Shakespeare’s Filthiest Puns Are Being Lost in Translation

It’s common knowledge the Bard of Avon was fond of filthy puns, which played fabulously well for the notoriously gutter-minded audiences of Elizabethan England. But while some of Shakespeare’s dirty jokes still work as well today as they did in the 16th century, many more have been lost in translation, thanks to the way English has evolved as a language in the past 400 years.
Fortunately, devotees to Shakespeare’s original pronunciation—known as OP scholars—are doing their best to remind modern audiences all about the Bard’s legacy for being down with OPP, so to speak. A recent report from the Atlantic highlights examples of the puns they’re reacquainting readers with:
Wordplay-happy Elizabethans often used “nothing”/“no-ting” as a euphemism for…“vagina.” (There’s no thing there, get it?) Which means that the title Much Ado About Nothing, on top of everything else, also suggests Much Ado About…yeah.
Meanwhile, the best way to get the full Shakespeare-ience is to catch an OP performance of one of his plays. But if you can’t do that, then a language companion like Shakespeare’s Bawdy or Shakespeare’s Words will illuminate dirty jokes galore. For example:

Dirty Scrabble in Twelfth Night
“By my life, this is my lady’s hand, these be her very C’s, her U’s and her T’s and thus makes she her great P’s.”  – Malvolio
Read this out loud with its swaggering original pronunciation, and you’ll find yourself spelling out an, ahem, certain word. (The “and” becomes a slangy “N” sound, if you know what we’re saying.) In addition to pioneering the earliest written variation of a “See you next Tuesday” joke, Shakespeare also made these lines pull double duty, so to speak, by throwing in a bit of toilet humor into the mix. Great P’s? Yep. He went there.

Hamlet keeps redirecting the conversation… into Ophelia’s crotch
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?
OPHELIA: I think nothing, my lord.
HAMLET: That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
OPHELIA: What is, my lord?
HAMLET: Nothing.
Ah, filth. First, don’t overlook that passing mention of “country matters”; no doubt you can guess which syllable in that phrase would’ve been over-emphasized to a roar of bawdy approval. And of course, there’s the “nothing between your legs” joke—which, again, would be a vaginal double entendre to Elizabethan ears. Although in Hamlet’s defense, Ophelia walked right into that one.

Sonnet 151
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love: flesh stays no further reason
But rising at thy name doth point out thee
As his triumphant prize.
Although many of Shakespeare’s best and filthies puns were saved for his stage works—much to the delight of the rowdy theater audiences of the time—he couldn’t resist packing phallic humor into his sonnets. That rising, pointing, triumphant thing he’s talking about? Yeah, that’s not his soul.

Sampson and Gregory’s wiener banter from Romeo and Juliet
SAMPSON: Me they shall feel while I am able to stand, and ’tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.
GREGORY: ‘Tis well thou art not fish. If thou hadst, thou hadst been poor-john. [Enter ABRAM and another SERVINGMAN.] Draw thy tool! Here comes of the house of Montagues.
SAMPSON: My naked weapon is out. Quarrel! I will back thee.
Even before all that talk of tools and naked weapons, this whole exchange was already one big dong-measuring contest. For one, Sampson’s reference to his “pretty piece of flesh” is exactly what you think it is (and my, aren’t we confident about the notorious beauty of our wang?). But unless they’re experts in Elizabethan cuisine, contemporary audiences might miss the full implication of that “poor-John” comment, which refers to the cheapest, nastiest dried fish available at the time.
In other words, it’s pretty big of Sampson to back his friend in a fight, when Gregory just compared his penis to a desiccated trout.