Filthy Shakespeare - Pauline Kiernan

Despite the richness of Shakespeare's sexual language (his work includes no fewer than 150 puns for female genitals, and 180 for male genitalia), scant attention has been paid to it until now. Filthy Shakespeareoffers more than 70 examples of the Bard at his bawdiest, arranged under 23 sexual categories. Each filthy passage is 'translated' into modern English and the hidden sexual meanings of the words explained in a glossary.

In a lively and rumbustious introduction, author Pauline Kiernan shows how Shakespeare's predilection for rude punning had its roots in the social and political reality of Elizabethan England, where the brutal facts of life were often described by figures of speech to distance or disguise them, and where the network of government spies meant that covert communication was, for some, a matter of life and death.

Filthy Shakespeareis not just the quirkiest, dirtiest and funniest gift book of the year, it also offers fascinating and surprising insights into the richness and complexity of Shakespeare's world and Shakespeare's language.