wall

   The famous literary example of wall used as a vocative occurs in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Pyramus, otherwise Nick Bottom, the weaver, addresses Tom Snout, playing the part of the wall: ‘Oh wall, O sweet and lovely wall,/Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne.’ The wall obligingly holds up his fingers to represent the chink, a scene which never fails to amuse an audience. ‘Wall’ can be heard as a vocative on any Saturday afternoon in Britain, in the course of a football match. When a free-kick is to be taken anywhere near the opposing goal, several defenders will normally form a human wall. They will invariably stand nearer than the ten yards specified in the rules of the game, and will be told, collectively, to retreat by the referee. He is unlikely to address them as ‘sweet and lovely wall’. ‘Get back, wall,’ is the more usual instruction.