Shakespeare's Bawdy

This unusual and invaluable contribution to Shakespearean scholarship is a thorough examination of the "bawdy" in Shakespeare's works from the literary, psychological and lexicographical standpoints. Scholars and intelligent readers and interpreters of Shakespeare have always been aware of the large number of bawdy references throughout his plays and poems, but even they probably have not fully comprehended the wealth of hidden allusion and multiple meanings in many seemingly obvious passages. Shakespeare's Bawdy is divided into two parts. The first section is an essay with illustrative examples of the non-sexual, sexual, homosexual, general and valedictory references in the plays. The second part is a comprehensive glossary - alphabetically arranged - which cites all the significant and important passages with full definitions and explanations of the terms used by Shakespeare. The author, Eric Partridge, is the well-known English scholar and lexicographer and a world authority on slang and colloquial English. "A fascinating study in semantics and immensely revelatory."-Margaret Webster