Greasy Lips: Me So Horny For You Bawdy

[CONTENT REDACTED: In this blog entry, I made reference to Dr. Pauline Kiernan’s work and book on bawdy in the Bard, Filthy Shakespeare; in doing so, I have offended her by my tone and use of her material. I apologize for the offense, and have thus redacted the reference.]

Podcast 33: Love’s Labor’s Lost–Bawdy Bawdy Bawdy (The RESTRICTED “greasy lipped” Episode)

This week’s podcast is a continuation of our month-long discussion of Love’s Labor’s Lost, focusing on the bawdy humor in the play.

NOTE: This podcast contains mature subject matter and adult language (as well as adolescent humor and naughty bits, lots of naughty bits)… SO, if you’re easily offended, you might want to skip this one and wait until next week’s podcast, a return to safe-and-sane discussions.

Then we’ll finish up with our usual recap of this week’s blog entries.
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A Bone to Pick? Well, Duh…

Back in November, when I saw the Shakespeare’s Globe touring production of Love’s Labor’s Lost up in Santa Barbara (short review // full review in podcast), I mentioned that in the critical press, some balked at the edit of the play, complaining that the (pre-intermission) first half runs all the way to the end of Act Four.
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Heavyweight Championship Poetic Throwdown

In Act One, Scene One of Love’s Labor’s Lost, we are audience to a battle in verse between Berowne and his three compatriots, the King, Longaville, and Dumaine.  Like many poetic skirmishes we’ve talked about in the past, we hear answering and “topping,” in both rhyme and content.
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Rosaline: The Dark Lady

As we noted earlier in this month’s discussion of Love’s Labor’s Lost, there is much dramatic conversation (mostly derogatory) about the complexion of Berowne’s object of affection, Rosaline.

The King and his men are shocked over Berowne’s love because

  • she “is black as ebony” (IV.iii.243)
  • “To look like her are chimney sweepers black” (IV.iii.262)
  • “And since her time are colliers counted bright” (IV.iii.263)
  • “Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack” (IV.iii.264)
  • she is the same color as a “shoe” (IV.iii.273 stage direction)

Berowne himself describes Rosaline’s eyes as “two pitch balls stuck in her face” (III.i.194), but never directly discusses her complexion.  His description of “toiling in a pitch — pitch that defiles” (IV.iii.2-3) could refer to her skin color but more likely to her eyes as he references them later in the same speech (IV.iii.10).  Earlier in the play, he describes his love as a “whitely wanton” (III.i.193).  In Shakespeare’s day, however, “whitely” could mean either “Whitish; pale; light-complexioned, ‘fair’” (note that this is not the same as being “white”) or “quietly” (Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM [v. 4.0]), and either works (she could be not quite as white as the other women of the party, or maybe this could be a reference of her being “quietly wanton”).

The Elizabethan standard of beauty was deathly white (so much so that makeup also included the light drawing-in of veins below the skin) and blue-eyed. Rosaline obviously doesn’t fit this mold.  So if she has little in common with the stereotypical beauty, might she have more in common with another Shakespearean character?
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Academic Lovers as Poets: Who Makes the Grade?

In Love’s Labor’s Lost, our four male protagonists begin the play swearing to spend the next three years in academic study.  Within hours, they have forsworn that oath, and have picked up pens to swear their loves to the members of the newly arrived French party.  Let’s takes the men in their initial roles as students, and grade them in their next roles as poets.
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Words, Words, Words: Language and Wordplay, Part Two

Yesterday, we started talking about all the ways Shakespeare plays with language in Love’s Labor’s Lost.  But I want you to think back even further.  Remember last month, when I couldn’t figure out the whole Lady Anne/Richard trimeter thing?  And how, by the end of the discussion, I was still as in the dark?
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You’re a Punny Guy with Those Rhymes: Language and Wordplay, Part One

For the sheer amount of different uses of language, Love’s Labor’s Lost marks a departure from Shakespeare’s earlier works.  While we have seen some wordplay before (answering rhyme, antilabes, and rhetoric) before, never before have we seen such sheer volume.  Over a third of the play is in prose (the former champ Taming had just over a fifth), and of the remaining poetic lines, nearly TWO-THIRDS rhyme (the former champ was Comedy which had just under a quarter).  But beyond simple prose vs. verse, unrhymed vs. rhymed, we have HOW the language is employed.

Here are but a few…
Continue reading “You’re a Punny Guy with Those Rhymes: Language and Wordplay, Part One”

Podcast 32: Love’s Labor’s Lost–End of Plot and DVDs

This week’s podcast is a continuation of our month-long discussion of Love’s Labor’s Lost, including a finish to our plot synopsis with the last scene of the play, a discussion about comedy, and reviews of the DVD productions, the 1985 BBC Colleced Works production and the year 2000 Kenneth Branagh musical version.  Then we’ll finish up with our usual recap of this week’s blog entries.
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A Word (or two) About Names

Armado
The Spaniard Armado is a not so subtle dig at the recently defeated (by the English) Spanish Armada

Berowne
Some believe, as does Asimov, that Berowne is meant to evoke Armand de Gontaut, Baron de Biron, a friend of Henry of Navarre (known in England because of his work with the army of the Earl of Essex, which supported Henry of Navarre)
[btw, the name is pronounced “bahROON” like it rhymes with “moon” (as it does in the play), not “berOWN”]

Longaville
Some believe, as does Asimov, that Longaville is meant to evoke the Duc de Longueville, one of Henry’s generals

Holofernes
This is a Biblical name, but not one ANY parent would use to name a child: it comes from the apocryphal (and Catholic) Book of Judith.  Holofernes was an Assyrian general who invaded Judea; he was killed by the titular Judith.