# Dirty Shakespeare **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 9, 2003, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dirty-shakespeare/212168 "2003-11-09T02:55:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 20
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2003, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dirty-shakespeare/212168/20 "2003-11-09T23:18:49Z")
Shakespeare was notorious enough for being indecent in places that he indirectly gave rise to the, now possibly slightly archaic, term “to bowdlerize”. Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825) having edited out the rude bits, or rather “whatever is unfit to be read aloud by a gentleman to a company of ladies”, to produce _The Family Shakespeare_ in 1818. It’s sufficiently famous as a case of 19th century prudishness that I’d hope that textbook editors these days would be wary of following his example. The _Cambridge Companion to Literature in English_’s entry on him notes that he did the same with Gibbon. He’d at least put the very rude bits in Latin in the first place. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dirty-shakespeare/212168)._