Sexual Ribaldry
What made an Elizabethan audience laugh? A tour of Shakespeare's anatomical humor would do the trick. This from The Comedy of Errors:
“She is spherical, like a globe. I could find countries in her.”
Belgia is Shakespeare's pun on “belly,” and bogs was slang for “buttocks.” In The Taming of the Shrew, which has a plethora of sexual banter, we find these lines:
“Who knows where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail?”
Even Shakespeare's name, William, had many sexual connotations. “Will” could mean sexual desire and was simultaneously a pun for male and female sexual organs as well as a reference to his own name. Obviously, “Will,” was one of his favorite words.
Shakespeare could be bawdy, sometimes vulgar, many times pushing the bounds of good taste, as attested to by these locker-room words.
Arise |
an erection |
Die |
to have a sexual orgasm |
Cork |
penis, but it also meant God |
Cod |
another word referring to the male organ |
Thing |
penis, as in this line from As You Like It: “Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?” |
Quaint |
Female genitalia |
Count |
numbers or a pun on female genitalia |
Nothing |
female genitalia, as used in these lines from Hamlet: Hamlet: “That is fair thought to lie between a maid's legs.” Ophelia: “What my Lord?” Hamlet: “Nothing.” |
Hell |
also used as a term for female genitalia |
Then there is this sexual innuendo from Othello when referring to the sex act: “A beast with two backs.”
