

Avaunt definitely carries spiritual or superstitious weight. This is the word one would use for commanding demons, witches and any other evil presence to leave. When directed at people rather than the supernatural, it carries connotations of derision, hatred, or fear; that the speaker seeks to protect themselves from those to whom they speak is clearly evident.

In The Comedy of Errors, Act 4, Scene 3, we see Antipholus and Dromio discussing the courtesan who has just demanded gold from Antipholus.

COURTESAN
Well met, well met, Master Antipholus. I see, sir, you have found the goldsmith now. Is that the chain you promis’d me today?

ANTIPHOLUS
Satan, avoid, I charge thee tempt me not.

DROMIO
Master, is this Mistress Satan?

ANTIPHOLUS
It is the devil.

DROMIO
Nay, she is worse, she is the devil’s dam, and here she comes in the habit of a light wench; and thereof comes that the wenches say, “God damn me,” that’s as much to say, “God make me a light wench.” It is written, they appear to men like angels of light, light is an effect of fire, and fire will burn: ergo, light wenches will burn. Come not near her.

When the lady asks again for either the promised gold chain or the return of her ring, Antipholus uses avaunt to send her away, emphasising the spiritual or supernatural theme of his earlier judgement upon her.

COURTESAN
I pray you, sir, my ring, or else the chain;I hope you do not mean to cheat me so?

ANTIPHOLUS
Avaunt, thou witch! Come, Dromio, let us go.

Othello uses the word twice. First, In the course of Iago’s subtle and insidious destruction of Othello’s belief in Desdemona’s innocence, Othello tells Iago, ‘Avaunt, be gone! Thou hast set me on the rack.”

Later, he uses the term in the presence of Lodovico to dismiss Desdemona once he has finished accusing her of being false and mocking her distress at his treatment of her. Here, he speaks to Lodovico and Desdemona alternately in the one speech.

Sir, she can turn, and turn; and yet go on
And turn again; and she can weep, sir, weep;
And she’s obedient, as you say, obedient;
Very obedient Proceed you in your tears —
Concerning this, sir — O well-painted passion!
— I am commanded home. — Get you away;
I’ll send for you anon. —Sir, I obey the mandate,
And will return to Venice. — Hence, avaunt!

Exit Desdemona.

Othello speaks politely to Lodovico while simultaneously disrespecting Desdemona. The tone of Othello’s words to his wife is very similar to that used by Antipholus, demonstrating the contempt and moral heft of the dismissal. At this point, it is clear that there is no going back for Othello: he has made up his mind, and his love and respect for her are dead.

In Macbeth, Act 3 Scene 4, Macbeth is shaken by the appearance at dinner of Banquo’s ghost, which he addresses thus:

Avaunt, and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with!

In that powerful second scene of Richard III in which Richard woos Anne Neville and begs her to marry him, Anne responds to Richard’s interruption of the funeral procession of the former King Henry VI with words and tone of superstition and the supernatural:

GLOUCESTER
Stay, you that bear the corse, and set it down.

ANNE
What black magician conjures up this fiend
To stop devoted charitable deeds?

GLOUCESTER
Villain, set down the corse, or, by Saint Paul,
I’ll make a corse of him that disobeys.

GENTLEMAN
My lord, stand back, and let the coffin pass.

GLOUCESTER
Unmanner’d dog, stand thou when I command.
Advance thy halberd higher than my breast,
Or by Saint Paull Ill strike thee to m foot,
And spurn on thee, beggar, for thy boldness.

ANNE
What, do you tremble? Are you all afraid?
Alas, I blame you not, for you are mortal.
And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil.—
Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell!
Thou hadst but power over his mortal body,
His soul thou canst not have. Therefore be gone.

The exchange that follows is full of the imagery of saints and devils, angels and demons, and heaven and hell.

In both these instances, the supernatural context of the use of avaunt! demonstrates the seriousness and spiritual gravity with which it was spoken. It was the word used to command sinners rather than saints and fiends rather than friends.

Satisfying Shakespearean Ways To Tell Someone To Go Away #3: Aroint Thee!

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Aroint thee! Is stronger than Get thee gone! or Get thee hence! because of its implied disrespect for the recipient of the command.This intransitive verb of unknown origin means ‘go away’ or ‘begone’, but at the same time indicates that the speaker holds higher status or demands more respect than those to whom they are speaking.

