Brandon Vo Significance of Bawdy in Romeo and Juliet One of the most recognizable elements that is in Shakespearean plays is the

pun. Beyond just the pun however, the use of sexual puns, or bawdy language has been a particular calling card of Shakespeare's wit and humor. According to Samuel Coleridge, a Shakespearean play contained an average of 78 puns, and over the life of his career Shakespeare had managed to work in no less than 3000 puns into his plays; that said, apparently the works of Shakespeare contain more than 700 puns on sex and more than 400 on genitals. Shakespeare's use of bawdy sexually suggestive, crude, or humorously indecent languagebecame an area of serious critical interest in the 20th century, with critics on both sides arguing about the value or lack thereof that bawdy actually contributed to the quality of the works. While many viewed that the bawdy in Shakespearean works was a shallow appeal to the humor of the proles, many critics have explored the opposing view: that bawdy was rather essential to a complete enjoyment and understanding of a Shakespearean play. Indeed, a close-reading of one of Shakespeare's most pun-filled works, Romeo and Juliet, will prove that not only does the significance of bawdy extend beyond a comic-level, but that it also serves as a vehicle for serious issues. There are several perspectives that one can take when choosing to look at Shakespeare's use of bawdy. Each of these perspectives lend credible views as to why bawdy is not simply a comic-device to keep audiences engaged. From a historical standpoint, sexuality in Shakespeare's time was definitely taboo topic. The culture of Elizabethan England was one that was encouraged to cherish purity and this was most easily seen in the fact that Queen Elizabeth was idolized as the "Virgin Queen." The Church constantly reminded its followers of the wickedness and sinfulness of society and as such, there was an understandable social taboo against blatant sexuality. That being said, human

beings are sexual by nature, "people masturbate, woo, marry, copulate, and give birth" (Wells 15). As such, while the Virgin Queen promoted and attempted to enforce a culture of purity and chastity (outside of the sex involved in wedlock), sexuality permeated through various outlets, one of which being the theatre. According to Stanley Wells, "the theatre was associated with the court, and courtiers were notoriously promiscuous" (Wells 15) additionally, "the relationship between actors and audiences, then as now, was sexually charged" (Wells 27). From the arguments that Wells brings forth, it is understandable from a practical standpoint that Shakespeare's use of bawdy perhaps transcended mere comic relief, but acted as an outlet for the seemingly repressed sexuality of Elizabethan England. Indeed, Eric Partridge suggested that "composition is superior to love-making as a means of satisfying the need for self-expression... to write of sex and love serves both to satisfy and perhaps justify the intellectual and spiritual need to create and homeopathically to assuage one's physical desires" (Partridge 60). According to Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare's plays in general reflected contemporary social history of the time. Garber suggests that "for Shakespeare... the prevailing beliefs of the time about marriage, virginity, chastity, and child-rearing were essential materials for his art" (Garber 127). It can be seen that Romeo and Juliet is a play that is filled with bawdy language in the form of lewd puns. The male characters such as Romeo, Benvolio, and Romeo banter with bawdy innuendos that serve to express an unrepressed sexuality that was acceptable for the male gender. Gregory, Peter, and Sampson joke about virginity and "naked weapons," the nurse is both the source and target of puns. While there are many who view that it is shallow tool to keep audiences engaged and entertained, in reality, it is difficult to make an overarching claim that bawdy in Romeo and Juliet serves no purpose other than for crude humor, since the play itself is a rather bawdy play. A play about love will always have a hormone-charged atmosphere (what
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else drives individuals to do the things that Romeo and Juliet do?) and as such, it goes hand in hand with bawdy, or sex. In this hyper-sexual atmosphere, it can be tempting to interpret the protagonists' young love as primarily physical, and by extension, write off the use of bawdy as purely shallow, but the fact that the play incorporates deeper themes of tragedy helps viewers see that there is a deeper relationship between sex and love, and thusly, there is a deeper meaning behind the use of bawdy in general. Marion Perret suggests that Shakespeare's use of bawdy sexual references actually serves to develop and character relationships, theme, and even plot. Additionally, Ronald Knowles states in passing that "bawdy is used not only for structural and thematic contrast, but for something larger and more positivethe carnivalesque embrace of existence" (Knowles 75). In this case, Knowles uses carnivaleque to mean "a literary mode that subverts and liberates the assumptions of the dominant style or atmosphere through humor and chaos." Thus, it can be seen from many standpoints, that bawdy serves not only as a release for the audience in a carnivalesque manner, but that it helps the audience gain a deeper reading of the play's characters and character relationships. At his juncture, the argument will be made that while there are many characters that make use of bawdy, each of them use bawdy in a different way, and bawdy provides different positive effects for the audience. This will be examined more in depth by looking at the characters of Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, the Nurse, and Gregory and Sampson together. While Romeo doesn't partake in too many bawdy moments, as he is too busy preening about love and such, there are times when it is clear that he is looking forward to the opening marriage will provide to him to partake in bawdy in endeavors. This is evident in when he says: And stay, good nurse, behind the abbey wall: Within this hour my man shall be with thee And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair;
