Naughty Shakespeare Continued

Take the sorry case of Othello, the most popular tragedy of the 17th century, and Shakespeare's most passionate play. It comes to pass, in the original text, that the hero is so overwhelmed by sexual jealousy that he begins to act very badly. In one horrifying scene (IV.i), Iago and Othello begin by debating the precise circumstances of Desdemona's alleged infidelities-"naked with her friend in bed," "Lie with her? lie on her?"-in terms thought too explicit for family consumption. By the mid-18th century, such lines would be absent from all acting texts of Othello. Another 174 lines were also cut from the scene, beginning where the overwrought Moor has an epileptic seizure and falls into a trance; this and later details were found to spoil the "tragic" effect.

Elsewhere, indecent language-which pervades the play-was softened or cut. Iago's news to Brabantio that "an old black ram/ Is tupping your white ewe" was deleted (I.i.88-89), as, needless to say, were more shocking lines such as "Would you, the supervisor [spectator], grossly gape on?/ Behold her topp'd?" (III.iii.395-96) and "Cassio did top her" (V.ii.136). The word cuckold vanished. Othello no longer called his wife an "Impudent strumpet" or a "whore" (IV.ii.81, 86); Desdemona no longer punned, "I cannot say 'whore.'/ It does abhor me now I speak the word" (161-62). The word abhorred so many that it virtually disappeared from plays and print by the 19th century.

These neutered stage versions of Othello also became best-selling booklets, outselling editions of the uncut works. (Uncut, but still tampered with; Alexander Pope, for instance, had already changed those two top's to milder tup's.) Particularly popular was the expurgated collection assembled in 1773-74 by the aptly named Francis Gentleman, who had already offered many helpful suggestions in The Dramatic Censor (1770). On Othello's invocation of "devils" and his demand that they "roast me in sulphur" (V.ii.277-79), Gentleman characteristically wrote, "as [these lines] convey very horrid ideas, we could wish them omitted." Often, they were.

Such efforts to save the Bard from himself culminated in the famous Family Edition of Shakespeare (1818), edited by Thomas Bowdler and an unnamed close relative, probably his sister. In the words of Marvin Rosenberg, Bowdler's compelling motive was "to protect the purity of British womanhood from indecent language.… Shakespeare's words were simply too potent to be trusted with a lady" (244-45). Bowdler himself wrote that the Bard's plays are "stained with words and expressions of so indecent a nature that no parent would chuse to submit them in uncorrected form to the eye or ear of a daughter."

Some examples of Bowdler's improvements, still from Othello: Iago no longer tells Brabantio that "your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs" (I.i.115-17), but rather that "your daughter and the Moor are now together." In Shakespeare, the bloodthirsty hero worries that Desdemona's "body and beauty" will distract him from his purpose (IV.i.205); in Bowdler, her body is deleted. "Top" is gone, and "tup" along with it, and "naked" for good measure. Shakespeare's "bawdy wind that kisses all it meets" (IV.ii.78) is reduced to a "very wind."

Bowdler's efforts, which in truth weren't nearly so extreme as Gentleman's, earned him gratitude in his century and infamy in ours. The Family Edition is now out of print, and bowdlerize is a term of contempt. Yet Shakespeare has never really recovered; many of those who read the complete texts and understand them are even today embarrassed by his low comedy and incorrect ideas.

In any case, between about 1750 and about 1950, it was either censored Shakespeare or no Shakespeare; so we must partly thank Gentleman and Bowdler for keeping his plays alive and onstage. Thus Shakespeare has reigned virtually uninterrupted since at least 1594, the year of his first published work, a quarto of Titus Andronicus. (This wildly popular play would ironically become Shakespeare's most reviled effort-see "Bloody Shakespeare," page 24.)

But Shakespeare's greatness in the eyes of history has latterly become a burden. It's scarcely possible any more to simply experience his plays as pure literature-or pure entertainment-for the word "pure" has become impure. Like the terms "great" and "literature," it is inevitably tainted by some agenda.

