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And Shakespeare knew that tension within himself. Same-sex intimacy in The Two Noble Kinsmen Read
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New Perspectives on Gender and Desire in the Bard’s Work
London — For centuries, William Shakespeare has been celebrated as the pinnacle of English literature, his works dissected for their linguistic brilliance and timeless themes.
The British Library’s 2023 exhibitionLove and Desire in the Renaissance prominently featured his sonnets alongside letters from same-sex couples of the era.
Activists argue that embracing Shakespeare’s potential queerness enriches his legacy. I do believe that the sonnets provide the key to his soul, as Wordsworth said, that Shakespeare unlocked his heart in these sonnets, and they bear witness to the ecstatic turmoil of being in love: the furious jealousy, the pleasure, the pain, the longing, the loneliness, the futility, the sense of inadequacy that can accompany that sort of passion.
This is a huge subject, and it's something that there’s been a great deal of writing and research done on, so if it is something that interests you, I would encourage you to read further on it; but I hope that was a helpful and interesting introduction to the subject.
So thanks for joining us, and thanks to all the people who spoke to me today: we had Liz, Stanley, Michael, and Greg, and a huge thanks to the friends of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, without whom the podcast would not have been possible.
Don’t forget to join us next week for episode eight, where we’ll be asking “How much was Shakespeare worth?”
Related Posts:
– Queering Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes
– Shakespeare’s Many Moods of Love
(Homo)sexuality in Shakespeare’s Sonnets
The great actor Sir Ian McKellen, who is also well-known as a gay activist, was recently quoted in the press as saying that Shakespeare himself was probably gay.
It’s not the ‘wrong’ thing to ask, and I’m beginning to wonder if it really is so anachronistic to think about the sexual orientation of historical people. And so, because the word ‘love’ covers such a broad spectrum of relationships in Shakespeare’s day, his use of it doesn’t tell you very much about his sexual feelings towards other people. It’s also true that we now, in our society, have this idea that it’s women who form these very close, emotional friendships.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Some of them, however, and these tend to be the less popular ones, are intimate poems. There has been a lot of time and effort put into exploring who these may have been written for, who they were intended for, and if that’s something you’re interested in, there’s plenty to read out there about it, but, for now, Stanley Wells gave me an excellent summary and his thoughts on Shakespeare’s sexuality.
WELLS: Shakespeare’s personal writings, it would be appear, are his sonnets.
He says, “Suffolk first died: and York, all haggled over, / Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteep'd, / And takes him by the beard; kisses the gashes / That bloodily did spawn upon his face; / And cries aloud 'Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk! He says, “I have nightly since / Dreamt of encounters 'twixt thyself and me; / We have been down together in my sleep, / Unbuckling helms, fisting each other's throat, / And waked half dead with nothing.” Now, that is a pretty [chuckles] extraordinary erotic description of male passion.
And of course, there’s also a description on the battlefield of homophobia – of homophobic prejudice, at any rate – and in the most scurrilous terms, in the mouth of Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, where he derides the love of Achilles for his friend Patroclus, saying, “Thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.” And Patroclus rails at that and says, “Male varlet, you rogue!
The dramatist who gave us the playfully queer wooing of Orlando and ‘Ganymede’ in As You Like It also created happy hetero couple Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. Widespread same-sex bed-sharing, the high value placed on single-gender friendship, and a generally un-prudish attitude to bodily functions created an environment in which homosexual acts, while technically illegal, went virtually unreported and unpunished.
‘But I still feel a bit caught out when someone wants to talk about Shakespeare’s sexuality.
So, Shakespeare certainly didn’t go around self-identifying himself as homosexual or bisexual or straight or gay. We’ve paid money so that we can stare at other people’s bodies for two hours. It’s an interesting phrase.
Invited to comment on this, I pointed out that there was nothing new in the idea, which for a long time has been frequently expressed especially because some of his sonnets are clearly addressed to a male. If, by that, you mean, “Did he have sex or sexual feelings for other men?”, it’s certainly not impossible that he did; it’s certainly not definite that he did.