Scholars on Meaning of "Lead Apes in Hell"

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Scholars can’t agree about what exactly is meant by  the proverb “old maids leading apes in hell.” Some say it gained popularity as a Protestant attack on the Catholic Church insistence that the unmarried refrain for sexual activity.

The following scholarly comments ( which often blatantly contradict one another) gives us a glimpse of what Shakespearean nitpicking is like.
Said to be the fate of women who die old maids, an afterlife punishment for their failure to go forth and multiply. As far as I can tell, the exact origins of the saying are unknown, though the first usage listed by the OED dates to the 16th century. Readers may have encountered the phrase before in the works of William Shakespeare. Both The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing make reference to leading apes into hell (not surprising given the subject matter of those plays).

H.W. Jansen suggests a somewhat different meaning for the phrase in his Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. According to Jansen, leading apes into hell is not a punishment for old maids; it is a description of the dire consequences of female celibacy. By the time of the Renaissance, the ape was already well-established as a symbol for fornication. Women, by refusing to marry, forced men to seek sex outside of the marriage union, thus making them fornicators or apes. What the saying suggests is that old maids lead otherwise good men to sin, placing their immortal souls in jeopardy. Thus, a woman who does not marry leads apes into hell.
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Q What are we meant to understand by the phrase

“Leading apes in hell” ?

MW

A Very few people seem to know that “lead” in Tudor English means to have sexual intercourse. The proverb means that women who take no part in the sexual activity of society for whatever reason will be punished by being served by apes in hell. This is not a punishment for chastity (a faithful spouse is chaste) but for failing to spread joy in the world by healthy activity.

When Shakespeare mentions “leading apes into hell”, he is being allusive, as he so often is when the real matter is coarse. His audience would have recognised the allusion immediately. There is also a madrigal verse about Messalina, going up and down the house very upset because her monkey lies a-dying. “O Death thou art too cruel to take her only jewel”, and “If her monkey die, she shall sit and cry“ Fie, fie, fie fie!”.

The Elizabethan audience would immediately have understood going “up and down”, the loss of her only jewel, and the orgasmic cries of “fie” as being a classic tudor dirty joke. Her pet ape is dying because she has deprived him of the opportunity of serving her in hell by the time-honoured method.

Benjamin Britten failed to realise this when he set this verse very piously in Our Hunting Fathers. The words for this cycle were chosen by WH Auden, who could certainly recognise a sexual allusion when he saw it. James Bowman tells me that he thinks that Auden did tell Britten, but that Britten simply thought he was being disgusting and ignored the advice.

Not the first time that a dirty joke has got past in a more innocent age

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 Among other wedding customs alluded to by Shakespeare we may mention one referred to in "Taming of the Shrew" (ii. 1), where Katharine, speaking of Bianca, says to her father—

"She is your treasure, she must have a husband:
 I must dance bare-foot on the wedding-day,
 And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell,"

it being a popular notion that unless the elder sisters danced barefoot at the marriage of a younger one, they would inevitably become old maids, and be condemned "to lead apes in hell."

 The expression "to lead apes in hell," applied above to old maids, has given rise to much discussion, and the phrase has not yet been satisfactorily explained. Steevens suggests that it might be considered an act of posthumous retribution for women who refused to bear children, to be condemned to the care of apes in leading strings after death. 

Malone says that "to lead apes" was in Shakespeare's time one of the employments of a bear-ward, who often carried about one of these animals with his bear." Nares explains the expression by reference to the word ape as denoting a fool, it probably meaning that those coquettes who made fools of men, and led them about without real intention of marriage, would have them still to lead against their will hereafter.

In "Much Ado about Nothing" (ii. 1), Beatrice says, "Therefore I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward, and lead his apes into hell." Douce 1 tells us that homicides and adulterers were in ancient times compelled, by way of punishment, to lead an ape by the neck, with their mouths affixed in a very unseemly manner to the animal's tail.

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