Old school speech is also more boorish than you may think, between a combination of genteel ways of phrasing insults that everyone still knows what it means (see "diplo-speak" for a modern example), and phrasings whose connotations are now either lost, or certainly not viscerally understood.
I consider the fact that we still teach Shakespeare in high school to be proof positive that neither teacher nor student actually understand it... if the violence and sex jokes were understood in modern terms, schools would not teach it. (I'm not saying they would censor it per se, it might still be in the library, but it wouldn't be taught front & center.)
> I consider the fact that we still teach Shakespeare in high school to be proof positive that neither teacher nor student actually understand it... if the violence and sex jokes were understood in modern terms, schools would not teach it. (I'm not saying they would censor it per se, it might still be in the library, but it wouldn't be taught front & center.)
AFAICT, neither students nor teachers are generally particularly against having racy stuff in schools -- the people that are a vocal (though often small) group of parents and interested outsiders, and they tend to be selective in their objections in a way which reinforces the idea of "bad" = "new". I have no problem believing that students and teachers could understand Shakespeare quite well without the group that is usually the source of objections either (a) understanding it, or (b) finding that it fits the particular world-view they are trying to sell to object to it.
Well, there are definitely a bunch of things in Shakespeare plays that are subtle and contextual to the times enough that we've actually lost the sense of their vulgarity as well [1]. The common perception of Shakespeare as exclusively high-brow, when in reality it played to both an upper and lower class audience and that was probably a part of its appeal, does seem to be reinforced by the way it's taught in school.
"making the beast with two backs" or whatever in the beginning of Othello just struck my mind, and nearly all of Titus Andronicus is beyond decent. There's also quite a bit of awful stuff in The Merchant of Venice
I consider the fact that we still teach Shakespeare in high school to be proof positive that neither teacher nor student actually understand it... if the violence and sex jokes were understood in modern terms, schools would not teach it. (I'm not saying they would censor it per se, it might still be in the library, but it wouldn't be taught front & center.)