CRITICISM

Colman, E. A. M. “Verbal Gymnastics.” In The Dramatic Use of Bawdy in Shakespeare, pp. 35-46. London: Longman, 1974.

Traces Shakespeare's development of bawdy from easy crowd pleaser to the use of bawdy as an integral part of characterization and plot.

Cummings, Peter. “The Making of Meaning: Sex Words and Sex Acts in Shakespeare's Othello.” The Gettysburg Review 3, no. 1 (winter 1990): 75-80.

Considers Shakespeare's unsurpassed contributions to the language of love and sex.

———. “Shakespeare's Bawdy Planet.” Sewanee Review 101, no. 4 (fall 1993): 521-35.

Examines what Shakespeare's use of bawdy reveals about Elizabethan society.

Franke, Wolfgang. “The Logic of Double Entendre in A Midsummer-Night's Dream.” Philological Quarterly 58, no. 3 (summer 1980): 282-97.

Contends that the characters of A Midsummer Night's Dream must be unconscious of the double meaning of their words in order for the play to be effective.

Hedrick, Donald. “Flower Power: Shakespearean Deep Bawdy and the Botanical Perverse.” In The Administration of Aesthetics: Censorship, Political Criticism, and the Public Sphere, edited by Richard Burt, pp. 83-105. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.

Focuses on the sexually symbolic flower imagery found in Shakespeare's works.

Knowles, Ronald. “Carnival and Death in Romeo and Juliet: A Bakhtinian Reading.” Shakespeare Survey 49 (1996): 69-85.

Explores the carnivalesque elements of Romeo and Juliet, including the use of bawdy in the play.

Rubinstein, Frankie. “Persistent Sexual Symbolism: Shakespeare and Freud.” Literature and Psychology 34, no. 2 (1988): 1-26.

Discusses Shakespeare's use of sexually symbolic words in terms of Freudian interpretations.

Traci, Philip J. “Suggestions about the Bawdry in Romeo and Juliet.” South Atlantic Quarterly 71, no. 4 (autumn 1972): 573-86.

Describes how bawdy is used in Romeo and Juliet to convey innocence, maturity, and partial victory in death.

Williams, Gordon. “The Shakespearean Reputation.” In Shakespeare, Sex and the Print Revolution, pp. 7-13. London: Athlone, 1996.

Examines Shakespeare's reputation as an erotic poet, which was already well established in the seventeenth century.