New research out of the United Kingdom has come to a provocative and questionably accurate conclusion: William Shakespeare, the greatest writer of the English language (or, for that matter, any language), was a bisexual man.
Sir Stanley Wells and Dr. Paul Edmonson, two UK-based Shakespeare scholars, came to the conclusion after a thorough analysis of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Of 182 sonnets, the pair concluded that 10 were written for women, while at least 27 were written for men. The duo arranged the sonnets in a likely chronological order based on phrases mirrored in Shakespeare’s plays. As they did so, a pattern began to emerge.
“The language of sexuality in some of the sonnets, which are definitely addressed to a male subject, leaves us in no doubt that Shakespeare was bisexual,” Edmondson told UK newspaper The Telegraph. “It’s become fashionable since the mid-1980s to think of Shakespeare as gay. But he was married and had children. Some of these sonnets are addressed to a female and others to a male. To reclaim the term bisexual seems to be quite an original thing to be doing.”
Related: Sir Ian McKellen Is Quite Certain That Shakespeare Was A Big Poof
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Edmonson and Wells also concluded that at least one sonnet makes reference to Shakespeare in a three-way relationship.
“Sonnet 40 begins angrily: ‘Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all’ and includes the line: ‘Then if for my love thou my love receivest’, implying that his love has been betrayed,” Wells noted. “In Sonnet 41 Shakespeare – in spite of the betrayal – admires the beauty of both his male and his female lover: ‘Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee,/ Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.’”
As Wells and Edmonson noted, Shakespeare had a long marriage to Anne Hathaway, a woman eight years his senior. Speculation about the playwright’s sexuality is actually nothing new. In 1640, a printing of his sonnets changed most of the male pronouns to female to obscure any reference to potential homosexuality. Debate reignited in 1780 with the publication of the original texts which retained the references to same-sex love. Noted authors since, including Oscar Wilde and Robert Browning, have speculated that Shakespeare harbored same-sex attractions.
Kangol2
Shakespeare lived before the existence of sexual categories as we know them, but it’s hardly news that he addressed a significant number of those beautiful sonnets, some of the greatest and most enduring poems in the English language, to a young man. Sonnet 20 even contains overt sexual innuendos that today would be considered gay or queer. His plays include a great deal of gender-bending and queerness well before our current understanding of those terms, and there’s a subtlety in some of these works that anticipates psychological and social shifts hundreds of years before the fact. Whether he actually acted on his desires, his mind and imagination were capaciousness enough–and readers of his day and in subsequent eras–were able to imagine love and desire beyond the heteronormative binary.
Observant
Thanks for your comment, Kangol2. That was succinct, informed, and beautifully written.
Georgeiv2
Well put there Sir,
I hate the fact that we need to label everyone these days He wrote some of the most beautiful pieces in the English language lets just enjoy it
wikidBSTN
Sounds nice – but totally wrong. Shakespeare and “the readers of his day” lived in Elizabethan England where hetero normative was more taken for granted and “enforced” than even today. If you think the Church and the idea of sodomy as a sin didn’t have a strong hold over society in the 16th and 17th Centuries then you just don’t know your history.
Joshooeerr
There was as much of a queer subculture in Shakespeare’s time as there is today, with public houses that catered to gay men and cross-dressers (“Molly houses” was one term), etc. And the theatre was then, as ever, a haven for homos. The Church might have been powerful, but it was as much ignored then as it is now, and the law’s attitude to homosexual activity wavered from punishing to turning a blind eye from Shakespeare’s time to Oscar Wilde’s. It’s a much more nuanced picture than you imply.
Donston
Honestly, I think it’s in poor taste to be “labeling” people that have been dead for hundreds of years. If we are welcoming people nowadays saying they are whatever they want to say they are and folks alter their identities all the time, then why are some obsessed with declaring someone from long ago was whatever the hell? The conclusion of the research is also borderline anti-gay. They’re pretty much saying: “those few people who think Shakespeare was ‘gay’, no, he was actually ‘bi’, because he was married to a chick and had kids”. As if many men who are homosexual or gay identifying haven’t been married to women and/or don’t have kids, especially 100s of years ago. As if homophobia and hetero expectations were not a thing back then. As if “gay” men are incapable of writing about hetero romantic stuff. And as if “straight” men are incapable of writing anything homo-erotic or “queer-ish”. The writings suggest some type of “queerness” maybe. But there’s really no way to determine lifestyle or preferences. Whether he was heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or experienced some degrees of fluidity. Where he fit in the gender, romantic, affection, sexual, emotional investment, relationship contentment spectrum. Or what his sense of self was and what identities he would have embraced if he was going to embrace any. Or how much sociology or expectations affected his work. We don’t even know if he ever had a male “lover”. Hell, we don’t even know if most the poems were written from his perspective.
Do the research. But don’t try to tell us what someone was, especially not based on poems. This type of stuff is a persistent issue with identity politics and agenda pushing.
revashayne
The same thing happens when people talk about Oscar Wilde. It’s supposed that he was “bisexual” because he had a wife and children but leave off the context of the virulently homophobic era he lived in.
