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Shakespeare’s  Bawdy  Language

Shakespeare is renowned around the world as the greatdramatic poet and playwright whose thirty-six plays
are now deservedly translated into more than forty languages.
“No household in the English-speaking world is properly
furnished unless it contains copies of the Holy Bible and of
The Works of William Shakespeare” (Harrison, 1991: 11).

At the time Shakespeare wrote, most of the grammatical
changes from Old to Modern English had taken place. Rigid
notions about standards and standardized positions had not yet
been established in grammars. However, the flexible idiom of
Elizabethan English offered abundant opportunities for
Shakespeare’s linguistic inventiveness. In the power of the
word Shakespeare evidently felt exuberant to experiment with

the language. Surely, Shakespeare took full advantage of the unparalleled linguistic
freedom to invent, to experiment and to indulge lavishly. 

In 1818, Thomas Bowdler, an English editor, published an edition of Shakespeare’s
works in which bawdy words and expressions were omitted because Shakespeare’s
works could not “with propriety be read in a family” (Hulme, 1962: 97). Since this work
of Bowdler’s was introduced, the term ‘bowdlerism’ has been a part of the English
vocabulary.  Here is an example of ‘bowdlerism’ from “ Othello”.

Yago: Your daughter and Moor are now making the beast with two backs. (1.1)

Bowdler’s attempt at ‘improvement’ results in the following: Your daughter and
Moor are now together.

Michael Macrone states that the dramatist lived in a “naughty time and worked in
a naughty business. As he began his career in London, sometime in the late 1580s, civic
leaders and religious authorities considered the theatre extremely disreputable and even
dangerous. In 1594, Lord Mayor of London pleaded with Queen Elizabeth’s Council to
tear down all the theatres, for they were places of meeting for all vagrant persons and
masterless men that hang about the City, thieves, horse-stealers, whoremongers,
cheaters, cony-catching persons, practisers of treason, and other such like ” (Macrone,
1983: 134).

Here are some examples from Shakespeare’s lewd lexicon:
Assail,  assault,  verb and noun, respectively for laying siege to a lady’s chastity. 

Front her, board her, woo her, assail her, Sir Toby urges. (Twelfth Night, 1.3)

Praising the chaste Imogen as goddess-llike,  Pissanio notes that she resists such
assaults/As  would  take  in  some  virtue (Cymbeline, 3.2) 

Bawdy language is also used by Shakespeare in his Sonnets: Beauteous  thou  art,  the

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Lala Charchoghlyan



Bard writes to his Young Man, therefore  to  be  assailed.  (41,  6)
Some readers may feel it is distasteful to investigate the bawdy aspect of the

Sonnets, for their central theme and greatest beauty are love and friendship in the fullest
meaning of these experiences. But the fullest and healthiest and richest fraternity is
erotic fraternity. 

So am I as the rich whose blessed key
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked trreasurre,
The which he will not every hour survey
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasurre.
Therefore are feasts so seldom and so rare. (Sonnet 52)

“Treasure” and “pleasure” are erotic puns in Renaissance diction connoting sexual
innuendo and at least sexual foreplay. 

Bawd,  bawdry,  bawdy,  bawdy-hhouse
The old form baude of the adjective bawdy, which is nowadays a synonym for

lewd, originally meant joyous,  gay. The noun baudery meaning jollity was more
frequently used. Baude was loaned from Old French baud. Having been transferred from
French to English, bawd  was also used in the meaning of pander. It also meant cat,  pussy
or rabbit and was also used in slang. Shakespeare himself still used the word in both
senses. In Romeo and Juliet Mercutio cries out “ A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho!” (2.4).
“Bawd” means “prostitute” and is also hunter’s slang for “hare.” “So ho” is a hunter’s
cry upon spotting the quarry. Romeo asks him what he has spotted, and Mercutio
answers with a string of double-entendres: “No hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a Lenten
pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent” (2.4). A “lenten pie” is one to be
eaten during Lent, when you aren’t supposed to eat meat; “hare” is slang for “prostitute”;
“hoar” sounds the same as “whore” and means “a female prostitute”; “stale” is another
slang word for “prostitute”. The non-bawdy meaning of what Mercutio has just said is
“No hare unless it is the kind of hare that someone might fill  lenten pie with, in which
case it would be ‘stale and moldy’ before it was eaten.” The bawdy meaning is “No hare,
unless it is the kind of whore who is only good enough when you cannot get someone
better.”

Another example is from Henry IV, when in a nostalgic mood, Falstaff asks Bardolf
to sing him a bawdy song. Meanwhile he reminisces about his youth when he went to a
bawdy-house ‘not above once in a quarter of an hour’. (3.2)

The word  blood is also used with reference to sexuality. Instances may be observed
in Othello: “Merely a lust of the blood” (1.3) and in The  Comedy  of  Errors: “My blood
is mingled with the crime of lust”. (2.2)

Very often ‘blood’ is associated with sexual passion especially in combination with
the notion of ‘heat’. In early medical theories the ‘blood temperature’ was related to
liveliness and sexual condition (Webb, 1989: 12), which finds its manifestation in the
word hot-bblooded.

