SOURCE: Ross, Thomas W. “‘The Safety of a Pure Blush’: Shakespeare's Bawdy Clusters.” Shakespeare Studies 12 (1979): 267-80.

In the following essay, Ross studies the dual effect of certain word groups, or “bawdy clusters”—words that take on indecent meanings when they occur in clustered references.

CELIA:

But love no man in good earnest, nor no further in sport neither, than with the safety of a pure blush thou mayst in honor come off again. 

(AYL [As You Like It], I.ii.27-29)

There is no question that the most important twentieth-century innovation in Shakespeare scholarship is textual criticism. But a close second is the rediscovery of his multiple meanings, including his bawdy innuendo. Eric Partridge was the great pioneer, despite his occasional unscholarly exuberance. In E. A. M. Colman's study of the dramatic uses of bawdy in the plays and poetry there is a more disciplined sensitivity to these...