An Early Modern Dildo Shop This week is Valentine's Day and I was reminded of the little known bawdy Valentine's Day poem written by Thomas Nashe. The Choise of Valentine s, or The Merie Ballad of Nash his Dildo, is believed to have been composed around 1593 and exists in three extant manuscripts, but was not published in print until 1899. I first came across this poem while researching sex in Shakespeare and was struck by it's explicit language and humorous wit. The poem is erotic in nature and sexually explicit, but is wrapped in humour and wit and framed in a classical style inspired by Ovid. The eroticism of the poem is very explicit, verging on pornographic, and accusations arose against Nashe for 'prostituting his pen'. While the poem is not of any significant literary value, it is an interesting insight into sex and erotic writing in the early modern period and is perhaps most significant for being the first known usage of the word 'dildo' in
With my dissertation well under way, I hope to use this blog to think through some of my ideas and share the direction of my writing. The overarching aim of my dissertation, titled Large and Spacious Will: Sex and Sexuality in Shakespeare's Sonnets , is to attempt to reclaim the 'dark lady' from a figure which functions merely as an example of misogynist discourse to a woman who is a rebel and a threat to patriarchy and social order. To achieve this aim, I am taking an intersection approach. The oppression of race, class, gender, sexuality and many other spheres of oppression are always interlinked and inseparable and so, in my analysis of the sonnets, I feel it is important to consider the role of race, class, gender and sexuality. In this blog I want to outline some of the ways in which the woman of sonnets 127-154, sometimes known as the 'dark lady', disrupts class structures. The first 18 of Shakespeare's sonnets urge a fair young man to procreate in ord