William Shakespeare was totally Bisexual (Probably) 

im binging all your videos right now but man i remember when we had to analyze sonnet 18 in class back in high school and our teacher did not allow romantic interpretations because it was about a guy so we had to somehow find a way to analyze it as a platonic-bro-no-homo-poem. it was hilarious.

Can I throw my money in for the Marlowe/Shakespeare romcom? PLEASE

Absolutely flawless. Fabulous. 10/10. I love these videos, they really make me feel more at home when it comes to the queer community in history. We didn't just "appear," we were always there!

More than half of his sonnets were for a man :)

Fantastic video :) Oh, I think heteronormativity goes beyond just assuming a historic figure is straight until the historic record conclusively proves otherwise... There are some historic figures the historic record explicitly mentions as having had same sex who historians state that the two were friends. (To say nothing of the amount of birds that get missexed due to it being standard practice to assuming all animal sexual activity is a) between opposite sex birds and b) the bird on top is the male even when that requires sexing the same individual bird differently in consecutive sexual encounters) Now, sure, when doing a serious historic discussion we shouldn't project modern labels - with all the social connotations they provide - onto historic figures, because sexual prejudices were different then and labeling e.g. Alexander the Great as bisexual when he's from a time and place where that was the expected male sexual behaviour, so wouldn't have faced the prejudices that modern bisexuals face, makes little sense (In fact, in ancient Rome queer behaviour would have likely been 'a man taking the passive role in a relationship with a man who is of lower social status' rather than a man having a male lover. There is a Roman emporer who is negatively written about (By his successor, so grains of salt very much required, the problem with a lot Roman historic records are that they were usually written by the person who just stabbed the previous emporer in the back, literally or figuratively, trying to justify their actions as being necessary) for engaging in same sex intercourse, but the 'problem' wasn't that he was having sex with men in a Roman context, but because he was letting his social inferiors... Give him their wills. But... Outside of that very specific situation of serious historic discussion? And this 'outside of that' goes double if we note the sexual context of the time period? Representation is important, damn it, and letting queer kids identify with historic figures who made accomplishments? Hugely important.

can we also acknowledge the Dr who quote where Will says something mad gay to The Doctor and he says "5 historians just threw their fists in the air" I will not forget that

I can’t believe I’m watching a video about Shakespeare’s sexuality on a school night.

I just love his sonnets, and some of the prettiest ones are the 'gay' ones :)

God damn I'm glad that many high schools push reading plays by a bisexual man. I wonder if Othello had any similarities to the Dark Lady and if Shakespeare would want his Will inside both.

He was just a lover of all kinds ^ W ^

i LOVED this, PLEASE make MORE! (I don't know where else you would go, but if if have more ideas, please make them! I enjoyed this much! (just wanted to make that clear, awesome video!))

i always kind of avoided shakespeare (idk why tho lol Im more of an oscar wilde type of person) but im in my senior year (12th grade) and in our english syllabus there's sonnet 18. And dear god, the teacher explaining it as "the poet's beloved fRiEnD" with a straight face is hilarious. Like its all "just lads doing laddy things cause lads are cool" or "laddy bro pal dedicating 126 sonnents for his laddy bro pal no homo tho" type of thing again ndnlfsnf

A lot of this makes sense--particularly because sexuality in Elizabethan England WASN't polarized (the men especially just didn't deny, but didn't usually act on, homoerotic desire ALONG WITH hetero desire). But it bigtime misses the point. Like virtually all contemporary criticism, it bags the reality that the sonnet tradition is one of exploring HOW PROFANE AND SACRED LOVE ARE RELATED (in Petrarch and Dante, the originals, selfish sexuality becomes divine love because the beloved is virtuous, denying sex, and then conveniently dies, so the poet loves her as an extension of God). Shakespeare's sonnets show a guy (him, all men, whatever) TRYING to love in a selfless, sacred way, and by the end failing miserably because his lovers betray him and he finds out his feelings are unavoidably contaminated--so at the end he ABANDONS SEXUAL LOVE ENTIRELY and asserts his soul needs to look heavenward. Difference from Petrarch and Dante is, this is not because his lovers are so saintly and ennoble him, but because they, and he, are so corrupt. It's like a parody of traditional love sonnets. Look to context and don't try to modernize the ideas of other eras!

It was the Doctor and Martha!!!!!

This was great :D , highly enjoyed the in depth reading of the sonnets and analysis. And the dick jokes,, those were great too.

the way you said ‘more than one team’ had me actually wheezing

Loved this! Thanks for the modern version beside the original lol great learning experience :)

im watching this in school help

At the same time educational and highly entertaining - very well done! Looking forward to more!

