Shakespeare?

Question

what does it mean in Romeo and Juliet when it says "o, that she were an open ****, thou a popperin pear!" everyone laughs ad I have no clue way it is.

Answer 1

That she was an open WHAT?  What is the word that you omitted?  It couldn't be that bad if it was in Shakespeare.

Answer 2

Remember that these lines follow immediately after the one about sitting under a medlar tree. Another name for the medlar fruit was "open a*r*s*e".

[medlar: A fruit, vulgarly called an open a*r*s*e; of which it is more truly than delicately said, that it is never ripe till it is as rotten as a t**d, and then it is not worth a f**t.

Definition taken from The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, originally by Francis Grose.]

Mercutio jests that Romeo will think of Rosaline as a medlar fruit, which was supposed to look like the female genitalia, and himself as a poperin pear (a long narrow fruit shaped like the male genitalia). Additionally, there is the pun on "pop 'er in."

Re: "It couldn't be that bad if it was in Shakespeare." Oh yes it could, he was very bawdy.

Answer 3

complete speech (source cited below):

MERCUTIO

If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.

Now will he sit under a medlar tree

And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit

As maids call medlars when they laugh alone.—

O, Romeo, that she were, O, that she were

An open-**** and thou a pop'rin pear!

Romeo, good night.—I'll to my truckle

This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep.

Come, shall we go?

The speech is rather suggestive and vulgar and urges Romeo to bed Juliet

The missing word (how dare Yahoo edit The Bard) is a vulgar word refering to the portion of the body on which one sits.