Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Most Outrageous Sexual Puns Hardcover - 2007

by Pauline Kiernan

Celebrating the Bard in all his bawdy glory, a hilarious and insightful look into the down-and-dirty sexual puns lurking in Shakespeare's body of work

London's Elizabethan theaters were located in the seedy part of town, close to whorehouses but never far from Puritanical scorn. In that climate, Shakespeare became a master of the double entendre, crafting lines and scenes that unfolded in a variety of meanings the wickedly funny, the suggestively erotic, and even hard-hitting send-ups of corrupt politicians and clerics.

From The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Tempest and King Lear, the plays and poems pulsate with puns on body parts and what they do, and reveal shocking meanings beneath the brilliant codes.

Shakespeare's genius lies in his matchless understanding of the human condition, but for centuries we've been deprived of the full extent of one of his most brilliant dramatic devices. Finally, acclaimed Shakespearean scholar Pauline Kiernan unlocks the meaning behind the coded words. FILTHY SHAKESPEARE presents more than 70 examples of the Bard at his raunchiest, with each passage translated into modern English and the hidden meanings of the original words explained. A fascinating introduction shows how Shakespeare's amazing range of wordplay had its roots in the social and political reality of Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

Revealing and riotously funny, FILTHY SHAKESPEARE is the perfect gift for anyone who wants to rediscover the master of the sexual pun at his most inventive, and an intriguing look into the richness and complexity of Shakespeare's language and his world.