Was Shakespeare gay?

[kelby_lake]

I have heard rumours

[Virgil]

Well he was married with several children. Obviously he could perform sexually with a woman. ;)

[Il Penseroso]

He definitely has gender blurring themes in his plays and sonnet sequence (what is it, Sonnet 21 that's the "out of the closet sonnet"?), but beyond that I don't see much use in too much speculation. The themes as presented in his works are what is important.

[Virgil]

He definitely has gender blurring themes in his plays and sonnet sequence (what is it, Sonnet 21 that's the "out of the closet sonnet"?), but beyond that I don't see much use in too much speculation. The themes as presented in his works are what is important.

I agree Il Pens. It's not that important. The gender reversal themes in his plays were not unusal for his time, but it's hard to explain away the sonnets.

Petrarch's Love (a member here on lit net for those who don't know her) is a real expert on Shakespeare.

[princesspoppi]

Who cares? The man was a genius!!

[Ultimo]

He was'nt gay. He was italian.

[Lokasenna]

Perhaps bi-sexual? Not that it matters, or course, but there are elements of both heterosexual and homosexual love in his plays, albeit that the latter is a lot subtler.

[Ultimo]

Sure it was the english influence...

[xman]

The rumors stem from a modern day misunderstanding of Elizabethan platonic love between men which is displayed in some of the sonnets. The other sonnets to the Dark Lady reflect a very different passion indeed.

X

[Virgil]

The rumors stem from a modern day misunderstanding of Elizabethan platonic love between men which is displayed in some of the sonnets. The other sonnets to the Dark Lady reflect a very different passion indeed.

X

I've made that argument too. There is nothing in any of the plays that would suggest homosexuality or even bi-sexuality. I've maintained that it was a poetic stance he takes in the sonnets emulating classical Greek culture. But Petrarch's Love (here on lit net, who's quite knowledgable and who's opinion I greatly respect) disagrees with me. It's a question we can forever fathom without ever coming to a conclusion.

[JBI]

He, from reading the sonnets, would appear bi-sexual. The first 126 are undoubtedly addressed to a youthful male, whereas last 28 would appear to be addressed to a woman, seemingly older.

Everything else is just speculation, but it doesn't matter much. He almost unquestionably was open minded when it came to homosexuality, and doesn't seem to show any "god fear" in terms of his relationships. But either way, it still doesn't matter - Shakespeare's biography is virtually invisible.

I think the debate generally goes like this, "He never openly said he liked to have sex with men, therefore he wasn't gay."

"true, but couldn't that just be you not being able to come to terms with his sexuality, since he was that great an author, and our culture for the longest time, and still today, has been, and is, homophobic?"

"Show me the quote."

"Why do we even need one? What's so wrong about him addressing a love poem to a male?"

Generally it doesn't matter. I would think he had sexual feelings towards men - whether he acted or not is not really the point however. The debate has been dragged on about Walt Whitman as well, and quite frankly, it's rather tiresome.

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi Kelby_Lake--The issue of whether Shakespeare had homosexual tendencies or not has long been a question of interest and debate. As Virgil pointed out, he was married and had children, though that wouldn't rule out being gay, especially in the context of the times. As xman points out above, you also have to be careful about reading too much into expressions of affection between men in Renaissance verse, since feelings associated with purely platonic friendship between men could be expressed in terms of their "love" or "affection" for one another.

That said, I personally find it difficult to read the sonnets without some sense that he at least felt some sort of physical attraction toward men, or at least one very good looking young man. My own sense is that he was probably attracted to both women and men to some extent, though whether he was actively gay is another matter. The sonnet most often cited is #20, which describes the "Master Mistress" of my passion, and is at least playing with the idea of being very physically attracted to the young man. Even apart from that, his feelings for and jealousy over the young man seem to push the boundary of the platonic even for the Elizabethan age.

