diff -r 65f2c92ed079 Lib/email/message.py
--- a/Lib/email/message.py	Sun Jul 07 23:30:24 2013 +0200
+++ b/Lib/email/message.py	Wed Jul 10 23:53:43 2013 +0800
@@ -182,9 +182,9 @@
     def get_payload(self, i=None, decode=False):
         """Return a reference to the payload.
 
-        The payload will either be a list object or a string.  If you mutate
-        the list object, you modify the message's payload in place.  Optional
-        i returns that index into the payload.
+        The payload will either be a list object, a string or a bytes
+        sequence.  If you mutate the list object, you modify the message's
+        payload in place.  Optional i returns that index into the payload.
 
         Optional decode is a flag indicating whether the payload should be
         decoded or not, according to the Content-Transfer-Encoding header
@@ -245,6 +245,8 @@
                     # If it does happen, turn the string into bytes in a way
                     # guaranteed not to fail.
                     bpayload = payload.encode('raw-unicode-escape')
+        if isinstance(payload, bytes):
+            bpayload = payload
         if not decode:
             return payload
         if cte == 'quoted-printable':
diff -r 65f2c92ed079 Lib/test/test_email/test_email.py
--- a/Lib/test/test_email/test_email.py	Sun Jul 07 23:30:24 2013 +0200
+++ b/Lib/test/test_email/test_email.py	Wed Jul 10 23:53:43 2013 +0800
@@ -552,6 +552,15 @@
         msg._payload = x
         self.assertEqual(msg.get_payload(decode=True), x)
 
+    def test_binary_quopri_payload(self):
+        # Although not documented, this is supposed to work.
+        msg = Message()
+        msg['content-type'] = 'text/plain; charset=latin-1'
+        msg['content-transfer-encoding'] = 'quoted-printable'
+        msg.set_payload(b'foo=e6=96=87bar')
+        self.assertEqual(msg.get_payload(decode=True),
+                        b'foo\xe6\x96\x87bar')
+
     # Issue 1078919
     def test_ascii_add_header(self):
         msg = Message()