For almost all of us, our only exposure to Shakespeare's writings came in high school and college. Which means that we probably never heard that his work is rife with sexual puns and imagery, since teachers and professors aren't too quick to mention this aspect of the Bard. Besides a general taboo against sexual matters (not to mention fear of being censured by school boards or faculty committees, or even sued by bluenose students), the whitewashing is done for the same reason it's always done — to protect reputations, in this case Shakespeare's. Instructors are trying as hard as they can to convince impressionable minds of Shakespeare's genius and importance, so it wouldn't do to tell them that the greatest writer in the English language played around with “fuck,” “cunt,” and “prick.” Haven't we been told that only people with no imagination and poor vocabularies resort to such foul language?
Shakespeare was enamored with vaginas. In his groundbreaking work, Shakespeare's Bawdy, mainstream scholar Eric Partridge lists 68 terms that the Bard used in both direct references and double entendres: “bird's nest,” “box unseen,” “crack,” “flower,” “forfended place,” “hole,” “nest of spicery,” “Netherlands,” “O,” “Pillicock-hill,” “salmon's tail,” “secret parts,” “Venus' glove,” “withered pear,” “wound,” and dozens more.
Penises didn't rank quite as high in Shakespeare's mind, but Partridge still finds 45 dick euphemisms in the works, including “bugle,” “dart of love,” “instrument,” “little finger,” “loins,” “pizzle,” “potato-finger,” “thorn,” and “tool.”
Some of Shakespeare's indecencies are lost on us moderns. But when you learn that “to die” also meant to orgasm, you get the joke in Much Ado About Nothing when Benedick tells his ladylove: “I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes.”
Sometimes it's not that subtle, like when Mercutio tells the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet that “the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.” Besides the overt imagery of a “bawdy hand” on a “prick,” Shakespeare's also making a sly reference to the hands of a clock being straight up at 12 o'clock.
William even invented a highly visual slang term for sex that's still in use. In Othello, Iago informs Brabantio: “I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor [i.e., Othello] are now making the beast with two backs.”
The Bard never directly used the word “fuck,” but he did pun on it. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, as Sir Hugh Evans tries to teach Latin, a bizarre speech impediment involving the letter “V” makes him talk about the “focative” case. This is immediately followed by him mentioning the Latin word caret (a homophone of “carrot”), which a female character assures us is “a good root.”
The word also makes a disguised appearance in Henry V. Act 3, scene 4 is delivered almost entirely in French, and its sole purpose is to lead up to a linguistic sex joke. Katherine asks Alice to tell her the English words for various body parts (elbow, nails, etc.). Toward the end, she wants to know how to say “le pied et la robe” (“foot and dress”) in English. Alice tells her that they're “foot” and “coun” (she means “gown” but badly mispronounces it). Katherine mistakes this for the French words meaning “fuck” (foutre) and “cunt” (con), leading her to screech — in French — that those words “should not be used by a lady-in-waiting.”
“Cunt” makes another appearance — punned in the word “country” — in this exchange from Hamlet, in which Ophelia thinks the Dane is aiming to get some nookie:
Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia: No, my lord.
Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ophelia: Ay, my lord.
Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?
Perhaps funniest of all, we have the scene from Twelfth Night in which Malvolio reads a letter and thinks the handwriting is that of Olivia, the object of his love. He exclaims that “these be her very C's, her U's and her T's and thus makes she her great P's.” Apparently, the word “and” should be pronounced lazily, so that it sounds like “N” and completes the word. We even get a bonus excretory joke when Malvolio says that Olivia urinates (“P's”) profusely with her cunt.
That Shakespeare! You can't turn your back on him for a minute. 