About

What, You Egg? [He Stabs Him] is a quote from William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth first performed in 1606. The quote became popular online due to the odd insult in 2013 after one Tumblr user revealed that it was their favorite Shakespeare quote. In 2019, The quote became a popular passage to mock English teachers' ability to find hidden meaning within any text.

Origin

In 1606, William Shakespeare's tragic play Macbeth was first performed. In the play, Macbeth's henchman stabs MacDuff's son and says the line "What, you egg?" before stabbing him. On July 19th, 2013, Tumblr^[1] user cantgeddynuffofdatass noted "This is my favourite Shakespeare quote" on a PrettyBooks post. The comment received over 445,200 notes in six years.

Spread

On June 19th, 2016, Facebook^[2] account Humans of Tumblr reposted the cantgeddynuffofdatass comment and received over 1,700 reacts in three years. On June 10th, 2018, Urban Dictionary^[3] user Handymany;) posted the definition "The iconic Shakespeare insult that shook tha nation. Egg meaning egg." for "what, you egg?" and received over 130 upvotes in a year. On October 3rd, 2018, Redditor Flashott posted PrettyBooks original image with the caption, "Roses are red, I am quite dim," to r/BootTooBig.^[4] The post gained over 16,000 points (95% upvoted) in a year. On April 29th, 2019, Redditor JasonTheRanga posted the image in relation to English Teachers to r/meirl^[5] (shown below, left). On December 17th, Redditor memer_makes_meme accumulated over 33,100 points (96% upvoted) in a day for their english teacher reaction to r/dankmemes^[6] (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References