I think the most accurate term would be bi romantic? idk.

Sonnet 20 is wild 😳

subscribing , i have had fun watching,thankyou, and you laughed in between was attractive, your voice is a song in itself.

I want to know more about the Marlowe being a spy part

I love your channel SO MUCH!!!!

I KNEW IT

You should watch "Upstart Crow"! It's pretty funny, Marlowe and Shakespeare are best buds and Marlowe comments on the fair youth poems a bunch

Very interesting video. Did you see Will the British TV series? Love to know your thoughts.

It’s very interesting that also in english a lot of ancient writers and poets wrote poems and letters to seemingly men; we have the same dilemma in arabic. Even today a lot of songs seem like they were addressing a men. But at least in arabic, the word ‘habib’(which means lover in arabic) which is the centre of controversy was explained to used as a generalized term without any gender. So maybe here it’s the same case

Possibly. But as you say, he wouldn't know what that word meant. And the poems he wrote to the (possibly) gay young nobleman strike less as love poems than a lowly playwright courting the patronage of a rich aristocrat. The sonnets to the Dark Lady feel a whole lot more sincere. I think he'd have thought his sexual feelings, whatever they were, were normal, and he wouldn't have felt any need for a label. I think we, in our present time, are too addicted to labels. Heterosexual isn't the norm. It is, however, the way any species with two sexes reproduces itself. Some animals are 'gay', but they rarely reproduce successfully. There's a reason gay people used the (somewhat derogatory) term 'breeder' to refer to 'straights' (they also came up with that term). You don't have to be straight to have kids, but people who aren't heterosexual are less inclined to do so. It's not a perversion or an aberration to be unconventional in your sexuality. People who are different help renew a culture, a society. But they can't keep a population alive very long. Precisely because they are unconventional. There's a reason why all the different orientations combined are vastly outnumbered by people who are attracted to the opposite sex. By which I mean physical attraction. Emotional attraction can happen between any two people. So the LGBTQ+ people all owe their very existence to--drumroll--breeders. And Shakespeare was one. He got Anne Hathaway pregnant out of wedlock. She was older than him. That is not very typical behavior for a gay man. Anne was no beard. She was his first love. He had others. Possibly one or several of those were male. We have no evidence of that. Do we really think a young rich nobleman had sex with an elderly commoner? People can have very passionate platonic 'affairs'--marriage of true minds, anyone? Also, we tend to forget a large percentage of rich men in Ancient Greece and Rome had sex with boys. Without being the least bit gay. It was normal in certain classes then--also very exploitative. Today we call that 'grooming.' Truthfully, none of Shakespeare's characters are gay. They are simply what Elizabethans were used to seeing. Women played by young men in drag. Many of whom were probably entirely straight. We see what we want to see. Today, we'd like to see Shakespeare as gay or bi. See the whole man. And see that unconventionality has no sexual persuasion.

1:49 I think you may have accidentally made a double negative there. No real criticisms otherwise, I quite enjoyed the video. :)

love your stuff. Just started following.

“Love him or hate him...” haha. Who hates him?

The "dark lady" idea both historically refers to racial differences but also to alchemical ideas and likely in my opinion a combination of both. The dark woman is the first stage in alchemical transformation. Historically we know there was a migration of Moors of various skin color into Northern Europe at various periods, most notably after the inquisition but you get the same theme with Eschenbach's work in 1100 in Germany. So the idea is older than Shakespeare. But England had a treaty with the Turks at the time so there was a great influence. The alchemical reference of the Nigredo is often represented as an African dark skinned woman. Which is also the initial stage of alchemical transformation. Muslims had more ancient alchemical knowledge than Northern Europeans. So in my opinion alchemical idea of "the nigredo" may have been both a Middle Ages racial idea and that "such people" had special spiritual knowledge. As well as the esoteric idea. Compare Shakespeare to Eschenbach and to alchemical literature and you will see what I am referring to. Eschenbach made direct references to Africans and Muslim spiritual ideas in relationship to Christianity. As far as homosexuality/bisexuality we know that Muslim and Christian culture had stricter and looser acceptance at different points in history. We think Muslims are today "homophobic" but was this always the case? In the past they more accurately preserved all of Platonist literature than Christians and Plato obviously contains many homoerotic references. Plato was reintroduced to Europe through Muslims. So the acceptance of homosexuality in the Renaissance may actually have been a largely Muslim influence. So the ideas of "the dark lady" and "the love of the same gender" may have come directly from an educated Muslim influence on England. Which we know historically happened. As far as bisexual, It is reasonable that it took a bisexual person who felt different to bring this to the forefront. So I think that Shakespeare was bisexual. But the brilliant humor in his work was likely more "universal". There would have been sexual ambivalence/desire/shame/homophobia unexpressed that Shakespeare brought to consciousness. After Shakespeare died Protestants outlawed theater for 80 years. Shakespeare provided too much truth. To expand on this Plato idealized non-sexual platonic love as the means of experiencing an enlightened Logos. But Plato also referenced an alternative namely a type of Mania for the same gender which can reveal the Logos. Love of the same gender can bring fourth the Christian ideal of the Logos. Alchemists believed that the first stage of alchemy was "the dark skinned woman" the Nigredo. So Shakespeare tapped into this idea of the way to Logos (Jesus) enlightenment could emerge with two forbidden sexualities. The same theme was expressed and duplicated into modern times. You get the same theme with Guess Who's Coming to Dinner crossing racial marriages and Tennessee Williams insinuating gay love in his plays. What we need to understand in the moment is that we have finally gone beyond both taboos of inter-racial and gay marriage. Which is a 2500 year old issue.

