I teach ninth grade English and while I have studied and even taught Shakespeare before, this is my first experience teaching the famous Romeo and Juliet. The beginning can be started with all sorts of lewd and bawdy comments and behaviors. It was Shakespeare's way of getting the groundlings watching the show on his side so they would watch more and not throw tomatoes at the players, which they sometimes did.
Today, while introducting promptbooks and how to handle a script, we looked at Act II scene 1. Mercutio and Benvolio are chasing around Romeo who has been bitten by the love bug. They keep talking about raising spirits but they don't mean spirits. They mean raising one's manhood. It's all right there. I had to glance over it and tell the kids they were just being silly and talking about how crazy Romeo is, like raising the spirits. But if I were to tell an adult, it would be the raunchy stuff. I told the students about the dirty jokes in the beginning, but I did not want to tell the ninth graders about Romeo's boner today.
'Twould anger him
To raise a spirit in his mistress' circle
Of some strange nature, letting it there stand
Till she had laid it and conjured it down.
Wow. Shakespeare just said he's got a hard-on and only the mistress can get him laid to where he has no more hard-on.
Shakespeare was fun.
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