Note to Romeo and Juliet, 1.1.30: "if thou hadst, thou
hadst been poor-John"


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Romeo and Juliet,
Act 1, Scene 1, line 30,
if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor-John: if you were fish (instead of flesh) you would would be the cheapest, ugliest kind. "Poor-John" was dried hake; the whole fish was dried until it was stiff, so that it looked, to those with a certain kind of imagination, like a grotesque erection.