Donston
It’s especially dumb with Oscar Wilde, because by then there were homophobic laws in place, laws Oscar was eventually imprisoned for. While so much of his work had genuine underlinings homo-eroticism and homo-romanticism, as opposed to a handful of sonnets that no one knows the origins or perspective of. And it’s fairly well known that during his hetero marriage Oscar spent most of his time with his male lover. But some folks are just obsessed with somebody being “bi”. Even nowadays homosexual and “gay” identifying people indulge marriage or have kids. It’s just a dumb thing to use. You’re pretty much using 100s of years of hetero institutions, hetero expectations and homophobia to detach people from “gay” and push the “bi agenda”. It’s really corny and transparent. And too many “queers” indulge so this.
But really, I’m just not here for “labeling” long dead people in general. We can investigate their work, talk about their lives, their potential dimensions and struggles. But just don’t go “labeling” these folks. Many people say that they’re really about not pushing people out of the closet, being okay with self-identity, acknowledging internalized homophobia and hetero pressures and queer insecurities mental health struggles, trying to understand fluidity or contradictions or the gender, romantic, sexual, affection, emotional investment, commitment spectrum. But a lot of those people aren’t truly about that life. That just want to push identities or their individual agendas.
Kangol2
Actually, Donston, people know quite well that Shakespeare wrote his famous sonnets. 154 of them were collected and published in 1609, during Shakespeare’s lifetime, under his name, with 6 more appearing in his plays, so it’s hardly the case that no one knows who wrote them, etc.
Also, if you have read them, it is clear in many that the addressee is a young man who is beloved by the poetic speaker, who is not a woman. This is neither news nor new to anyone who has studied them. Additionally there are numerous examples in his plays of cross-dressing, cross-gender-play, queer desire, and so on. In Twelfth Night in particular, he pushes the boundaries.
Again, this comes long before the “invention” of heterosexuality or homosexuality as we know them, or later categories, but it is also the case that there were writers during Shakespeare’s era who are known to have engaged in same-sexual relationships (Christopher Marlowe, etc.), so you’re right that contemporary labels are problematic, but at the same time, it is also important to reclaim figures from the past to underscore, particularly to homophobes but also to LGBTQ people, that people engaging in same-sex relationships and expressing same sex desire in their work are anything but new, as homophobes like to claim.
That the greatest writer–or one of them–in the English language was writing love poems to another man and including queer content in his work is significant. Shakespeare’s language (“a piece of work,” “knock knock,” “bated breath,” “as good luck would have it,” etc.) and imagination still live with us today.
Den
“Honestly, I think it’s in poor taste to be ‘labeling’ people that have been dead for hundreds of years.”
So sorry that the scholarship of others does not conform to your agenda and beliefs regarding sexuality, affectional preference and labels.
So sorry that the desire to understand the lives of long dead artists based on their work within the context of their time is offensive to you.
So sorry that the need for marginalized folks (lgbt in this case) to seek out our forebearers seems beyond your understanding.
But the scholarship and needs will persist nonetheless.
Yes, the notion that just because Shakespeare was married he was bisexual is foolish, but there is obviously more behind that notion. And despite the fact that most art is not biographical (an odd modern notion), it nonetheless offers clues to the personality that devised it.
Donston
Kangol2, I never questioned if Shakespeare wrote them. I’ve actually read some (for school). I questioned whether they were excerpts from abandoned plays or sonnets he took out of published plays. And I questioned the perspective of poems. Plenty of Shakespeare’s sonnets are clearly written from the perspective of a character. While plenty of his published sonnets were indeed from his plays. I never questioned their authenticity. Only one poster here has done that.
Shakespeare being “queer” or not is beside the point to me. Even the suggestion doesn’t bother me. While wanting to investigate the nature and dimensions and struggles of long dead people is fine and expected. I’m simply not here for “labeling” people who have been dead for hundreds of years and using sonnets as the basis. I’m not here for “labeling” people in general who can’t speak for themselves. And I definitely don’t like the “he was ‘bi’ not ‘gay” nonsense agenda from the researchers and using hetero marriage and kids to push that “bi” identity. It’s all problematic as hell for a number of reasons.
ProfessorDave
All this no labeling of people in the past is well and good, but really. The work speaks for itself. If these sonnets had been written during the early 20th century when we DID have labels, would we not say the same thing about the writer? Gay people have existed since the beginning of human history as waas made perfectly obvious by the ancient Greeks. LGBTQ people have a long history; let’s not try to sweep that under the rug.
Donston
It’s not about pushing history under the rug. It’s about making sure you don’t misinterpret things and see things the way you want to see them. We don’t even know the nature of those sonnets. Were they written for a play/plays he abandoned? Were they sonnets he edited out of finished plays? Were they all poems written from his perspective? Were they his “secret poems” to a male lover or about a guy he wanted or was infatuated with? No one knows any of this. There is no “evidence” of anything outside of those sonnets.
