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The blurb says bawdy, hilarious, insightful. Two outa three ain't bad (Meatloaf, if you're old enough to recognize the quote). Bawdy, yeah, and Kiernan calls a spade a spade, and other instruments by their name too; insightful is an understatement, and reading the 'decoded' text opens up incredible avenues. Food for thought really, and insight into sex and the sexes, genders and orientation, which help understand not only Elizabethan times but also our own. If we take today's euphemism, for instance, we all understand that 'sleeping with' someone is very much a wakeful activity. Two hundred years ago, it wouldn't have been: people routinely shared not only rooms but bed with total strangers, without ambiguity (eg. "No more than 5 guests per bed" at Michie Tavern, here in Piedmont). In two hundred years, 'sleeping' might no longer have any sexual connotation either, and might indeed have become quite virginal, a la Twilight: imagine the misunderstandings then when reading 20C novels? In the 16C, words like: dance, pit, wit, lend, articles, knob, foot, &c. had another meaning they have since lost, and the unsuspecting reader might not 'get it' (this last one meant 'become pregnant' in the days of the Bard). See if you get this one (Twelfth, 2:5): "By my life, t'is my lady's hand. These be her very c's, her u's, 'n' her t's and thus makes she her great p's." Hilarious, it may have been, in the puritan days of the Virgin Queen; not anymore, I'd say, but I'll settle for insightful and bawdy. Good clean fun?

2022-11-14 16:47