Scripta 9_2_link_final.pdf - Uniandrade

performances carried out in fancy play houses, can find themselves as
cosmopolitan beings in contact with re-readings of canonical artistic
expressions, historically limited to the rich and well educated cosmopolitan
individuals. Therefore, artistic productions can and must be enjoyed by a
greater public, and may be “delivered to the contemporary consumer in
his/her contemporaneity” (SANTIAGO, 2004, p. 116).
The Shakespearean Romeo and Juliet contains creative figures of speech,
such as puns and metaphors which subtly and humorously build images of
sexual content, often suppressed in the translations produced in the 18 th
and 19 th centuries for being considered obscene, and meant for the less
privileged classes who lack refined taste. For instance, immediately after the
Prologue, in Act I, Scene i, the play reader finds:
Sampson: […] I will show myself a tyrant: when I have fought with the
men I will be civil with the maids, I will have cut off their heads.
Gregory: The heads of the maids?
Sampson: Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads; take it in what
sense thou wilt.
Gregory: They must take it in sense that feel it.
Sampson: Me they shall feel while I am able to stand, and ’tis known I am
a pretty piece of flesh. (SHAKESPEARE, 2006a, p. 83)
Still in Act I, Scene i, one finds another example of humorous
wordplay with sexual connotation coming from Lady Capulet with reference
to her husband’s sexual performance:
Capulet: What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!
Lady Capulet: A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword?
Enter old Montague and Lady Montague.
Capulet: My sword, I say. Old Montague is come,
And flourishes his blade in spite of me. (SHAKESPEARE, 2006a, p. 86)
In Scene iii, Act I, samples of obscene language can be found in the
conversation the nurse has with Lady Capulet and Juliet.
Nurse: [...] She could have run and waddled all about;
For even the day before, she broke her brow,
And then my husband – God be with his soul,
A was a merry man – took up the child,
Scripta Uniandrade, v. 9, n. 2, jul.-dez. 2011
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