Episode 229:
It has been long recognised that Shakespeare included a lot of sex references in his plays, many of which are now quite obscure to the modern viewer. Recently a book called ‘Shakespeare on Sex’ caught my eye and I had an entertaining time reading it and thinking on the different perspective it offers on Shakespeare when seen through the lens of how Shakespeare thought about sex for his plays.
I was very pleased when author Marc Berley agreed to come on the podcast to discuss the book, although it did throw up a question immediately about how we could speak frankly about this subject on the podcast. As you will hear we were still struggling a bit with that question as we spoke. I hope we got the balance right, but be warned we talk about the language and mechanics of sex as they appear in the plays and hence I have marked this episode up as ‘explicit’.
Marc Berley was professor of English at Rutgers and Barnard/Columbia. His fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in the Iowa Review, the Threepenny Review, Lit Hub, and newspapers nationwide. He has appeared on BBC and PBS and been covered by Reuters, USA Today, the Washington Post, and ABC’s The View. He holds a BA, MA, and PhD in English and comparative literature from Columbia. The author of ‘After the Heavenly Tune’ and editor of ‘Reading the Renaissance’, he is founding editor of the award-winning literary magazine LitMag. He lives in New York.
Find out more about Marc and his work at: https://marcberley.com/
Amazon UK link to 'Shakespeare on Sex: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeare-Sex-Wills-Shaped-Liberated/dp/1510786465
Amazon US link to 'Shakespeare on Sex': https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeare-Sex-Wills-Shaped-Liberated/dp/1510786465
Publishers website link: https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510786462/shakespeare-on-sex/
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