If the word gets out, it's bound to happen.
Sexing up Shakespeare is a handy trick for directors seeking to exploit the Bard's bawdy humour to put bums on seats. Now one woman has gone further with the most intensive search ever for sexual innuendo, toilet humour and smut buried deep in the national poet's oeuvre. 'The plays are absolutely packed with filth,' said academic Héloïse Sénéchal. 'I've found more than a hundred terms for vagina alone.' That the author of As You Like It would, were he alive today, be writing for Viz magazine is implied by Sénéchal's research for the footnotes of a new Royal Shakespeare Company edition of his complete works which promises to be the most candid ever.
She claims that previous editions of Shakespeare have been too prudish, and that by using computer techniques she has uncovered unrecognised double entendres. These were aimed at the working classes who crowded into the Globe in London for their fill of bawdy entertainment. Sénéchal has identified seemingly innocuous words such as carrot, pencil and horn as terms for penis, while she pinpoints pie, fruit dish and 'buggle boe' as references to the vagina.
Look out, Ashland, Oregon, Pat Robertson might be damning you soon...