The true answer is, though, that we will probably never know for sure what his feelings were or whether he had any relationships outside his marriage with men or women. Certainly, the sonnets aren't anywhere near as explicit as Barnfield, whose poems to Ganymede are pretty unambiguous, or a play like Christopher Marlowe's Edward II which tackles the question of a gay relationship in about as straightforward a manner as the period would permit. Still, in the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's sonnets, the editor John Benson was famously uneasy enough about the potential for certain sonnets to be read as being homosexual love poems, that he changed the masculine pronouns to feminine ones in many of the sonnets to make it look like they had been written to a woman. Furthermore, they were most commonly published this way for nearly a century afterward. 1640 is close enough to Shakespeare's lifetime, that I doubt this sort of editorial change would have been made if Shakespeare's sonnets had not struck Benson and others as somehow being outside the normal boundaries of homosocial affection for that period.

[xman]

The sonnet most often cited is #20, which describes the "Master Mistress" of my passion, and is at least playing with the idea of being very physically attracted to the young man.
Ah yes. Sonnet #20. The one which ends;
"But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure."

The sense I get is that of a best friend spending all his time with a woman instead of Sunday night football with the boys.

There is no doubt that Will loved the young man, but whether he slept with him, or even wanted to is not something we can say is true. There simply isn't enough evidence. It's all speculation.

X

[Lokasenna]

I've made that argument too. There is nothing in any of the plays that would suggest homosexuality or even bi-sexuality.

I'd respectfully have to disagree with you there. A lot of them have (to a greater or lesser degree) subtexts of homosexuality. Consider the Merchant of Venice, and the strength of the relationship between Antonio and an increasingly distant Bassanio, and how it is always described in terms of love, often at the expense of the passion of Bassanio's relationship to Portia. Another example, if you will, would be in As You Like It, where you have the stange sexual androgeny of Rosalind when she becomes Ganymede, and particularly when Oliver and Phoebe try to seduce her as such.

[Virgil]

I'd respectfully have to disagree with you there. A lot of them have (to a greater or lesser degree) subtexts of homosexuality. Consider the Merchant of Venice, and the strength of the relationship between Antonio and an increasingly distant Bassanio, and how it is always described in terms of love, often at the expense of the passion of Bassanio's relationship to Portia. Another example, if you will, would be in As You Like It, where you have the stange sexual androgeny of Rosalind when she becomes Ganymede, and particularly when Oliver and Phoebe try to seduce her as such.
You are right, at least about Antonio and Bassanio. Their friendship is expressed in terms of love and could be seen as beyond the bounds of heterosexual male friendship by today's standards. But the point of the play was for Bassanio to marry Portia. That is a male with a female. I do think as Xman points out that the way males expressed friendship varies at different eras. As to the several plays, including As You Like It, where characters disguise themselves in the opposite gender's clothing, frankly that's a sort of game that Shakespeare is playing. I guess if you're looking for homosexuality, you will see that. If one is looking for homosexuality, one sees it in anything. There are people who see "latent" homosexuality in Hemingway's novels between various macho men.

[Lokasenna]

You are right, at least about Antonio and Bassanio. Their friendship is expressed in terms of love and could be seen as beyond the bounds of heterosexual male friendship by today's standards. But the point of the play was for Bassanio to marry Portia. That is a male with a female. I do think as Xman points out that the way males expressed friendship varies at different eras. As to the several plays, including As You Like It, where characters disguise themselves in the opposite gender's clothing, frankly that's a sort of game that Shakespeare is playing. I guess if you're looking for homosexuality, you will see that. If one is looking for homosexuality, one sees it in anything. There are people who see "latent" homosexuality in Hemingway's novels between various macho men.

Fair enough!:lol:

I just know that I've lost count of the number of articles I've read about homosexuality in Shakespeare, and I thought I'd just question what seemed like a rather generalised assumption!

[Petrarch's Love]

Ah yes. Sonnet #20. The one which ends;
"But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure."

The sense I get is that of a best friend spending all his time with a woman instead of Sunday night football with the boys.

There is no doubt that Will loved the young man, but whether he slept with him, or even wanted to is not something we can say is true. There simply isn't enough evidence. It's all speculation.

