Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Most Outrageous Sexual Puns

When you go to see a Shakespearean play, you will often see a staid, rather dignified production, performed by serious and stuffy actors. However, if you could travel back in time to the turn of the seventeenth century, you would find the theatre located in a notorious red light district, with the audience filled with drunk and semi-drunk yahoos. You would see the audience roaring with laughter, nudging each other as actors spouted off various lines. What did they see that we don't? Well, the fact is that Shakespeare's plays are filled with sexual puns, innuendoes and plays-on-words that the contemporary audiences got, but whose meanings have generally become lost. In this wonderful book, author and historian of the Bard on Avon, Dr Pauline Kiernan, goes through all of the little dirty jokes, giving the original Elizabethan passage, and then translating them into modern English. Now, as you might expect from an Oxford educated professor, she does use English slang words instead of American words, but you will have no problem discerning the meanings from the context. I found this to be a very interesting and enlightening book. Who knew just how wicked old William actually was! If you want to see Shakespeare from a different angle than the one you were taught in school, then get this book! (Review of Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Most Outrageous Sexual Puns)

Dr Kiernan has unearthed centuries of censorship to reveal to us how Shakespeare used his plays, Sonnets and extended poems to make very serious comments about the political, philosophical and sociologically important issues of his time, many of which still have bearings on society today. The book works on several levels. On a more basic level it is entertaining for the casual reader whilst at a more, perhaps, sophisticated level provides serious textual analysis, from a Shakespearean Scholar from the University of Oxford, for the more scholarly reader. Thoroughly recommended!

This is a way cool book. Yes, it's a bit over the top, but it's also an introduction to the subject, and it doesn't pretend to be comprehensive, either. Dr. Freud would have had a field day in Shakespeare's London. As did Shakespeare. I never dreamed there were so many layers of meaning in Shakespeare's texts. I knew about a few of these examples, but I never realized quite how explicit some of the sonnets were. In fact, this book would have helped me write my document [dissertation, only shorter], only I didn't discover it until I was done. Way to go, Dr. Kiernan!

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!

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.