Euphemisms for genitals and sexual intercourse in Shakespeare's works

Shakespeare's texts contain a good many winged phrases, metaphors and euphemisms that are sometimes far from easy to decipher. But once you know the Bard's habitual devices, ticklish sexual particulars are discovered behind the absurd constructions.

Thus with the phrase "charged chamber" Shakespeare denoted the female genitals, and at other times he called them "birds nests". The verb charge he employs for the sexual act: in Henry IV, too, Pistol announces that he intends to discharge two bullets into Mistress Dorothy, though what is plainly meant is sex. Further on in the text Dorothy is said to be pistol-proof, which is rendered as a "seasoned bird", though what is meant is that she is impervious to impregnation.

The word horn he uses either to denote the horns of a cuckold or to denote the male member. Sometimes as a reference to priapism. If one reads closely, one can find in virtually every work of Shakespeare dozens of veiled sexual connotations, beginning with the beast with two backs (a euphemism for a couple in congress) in Henry VIII and ending with Othello's scrotum.