In contrast, calm and cold blood symbolizes absence of passion. “You cannot call

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it love; for at your age /The heyday in the blood is tame” Hamlet concludes when the
Duchess of Gloucester asks (Hamlet, 3.4); “Hath love in thy old blood no living fire?”
(King Richard, 2.1)

Sexual excitement and passion are associated with the image of ‘riding a horse’ in
sonnets 50 and 51. Eric Partridge in his Shakespeare’s Bawdy highlights more than a
hundred erotic horse-metaphors in the plays which seem to be summed up in Cleopatra’s
cry: “O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!” In Venus and Adonis a dozen
stanzas develop a miniature erotic allegory between two horses representing Venus and
Adonis, Adonis being unable to deal properly with his horse: “He will not manage her,
although he mount her.” 

In thinking about Shakespeare’s audience, two factors are of paramount
importance. First, despite the mix of class and caste, the group was predominantly
uneducated, and secondly, it is grossly inaccurate to assume that Shakespeare’s largest,
most appreciative audience was drawn from the aristocrats and the educated. “It was
with the common people that he achieved resounding success. For his livelihood and for
the survival of theatre as he knew it, Shakespeare, the consummate artist, played to them
all” (Lipson, 1985).

Therefore Shakespeare’s allegorical sexual references are accessible for a rude and
unpolished stratum of society and are generally put into the mouths of low and ignorant
people.

Hie you to church; I must another way,
To fetch a ladder, by the which you love
Must climb a birrd’s  nnest soon when it is dark.
I am the drudge and toil in your delight,
But you shall bearr  thhe  burrdenn soon at night. (Romeo and Juliet,2.5)

Here, in her bawdy and comic manner, the Nurse instructs Juliet to get married
promising to handle the details that will enable Romeo and Juliet to consummate their
marriage. She says that she will get a ladder and Romeo will be able to climb up to
Juliet’s room to visit her “bird’s nest” - a sexual allusion. She also says that she needs to
do all this work for Juliet’s delight, but refers to the sexual act as Juliet’s “burden” to
bear at night. 

Another example is when Juliet had fallen and bruised her forehead, and the
Nurse’s husband had picked her up and made a joke, which three-year-old Juliet made
even better: 

“Yea,” quoth he, “Dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;
Wilt thou not, Jule?” and by my holidame,
The pretty wretch left crying and said “Ay.”
To see, now, how a jest shall come about!
I warrant, an I should live a thousand years,

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I never should forget it: “Wilt thou not, Jule?” quoth he;
And, pretty fool, it stinted and said “Ay.” (1.3)

For a woman to “fall backward” means to have sex. The Nurse thinks the story is
so funny she tells it twice, laughing and probably imitating the cute, innocent way the
child said “Ay.” 

Before criticizing Shakespeare for using bawdy language, one must first take into
consideration the needs of the Elizabethan stage. The growth of permanent theatres offered
a benevolent environment not concerned with perfection. What theatre wanted was vigour
and movement, barbarous shapelessness and irregularity, and these can be found in
Shakespeare’s plays, which were the product of untutored instinct, not of formal rule.

There are many, however, who would think it best not to give too much attention to
this particular area of artistic language. V.K. Whitaker states that “no writer is more
moral than Shakespeare in fundamentals. His jests are often as bawdy as any, and he can
hunt with a perverse pertinacity for off-color implications in familiar language. But these
are on the surface of the man and of his theatre” (Whitaker, 1953: 41). 

In the context of the above, it is worthwhile to notice that Shakespeare’s bawdy
language can ‘arouse’ difficulties for translators too. In other words an unsolvable
problem springs up: how to transfer Shakespeare’s bawdy imagery to the possession of
another language, another culture? The Armenian translators believed it was necessary
to remove matter that was considered indelicate or otherwise objectionable by cleansing
morally harmful, offensive or erroneous language. Consequently, in many respects, the
imagery or dramatic irony and the figurative, rich language that Shakespeare is so noted
for have been lost. So have the fundamental writing principles of contrasting characters.
And all these have been sacrificed for the sake of innocence. The translators saved the
Bard from himself not allowing the Armenian reader to see, feel or know the intensely
rich meaning or purpose Shakespeare wanted his works to have.

References:

1. Bennett William. Book of Virtues. London: Abingdon Press, 1971.
2. Harrison G. B. Introducing Shakespeare. New York: Hamondsworth, Penguin,

1991.
3. Hulme Hilda M. Explorations in Shakespeare’s Language. New York: Barnes and

Noble, 1962. 
4. Lipson Greta B; Lipson Susan S. Romeo and Juliet, Plainspoken. Illinois: Good

Apple, 1985. 
5. Macrone M. Naughty Shakespeare. London: Andrews Meneel, 1983.
6. Muir K. A New Companion to Shakespeare’s Studies. New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1974.
7. Partridge Eric. Shakespeare’s Bawdy. New York: Routledge, 1968.

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8. Webb J. Barry. Shakespeare’s Erotic Word Usage. Hastings: Corn Wallis Press, 1989.
9. Whitaker V. K. Shakespeare’s Use of Learning. San Marino, CA: Huntington

Library, 1953.

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