July 5, 2007

Shakespeare's Porn Heritage

The recent discovery by English academics of a secret cache of manuscripts dating from the 1550s has greatly clarified the source material which inspired William Shakespeare to write some of his many plays.

That Shakespeare borrowed liberally from writers that came before him has been known for centuries. Academics, however, were shocked both by the nearly full-scale extent to which The Bard had appropriated texts and the graphic nature of the manuscripts from which he gleaned his stories.


Here are the titles of some of those more prurient quartos.



1. Romeo in Juliet

2. (Twelve Knights on) Twelfth Night

3. The Openly-Married Wives of Windsor

4. Kink Leer

5. Oooooothello

6. Henry IV Parts Two

7. Doing of the Shrew

8. The Commodity of Eros: A Whore's Tail

9. The MILF (Merchant I'd Like to Fuck) of Venice

10. Love's Laborers' Lust

11. Henry VIII-Inches

12. Cornholey Anus

13. Dick III

14. Pleasure for Pleasure

15. The Two Very Rough Men of Verona

16. A Midsummer Night's Cream

17. All Swell That End Swell

18. Much I Do: A Butt Thing

19. The Two Noble Kinsmen and the Enchanted Cock Ring of Destiny

20. Ass You Lick It

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