Shakespeare on Sex

The Bawdy Bard: Shakespeare, sex, and the liberation of love In Shakespeare on Sex, readers will discover William Shakespeare as they’ve never seen him before: a daring playwright determined to challenge Elizabethan sexual mores and champion the freedom of love. Drawing on the scandal of Shakespeare’s own youthful shotgun marriage after he impregnated twenty-six-year-old Anne Hathaway when he was still a teenage minor in a time and place that prohibited premarital sex, as well as the bawdy brilliance of his plays, this groundbreaking book reveals how sex was at the heart of his life, his art, and his legacy. Far from prudish, Shakespeare filled his works with sly jokes, lusty wordplay, and frank portrayals of desire—audiences today miss his peerless and purposeful smut, which flies by in iambic pentameter and Elizabethan slang. He defied the restrictive laws of his age, giving voice to women, young lovers, and rebels yearning for liberation. Shakespeare saw sex as both a miraculous joy