Klarinet Archive - Posting 001364.txt from 1998/07

From: "Robin Black" <BLACKR@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Re: klarinet Digest 30 Jul 1998 08:15:02 -0000 Issue 347
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 10:31:53 -0400

<<<And in exactly WHICH Shakespeare work does the word F*** appear? There =
is
a subtle difference between bawdy and lewd which has been lost lately.>>>

Oh, Shakespeare definitely got lewd at times (my MA is in Shakespeare =
Studies, and I spent MUCH time sifting through his dirty jokes). Check =
Othello for the lewd "A black ram is tupping your white ewe" line. That's =
just one of many. I'll just let you *guess* what "tupping" means, and it =
was considered extremely lewd in Elizabethan England. He wasn't gender-pre=
ferential, either. There's an extremely lewd joke on female genitalia in =
Henry V, in an exchange between Catherine and Alice; you'd have to know =
French to get the joke (where he uses very graphic French language in a =
misunderstanding about the English word for "foot"), but a large part of =
his audience did know French, and did get the lewd joke.

Somebody else already made the point that an artist can get away with =
being lewd as long as there's some creative substance behind what they're =
doing, and the only way you can "judge" that is to let time be the judge.

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