X

Hi X--First of all, I agree with you that anything we can say about Shakespeare's sexual orientation one way or the other is speculative. That said, I think even if you think he's completely straight, sonnet 20 is playing around with something much more than a complaint equivalent to not hanging out watching football with the boys. I doubt most guys sitting around, watching the game say: "man, you're so hot. You're totally like a beautiful woman and I could really go for you except that you've got a prick" (yes, the word "prick'd" very clearly has a bawdy connotation for Shakespeare's period, perhaps even more than it would for ours). Calling someone the androgenous "master-mistress of my passion" is not typical language for friendship even in Shakespeare's day. He's not just saying this is his loved friend in the first portion of the poem, but the potential object of his passion.

Now, you can certainly still argue that this sonnet doesn't prove Shakespeare is gay. He does, after all end up saying that the "use" of the young man is for the women, which might be a completely honest move to say, "just kidding" (or a nervous backing into the closet, depending upon interpretation). He could be playing with classical conventions praising the beauty of a young man, or just being witty in a rather edgy way. It's entirely possible that the primary source of his jealousy is as a good friend and nothing more. It would be doing a great disservice to the wit and complexity of this sonnet, though, to try to claim that he's not pretty unambiguously talking about the physical attractiveness of the young man here.

[kelby_lake]

The main evidence people use for Shakespeare being gay is probably the sonnets, 126 of which are to a young man. In my mind, there is no doubt that the narrator is bisexual, if not gay (female sexuality is portrayed throughout in a dark cynical way). But it doesn't necessarily follow that the narrator of the sonnets should be Shakespeare himself. They may be a poetic conceit- after all, his plays are poetic so why shouldn't his poems be dramatic?


Ah yes. Sonnet #20. The one which ends;
"But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure."

The sense I get is that of a best friend spending all his time with a woman instead of Sunday night football with the boys.


Really I think it's pretty obvious that Shakespeare's pretty keen on the guy, if you know what I mean.

[Serena03]

I have heard conspiracies of Lincoln being gay, Hitler, Jesus. Bottom line is that it is far too late to gather any absolute proof, nor would it or should it their legacies.

[Abras]

Shakespeare was an asexual alien... so no, definitely not gay!

[kelby_lake]

I have heard conspiracies of Lincoln being gay, Hitler, Jesus. Bottom line is that it is far too late to gather any absolute proof, nor would it or should it their legacies.

But it is interesting, no?

[OrphanPip]

It's not really possible for Shakespeare to be gay in the modern sense of the word, which comes loaded with different cultural associations. The sonnets are suggestive of a level of homosexual desire, but this says nothing really about Shakespeare's personal life.

At least with Marlowe we have contemporary charges of sodomy, and more explicit instances of it in the work.

James I, also left us with loads of contemporary evidence of his sexual interest.

We just don't have any real evidence to conclude much about Shakespeare's personal life. Even Spenser, the ardent conservative Protestant he was, has some minor instances of homosexual undertones in The Shepherd's Calendar and The Fairy Queene, but large amounts of biographical detail and knowledge of Spenser's theological and artistic views let us be pretty sure that he was mostly playing around with the conventions of Classical poetry. I.e. in the Shepherd's Calendar, there is a point where the shepherd Hobbinol gives Colin Clout a gift, and seems unreasonably enamored of the other shepherd, Colin goes on to regift the present to the female love interest Rosalind. There's some homosexual undertones in that, but I think it's more of a comedic allusion by Spenser.

In the glosses of the original edition it's written:

"In thys place seemeth to be some sauour of disorderly loue, which the learned call paederastice: but it is gathered beside his meaning. For who that hath red Plato his dialogue called Alcybiades, Xenophon and Maximum Tyrius of Socrates opinions, may easily perceiue, that such loue is much to be alowed and liked of, specially so meant, as Socrates vsed it: who sayth, that in deed he loued Alcybiades extremely, yet not Alcybiades owne selfe. And so is paederastice much to be praeferred before gynerastice, that is the loue which enflameth men with lust toward woman kind. But yet let no man thinke, that herein I stand with Lucian or hys deuelish disciple Vnico Aretino, in defence of execrable and horrible sinnes of forbidden and vnlawful fleshlinesse. Whose abominable errour is fully confuted of Perionius, and others. "

Spenser was certainly aware of the homosexual undertones in his work if he bothered to include a gloss stating that the relationship is Platonic. I don't think anyone reasonably thinks Spenser was gay, so the presence of homosexual undertones isn't necessarily indicative of the homosexuality of the author.

