Was Shakpeare gay, and do matter? | John Sutherland | The Guardian

Contents:

• WAS SHAKPEARE GAY?
• WAS SHAKPEARE GAY?
• WAS SHAKPEARE GAY OR BISEXUAL? MORN SCHOLARS REVIS A THORNY QUTN
• 11 PIEC OF EVINCE WE HAD A GAY SHAKPEARE
• WAS SHAKPEARE GAY?THAT IS THE QUTN...
• WAS SHAKPEARE GAY? HIS SEXUALY IS STILL DEBATED BY SCHOLARS TODAY
• WAS SHAKPEARE GAY, AND DO MATTER?
• IS THERE ANY EVINCE FOR A GAY RELATNSHIP THE MERCHANT OF VENICE?

WAS SHAKPEARE GAY?

This is a really big qutn that people have wrten a great al about, so this episo acts as a sort of summary of some of the arguments for and agast Shakpeare beg gay. I’m Jennifer Reid, and today we’re askg, “Was Shakpeare gay? And prev podsts, I’ve played you lots of short clips om a variety of speakers, but this week I’m gog to do slightly differently, and play you fewer, longer clips, as the clips ought to be played their was Shakpeare gay?

DOLLIMORE: I don’t know whether Shakpeare was gay or not, bee he didn’t leave any personal rerd. So, what that actually entailed [sic] people isn’t the equivalent of what a lovg gay relatnship is, whether or not Shakpeare was gay is a difficult qutn.

One thg that is fe, though, is that there was no self-inty as gay or homosexual or, as far as we know, any other term durg that time perd.

WAS SHAKPEARE GAY?

So, Shakpeare certaly didn’t go around self-intifyg himself as homosexual or bisexual or straight or gay. Michael Dobson explored this ia, the ia of Shakpeare’s awarens of different sexuali and sexual preferenc when I spoke to Well, sofar as the tegori of gay and straight didn’t exist, then he wasn’t gay, but that equally means that he uldn’t have been straight eher.

There's a lot of bate about whether anybody was gay, any of the morn sense, Elizabethan culture, or whether there were jt certa thgs they did, sometim, that didn’t actually fe a particular set of inti. So, the morn term would probably be… terted, rather than, [lghs] rather than gay. Did Shakpeare have relatns, or lovg relatns, wh a male person – was he, as we say, gay?

Well he certaly wasn’t gay the plete sense of the word throughout his life, bee he marri early, marri young, and he has three children – so to that extent, he’s heterosexual. However, ’s not impossible, my view, that Shakpeare did have sexual relatns, actually wh both femal (other than his wife) and wh don’t portray homosexual relatnships very clearly his plays. But over to Greg, to expand upon this and tell you what he thks about Shakpeare’s Was Shakpeare gay?

WAS SHAKPEARE GAY OR BISEXUAL? MORN SCHOLARS REVIS A THORNY QUTN

Well, there’s a lot of nonsense talked about this “gay wasn’t really gay then”, as if human nature and the exprsn of human feelgs changed this one regard the last 400 years.

11 PIEC OF EVINCE WE HAD A GAY SHAKPEARE

I do believe Shakpeare was gay, and… Ah, you know, as I say that I’m aware that everyone tends to st Shakpeare their own image, some way, so I, as a gay man, brought up a Catholic Lanshire, like to feel that Shakpeare might have spent his last years as a teacher Lanshire, had some Catholic sensibili (or at least an unrstandg of the nostalgia for the old fah), and that he experienced a passnate sire for his own sex!

” Now, that is a pretty [chuckl] extraordary erotic scriptn of male of urse, there’s also a scriptn on the battlefield of homophobia – of homophobic prejudice, at any rate – and the most scurrilo terms, the mouth of Thers  Troil and Crsida, where he ris the love of Achill for his iend Patrocl, sayg, “Thou art thought to be Achill' male varlet. It’s a brilliant scriptn of homophobia.

And, I thk there has been homophobia regnisg where those relatnships – those gay relatnships Shakpeare occur.

WAS SHAKPEARE GAY?THAT IS THE QUTN...

So, if Shakpeare wasn’t gay, he certaly had a great passn for and an unrstandg of gay relatnships, that’s certaly the se. Actors today’s theatre regularly portray the relatnships as homosexual, and ed actors are often crlo toward anyone who doubts that to be the se.

In Troil and Crsida, Patrocl is moured to be Achill’ “mascule whore” (V, 1, le 17), as is suggted Homer, and certaly the two are very close iendship, though Patrocl do admonish Achill to engage battle by sayg, A woman impunt and mannish grown Is not more loathed than an effemate man In time of actn Aga, on the morn stage this relatnship is often portrayed as obvly, even flagrantly, sexual; but whether Shakpeare saw as such, or the play valoriz homosexualy or bisexualy, is another matter. Was Shakpeare gay?

Revealgly, ’s often posed ways that draw attentn to the bate: ‘I’ve been told that Shakpeare was gay – is that te? ’ ‘I asked my teacher if Shakpeare was gay and he said no – what do you thk? It’s not that ’s exactly hard to fd a homoerotic sensibily Shakpeare’s works.

WAS SHAKPEARE GAY? HIS SEXUALY IS STILL DEBATED BY SCHOLARS TODAY

It’s not hard to fd homoerotic sensibily Shakpeare’s works: Twelfth Night, Orso falls love wh Car, not realisg he’s a she. ‘Our morn words for sexual orientatn – gay, straight, homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual – are all neteenth or twentieth-century ag’.

The poet Don Paterson wr his recent mentary on Shakpeare’s Sons that they are lerary proof posive of his bisexual or gay inty. For one thg, our morn words for sexual orientatn – gay, straight, homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual – are all neteenth or twentieth-century ag. Most historians are of the view that early morn people didn’t thk of themselv as gay or straight.

Most historians are of the view that early morn people didn’t thk of themselv as gay or straight (not that those words rried their morn meangs any se). What we now specify as homosexualy was fed to the culture at large, ctoms, practic and social stutns. Wispread same-sex bed-sharg, the high value placed on sgle-genr iendship, and a generally un-pdish attu to bodily functns created an environment which homosexual acts, while technilly illegal, went virtually unreported and unpunished.

WAS SHAKPEARE GAY, AND DO MATTER?

And I thk ’s bee ‘Was Shakpeare gay?

For what ’s worth, when I pot my lerary gaydar at Shakpeare I get a maybe. But that’s not to say there weren’t other wrers of the time for whom homoerotic subject matter and sexual inty seem to our ey to overlap. So he may or may not have been gay, but he fely read gay lerature – and that’s a lson we n all appreciate durg LGBT History Month.

“It’s bee fashnable sce the mid-1980s to thk of Shakpeare as gay. Vickers, a visg profsor at Universy College London, asserted that a Tim Lerary Supplement book review was wrong to state that Shakpeare’s 119 son was wrten a “primarily homosexual ntext”.

IS THERE ANY EVINCE FOR A GAY RELATNSHIP THE MERCHANT OF VENICE?

In 1640, a prtg of his sons changed most of the male pronouns to female to obscure any reference to potential homosexualy.