Vintage View: The codpiece

Kya deLongchamps takes a wincing look at the most peculiar protuberance of male attire which thankfully wilted in the age of Shakespeare’s ‘A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream’.

Rowan Atkinson and his scripting geniuses knew exactly where to head for the greatest laughs in their Tudor round of the anti-hero adventurer— Blackadder (BBC).

Who could forget the pungent Baldrick’s boast of his uncle playing ‘second codpiece’ in a version of the Scottish play (Sense and Senility 1987). “Did he have a large part?” asks Edmund.