Dirty Jokes In Shakespeare
The works of Shakespeare contain more than 700 puns on sex and more than 400 on genitals. But, sadly, most of these have been kept under wraps for centuries, depriving the world of some of the sharpest, most sophisticated and hilarious jokes in the whole of literature. Shakespeare’s sexual wordplay ranges from uproarious innuendoes to profoundly moving expressions of emotional pain. His kings, queens and aristocrats are as foul-mouthed as his clowns, and his women are expert dealers in the raciest double-entendres.
Why so many sexual puns? Shakespeare lived in a world that was vulgar and brutal by our standards, and people across the social spectrum spoke in a language that was full of colourful, bawdy and often blatantly filthy speech. His first patron, the Lord Chamberlain, was Queen Elizabeth I’s cousin, known for his ‘custom of swearing’and ‘obscenity in speaking’(as well as for fathering several illegitimate children and growing rich from the brothels up the road from Shakespeare’s theatre!) Shakespeare’s second patron was the King himself, Elizabeth’s successor James I, who was known as ‘the foul-mouthed King’.
Shakespeare’s theatre, the Globe, was located at the heart of London’s most notorious red-light district, Bankside (not far from where the reconstructed Globe stands today), and his plays abound with brothels. His most famous prostitute is Mistress Quickly — her name itself an obscene pun on Quick-lay.
Shakespeare’s astonishing genius lies in his supreme understanding of the human condition, and one of his favourite devices for getting his audience to explore the funny as well as the serious side of life was to play to its love of decoding meanings by making his tantalising subtext sizzle. Here’s a taste — but be warned: “down-and-dirty” doesn’t come near it!
Dr Pauline Kiernan is a Shakespeare scholar and screenwriter. Her books include Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s Most Outrageous Sexual Puns, which contains more than 70 examples of sexual puns in Shakespeare, and Shakespeare’s Theory of Drama. She has held fellowships and lectureships at the Universities of Oxford and Reading, and was Leverhulme Research Fellow at Shakespeare’s Globe in its first years.
