Category: Troilus and Cressida

[EXPLICIT CONTENT, ADULT LANGUAGE AND POTTY HUMOR AHEAD… SKIP IF EASILY OFFENDED.]

A couple of days back, I kicked off our Trip to Bawdy-ful and our exploration of bawdy in Troilus and Cressida. Yesterday, I looked at the view of homosexuality in the play (both negative/bawdy and positive/touching). Today, let’s slip back into the purely bawdy and nasty, as we look at what is one of the final destinations of sex: disease.

Continue reading “Troilus and Cressida: The Trip to Bawdy-ful, Part Three–lost in disease”

Yesterday, I began the trip to Bawdy-ful, i.e. Troilus and Cressida, with a look at the basic signposts along the way. Today, let’s take a back-road, so to speak, with a look at the depiction of homosexuality in the play.

In the project thus far, there hasn’t been a lot homosexuality explicitly depicted in the plays. Sure, there were some overly obsessed male friendships (see The Two Gentlemen of Verona) and a subtle unrequited homosexual love (see The Merchant of Venice), but nothing requited, returned, or anywhere near positive.

That ends here.

Continue reading “Troilus and Cressida: The Trip to Bawdy-ful, Part Two–taking the back road”

[EXPLICIT CONTENT, ADULT LANGUAGE AND POTTY HUMOR AHEAD… SKIP IF EASILY OFFENDED.]

According to Eric Partridge’s discussion of the naughty bits in Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Bawdy, Troilus and Cressida is “only slightly bawdier than Hamlet” (Shakespeare’s Bawdy, Partridge, Eric. New York: Routledge Classics, 2001; page 57). I’m not sure I buy the “only slightly” (given I know I spent two entries on Hamlet’s nudge-nudge wink-wink, and I figure it’ll take three to do Troilus and Cressida’s), but I would agree to his addendum: “yet, all in all, it leaves a nasty taste in the literary mouth” (Shakespeare’s Bawdy, 57).

And, of course, now I’m thinking back on the statement I made about the bawdy in Hamlet… that it has had the fun sucked out of the bawdy… that would indeed lead to that “nasty taste in the literary mouth.”

Continue reading “Troilus and Cressida: The Trip to Bawdy-ful, Part One–signs along the way”