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- Certification
- Sex & Nudity (5)
- Violence & Gore (1)
- Profanity (1)
- Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking (1)
- Frightening & Intense Scenes (1)
- Spoilers (2)
Certification
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Sex & Nudity
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- No sex is shown. Relatively chaste kissing occurs between actors on stage (sometimes man & woman, usually man & man due to prohibitions of females acting during the Elizabethan era). There's no nudity other than fleeting glimpses of statues or paintings on walls.
- References to romantic and sexual desire are fairly frequent, and not generally vulgar, often couched in complex puzzles that emphasize language is being avoided. One recurring theme centers on insinuations that Will is bisexual or gay, which he denies.
- Male clothing occasionally includes the "cod-dangle", stiff fabric which protrudes from the groin of pants like a banana, implicitly covering the penis.
- Mentions of breasts and genitals occur now and then, mostly without vulgarity. Male actors playing the role of women wear coconut shell halves outside their shirts to portray breasts. Occasionally a woman will play the role of a man.
- Several characters question Will as to why he made the character Juliet only 13 years old; implicitly, they felt she should have been older to be romantically and sexually involved with Romeo.
Violence & Gore
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- No more than mild scuffles are shown. Characters are sometimes threatened with swords or guns. Verbal threats of death occur now and then. We learn through conversation that one person was stabbed to death.
Profanity
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- Throughout the three seasons, modern swearing and vulgarity, mostly mild, is replaced by thinly-veiled faux-Elizabethan language such as arseington, boobikins, bitchington, barstable (bastard), pisslingtonned (to be drunk), or bollingbrokes (testicles). There's at least a few uses of futtock and futtoking and one of cocks, a few of "arse" and a couple of "bitch".. Gay men are referred to as "hugger muggers"; the Puritans as "purititties". There is one use of "bullshit."
Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking
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- Two characters smoke pipes during the closing scene of episodes. Alcohol is consumed occasionally. Drunkenness is rarely shown.
Frightening & Intense Scenes
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- The death of a favorable character, and a scene of poverty modeled on Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," are very sad.
Spoilers
Sex & Nudity
- Following questions of whether a character is male enough to legally act on stage, the character is discovered to be hermaphroditic, that is, having sexual characteristics of both males and females.
Frightening & Intense Scenes
- We learn that a child has died. The family is griefstricken.
