subscribe
/ Sign Out

Shakespeare’s first theatre ‘mainly porno’

WILLIAM Shakespeare’s first theatre offered mainly hardcore sex plays, it has emerged.

The excavation of Shoreditch’s Curtain Theatre revealed manuscripts with crude punning titles including The Merry Milfs of Windsor, Henry XXX and Coriolanal.

Historian Roy Hobbs said: “In the play Boneo and Juliet, the character Boneo asks, ‘Shall I compare thee to a hot piece of ass?’.

“These are unquestionably the words of the Bard.”

A theatre programme found at the site even suggests that Shakespeare, then a young, struggling actor,  appeared in the plays under the pseudonym Bill Spearcock.

Hobbs added: “The Curtain’s repertoire was not entirely pornographic. They also did violent historical plays with breasts and explosions and cheap horror plays like Ye Puppetmaster and Ye Critters VII: Ye Critters Versus Ye Leprechaun.”

Your astrological week ahead, with Psychic Bob

Gemini (21 MAY-20 JUN)
This week, in a strange case of life imitating art, everyone you meet will be balding with curly hair and singing Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Cancer (21 JUN-22 JUL)
Treat yourself to one piece of chocolate a day during your diet for all your hard work. Of course an entire bar counts as one piece, you absolute superhero.

Leo (23 JUL-22 AUG)
It’s not unusual for a doctor to ask for a stool sample but it is generally considered bad form if they do it on a first date.

Virgo (23 AUG-22 SEP)
When your eyes meet across a crowded bar, a nod, a wink and a wiggle of the eyebrows is all you need to do to let her know you’ve got chronic Tourettes.

Libra (23 SEP-23 OCT)
It’s very easy to sit at home criticising the likes of Peter Kay and Michael McIntyre, calling their comedy cliched and lazy and bemoaning a general public that bovinely eats the whole unappetising mess up. So crack on.

Sagittarius (22 NOV-21 DEC)
What with judgement day coming up and the four horsemen of the apocalypse roaming the land, now may not be the best time to start making gay porn to pay for your crack habit.

Scorpio (24 OCT-21 NOV)
After the success of post-work restaurants ‘Thank God It’s Fridays’ you launch a chain of depressing drinking holes called ‘Fuck You Satan, It’s Monday’.

Capricorn (22 DEC-19 JAN)
While leaving your body to the local medical school is a laudable gesture, in your case it’s actually rather unfair. Even to students.

Aquarius (20 JAN-19 FEB)
Things turn out better than expected this week as your four-day standoff with the police ends not in a hail of bullets but in the light drizzle of a good kicking.

Pisces (20 FEB-20 MAR)
A long, hearty laugh can be as beneficial to your health as a workout in the gym so why not save membership money by shoving a pensioner into the road twice a week?

Aries (21 MAR-19 APR)
The ability to empathise with the suffering of your fellow man and perform acts of truly selfless altruism is what separates us from our primate ancestors. Fancy a banana?

Taurus (20 APRIL – 20 MAY)
People accuse you of being obsessed with sex and that’s true, but only in the same sense drowning people are ‘obsessed’ with oxygen.

 

Next story ›