[Paulclem]

I agree Orphan.

Do you think questions about of the sexuality of historical personages are asked in order to validate homosexuality? I would have thought that it was increasingly unimportant these days with the openness and acceptance of western societies combined with the numerous prominant gay celebrities and exemplars we have.

[Serena03]

But it is interesting, no?

About as interesting as if he was heterosexual. :wink5:

[Alexander III]

I agree Orphan.

Do you think questions about of the sexuality of historical personages are asked in order to validate homosexuality? I would have thought that it was increasingly unimportant these days with the openness and acceptance of western societies combined with the numerous prominant gay celebrities and exemplars we have.

Actually the west is a walking contradiction in this regard, accepting homosexuality, yet being homophobic. Now in the west if a man comes out as gay, his friends and family will accept him for himself, and he does not need to hide it in a personal sense, as fortunately we have advance to a point where it is seen as just a sexual orientation, neither good or bad, like skin color, its just a color, its just a sexual preference. However if a man comes out as gay, he will never have any chance of a career in any public work, and even in most private work, coming out as gay shall damage his career. Furthermore, gay marriage is still not allow din the majority of wester countries. We are essentially saying its ok to be gay, but its not that ok. Still though the west is slowly getting there.

As for Shakespeare, I do tend to perceived him as bi, though this is a question which shall go unanswered through time.

Sorry to digress a bit but here is any interesting question. Scientific studies have shown that on average 1 out of every ten men is gay or bisexual. However is we look a famous poets, writers, painters, musicians, it seems to me to be closer to 4 out of 10 or 5 out of ten are either gay or bisexual. Could there be a link between thh genes that make on gay or bi, and the genes which affect the imagination creativity or the perception of beauty ?

Oh and I dont think the argument that he had a wife and children proves his heterosexuality. I mean a straight man CAN have sex with another man, he just chooses not to, but he CAN do it. If we consider those times, where a man without wife and children was looked at as almost disfigured in nature, it is logical that any man, no matter weather he was gay or simply not interested in marriage, must have married; for societies sake.

[stlukesguild]

I somewhat doubt the 10% number that is often cited. The numbers in recent studies range from 2-13% which suggests a less than accurate ability in collecting such data. Watching the development of students as a teacher and recognizing the homosexual tendencies in children as early as the 1st or 2nd grade I am more than certain that homosexuality is not something learned... not something that one can be conditioned into or out of. There is no chance that reading a book about a child who has two Mommies is going to lead some children to suddenly think, "Hey! I think I'll be gay!"

With regard to the percentage of homosexuality in the arts... I suspect that the arts have always afforded something of a safe haven for the very reason that artists of whatever ilk often seem to be more liberal and open in their views... often being something of outsiders. One doesn't become gay by becoming a painter or fashion designer... but rather painting and fashion design are perhaps less judgmental career choices for the homosexual than the military, the police, or football.

By the way... read Anthony Burgess novel, Nothing Like the Sun for a fascinating imagining of Shakespeare's biography... including his sexual leanings.

[OrphanPip]

I somewhat doubt the 10% number that is often cited. The numbers in recent studies range from 2-13% which suggests a less than accurate ability in collecting such data. Watching the development of students as a teacher and recognizing the homosexual tendencies in children as early as the 1st or 2nd grade I am more than certain that homosexuality is not something learned... not something that one can be conditioned into or out of. There is no chance that reading a book about a child who has two Mommies is going to lead some children to suddenly think, "Hey! I think I'll be gay!"


The numbers are difficult to assess for a number of reasons. We can blame early studies in the 70s for the 10% gay figure, which was largely the result of urban sample bias because of gay migration, a well recognized tendency for homosexuals to migrate to a few particular urban centers where there are established gay communities, i.e. New York and San Francisco in the US, or Paris in France.

The more accurate results commonly reported these days are in the 4-6% males are homosexual with another 1-3% identifying as bisexual. You get a different distribution with women, with much higher numbers identifying as bisexual relative to lesbian.

Edit: I actually don't think there's that much of a disproportionate amount of homosexuals working in the arts. Of major English language authors of the last 100 years or so I can only think of Wilde, Auden, Forster, and Maugham; Baldwin and Vidal, over on the American side; Amy Lowell, Virginia Woolf (more likely bisexual), and Willa Cather for women.

