Shakespeare's Bawdy [Paperback]

Eric Partridge (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0525470557 | ISBN-13: 978-0525470557 | Publication Date: April 29, 1960

This classic of Shakespeare scholarship begins with a masterly introductory essay analysing and exemplifying the various categories of sexual and non-sexual bawdy expressions and allusions in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. The main body of the work consists of an alphabetical glossary of all words and phrases used in a sexual or scatological sense, with full explanations and cross-references.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When Shakespeare's plays were first performed, they were popular with everyone: they weren't classics yet or a requisite course to be suffered. The stories were good entertainment for the masses, with a bawdy streak a mile wide. Certainly Shakespeare's depth and insight into human nature was appreciated, but surely some came just for the dirt. Shakespeare's contemporaries didn't need a glossary to get the jokes, but we do. Thank goodness for Eric Partridge's dictionary of Elizabethan smut, so we can get the double-entendres, too. Thus, "hardening of one's brows" (The Winter's Tale) refers to being cuckolded, "laced mutton" (Two Gentleman of Verona) is a prostitute, "riggish" (Cleopatra) means lascivious, and "groping for trout in a peculiar river" (Measure for Measure) means copulating with a woman. With an essay on the sexual, homosexual, and nonsexual bawdy in Shakespeare, an index to the essay, and a full glossary of bawdry, Partridge puts the nudge and wink back in Shakespeare. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

'It reads as freshly today as it did fifty years ago, when it surprised everyone with its originality and daring, an intriguing blend of personal insight and solid detective-work. If ever a word-book deserved to be called a classic, it is this.' - David Crystal --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Plume (April 29, 1960)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525470557
• ISBN-13: 978-0525470557
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,850,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still a classic of its kind, though showing its age, April 6, 2001

By 

Joost Daalder "Joost Daalder" (South Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: RC Series Bundle: Shakespeare's Bawdy (Routledge Classics) (Paperback)

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

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We Got the Jokes!, April 20, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: RC Series Bundle: Shakespeare's Bawdy (Routledge Classics) (Paperback)

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!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shakespeare's Bawdy, March 26, 2008

By 

Robert S. Powers - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: RC Series Bundle: Shakespeare's Bawdy (Routledge Classics) (Paperback)

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