The news that the notorious ‘don’t say gay’ law in Florida, which restricts classroom content that could be considered sexual, has prompted one school district to censor William Shakespeare’s plays made me go scurrying – as any schoolboy would – in search of the lines that might offend.
And having done so, I can quite understand why the authorities might be worried. I mean, it really is raunchy stuff. Here’s a sample (courtesy the No Sweat Shakespeare blog and other sources).
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2
Hamlet: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favors?
Guildenstern: Faith, her privates we.
Hamlet: In the secret parts of Fortune?
Well, Hamlet was a university student, as were his mates Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, so it’s only to be expected that they engage in a bit of smutty talk when they get together.
Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2
Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia: No, my lord.
Hamlet: Did you think I meant country matters?
Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.
Hamlet: That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
Suggesting that he might lie in a lady’s lap is naughty enough, but the lines that follow are seriously flirty when you know that ‘country matters’ (which would have been pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable) was a euphemism for, well, you know what. And ‘nothing’ was Elizabethan slang for a woman’s private parts – as opposed to a man’s privates, which were called (of course) their ‘thing’.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 1
Mercutio: Now will he sit under a medlar tree
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars when they laugh alone.
O Romeo, that she were! Oh, that she were
An open arse, and thou a poperin pear.
I love Mercutio. He’s the kind of light-hearted friend whose facetious humour is at once entertaining and annoying; in this case he is teasing poor Romeo, who is smitten with Rosaline, with a rather coarse joke that refers to a type of fruit called a medlar that was known in Elizabethan times as an ‘open arse’ (look it up on Wikipedia and you’ll see why!). And no prizes for guessing what a ‘poperin pear’ was a euphemism for.
Othello, Act 1, Scene 1
Iago: I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.
Iago wastes no time setting the cat among the pigeons with this line that is fairly well self-explanatory – the expression to ‘make the beast with two backs’ is still in use today.
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 2, Scene 1
Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.
Katharina: In his tongue.
Petruchio: Whose tongue?
Katharina: Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell.
Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail?
I’m pretty sure even the densest Florida schoolboy would get this one.
Much Ado About Nothing: Act 5, Scene 2
BENEDICK I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes
This sounds straightforward, even a bit on the mushy side – unless you know that ‘to die’ in Elizabethan England was also a slang term for having an orgasm. Oh, and while we are on double-entendres, the very title of the play has naughty connotations when you remember that ‘nothing’ meant a woman’s private parts (see above).
Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 3
Sir Andrew: But it becomes me well enough, does ’t not?
Sir Toby Belch: Excellent; it hangs like flax on a distaff; and I
hope to see a housewife take thee between her legs
In this exchange between a couple of Shakespeare’s most endearing characters, the very vain Sir Andrew Aguecheek is fishing for compliments about his hair, but instead gets a witty and rather smutty put-down from his tormentor, Sir Toby Belch.
Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5
Malvolio: By my life, this is my lady’s hand. These be her very C’s, her U’s and her T’s, and thus makes she her great P’s.
I’ll leave you with the line that is probably the crudest and smuttiest of all the bard’s jokes, in which the rather puritan Malvolio is reading a letter that has been planted for him to find, ostensibly from the object of his affections, Olivia. It would have been read ‘her very C’s, her U’s, ‘n’ her T’s’, which leaves no room for misinterpretation. And ‘making great P’s’ is toilet humour, pure and simple.
Anthony R Wildman 