The name William Shakespeare immediately brings to mind self-serious frippery nowadays. After all, you don’t end up with a title like “The Bard” by making dick jokes. Or do you? In Shakespeare’s own time, theatergoing wasn’t nearly as rarefied. His audiences were often made up of belligerent drunks carousing and hollering like a bunch of bros at a UFC match. For his part, Shakespeare played to the cheap seats with a steady stream of dirty jokes and ribaldry that now titillate only Elizabethan scholars and Shakespeare geeks. Among the... More >>>