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Which to the high top-gallant of my joy Must be my convoy in the secret night. (2.4.22) While on the surface, Romeo is planning his secret wedding with Juliet, secret night can also take a sensual turn when taken with the idea of joy. It is perhaps easy to see that Romeo associates marriage with the consummation of marriage, and he is indeed looking forward to it. Additionally going back to Romeo's infatuation with Rosalind, when he mentions that "O, she is rich in beauty, only poor, / That when she dies with beauty dies her store... / in that sparing makes huge waste" (1.1.13-16). Romeo here is suggesting that Rosalind is being greedy with her beauty, and it is a waste that she chooses to remain chaste (which in itself is a paradox as Romeo values her for her chastity). It is clear from Romeo's few and really, innocent, instances of bawdy that Shakespeare is making a conscious decision to set him apart from the other characters. Romeo and Juliet are not only tied together by the plot of love, but they are also tied together by their relative innocence in comparison to those around them. As seen later, Juliet's bawdy instances actually rival or even outclass Romeo's in regards to intensity. Indeed, it is interesting to note that the play's female protagonist Juliet, a seeming symbol of pure love and dedication, also partakes in the a bawdy dialogue of her own. The fact that she does this brings in many interesting notions from a gender relations perspective. Mary Bly examines the play by focusing on Juliet's lewd puns and considers the of her character on the comic heroines of Shakespeare's contemporaries. Bly suggests that Juliet is both "chaste and desirous" (Bly 97). Indeed, this can be seen in Juliet's speech in Act 3 Scene 2: JULIET Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen. Lovers can see to do their amorous rites By their own beauties; or, if love be blind, It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
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Thou sober-suited matron, all in black, And learn me how to lose a winning match, Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods: Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks, With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold, Think true love acted simple modesty. (3.2.1-12) From a close reading of -this particular passage, one can infer on a high level that Juliet is really looking forward to her honeymoon night with Romeo and she's not afraid to say so. It is clear from her soliloquy, that the chastity of Juliet is heavily guarded, and yet the figurative key is love and marriage. Once that legal/moral obstacle is out of the way, Juliet is completely open to the wild bawdiness that the male characters enjoy. The latter part of her soliloquy is full of double entendres, with phrases such as "hood my unmann'd blood" perhaps referring to the blood associated with the loss of virginity, and "strange love, grown bold" perhaps referring to an erection. From a gender relations standpoint there is significance in Juliet shedding the "chaste" image that Romeo carved out for her in his head, because by opening herself up to the bawdy, she effectively puts herself on the same level as the other male characters of the play. Another character that very much embodies the bawdy in Romeo and Juliet, is Mercutio. Mercutio is a kinsman to the prince and friend to Romeo. Mercutio is often interpreted as a comic foil to Romeo in the sense that he is very coarse in his views towards love and women. Mercutio's bawdy discussions of sex, for example, and his witty and light-hearted use of language contrast sharply with Romeo's romantic view of love and his gloomy lovesickness. Mercutio is an interesting character on the part of Shakespeare, as he uses many double entendres, and yet his name a bit of a double entendre itself: Mercutio is similar to mercurial, which in turn could be used to mean that a word has shifting meanings. That being said, Mercutio ends up using some of the most interesting and well-known sexual puns in Romeo and Juliet. For instance, early on in the play in Act 1, Mercutio puns with Romeo about the subject of
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Romeo's lovesickness. In regards to Romeo claiming that he is sinking into lovesickness, Mercuitio proclaims: "sink in it, should you burden love / Too great oppression for a tender thing" (1.4.24). This can most definitely be read as a double entendre, one for what it is literally, Mercutio telling Romeo that if he blames love, then it'll be lovesickness. That being said, the Oxford English Dictionary also relates the word burden to the idea of a child in the womb, and Eric Partridge in Shakespeare's Bawdy claims that burden as a verb means "To weigh down, press upon, a woman in sexual intercourse" (Partridge 81). Thus it can be read as such: Mercutio slyly suggesting that Romeo is just in need of sex, instead of love. This ties back to the idea of plays playing out human wants and needs, regardless of whether or not it's condoned in "normal" society. It is in this scene that Mercutio also says one of his most famous quotes: "Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down" (1.4.28). This is a pun on Romeo claiming that love pricks like a thorn, and when Mercutio claims that love is for pricking, he means it in the way as defined by Partidge: "copulation regarded as penetration as if by a prick or thorn." Thus he creates a bawdy version of love, whereas while Romeo claims that "love pricks like a thorn" Mercutio points out that love is for sex, in that sense, implying that it is only a step towards a goal of sorts. The character of Mercutio, through his bawdy humor and shameless puns, acts as a representative of a primal urge, one that surely audiences of the time felt and were discouraged to express. A character similar to Mercutio in the amount of bawdy language used is the character of the Nurse. Juliet's Nurse is first introduced to the play in Act 1 Scene 3. It is clear from the start that she s a trusted caretaker of Juliet, as well as a friend and mother figure. It can be argued that it is because of her tenure that she is able to say what she wants, leading to some rather bawdy moments of speech. For instance, when the Nurse gives Juliet the news that Romeo will marry
