Filthy Shakespeare - Hardcover

Kiernan, Pauline

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1905204752 ISBN 13: 9781905204755

Publisher: Quercus, 2006

Synopsis

The works of William Shakespeare contain at least 400 puns on male and female genitals. Despite the richness and breathtaking scope of his sexual language, too little attention has been paid to the sheer salacious inventiveness of his indecent puns - until now. His plays and poems pulsate with puns on body parts and what they do. "Filthy Shakespeare" presents over 70 sizzling examples of the Bard at his raciest, arranged under different categories from Balls to Buggery, from Cunnilingus to the Clap, from Homosexual to Transvestite. Each filthy Shakespearean passage is translated into modern English and the hidden sexual meanings of the words explained in a glossary. In her fascinating and lively Introduction, Pauline Kiernan shows how Shakespeare's sexual wordplay had its roots in the social and political reality of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, where the harsh facts of life were often disguised by bawdy, brutal punning, and in the era when the English secret service was born, deciphering secret codes became a national obsession.

About this title

About the Author

Pauline Kiernan is a distinguished Shakespeare academic and screenwriter and award-winning playwright. She is the author of the much-praised Shakespeare's Theory of Drama (CUP 1996)

From Publishers Weekly

It's a universal truth: sex sells. Giving the audience what they wanted in the 16th century, however, meant veiling it with puns, bon mots, slang and other tricks; fortunately, Shakespeare scholar Kiernan (Shakespeare's Theory of Drama) has taken the mystery out of the Bard's deceptively graphic passages in these frank translations from some of his most popular plays. Because most students read whitewashed versions (or because most high school instructors don't want to go there), even fans may be unaware of the degree to which, for instance, Iago (Shakespeare's "filthiest-minded character") employs sexually loaded language to rouse Roderigo's murderous lust in Act 5 of Othello: "Quick, quick, fear nothing... and fix most firm thy resolution" seems innocuous enough until Kiernan reveals that "nothing" means "vagina" and "resolution" means "balls." These blush-inducing transcripts render Shakespeare's work instantly contemporaneous; as it turns out, just the title of Much Ado About Nothing is easily as vulgar as anything uttered by gross-out moviemakers the Ferrelly brothers. Divided into chapters on lesbianiasm, homosexuality, virginity, sexual diseases, impotency, whores, pimps, brothels and other topics that shall here remain nameless, this jaw-dropping, giggle-inducing text proves both the Bard's enduring relevance and the fact that today's popular entertainment isn't nearly as debased as some might think.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Quercus
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1905204752
• ISBN 13: 9781905204755
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256