One has to please the groundlings.
Hamlet is filled with sex jokes.
Not often taught, but Shakespeare's plays were generally performed in the same districts as brothels and bear-dancers. The target audiences were generally the lower classes of England.
His plays are basically the equivalent to modern blockbusters (that is, the blockbusters that actually have some intelligence and depth behind them; Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Robocop, etc. I'm not talking Michael Bay's or Roland Emmerich's junk.)
Consider A Midsummer Night's Dream (reiterated: my favorite Shakespeare play.) One of the main characters is named Bottom, and his entire joke is that he spends half the play with the head of a donkey. He is, in all senses of the term, a butt-head. LOL
Plus, the opening line:
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man revenue.
That's a penis joke.
Or, heck, this famous passage that's one of Shakespeare's finest verse:
(OB)My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.
(PUCK) I remember.
(OB)That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal throned by the west,
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon,
And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
Quite a many references to various sexual anatomies, there.
Shakespeare was quite raunchy.
Nothing. But then, nobody reads Shakespeare for the plot.
Correct. Most do it to pass their English courses.
"'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity;
And pity 'tis 'tis true: a foolish figure;
But farewell it for I will use no art"
Well, I partially blame the way Shakespeare is taught in English courses. They're generally just presented in the High-Brow, Sophisticated And Scholarly Form, demonstrating that they are the Greatest Works of English Poetry, and are to be reverenced as such.
When they
should be taught in such a way that they can be applied to the students and their experiences. High School students aren't really interested in the strange poetry of """Old English""" (seriously, why don't teachers more forcefully correct that misconception? Shakespeare wrote in
Early Modern English!); they're only going to be interested in the story and other surface elements. I remember when I first looked up a summary of Hamlet's story, I wondered to myself, "what's so great about this?" I wasn't able to fully appreciate it until I saw where the Yorik scene is placed.
IOW, wanna teach Romeo and Juliet? Show them West Side Story. I'm quite serious. Then tell them about that version I mentioned above, where Romeo's Christian and Juliet's Muslim. (I REALLY wanna see that one.) And THEN, have them write their own stories about star-crossed lovers. (And for crying out loud,
don't show that movie with DiCaprio! That movie SUCKED! ...my Freshman English teacher showed that one. Why not the Zeffirelli version? Just because there's like half a second of Juliet's breasts at one point?
)
And in the meantime, keep some stuff mysterious. Peak their interest, and then deny them all the knowledge. That will make those who are truly interested seek out the plays for themselves. There's nothing like mystery that makes us want to learn more.
