ABSTRACT
It might appear trivial, and even impertinent, to raise the question of misogyny in relation to Shakespeare. Specialist studies of bawdry have confidently embraced this aspect of his work as indicative of its breadth and inclusiveness. Eric Partridge’s lexicon celebrates ‘the universal-spirited, the catholic-emotioned man’ Shakespeare ‘so dazzlingly, so movingly, was in life and print’ (1947:4); and this sentiment remains intact forty years later in F.R. Rubenstein’s declared intention ‘to show that Shakespeare, who we say understood and wrote of the human heart in all its facets, its frailty as well as its nobility, did exactly that’ (1989: ix). Similarly, E.A. Colman’s concern to demonstrate ‘the dramatic or thematic use of indecency’ (1974: vi) is repeated in Rubenstein’s insistence that despite the seeming ‘pointless obscenity’ of these ‘idle bawdy puns’, they perform a structural function as ‘signposts’ to ‘larger metaphors’ through which ‘meaning is enhanced’ (1989: xii, xi, x).
