Fair enough!:lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
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!
Printable View
Fair enough!:lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
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!
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by xman
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.
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?
Really I think it's pretty obvious that Shakespeare's pretty keen on the guy, if you know what I mean.Quote:
Originally Posted by xman
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.
Shakespeare was an asexual alien... so no, definitely not gay!
But it is interesting, no?Quote:
Originally Posted by Serena03
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.
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.
About as interesting as if he was heterosexual. :wink5:Quote:
Originally Posted by kelby_lake
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulclem
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.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
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.
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."
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by kelby_lake