The question of Homosexuality:

* Homosexuality has always been a threat to straight procreative society and religion; as it still is in many (read the majority of) societies. Some say it comes to exist through genetics, others say learned behaviour. It does exist in every society worldwide, but is not necessarily accepted. Elizabethan London was no exception and the Renaissance did infect the dissolute and godless young men and women of fashion with a certain neo-paganism. I do not wish to imply all homosexuals are pagan, there are and were many Conservative homosexuals.

*The idea that Sh. was full-on homosexual i.e. that he preferred male love and sex above and beyond heterosexuality and the husbandry of procreation, is to my mind unlikely.
The idea that he was bisexual doesn’t seem that far-fetched, but then it could be projection.
The idea that he was heterosexual with latent desire to be a homosexual by strength of love not lust seems to me an option. His works show a man’s man with a gentle heart and when he talks of sex in the plays it is mostly of country matters.

*Effeminate males in Sh. work are dealt with kindly but contemptuously; witness Hotspur`s speech in Henry 4th: act1: sc.3.  And of course that old camp Queen, Thersites, in Troilus and Cressida. And mind you the Merchant of Venice is certainly willing to bend over backwards to help out his friend.

*In fact Sh. brother Gilbert is more often portrayed as the homosexual in the Shakespeare family. He left Stratford not long after Will and set up as a haberdasher in London, where he lived and worked until he died. Good connection by the way for an actor having your own costume maker!

*I think it obvious Sh. knew and worked with homosexuals because darling what’s the thea-tuh without them?

*By 1609 it was common at the Court of James 1st because the king himself was rumoured to be gay. He, like Sh, had a wife and family!

*Fletcher and Beaumont are both labelled homosexual. Sh. collaborated with them in the first decade of Jame’s reign. I think like Rembrandt he had his apprentices, as they took over his writer position for the King’s men when Sh retired.

*The idea that the Sonnets prove Sh. to be a homosexual was started by Oscar Wilde in 1889 with a story he wrote called `The Portrait of Mr.W.H.`. An excellent read! Wilde inconclusively postulates in this work of fiction that the Mr. W.H. of the Dedication to the Sonnets, is a boy actor who played the most famous female roles.

*The Sonnets do seem to indicate homosexuality:
I mean they are addressed with love to a beautiful young man…

`the master-mistress of my passion`.Q20.

But if you read further it becomes quite clear that his sex is not the reason for the poet’s love..

` since she prick`d thee out for women`s pleasure,
mine be thy love and thy love`s use their treasure`. Q20.

*Ten years after Wilde, Samuel Butler wrote his theory on the queer content of the Sonnets. Butler insisted the Mr.W.H. of Thorpe`s dedication was the inspirer of the S. and his name was Willie Hughes, a sea-cook who sold the Sonnet manuscript to Thorpe in 1609 for a few shillings because he had money problems. How Butler came to know this is perhaps more of a mystery than the Sonnets themselves!

*The idea for the name Hughes derives from the fact that in the original Sonnet Quarto prints several words in italics; one such being Hews in Q20. There are other such italicised words: rose, alchemy, orient, phoenix, ocean, rhetoric, informer, will, epitaph, cherubims. All very gay words when italicised!

*The punishment for Homosexuality in Sh. time was death, but the threat of punishment never stopped a determined lover, ever. It makes no sense however for Sh to call attention to a capital offence in verse; as Wilde found out in the 19th C. no-one is above the law.

*The church and the performing arts, in particular the theatre, have long served as a camouflage and relatively safe haven for homosexuality. This does not mean they are rampant sex clubs, but rather places of tolerance and acceptance.

*Another commentator Gillet, found Butler`s identification of W.H. ridiculous but thought the case for homo-erotic content proven…

˜This dangerous being (the FYM) had all that was necessary to seduce a poet of delicate sensibility, of aristocratic spirit and perhaps a little snobbishness…The simple phenomena of his youth and beauty were a great attraction to the ageing man…Shakespeare was lost. Throughout the S. one can see the sort of disquieting young dog that the FYM was: nonchalant, despotic, insolent, probably malicious, falsehood incarnated in the form of an angel…such was the poet`s terrible experience…my master-mistress…what man ever addressed another man with such self-abasement and such adoration?`

…Gillet concludes by finding the whole cycle…

`the most tragic of human documents, the eternal story of mature age seeking to retain youth, of the superior man seized by a creature of luxury that betrays and martyrs him, and that, under its brilliant plumage, is a soulless nature, a vulgar bird`…

*None of the above takes into account the Triangle affair of the poet`s mistress, the so-called by commentators, Dark Lady, the Fair Young Man and the Poet himself….

`Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still` Q144.

and its earlier-published counterpart….

`When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her though I know she lies…

…Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.`. Q138.

A sensitive duo of sonnets to whet a gossip’s lips at the fin de siecle Court of Elizabeth. The implied heterosexuality of these lines is never questioned. Of course there is one other possibility:

* Bisexuality. Benedict Friedlander a German commentator first discussed this in 1908. He finds his evidence in the Triangle affair dealt with in Q40-42.

*The ancient religions of the Near East and Asia recognized and accepted other sexual practices, as did the Dorian Greeks. The Samurai of Japan also accepted male love and it was commonly commended for warriors. It is Christian history that created the taboo. Then again any form of sex in Christian society is taboo, tied up as it is with morality, leading to sinful, criminal and pathological behaviour.

*Now Sh. certainly had enough examples of homosexuals in art history: Socrates and Plato from the Greek philosophers to Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci in the Renaissance.

*His own time too with near and actual contemporaries like Nicholas Udall, who wrote Ralph Roister Doister, had to quit his post as headmaster of Eton after certain accusations.

*Shakespeare’s greatest poetic rival Christopher Marlowe was accused at trial of atheism and homosexuality. He was killed in a bar fight by some have it a jealous lover, some by espionage agents, some an argument about the receipt or reckoning (see dutch word: rekening). Some say Marlowe used this opportunity to escape away to France and Italy, to undergo primitive plastic surgery and then return to become the immortal Bard in secret under the pseudonym of some schmuck from Stratford called Shagsbirds.

*Other presumably gay writers of his time include Fletcher and Beaumont and the poet Richard Barnfield. No one says the life long friends of Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon, his fellow players, his musician friends, his business relations and fellow speculators were gay. Though who knows? Science tells us nowadays that 50% of the population is definitely heterosexual, 5%-10% is homosexual, which leaves 40% unaccounted for. Who cares?

*I think if you read the Sonnets and Plays with an understanding of the use of bawdy word-play you will find much heterosexual nudge-nudge wink-wink innuendo and not much more. The basic thing to remember is that love is not just sex.

*Sex can lead to disease if practised wantonly. In Shakespeare’s age it could cost you your complexion and in our Age it may cost you your life. The wondrous being that is the FYM had all that was necessary to seduce a poet of delicate sensibility, of aristocratic bent where morality is concerned, leading to sinful, criminal and pathological behaviour. Because even if the FYM was gay, he did sleep with the poet’s mistress!

Yet this shall I ne’er know but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
Q144.