Shakespeare's Bawdy - Softcover

Eric Partridge

4.1

150 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0525470557 ISBN 13: 9780525470557

Publisher: Plume, 1960

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This unusual and invaluable contribution to Shakespearean scholarship is a thorough examination of the "bawdy" in Shakespeare's works from the literary, psychological and lexicographical standpoints. Scholars and intelligent readers and interpreters of Shakespeare have always been aware of the large number of bawdy references throughout his plays and poems, but even they probably have not fully comprehended the wealth of hidden allusion and multiple meanings in many seemingly obvious passages. Shakespeare's Bawdy is divided into two parts. The first section is an essay with illustrative examples of the non-sexual, sexual, homosexual, general and valedictory references in the plays. The second part is a comprehensive glossary - alphabetically arranged - which cites all the significant and important passages with full definitions and explanations of the terms used by Shakespeare. The author, Eric Partridge, is the well-known English scholar and lexicographer and a world authority on slang and colloquial English. "A fascinating study in semantics and immensely revelatory."-Margaret Webster

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Review:

When Shakespeare's plays were first performed, they were popular with everyone: they weren't classics yet or a requisite course to be suffered. The stories were good entertainment for the masses, with a bawdy streak a mile wide. Certainly Shakespeare's depth and insight into human nature was appreciated, but surely some came just for the dirt. Shakespeare's contemporaries didn't need a glossary to get the jokes, but we do. Thank goodness for Eric Partridge's dictionary of Elizabethan smut, so we can get the double-entendres, too. Thus, "hardening of one's brows" ( The Winter's Tale) refers to being cuckolded, "laced mutton" ( Two Gentleman of Verona) is a prostitute, "riggish" ( Cleopatra) means lascivious, and "groping for trout in a peculiar river" ( Measure for Measure) means copulating with a woman. With an essay on the sexual, homosexual, and nonsexual bawdy in Shakespeare, an index to the essay, and a full glossary of bawdry, Partridge puts the nudge and wink back in Shakespeare.

About the Author:

Eric Partridge (1884-1979) was the author of some three dozen books, mainly on the aspects of the English language. Stanley Wells is an eminent Shakespearean scholar and the general editor of Oxford Shakespeare.

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