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her at Friar Laurence's cell, she teases Juliet about her pending wedding night after the marriage. She mentions "by the which your love / Must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark" (2.5.7374). The idea of a "bird's nest" can be a metaphor for a bedroom, but it can also be taken as a double entendre towards Juliet's own sexual organs. Additionally, the nurse states that she must do a lot of work for Juliet's pleasure, but it is Juliet who "shall bear the burden soon at night" (2.5.76). Once again, the idea of burden comes up, and in this case, it takes on Partridge's noun meaning, "the weight of a man's body during intercourse." As such, she means to say that Juliet will have to bear the burden of Romeo's burden, so to speak. Perhaps related to the Nurse's social standing and education level, her bawdy language is not always cleverly disguised with double meanings. An example is when the Nurse goes to wake Juliet up on the morning that she is supposed to marry Paris. As she is in the process of waking Juliet up, she says " "You take your pennyworths [of sleep] now; / Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant, / The County Paris hath set up his rest, / That you shall rest but little" (4.5.4-7). The Nurse is suggesting that Juliet get as much sleep as she wants now, but once she marries Paris, he will "set up his rest" and she will then "rest but little." Partridge relates the phrase "set up his rest" is to the word stab, which in turn is translated to mean intercourse. Thus, the nurse is being quite apparent when she suggests that Juliet will have very little time for sleep once Paris marries her (for obvious reasons). It is truly a sign of the Nurse's relationship with Juliet that she is able to be so transparent with her thoughts, and as such, she's figuratively acting as the Juliet version of Mercutio. No discussion of the bawdy in Romeo and Juliet would be complete without the inclusion of the characters of Sampson and Gregory arguably the embodiment of the critical claim that Shakespearian bawdy is just crude humor designed to entertain the masses. In fact, the first scene
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of the play is opened by a bawdy bantering session between Gregory and Sampson, two Capulet servants. Sampson claims to Gregory that "women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will push Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall" (1.1.13-17). It doesn't take much deciphering to see what he means here, he is straight out boasting that he will push the Montague men away, and thrust (Partridge points out that this is short for penis thrust) the Montague maids. He continues to make this clear when he says "Me they shall feel while I am able to stand: and 'tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh" (1.1.28-29). Earlier in the scene he uses the word "stand" in relation to standing and fighting, but now it is obvious that he is using to refer to an erection. Crude indeed, it does make the critical assumption, that the bawdy can be rather shallow, have some merit. That being said, perhaps it makes sense, as Gregory and Sampson are theoretically lower educated servants, and Shakespeare could be making the claim that they are only capable of low humor. Regardless, it is clear that they don't take up a large portion of the play, and as such, their version of bawdy humor is there expressly for entertainment purposes, rather than giving viewers subtle insight into relationships, such as the humor of the Nurse. In conclusion, as seen from the examples presented before, while there are instances of bawdy that prove to be just crude humor, much of the bawdy in Romeo and Juliet actually serve to create a deeper meaning of the characters and the relationships between themselves. Romeo and Juliet are intrinsically tied by their very similar bawdy instances, while Mercutio and the Nurse solidify the audience's understanding of their relationships with their respective friends through their use of bawdy. Additionally, Mercutio provides an interesting commentary on the relationship of love as opposed to sex, and thus perhaps speaks towards the need for escape in a sexually oppressive Elizabethan society. This particular view is also reinforced by the fact that
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both the Nurse, as well as Romeo and Juliet, all seem fixated on the night of the marriage and the subsequent consummation of it.

Works Cited:

Bly, Mary. "Bawdy Puns and Lustful Virgins." Shakespeare Survey 49 (1996): 97-109. Print. Garber, Marjorie B. Coming of Age in Shakespeare. London: Methuen, 1981. Print. Knowles, Ronald. "Carnival and Death in Romeo and Juliet: A Bakhtinian Reading." Romeo and Juliet and Its Afterlife. By Stanley Wells. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. N. pag. Print. Partridge, Eric. Shakespeare's Bawdy. London: Routledge, 1968. Print. Shakespeare, William, and Peter Holland. Romeo and Juliet. New York: Penguin, 2000. Print. Wells, Stanley. Shakespeare, Sex, & Love. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.