So Quick So Hot So Mad: Elizabethan Bawdy Songs - New York Ensemble for Early Music

So Quick, So Hot, So Mad liner notes

In contradiction to the common­place that human nature is ever the same, the fact is that tastes in sexual humor are fleeting. It is difficult for us to put those tastes of different ages and cultures from our own into historical, social, or even personal perspective, since our view is clouded by the ever-changing attitudes of our own society and by our usually immutable individual prejudices. We frequently hear references, delivered perhaps with sly and knowing winks, to the Elizabethans' morally unfettered way of life, or to the naughtiness of their "ballads," or to "Shakespeare's bawdy." (The glossary to Eric Partridge's book by that title [New York: E. P. Dutton, 1960] will furnish the reader with good interpretations of some sexual metaphors and euphemisms of Elizabethan usage. It will also reveal, incidentally, subtle changes in society's attitudes since 1948, when the book was first written.) In fact, there has seldom in the world been an age of cleaner minds than this golden age of English music and literature. The Elizabethans were simply, probably incomprehensibly to us, frank. There was no salacious interest in the mere mention of bodily parts -- after all, the codpiece was a prominent part of most males' attire-and sexual functions were recognized generally, certainly by Shakespeare, as the complex metaphors of human relationships that they are. On the other hand, truly "bad" words (which were the same ones then as now) seldom found their way into print or public performance...