World Famous Comics: Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Most Outrageous Sexual Puns
Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Most Outrageous Sexual Puns
By: Pauline Kiernan Publisher: Gotham Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Format: Bargain Price Label: Gotham Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 304 Publication Date: October 04, 2007 Release Date: October 04, 2007
Product Description: Celebrating the Bard in all his bawdy glory, a hilarious and insightful look into the down-and-dirty sexual puns lurking in Shakespeare’s body of work
London’s Elizabethan theaters were located in the seedy part of town, close to whorehouses but never far from Puritanical scorn. In that climate, Shakespeare became a master of the double entendre, crafting lines and scenes that unfolded in a variety of meanings—the wickedly funny, the suggestively erotic, and even hard-hitting send-ups of corrupt politicians and clerics.
From The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Tempest and King Lear, the plays and poems pulsate with puns on body parts and what they do, and reveal shocking meanings beneath the brilliant codes.
Shakespeare’s genius lies in his matchless understanding of the human condition, but for centuries we’ve been deprived of the full extent of one of his most brilliant dramatic devices. Finally, acclaimed Shakespearean scholar Pauline Kiernan unlocks the meaning behind the coded words. FILTHY SHAKESPEARE presents more than 70 examples of the Bard at his raunchiest, with each passage translated into modern English and the hidden meanings of the original words explained. A fascinating introduction shows how Shakespeare’s amazing range of wordplay had its roots in the social and political reality of Elizabethan and Jacobean England.
Revealing and riotously funny, FILTHY SHAKESPEARE is the perfect gift for anyone who wants to rediscover the master of the sexual pun at his most inventive, and an intriguing look into the richness and complexity of Shakespeare’s language and his world.
Marvellous 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!
Wow! 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!
Fantastically Filthy 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!
FIVE STARS 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.
Filthy Shakespeare Very very interesting. I knew that Shakespeare had a lot of sexual punning in it but I did not know the depths of it. It makes me laugh to remember my elderly english teacher reading these plays allowed to the class. If only she knew;)
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