I'm not gay personally, but I love the fact that you can say 'I am a gay man' on a video online without fear of persecution or threats in this country. I am really proud of us for that.
If anyone stumbles upon this and is looking for more (probably) queer Elizabethan playwrights and plays, may I *highly* recommend Edward II by Kit Marlowe👀
Speaking of Edward II!! There was also a new play that the globe put on before the pandemic, I think was was called ‘After Edward’. I went to see it and it was such a beautiful journey of sexuality and discovery and the writer of the play actually also played Edward II at the same time.
I think what further obscured any less than traditional sexual identities was the fact that women were not allowed to appear on stage, so female characters were played by men in drag
The problem I see with these debate is that many who argue for Shakespeare being gay speak from a modern perspective in which every close friendship between men (or women) HAS to be erotic. I would argue that that is only the case because we don't allow for too intimate relationships between friends anymore, always seeing sexual intentions behind every corner. But back then, as being said in the video, it was normal to kiss or share a bed with the same sex for a multitude of reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with sexuality. Soldiers often had to share accommodations (both for warmth and lack of space) and women of the higher classes were attended to [and supervised] by their maids and older female figures of the household who shared their bed. At the same time sex between man and woman was almost synonym with marriage [even though in Elizabethan times most people went to church to have their marriage certified a simple vow between two people spoken in front of others as witness was legally binding and so was the taking of a girls virginity - a subject often discussed in Shakespeare's plays.] That does not mean that I don't think there weren't any queer people back then but that I think that a lot more people might have identified as bi- or pansexual if they had the terminology as as homo- or heterosexual [especially since women were seen as "underdeveloped" men by scholars of the time, not as having an altogether different sex]. One play and person that is wonderful to look into regarding the question how people back then even thought about sex is Middleton's and Dekker's The Roaring Girl and the woman it talks about: Mary Frith. This really shines a light on many of the crossdressing comedies and how [boy] actors playing women might have been perceived by the audience.
Some great points and I think the conclusion is a great synthesis of different viewpoints but the way you talked about how some historians are critical of using modern container words for historical figures seems reductive. Unpacking that idea has implications that are worth thinking about, even if it’s ouchy.
If we assume that gay men were in the same proportion of the population back then as they are today, then there is no reason to think Shakespeare could not be gay. Furthermore, if we assume that gay men were as over represented in the arts back then as they are today, then that gives us even more reason to wonder if Shakespeare was gay. For instance, we can be pretty sure that artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Tchaikovsky, Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde were gay, just to name a few. If I were a betting man, I'd bet that Shakespeare was gay, which is why he married a woman eight years his senior. Anne was his beard.
Genius awakens Genius And then of course... there is Edward FitzGerald of Woodbridge, Suffolk (1809 - 1883) who translated and adapted the world famous, multimillion selling poem the Ruba'iya't of Omar Khayya'm (all five different editions - a work in progress methinks ? ! ) who adored - was inspired by W.S, visited Stratford upon Avon with his friend Alfred Tennyson, was vegetarian predicting the whole world will turn vegetarian, was rude to Sir Henry Irving... during one of his performances and who passed over tomorrow June the 14th in 1883 - so suffolk duly celebrates the 140 years of the golden legacy of this genius.
No, shakespeare was a feminist who put women in male costume to display their power and wisdom. In no play did a man dress as a woman only women as men. He was straight and had premarital heterosexual relations. No evidence for any male relationship. He was not gay and wrote poetry which flattered patrons. Not gay at all.
Shakespeare's sonnets were written for his young patron, Southhampton, to whom he also dedicated his two long poems. It is not outlandish to see them as love poems, but they are more likely poems of tribute dutifully offered week after week while Southhampton's money kept Shakespeare afloat. The latter section of the sonnets are written to the "Dark Lady" and are unabashedly erotic, which the earlier-numbered sonnets are not. RU-vid has a lecture by A.L. Rowse, who was a Shakespeare scholar and was himself gay. He was firmly convinced Shakespeare was not gay.
I can definitely understand some people not caring about Shakespeare's sexual preferences - "death of the author" is a very popular approach! But I think it's still really worthwhile exploring these questions about historical figures? Not only to try & understand them more completely as fully rounded humans, but also because unfortunately there's a pretty hefty section of society who either argue that queer attraction is a "modern invention/peversion", or who want to obfuscate & ignore the existence of non-straight, non-cos people throughout history. Challenging those narratives is important. I don't personally think it's possible to come to a conclusion about W.S.'s own preferences or behaviors from the surviving evidence, but I think it's a worthwhile question to explore? And I think the point the presenter made here about Shakespeare's intentionally writing to cater to an audience with diverse sexual tastes is even more worth unpacking, given how monolithic our view of past eras can be! In terms of this being a 'once over lightly' of the question, yep, agreed, but I'd argue it's intended to be digestible by a very broad audience rather than a scholarly deep-dive? Other presenters like J. Draper have done more detailed-but-hilarious coverage of the same topic, well worth checking out.
The fact that women were not allowed to act in the day and all female parts were played by men, the idea that playwrights would write plays, lines and sonnets to be performed with men in mind instead of women is not a far stretch..
Sonnet 20: A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion; An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; A man in hue, all “hues” in his controlling, Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth. And for a woman wert thou first created; Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated, By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure, Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure. So basically, "You're as pretty as a woman, but you've got a johnson, which is of no use to me." Assuming the narrator is supposed to be Shakespeare, himself (which is far from certain), then Shakespeare was not into dudes. Of course, who ever takes Shakespeare at his words?
CS Lewis said that there are two types of readers. , those who do things to books and those who let books do things to them. this is an example of the former kind.
