It is interesting that Shakespeare should comment on 
the confessional aspect of authorship, “sold cheap what is 
most dear,” for whether as actor or playwright his going “here 
and there” would have seemed the same to him. And it is this 
confessional pouring forth of private news and views that 
seemed to Aretino and his contemporaries to warrant the 
association of the press with pornography and filth. This is the 
view that dominates Pope’s Dunciad  in the early eighteenth 
century. But for Aretino the switching of private confession into 
public accusation was a perfectly natural response to the print 
technology.

          Indeed, remarks Raimondi, Aretino “is a prostitute”. 
     He has the prostitute’s instinct of social rebellion. “He 
     throws mud not merely in the face of his contemporaries, 
     but of a whole past. It would seem that he lifts up the