This title, first published in 1979, is a glossary of the bawdy vocabulary that was used in Renaissance Drama. One of the primary functions of this gloss of literary bawdy is to interpret imaginative uses of the language rather than simply record the generally accepted uses and meanings, with its principal task to make the dialogue of the plays more intelligible to the reader. With examples of bawdy language used in the works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and John Webster amongst many others, this title will be of great interest to students of literature and performance studies.

This collection gathers new essays by critics and scholars who are currently reshaping our sense of the function and nature of seventeenth-century poetry. Contributors return to the New Critical canon of Renaissance poetry with fresh perspectives that emphasize considerations of gender, ideology, power, and language. In the first group of essays, David Norbrook, Annabel Patterson, John Guillory, Rosemary Kegl, and Stephen Orgel explore the various ways in which a text can be "political." Next, Arthur Marotti, Jane Tylus, and Jonathan Goldberg consider the circumstances of textual production and reception in the seventeenth century. Finally, Stanley Fish, Gordon Braden, Michael C. Schoenfeldt, and Maureen Quilligan discuss the particular forms of anxiety that result when seventeenth-century poets modify the traditional rhetoric of sexual desire to serve what seem to be erotic or religious purposes. These essays, accompanied by an extensive editors' introduction, intersect less in their shared enthusiasm for particular authors or interpretative methods than in a common interest in particular critical issues. They present the most exciting work by critics redefining Renaissance studies.

In Renaissance and early modern Europe, various constellations of phenomena-ranging from sex scandals to legal debates to flurries of satirical prints-collectively demonstrate, at different times and places, an increased concern with cuckoldry, impotence and adultery. This concern emerges in unusual events (such as scatological rituals of house-scorning), appears in neglected sources (such as drawings by Swiss mercenary soldier-artists), and engages innovative areas of inquiry (such as the intersection between medical theory and Renaissance comedy). Interdisciplinary analytical tools are here deployed to scrutinize court scandals and decipher archival documents. Household recipes, popular literary works and a variety of visual media are examined in the light of contemporary sexual culture and contextualized with reference to current social and political issues. The essays in this volume reveal the central importance of sexuality and sexual metaphor for our understanding of European history, politics and culture, and emphasize the extent to which erotic presuppositions underpinned the early modern world.

This annotated version of As you Like it, one of the Bard's wittiest and bawdiest plays, provides a detailed guide to its Elizabethan language and its references. It restores the drama to the language of the First Folio of 1623, including the original spelling, capitalization and punctuation. Practical annotation provides insights into the puns, allusions and world-play that characterize all of Shakespeare's dramas. Appendices enumerate the typographical errors that have been corrected in this version, in addition to offering stage directions from the First Folio, lineation amendations and original character tags. This restorative, no-nonsense approach will appeal to both aficionados and newcomers to Shakespeare's plays.

Michaelmas term: Cast gender - mixed; number - 19 males, 7 females (total 16); size - large; length - 5 acts, 18 scenes. Elizabethan drama. Property swindling of country landowner by city merchant.

Despite various influential writers' and critics' high praise of the poetry of Richard Barnfield (1574-1620/26?), his work has long been marginalized in English literary history because of its pervasive homoeroticism. Current interest in literary representations of gender and sexuality, in dissent from dominant ideologies, and in the early modern possibilities of same-sexual subjectivities, accounts for the renewed interest in Barnfield's poetry. This new collection of essays seeks to provide a forum for his evaluation and reinterpretation in accord with his topicality for literary studies today.

Containing the complete and annotated texts of six pamphlets written between 1609 and 1620, "Custome Is an Idiot" makes an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on early modern British cultural history, specifically on competing opinions about the role of women in society. During the early seventeenth century a fierce debate raged in British intellectual society regarding the role of women, how much is ordained by God, and how much is merely custom. The pamphlets that circulated at the time reveal a great deal about the terms of the debate, and these six constitute a significant body of primary literature, allowing the contending voices to be heard anew. Included here are two pamphlets about gossips by Samuel Rowlands, William Heale's treatise against wife-beating, Christopher Newstead's argument for the superiority of women, and Hic Mulier and Haec Vir, two pamphlets that address the theme of cross-dressing. Introductions by Susan Gushee O'Malley place each pamphlet in a wider context, and detailed annotations shed light on the individual texts.

Rather than assemble a retrospective, the editors of Renaissance Drama use the release of their fortieth volume to survey the present and to attempt a view into the future. Scholars working on different kinds of Renaissance drama contributed brief essays addressing the state of their field, "field" being convenient shorthand for the practical but productive lack of a firm definition under which they and their colleagues study, do research, and write.

Courtesans - women who achieve wealth, status, or power through sexual transgression - have played both a central and contradictory role in literature: they have been admired, celebrated, feared, and vilified. This study of the courtesan in Renaissance English drama focuses not only on the moral ambivalence of these women, but with special attention to Anglo-Italian relations, illuminates little known aspects of their lives. It traces the courtesan from a wry comedic character in the plays of Terence and Plautus to its literary exhaustion in the seventeenth-century dramatic works of Dekker, Marston, Webster, Middleton, Shirley and Brome. The author focuses especially on the presentation of the courtesan in the sixteenth century - dramas by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Lyly view the courtesan as a symbol of social disease and decay, transforming classical conventions into English prejudices. Renaissance Anglo-Italian cultural and sexual relations are also investigated through comparisons of travel narratives, original source materials, and analysis of Aretino's representations of celebrated Italian courtesans. Amid these fascinating tales of aspiration, desire and despair lingers the intriguing question of who was the 'dark lady' of Shakespeare's sonnets.

The ancient Greeks and Romans considered it degrading to both parties yet depicted it prolifically in art and literature. The Early Christian Church called it "the worst evil," punishable by seven years of penance and fasting (murder was one year). Nearly all of the 13 original American colonies had laws against it--except Georgia. A Victorian handbook for young brides advised how to "dampen his desire to kiss in forbidden territory." Attitudes about oral sex have varied through the centuries and across cultures--a death sentence in some nations, a religious practice in others. This book explores its history as well as its impact on world events.