Shakespeare uses this command twice in different plays.

In King Lear’, Act 3 Scene 4, Edgar has disguised himself as Poor Tom and feigns madness after his brother Edmund, who has allied himself with Lear’s faithless daughters Goneril and Regan and their husbands, convinced his father Gloucester that Edgar seeks to kill him. A manhunt ensues, and when Gloucester appears in this scene carrying a lit torch, Edgar speaks thus:

“This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet; he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squinies the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth.
Swithold footed thrice the ’old,
He met the night-mare and her nine-fold;
Bid her alight,
And her troth plight,
And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee.“

Anyone observing Edgar’s behaviour and apparently senseless ramblings would dismiss him as a madman, just as Gloucester did, but Edgar’s meaning here is clear: Gloucester is acting under the influence of evil, and Edgar is telling him to leave.

Given the widespread fear and superstition associated with witchcraft in early modern times, it would have been a natural understanding among Shakespeare’s audiences that even a madman has higher social status than a witch: he may be crazy, but at least he is not a willing agent of evil.

The spiritual connotation of aroint thee! is also demonstrated in Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 3, where one of the Wyrd Sisters recounts a conversation between herself and a sailor’s wife:
“A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap,
And mounch’d, and mounch’d, and mounch’d. “Give me!” quoth I.
“Aroint thee, witch!” the rump-fed ronyon cries.
Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ th’ Tiger;
But in a sieve I’ll thither sail,
And like a rat without a tail,I’ll do,
I’ll do, and I’ll do.”

That the sailor’s wife bids the witch leave with the command “Aroint thee, witch!” underscores the difference in social and spiritual status between the two.

At those times when ‘get thee gone’ and ‘get thee hence’ don’t seem to pack enough punch, ‘aroint thee’ might be just the phrase you need to achieve your goal in a most satisfyingly Shakespearean manner.

Satisfying Shakespearean Ways To Tell Someone To Go Away #2: Get Thee Hence!

Get thee hence! is equivalent to “Get out of here!” or “Get away from here!” It often seems stronger and more urgent than begone! or get thee gone!

Upon hearing of the royal decree that the Duke of Suffolk must be exiled – later in that same scene of Henry 6, part 2 in which she previously bid him “get thee gone”– Margaret of Anjou urges the Duke of Suffolk to leave her presence in a hurry before her husband, King Henry VI, finds them together:

“Now get thee hence, the King, thou know’st, is coming.
If thou be found by me, thou art but dead.”

Margaret’s pleas escalate from “get thee gone” to “get thee hence” in proportion to the danger of Suffolk being found in her company. demonstrating the increased urgency of her tone and command.

A sense of impatience rather than imperiative is captured in Act 4, Scene 4 of The Two Gentlemen of Verona where Proetus bids Launce, who has just screwed up Proteus’ gift to Silvia of a puppy,
“Go, get thee hence, and find my dog again,
Or ne’er return again into my sight.
Away, I say! Stayest thou to vex me here?”

In Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra uses the phrase twice in the course of her conversation with an Egyptian messenger who delivers unwelcome information regarding Marc Antony: that Antony is good friends with Caesar, and finally that he is married to Octavia.

Obviously angry, Cleopatra repsonds to the messenger with considerable hostility: after wishing a most infectious pestilence upon him, striking him to the ground, threatening him with torture and saying that he has “liv’d too long”, this exchange occurs:

CLEOPATRA
Is he married?
I cannot hate thee worser than I do,
If thou again say yes.

MESSENGER
He’s married, madam.

CLEOPATRA
The gods confound thee, dost thou hold there still?
MESSENGER
Should I lie, madam?

CLEOPATRA
O, I would thou didst;
So half my Egypt were submerg’d and made
A cistern for scal’d snakes! Go get thee hence!

The repetition of “get thee hence” just a few lines later highlights the strength of the command and is proof positive that Cleopatra wasn’t messing around.

Get thee hence! is certainly expressive and delivers a satisfying sense of Shakespearean drama to your demand to be left alone.

Of course, if they don’t go, you can always try mixing it up a little with the words of Imogene from Cymbeline, Act 5, Scene 5: “O, get thee from my sight… Dangerous fellow, hence!”