The Bawdy Bard

A quick note to all my dear readers. You are in for a devious treat! We have a surprise guest blogger with us today, Maire Jolie, my brilliant critique partner. As I am currently on vacation, I am away from all my books and resources, so I pulled in the next best resource I have...Maire!
Please leave her a commentary and do be warned. This is not your mother's Shakespeare....
Cheers,
Delilah Marvelle


First and foremost, thanks Delilah for inviting me to post! I love this blog and love working with you. So without further ado, onto today’s post.

THE BAWDY BARD
What, with my tongue in your tail?
The Taming of The Shrew

It’s epidemic. This time of year, Shakespeare is everywhere and outdoors. It’s finally glorious summer and thousands of fans head out to the green grasses, plunk their bums down on the hard ground, crack out the wine and sit back and revel in the fabulous magic and bloody (sometimes quite literally) good wit of this long gone playwright. I myself am fortunate enough to work behind the scenes of one of our countries fine Shakespeare festivals. And yet, I am here today to discuss my favorite part of the bard. His baaaadness. Will was a very, very naughty boy who liked to get down and get dirty.
In the grand tradition of academia, Shakespeare devotees fall into two camps. Those who read and those who do. The ideas of the two groups are continually at war what with iambic pentameter, plosives, assonance, etc. etc. Those who read, glory in Shakespeare’s poetic form. Those who do, well, they have a tendency to like to rock and roll with the more cheeky parts. Sadly, most high school students, and I dare say victims of university literary professors (though not all) are subject to what I like to call purists.
Webster defines a purist as someone who believes in the “strict observance of or insistence on precise usage or on application of formal, often pedantic rules.” Acck! Why would you want to apply this to Shakespeare? And yet, countless people around the globe insist on the purity of Shakespeare’s form, the use of his scansion, and the fact that there is only one way to do Hamlet. I ask you, would Shakespeare’s plays have survived so long if there were only one way to do them . . . and if they didn’t have lots of naughty bits? As Benedick says in Much Ado About Nothing, “No! The world must be peopled!” And though Shakespeare only had three children (the first conceived out of wedlock and with what today we might call a cougar) he certainly liked to write about copulation. And from his sonnets and plays there’s no doubt he probably had a lot of experience with it.
For those of you who think of Shakespeare as boring, posturing, and pompous, I give you Sonnet 135.
Ahem.


Sonnet 135
Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;
More than enough am I, that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will
One will of mine, to make thy large Will more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.

Innocent enough right? Its beautiful, it has sonnet form. It scans. Mwahahahaha. Now. Read it again. And at *Will* replace Will with penis and or vagina. See how it reads then. Or if you want the easy way out, courtesy of No Fear Shakespeare:

Sonnet 135

Other women may have their little desires, but you have your Will , and another Will as well, and more Will than you need. I, who am constantly pestering you for sex, am more than enough to satisfy you, adding another willing penis to the Will you already have. Since your sexual desires (and vagina) are both so enormous, won't you agree just once to let me put my desire inside yours? Are you going to be attracted to everyone else's will (penis), but reject mine? The sea is entirely made of water, but it still accepts additional water whenever it rains. So you, who already have a William, should in addition to your lover William accept my will (penis), making your sexual appetite (or vagina), which is already huge, even huger. Don't kill an eager seducer by being unkind to him. Treat all your lovers as a single lover, and accept me (and my part) as part of that lover.

Anybody need a fan? How often does your guy offer you his penis to please your enormous desire when ever you want and how often you want? Hmm? But in all honesty, during the Elizabethan/early Stuart period, Will was synonymous with penis, sometimes vagina, and sometimes also desire. Interestingly, enough ring frequently meant vagina which gave a whole new meaning to the guys giving their wives’ rings away in The Merchant of Venice. Try reading the end of that play with that new view. And nothing quite literally could mean No Thing. And well ladies, you really have no thing, right? So Much Ado About Nothing might be translated as Much Ado About Vaginas and given the nature of the play that wouldn’t surprise me if that’s exactly what it meant, and people in that period certainly would have known about the dirty little joke.
It doesn’t come close to stopping here. We could take a walk through the never ending double entendre of The Taming of the Shrew but instead, I thought it would be fun to take a quick look at Shakespeare’s opinion on virginity.
Okay, so when he wrote the dad parts, there’s no question; girls were to keep their legs locked firmly together and any opening of them would condemn said daughter to the fiery pits of hell. However, when Shakespeare wrote the young guy parts his opinion on virginity did a 180. Romeo can’t stand it that Rosalind won’t give it up. And frankly, when Juliet sends him off, he wants to know why she “will leave (him) so unsatisfied.” But the real coup de grace, the one that takes it all is from All’s Well That End’s Well. So, I’ll leave you with this saucy section with Parolles and Helena.

PAROLLES
Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be
blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with
the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It
is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to
preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational
increase and there was never virgin got till
virginity was first lost. That you were made of is
metal to make virgins. Virginity by being once lost
may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is
ever lost: 'tis too cold a companion; away with 't!

HELENA
I will stand for 't a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

PAROLLES
There's little can be said in 't; 'tis against the
rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity,
is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible
disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin:
virginity murders itself and should be buried in
highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate
offen dress against nature. Virginity breeds mites,
much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very
paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach.
Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of
self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the
canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but loose
by't: out with 't! within ten year it will make
itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the
principal itself not much the worse: away with 't!

So, I’m not a fan of losing my virginity (though I can’t exactly lose what I’ve already lost :D) just to get more virgins, i.e. have children. But hail Shakespeare for declaring it a cold companion. Have a closer look at this scene Act 1, sc1 with No Fear Shakespeare.
Thanks for the chance to chat about the bard with you all!