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RC Series Bundle: Shakespeare's Bawdy (Routledge Classics)

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Modern well-annotated editions of Shakespeare (like those in the New Cambridge, Oxford, or Arden series) often explain bawdy usages in Shakespeare which today's reader cannot - yet should - understand. Even so, this area is still often comparatively weak in current commentaries, and this classic provides a great deal of help to the reader who wishes to know more. For a reader who does not use annotated editions at all, the glossary is yet more useful, though such a reader will often not even begin to think about instances of bawdy which would have been readily apparent and intelligible to an Elizabethan. Much does not get explained in Partridge: in that case a curious reader will often find the relevant exposition in Gordon Williams's *A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature*. However, as that is an expensive and difficult-to-use book, many readers would still serve themselves well by buying Partridge's guide. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia

The head of our English Department in college was an expert on Shakespeare's bawdy. This was one of the books he had us read. When his classes attended a Shakespeare play, you could always spot us in the audience. We were the ones laughing at the dirty jokes!

Eric Partridge is always a fine scholar of words. His glossary of words that Will Shakespeare used, and what Will actually meant by those words, is fascinating. Understand Will better!

I do have another book about the same subject, titled "Naughty Shakespeare". The only thing that I noticed in the "Naughty..." book that Partridge didn't mention or maybe didn't know about, was that Shakespeare's street audience really understood what "Much Ado About Nothing" is *really* about. His street audience knew that men do carry "something" between their legs; but women carry "nothing" there. So there's your naughty lesson for the day about one of Will's most performed plays.

Sorry if that story is offensive to some people. But you probably wouldn't have read it if you were not intersted in Shakespeare's "Bawdy" :=))

Bob Powers

Most of us cannot properly appreciate Shakespeare without a little help with the language. It's not so much that he uses words we don't know, although that is a problem, it's that he uses words we think we know to mean things we're not familiar with. "Shakespeare's Words" by Crystal and Crystal is a big help, but they leave out a lot of the naughty bits. Shakespeare's work is heavily salted with sexual puns and references. Don't miss the fun.

I also like "Filthy Shakespeare" by Kiernan.

"Shakespeare's Bawdy" is a classic of its kind. What else would you expect from Partridge? This wee paperback is indispensible, and has yet to be bettered. Think you know all of Shakespeare's puns? Think again!

You might find it hard to believe that such an inherently interesting topic could be made tedious. However, Eric Partridge excels at it. The bulk of the book is an excellent glossary which we are guided to read based upon lists of words in the short 58 page introductory essay. For example, in reference to the entire corpus, he says "Clasping ranges from the almost meaningless waist-encirclement of the merely familiar to the passionate embraces of lovers: and in the Glossary entries at arms, clasp, clip, embrace, hoop with embraces, hug, lay one's..., and strain account for most of the nuances." (p. 30)

Another example also shows the pomposity with which the text is replete: "This is the Shakespearean locus classicus; and I hardly need to reproduce it here. Yet for the sake of the inexpert or the not-so-knowledgeable, I refer the reader to the following entries in the Glossary: virginity, kept out, assail, sit down before, undermine, blow up, breach, city, increase, virgin, principal, lying and withered pear." (p. 41) Note that they are not in alphabetical order. We would not want the reader to review both virgin and virginity at the same time, would we?

There is a chapter that comes tantalizingly close to ranking the plays from least to most bawdy. But even here, he manages to avoid giving us anything so useful and expected. Instead, we get a list in chronological order with vague relative bawdiness scores such as "out-Kyds Kyd in crude sensationalism" and "the obscenest of the Histories" and "possesses a few more particularities than Macbeth, yet, in its general effect, even less `objectionable'".

Only three Shakespearean excerpts of more than a few lines are examined to any extent so you can get a feeling of how to discern and enjoy Shakespeare's Bawdy when reading or hearing it. For one of them, perhaps the most useful two pages in the book, the author tells us in a footnote that "Professed Shakespearean scholars and competent lexicographers need not read this section-ending. All other readers, however, might do worse than to ponder it." Worse than this? That is hard to believe.