Klarinet Archive - Posting 001371.txt from 1998/07

From: Roger Shilcock <roger.shilcock@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: klarinet Digest 30 Jul 1998 08:15:02 -0000 Issue 347
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 11:57:41 -0400

"Tupping" would be perfectly normal farming talk - and still is in some
places. This is what rams have *always* done....
Roger Shilcock

On Thu, 30 Jul 1998, Robin Black wrote:

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