On one side are those who question whether "great" means anything more than "approved by self-appointed (and oppressive) cultural authorities." On another side are those who use "great" to mean "spiritually and morally superior"-that is, "better" for us than mere "entertainment." There are, as you might imagine, numerous variations on these themes. All have been applied at one point or another to Shakespeare, the most prominent of literary targets.

There's no remaining neutral in the "culture wars"; and, given a title like Naughty Shakespeare, you might assume I think the moralists are wrong. To a degree, I do; to urge Shakespeare on students and the populace at large as a great upholder of traditional values (as the moralists understand "traditional"), you have to explain away a good deal of gratuitous dirt and violence. And, worse, you have to crudely simplify Shakespeare's complex, if not confused, moral attitudes-of which there are many.

But while I do think a simplistic moral view is absurd, I also believe that the bad stuff-of which there's enough to offend anybody-only increases the work's power, even its moral power. The debunkers and relativists are wrong, too, if they think Shakespeare is "great" only because cultural elites have decreed it so. And by aiming to replace the canon of dead white males with an "improved" version that's more positive and uplifting, they are no less moralistic in their way than the moralists.

Thanks to their efforts-and thanks also to student diversity and demands for more freedom-it is now possible to major in English at any of a number of respected American colleges without studying Shakespeare. Given the Bard's heretofore unmatched stature and influence, this is a remarkable turn of events. And given his vast influence on later English and American literature, it's also unwise. It's all well and good to treat students as free consumers of learning, but in a literal sense they're not yet educated consumers.

From one angle, the situation is deplorable; but it does have its positive side. Arguments like "Shakespeare's no longer relevant," or "Reading Shakespeare is a form of oppression," are obviously ludicrous; but on the other hand, Shakespeare has perhaps been hurt more than helped by decades of academic sanctimony.

After all, though he's the undisputed king of English letters, Shakespeare was a mere mortal. It was far from obvious in his day that his work would prove of lasting value, and for at least a century Ben Jonson and John Fletcher were esteemed his equals. His subsequent idolization-a.k.a. "Bardolatry"-has distorted Shakespeare's true place in literary history; and it has set his work on a false pedestal, encouraging reverence more than understanding.

Believe it or not, not everything he wrote is perfect, or timeless, or even good, by whatever measure you choose. But since the 18th century, Shakespeare has served as a totem of literature's power to perfect reality and in turn to perfect its readers. Reading his work or attending performances is supposed to make you better-more aware, more knowing, and in some sense more virtuous. He's become Western culture personified, the embodiment of Tradition and thus a key link to the "eternal values" that always seem to be slipping away.

The very idea would have made his contemporaries laugh-and Shakespeare would have laughed with them. As far as he was concerned, he was an entertainer, committed to the twin goals of enchanting his audience and making pots of money. And in the eyes of many Elizabethans, his chosen medium, the theater, was as far from "uplifting" as you could get. Rather than temples of moral improvement, the theaters were viewed as "bawdy houses" (brothels) where one went to be corrupted.

Elizabethan critics such as Stubbes made the same mistake as all would-be censors: to assume that entertainments are capable of corrupting morals on contact. This is the same mistake, in reverse, as assuming that morally "good" literature implants good values directly in our souls.

Latter-day moralists, ignoring the attitudes of Shakespeare's own contemporaries, have tended to place him squarely on the side of the angels. But if he were really all that healthful, he'd probably have been forgotten long ago; at best, he'd be ranked with such pious figures as Bunyan. Shakespeare's greatness depends in large part on two factors inconvenient to literary utilitarians: he was a great entertainer, not above feeding his audience what it wanted; and his work is morally extremely complex.

The Bard's reputation is so intimidating that people sometimes forget he was an entertainer, not the author of cultural prescriptions, nor a promoter of the traditional values of his day. In this book I aim not to present a "true" picture of Shakespeare's mind-virtually impossible in any case-but a truer picture of his work than what is usually taught, and of what has usually, through the centuries, been performed.