Edit2: Although, I am a firm believer that sexual desire is biologically determined, with some effect of psychological development, I am ever hesitant to equate what is a physical desire entirely with a cultural understanding of how the self relates to that physical desire. It may be true that in the physical sense I'm just as gay as the repressed closet case, but it's not true that we are both gay in a meaningful cultural sense.

[MANICHAEAN]

His most distinguished fellow poets, including Spenser and Raleigh, found the celebration of women congenial on a personal as well as a public level. Shakespeare, on the other hand appears to have began with an antifeminist bias and it seems that it is this attitude, (genuine or assumed) that directly influences his theories about the nature of love: the encounter between a passive male and an aggressive female, between modest reason and shameless lust. It is a varient form of theme found throughout Shakespeare's work: men bound together by friendship are sundered by the love of woman (as in "Two Gentlemen of Verona") What is being mocked perhaps is male pretensions to immunity from passion?

The angle that Shakespeare comes from though, appears to be that, by loving a male rather than a daughter of Eve, one can find salvation. But the taint of homosexuality of the time clings to such a suggestion and I think Shakespeare would have been painfully aware of the proverbial fickleness of boys, declaring through the Fool in "Lear", for instance, that "He's mad that trusts ....a boy's love, or a whore's oath."

[kelby_lake]

The narrator of the Sonnets, whether it's Shakespeare or merely an invented persona, clearly has some sexual desire for the Fair Youth (although it seems to have been unconsumated).

[OrphanPip]

The narrator of the Sonnets, whether it's Shakespeare or merely an invented persona, clearly has some sexual desire for the Fair Youth (although it seems to have been unconsumated).

Ya, I agree this is a fair conclusion, and I think it's naieve or obtuse to think Shakespeare wasn't aware of what he was doing.

[kelby_lake]

Ya, I agree this is a fair conclusion, and I think it's naieve or obtuse to think Shakespeare wasn't aware of what he was doing.

I think the Sonnets are dramatic. There's characters, a loose narrative...although they're of varying quality, I find them fascinating. I love how he plays around with gender and gender perceptions.

[Alexander III]

I somewhat doubt the 10% number that is often cited. The numbers in recent studies range from 2-13% which suggests a less than accurate ability in collecting such data. Watching the development of students as a teacher and recognizing the homosexual tendencies in children as early as the 1st or 2nd grade I am more than certain that homosexuality is not something learned... not something that one can be conditioned into or out of. There is no chance that reading a book about a child who has two Mommies is going to lead some children to suddenly think, "Hey! I think I'll be gay!"

With regard to the percentage of homosexuality in the arts... I suspect that the arts have always afforded something of a safe haven for the very reason that artists of whatever ilk often seem to be more liberal and open in their views... often being something of outsiders. One doesn't become gay by becoming a painter or fashion designer... but rather painting and fashion design are perhaps less judgmental career choices for the homosexual than the military, the police, or football.

By the way... read Anthony Burgess novel, Nothing Like the Sun for a fascinating imagining of Shakespeare's biography... including his sexual leanings.

yes I also think that homosexuality is genetic, not something you learn ,as in your are born it. However what I was saying is that there is a myth in our culture that a straight man cannot have sex with another man, which is not true he can, he may not enjoy it particularly but he can; me as a straight guy am sure that if I wanted to could get hard and ejaculate in having sex with another man ( sorry if that was crudely said)

Let us look at ancient greece where bisexuality seemed to be just as equal as heterosexuality, and there was no concept that a man could only like men or women or just like them equally, there were millions of sfumature and in said culture being able to prefer sexually with a male or female whom was attractive was considered just normal or expected, secondly cam the personal preferences of each individual.

As for Shakespeare, It is all purely speculation, which may or may not be true, preaching for either side seems rather irrelevant and foolish, when the only answer we can accept is that we do not know, and that may be a blessing, as if we did know, we would undboutedly look at his works differently, which may remove us from the beauty of his art into more of a modern ineffectual political study of his works...

[kelby_lake]

Apparantly everyone is a little bit bisexual...