Shakespeare and Penis Size

I was working on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night yesterday, and came across a very interesting interpretation of an interchange between two characters - provided by the annotator, Demitra Papadinis:

Act I, Scene v

Maria: .my Lady will hang thee for thy absence.
Clowne: Let her hang me: he that is well hang’d in this
World, needs to fear no colours.

Interpretation: “Most footnotes tersely proclaim that ‘fear no colors’ is proverbial for ‘fear nothing’ with a further pun on ‘collar’ meaning noose. Such prim and proper definitions completely ignore the fact that a man who is ‘well hung’ is genitally well endowed, and that ‘colours’ is a pun on ‘culls,’ common slang for the testicles. Therefore the submerged witticism of the line is that a well-endowed man need never fear rivals in (physical) love.

The Clowne shortly revisits this theme with the quip that ‘Many a good hanging, prevents a bad marriage.’”

It seems like the Bard knew what was down - after all. “Many a good hanging, prevents a bad marriage” - sounds like Shakespeare is encouraging me to carry on with PE for life!

Wills did like his ‘plays’ on words. ;)

Wow - look at that triple word-play!

Back in Merry Olde England around Shakespeare’s time, the term “well hung” did not have the connotation you think it did.

Hanging was the preferred and frequently utilized means of execution of commoners, and the better hangmen strove to achieve a fracture of the cervical spine at the second vertebra (“hangman’s fracture”) through use of the correct vertical drop, and weighting the victim, if necessary. Too much drop or weight resulted in messy decapitation, and too little resulted in slow strangulation, which was a real time-waster.

Male victims of acute spinal trauma often manifest involuntary erection, then and now. If the condemned therefore was seen to have a visible erection, it was taken as a sign that the cervical spine had been fractured and the spinal cord severed. The condemned was then judged to be or have been “well hung”.

SO ifyou’re well hung when well hung…?

Is that where the modern expression “well hung” comes from? Since an erection would show everyone present wether the condemned was both “well hung” and “well hung”??

I have no idea what would and would not be plausible interpretations of Shakespeare, but I think people back then were “raunchier” than a lot of us think. (Because we think of “religious pietism” etc)

That is just possible :)

I think we have to give him credit that this means exactly what it sounds like - although your interpretation is absolutely correct, redbear.

In the introduction to this edition, the annotator mentions how “count” was pronounced like the first syllable of the word “Country” in Elizabethan England - so when Lady Capulet tells Juliet, “By my count/ I was your Mother, much upon these years / That you are now a Maid.” - she means it in both ways!