In his Book of Virtues, William Bennett cites six uplifting passages from the Bard. And he's correct to do so, for the Bard gives voice to many noble ideals and to much timeless wisdom. But I'm delighted to outweigh him in my little book of vices. Keep Naughty Shakespeare by your copy of Bennett's Virtues; read them both; or, better yet, read the plays.

act of darkness Edgar, posing as a former sinner, says he "serv'd the lust of my mistress' heart and did the act of darkness with her." Elaborating, he explains that he was "one that slept in the contriving of lust, and wak'd to do it" (Lear, III.iv.86-90). If "darkness" refers to the time of the act as well as to its wickedness, he must have "wak'd" before dawn. See also do the deed. 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 (TwN, I.iii.56-57). Praising the chaste Imogen as "goddess-like," Pisanio notes that she resists "such assaults/ As would take in [conquer] some virtue" (Cymbeline, III.ii.8-9). Also used in the Sonnets with the sexes exchanged: "Beauteous thou art," the Bard writes his Young Man, "therefore to be assailed" (41.6). bawd, bawdry, bawdy, bawdy-house, etc., etc. All these words refer in one way or another to the sex act. A "bawd" is a pimp or procuress; "bawdry" is either dirty talk or the dirty behavior; "bawdy" means "lewd" or "lascivious"; a "bawdy-house" is a whorehouse; and so forth. Pompey in Measure for Measure is a "bawd," as is the character Bawd in Pericles. "Come, sweet Audrey," Touchstone rhymes to his fiancée, "We must be married, or we must live in bawdry" (AYL, III.iii.96-97). In a nostalgic mood, Falstaff asks Bardolph to sing him a "bawdy song" while he reminisces on his youth, when he "dic'd not above seven times-a week" and "went to a bawdy-house not above once in a quarter-of an hour" (1 Henry IV, III.iii.13-17) bone-ache Pain due to veneral disease; or, by extension, the disease itself. "The vengeance on the whole camp!" cries the bitter Thersites to his fellow Greeks, who are fighting a war for a wanton woman; "or rather, the Neapolitan bone-ache!" (Troilus, II.iii.17-19). (Naples was considered the home of syphilis.) bum Buttocks. "Troth," Escalus tells Pompey, "and your bum is the greatest thing about you, so that in the beastliest sense you are Pompey the Great" (Measure, II.i.217-19). Apparently describing undignified Xattering "curtsies," Apemantus mocks the "Serving of becks [precious nodding] and jutting-out of bums" (Timon, I.ii.231).

cliff "She will sing any man at first sight," says Ulysses of Cressida. "And any man may sing her," Troilus bitterly adds, "if he can take her cliff; she's noted" (Troilus, V.ii.9-11). "Cliff," a variation on "clef," is also slang for the female parts. However, in The Comedy of Errors (III.ii.126), it probably means "breast." clyster-pipe Enema tube. Hoping to convince Othello they're signs of hanky-panky, Iago carefully notes Cassio's courtesies (such as kissing his fingers) to Desdemona. "Yet again, your fingers to your lips? Would they were clyster-pipes for your sake!" (Othello, II.i.176-77). cock One can hardly miss the vulgarity of "Pistol's cock is up,/ And Xashing fire will follow" (Henry V, II.i.52-53; also see pistol). Outside such double entendres, cock was also a substitute for the even more shocking word "God," as in "By Cock" (Hamlet, IV.v.61) and "Cock's passion" (Shrew, IV.i.118). codpiece In poetics this is called "metonymy"-the container standing for the contained. In Shakespeare, "codpiece," which denotes a decorative bag worn by fashionable men over their privates, very often means the privates themselves. On Angelo's decree that Claudio shall be put to death for fornication, Lucio exclaims, "Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a man!" (Measure, III.ii.114-16). Elsewhere, Berowne calls Cupid the "king of codpieces" (LLL, III.i.184); and Borachio recalls a depiction of Hercules, whose "codpiece seems as massy as his club" (Much Ado, III.iii.137-38). Sometimes the metonymy proceeds another step, from the body part to its owner. "Here's grace and a codpiece," quips the Fool-"that's a wise man and a fool" (Lear, III.ii.40-41).