Filthy Shakespeare

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.

Acknowledgements A Note Before You Begin Introduction: Sex in Shakespeare's Time A Note on Sources Pertaining to Fucking Pertaining to Cunt Pertaining to Prick Pertaining to Erection Pertaining to Ejaculation Pertaining to Wanking Pertaining to Cunnilingus Pertaining to Fellatio Pertaining to Buggery Pertaining to Transvestite Pertaining to Lesbian Pertaining to Homosexual Pertaining to Brothels Pertaining to Male Whore Pertaining to Female Whore Pertaining to The Clap Pertaining to Dildos Pertaining to Boobs Pertaining to Balls Pertaining to Pubes Pertaining to Impotence Pertaining to Virginity Pertaining to Pimps Appendix Index

'... 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

It never fails to amaze me just what lengths people will go to smear famous people just to be sensational and make money. this book is nonsense and filled with dirty interpretations from the author - not shakespeare. I will qgive a fitting Shakespeare quote to the author Away and mock the time with fairest show, false face must hide what false heart doth know - James McEwan



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