“Imprisoned pride” that one just might make it to Wattpad

Super into, or super bisexuals Just say he was Bisexual.

A well made video!

ok but can we talk about how the first 17 sonnets read like angry facebook comments on a childfree post they make me laugh every time and they feel really like repressed and displaced until he suddenly does a 180 at 18

When don’t even know if he wrote the plays and sonnets.

Remember to always apply modern context to history

Shakespeare definitely used They/Them pronouns

Shame for him. A good man an author who wrote a flawless poems and novels but as soon he went for sonnet his ideas, points and brief to his own live changes. “North star is actually the way when you lost it well get you to your life not the way you describes the love.

I would say bi

My headcanon is that Shakespeare was a trans cat girl

I heard a word thus wrongly spake my dear lady, that of Whingeing. It's pronounced Win-jin-ing, breaking it into syllables.

Very very very very late but in my english class we analyzed sonnet 18 and my teacher said "so as you can see, Shakespeare was just a little bit fruity"

Love this video.

William worked with a lot of Actors, at a time where Men & Women were very androgynous, I'd say he would've been Pan.

I love researching queer history

I am the only who have seen those flags in my first time .😂

Poor Ann!

damn why are these comments so mean

I pretty sure bisexuals means attracted to both genders, pansexual would be all people

Shakespeare was illiterate but Bacon was gay, he was the guy you are looking for.

I have often thought that a prerequisite for being a minister of the gospel should not to be having spent ones former life as a scoundrel, especialy when SOLA SCRIPTURA is the operating principle of biblical interpretation and research. a former prostitute should be aloud to attend church services but this doesn't necessarily mean that she should be made head of the choir. in light of modern alligations about Shakespeare's secret gayness a lot of alarms beginning to go off in my mind. "Kiss me sweet and twenty " comes to mind. it is a song filled with the joyfully celebration of Spring and virginal love. it makes clear to me the sexual normality and orientation of the poet. the poem makes a reference to the short window of time left for the bringing forth of children. "youths a thing will that will not endure" in today's contraceptive culture which was accepted by every Protestant denomination in the land at Lambeth in 1930, sex and love are mutually exclusive so, people may go either way for romance. This paradime shift opened the way for Margaret Sanger to be allowed open her first family planning clinic in Harlem. Birth Control blurs the line between gay and streight became it necessarily removes the possibility of pregnancy from the romantic act. I begin to see how the absence of fecundity utterly skews the cultural perception of poetic verse. aprehensions of being misconstrewed would sheath the pen in any scabard shoud one try to discribed romance in a Sodomon & Gamorah world. Imagine with what suspicion a sermon on the beauty of the Christ child would bring? What I see in all of this is the utter degradation of moral codes and then the neseccary debasement of the language that serves them. We have as jethro Tull once put it, "Sand Castle virtues in the tidal distruction of the moral malais"

I personally don’t believe he was ever real idk ;-;

The only thing that offended me was your profanity. His writings are being taken out of context here. He was not homosexual.

Bi is not pan !!!!!!!! We only love girls and boys but not non-binary people . If we would love non-binary people we would be pan but we are BI so our own gender and the opposite one !

There is no evidence that he went to school.

♥️🏳️‍🌈♥️

What bullshit!

that's not how you say penchant. apart from that very nice

Revisionist history, cultural projection, false literature. Par for the course on censorshipTube and SV rainbow culture (soon to die with continued unmasking).

The Glover's son from Stratford-on-Avon could not have written the works attributed to him. He had very basic schooling and had never been abroad. He could barely write his name.