Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #346189 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

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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Review
'... you will find Filthy Shakespeare great fun.' Times Literary Supplement 'Back when you were studying the Bard at school, who knew the hidden sexual innuendos within his works! This new book has unearthed loads of them.' Company Magazine 'There's a lot of talk about culture getting coarser nowadays, but those Elizabethans - they really knew how to talk dirty. Apparently every single one of Iago's 1,070 lines in Othello contains a sexual pun. Pauline Kiernan ... obligingly translates the smuttiest scenes so that we can appreciate the full extent of the smirkathon. It's fascinating ...' The Guardian 'Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Most Outrageous Sexual Puns' piles ingenuity on scholarship to make the bard bawdier.' Daily Telegraph 'A thoroughly respectable academic slums it with this gloss on bum jokes, not to mention all sorts of other sexual practices and body parts. Once you get past the giggles, a convincing introduction makes a good case for the centrality of bawdy wordplay throughout the culture of the time, showing how the raw realities of Elizabethan and Jacobean London made audiences immediately able to decipher the double entendres and puns of the plays.' Scotland on Sunday (Review) 5th November 2006 `A work of scholarship dressed up, with brilliant design, as titillation' The Spectator "Glorious ... a beautifully presented guide to Elizabethan filth" Stephen Bayley, Observer Book of the Year

Review
“...goes some way towards wiping out that sneaking feeling you often get when reading the Bard’s sublime verse that you’re not quite in on the joke...fascinating.”
—The Guardian

“...a bona-fide Shakespeare scholar...it’s all there: from balls to buggery, and from pricks to pubic hair.”
—Guardian Unlimited

“...great fun”
—Times Literary Supplement

“...a beautifully presented guide to Elizabethan filth.”
—The Observer (voted one of the Best Books of 2006)

“...a work of scholarship dressed up, with brilliant design, as titillation.”
—The Spectator

”..who knew the hidden sexual innuendos within the Bard's works! This new book has unearthed loads of them.”
—Company Magazine

Customer Reviews

FIVE STARS
The great strength of Filthy Shakespeare is that is has been written by a Shakespeare scholar who is also a dramatist. Dr. Kiernan shows that Shakespeare often used sexual puns as a serious dramatic device for important issues such as morality, politics, and war. Some of the best parts of the book are where she demonstrates how Shakespeare used sexual puns to intensify the the dramatic impact of the scene. The introduction which describes the social and political world of the playwright is excellent. This is an important book. It will be appreciated not just by playgoers and readers of the plays but by all Shakespeare actors and directors.

Fantastically Filthy
Saw this @ Barnes and Noble and was intrigued - I had read about Shakespears's puns in another book. I think it's great that someone is trying to show the dual meanings in so many of Shakespeare's famous scenes. Loved it!

Outrageous Language
Yes, Shakespeare is the master of the dirty puns...however, I think it could have been written more tastefully. The Partridge book (Shakespeare's Bawdy) is essentially the same thing but gives reasoning behind the writing and is better written. That said however, it is definitely entertaining to read the world as Shakespeare saw it...if glaze-eyed students around the world knew what they were REALLY reading, I would think Shakespeare would become far more popular.