Dildo

He bendeth not, nor foldeth any deal, / But stands as stiff as he were made of steel ~ Thomas Nashe

A dildo is a sex toy, often explicitly phallic in appearance, intended for sexual penetration or other sexual activity during masturbation or with sex partners. Dildos can be made from a number of materials and shaped like an erect human penis. They are typically about the average length of an erect penis, but some may be longer.

Quotes

• Even lovers have vanished without a trace. Ever since the Milesians revolted from us, I haven’t even seen a six-inch dildo, which might have been a consolation, however small.
  • Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 106–111. Spoken by Calonice
  • Compare: Thucydides, 8, 17

• As Pherecrates said, skin the skinned dog.
  • Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 158. Spoken by Lysistrata
  • Jeffrey Henderson, tr., Aristophanes III, LCL 179 (2000), pp. 283, 289

• Ugly women use dildoes.
  • From a passage of Cratinus, quoted in the Suda
  • Cited in: The Index Expurgatorius of Martial (1868), p. 53

• He hath songs for man or woman, of all sizes. No milliner can so fit his customers with gloves. He has the prettiest love songs for maids, so without bawdry, which is strange, with such delicate burdens of dildos and fadings, “Jump her and thump her.” And where some stretch-mouthed rascal would, as it were, mean mischief and break a foul gap into the matter, he makes the maid to answer “Whoop, do me no harm, good man”; puts him off, slights him, with “Whoop, do me no harm, good man.”
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, act 4, sc. 4

• Adieu, unconstant love, to thy disport;
  Adieu, false mirth, and melodies too short;
  Adieu, faint-hearted instrument of lust,
  That falsely hath betrayed our equal trust.)
  Henceforth I will no more implore thine aid,
  Or thee for ever of Cowardice shall upraid:
  My little dildoe shall supply your kind,
  A youth that is as light as leaves in wind:
  He bendeth not, nor foldeth any deal,
  But stands as stiff as he were made of steel;
  (And plays at peacock twixt my legs right blithe
  And doeth my tickling swage with many a sigh;)
  And when I will, he doth refresh me well,
  And never makes my tender belly swell.
  • Thomas Nashe, The Choise of Valentines (wr. 1592 or 1593; pub. 1899)

• You ladies all of merry England
  Who have been to kiss the Duchess's hand,
  Pray, did you not lately observe in the show
  A noble Italian called Signor Dildo? ...
  A rabble of pricks who were welcomed before,
  Now finding the porter denied them the door,
  Maliciously waited his coming below
  And inhumanly fell on Signor Dildo ...
  • Earl of Rochester, "Signior Dildo", Poems on Affairs of State (1703)
  • Composed in December 1673, on the proposed marriage of the Duke of York to Mary of Modena

• To act with raw boys is loving without men.
  What will not poor forsaken women try?
  When man's not near, the Signior must supply.
  • John Dryden, The Mistaken Husband (1675), Epilogue
  • Variant: "young" for "raw"
  • John Harold Wilson, Court Satires of the Restoration (Ohio State UP, 1976), p. 14

• I am told with a vast long signior
    Some matrons do ease
    Their lust and do please
  Though they have not been lain with these ten years.
  • "The Ladies' Complaint to Venus" [1691], Lansdowne MS. 852, f.43
  • Court Satires of the Restoration (1976), p. 14

• The sisters of Jack Howe too I must name,
  In vice as knowing, and as bad in fame;
  For fear of children they all men defy,
  The Signior [Dildo]'s vigor constantly they try.
  • "Satyr" [c. 1680], Harleian MS. 6913, p. 235
  • Court Satires of the Restoration (1976), p. 45, note 28
  • See also: John Grubham Howe, whose five sisters were all yet unwed in 1680