Furthermore, the “he had to be ‘bi’ and we’re reclaiming ‘bi” nonsense was condescending and problematic as hell. The point of the research seemed to be more about trying to “prove” he was was “bi” and not “gay”, as opposed to trying to show he was “queer”. We’re talking about homophobia and hetero expectations from 100s of years ago. So, using a wife and kids to highlight he was “bi” is just idiotic. Also, nowadays we’re talking more and more about the individuality of sexuality, gender, potential fluidity, and the gender, romantic, sexual, affection, emotional, relationship contentment spectrum. So, trying to “prove” someone from 100s of years ago was “bi” as opposed to “gay” just comes off old-fashioned and obsessed with identity politics.
Talk about things. Explore things. No one is saying not to do so, at least I’m not. But you don’t have to “label” anyone, especially since all you have are sonnets from 100s of years ago. And yes, I say the same thing about people living today.
Den
We know that many of them were printed privately and distributed among his friends, so clearly they were not “secret poems”. And we also know that 154 of them were published for sale in 1609.
And whether they were “written from his perspective” or not, an examination of an artists work reveals a great deal about his interior life. Your position is kind of like some art historian hundreds of years from now looking at the works of Jean Cocteau, Jean Genet, Marsden Hartley, Paul Cadmus, or Charles Demuth and objecting to any kind of label regarding their sexual preferences.
BigJohnSF
Research shows that Shakespeare lived long before a bunch of grad students decided to adopt a hateful term of oppression as their label., Shakespeare understood the power of words, and would have rejected the homophobic label “queer” out of hand.
Donston
Y’all really need to get over this “queer” obsession. If you hate the word so much then you probably shouldn’t be visiting this site considering its namesake. Words evolve, and “queer” has been widely accepted by many as this catch-all term, including by many homosexual, “gay” identifying, overall homo-leaning people. You don’t have to embrace it. No one is forcing you to. But trying to shame people for using “queer” at this point is just petty and counterproductive. That’s really something folks need to get over.
Duncanb
True that queer used to be a homophobic term. However now it has become a term that unsettles all the discourses that are the mainstay of homosexual oppression. The term “to queer” means destabilising the hidden oppression in how we speak of things in everyday language, how our oppression is embedded in the way society is put together. Queer theory is a major tool to theorise and dismantle human oppression in general. Queer as an umbrella term also includes the vast range of sexualities and genders that are excluded from the Cis-gender binaries of exclusively heterosexual biological male and female. It is our friend and evidence of a world changed and changing, evolving and improving. It offends sensibilities because it is unashamed and revolutionary.
Fahd
From my perspective, a great deal of the literary criticism of the last century or so devoted a lot of space to fitting the personal lives and works of authors into Victorian-style, hetero-normative puritanical pigeon holes. Basically, there has been a lot of lying and mold-fitting going on. So, now the pendulum swings, and it seems a newer set of literary critics/historians are imposing a newer set of labels that also would have been foreign to the studied authors. However, I think it is progress, and overall, the closer the historical record is to being accurate the better it is so that we might appreciate these authors’ legacies and appreciate human sexuality as it has been historically and as it has evolved.
rand503
Yes, I agree, we must be careful with assumptions and being so sure about things in the past. That should extent to the assumption that Shakespeare actually wrote those sonnets.
Kangol2
Shakespeare published the sonnets in his lifetime! In 1609. He died in 1616. They were known to be by him. The provenance of some of the plays is sketchy, along with some other poems by him, but it is widely established that those famous “Shakes-peares Sonnets,” issued in London, were by him. This isn’t a subject of doubt.
Joshua333
He wrote Sonnets about liking both men and women, he was not straight.
wikidBSTN
This is NOTHING new.
And what does it matter if the merchant William Shakespeare was gay or bi? He didn’t even write the stuff.
More likely, it was Christopher Marlowe – who was gay – living in exile abroad in Italy. Marlowe had the education and knowledge of both life at royal court and the countries that appear in the works attributed to Shakespeare. The man William Shakespeare, who was real, had none of these and likely didn’t even have more than a rudimentary education.
Heywood Jablowme
Marlowe died in 1593, very early in Shakespeare’s career, and long before the sonnets were published.
Kangol2
Heywood is so right about Marlowe.
Shakespeare probably attended school in Stratford, then began writing as a teenager. He also is thought to have spent several years as a teacher, which would have allowed him to refine his writing, and read extensively. By the time he began to make his name in the 1590s, he was already being singled out by peers as an undereducated upstart whose skill with language both impressed and annoyed them. Lastly, by the time he and his collaborators were staging plays under the Royal patent, he would have had considerable access to many spheres of life in Britain. As someone pointed out a few years, based on the London of his era, Shakespeare would have interactions with Black people (and they appear in his plays), Jewish people (same), and both the highest and lowest levels of that society. All appear in his plays. Lastly, John Florio, a brilliant Italian-born editor, possibly collaborated with and then edited and revised Shakespeare’s plays. (Fun fact: Florio ranks third in new words introduced into English after Chaucer and Shakespeare!)
Also, many of the major writers in English had minimal formal education. Just a few: Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, H. G. Wells, Edith Wharton, George Bernard Shaw, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, Doris Lessing, Augusten Burroughs, etc.
BoomerMyles
Bisexual chic was always a thing.
ShiningSex
sexuality is never “chic”. that kind of thinking is why idiots think it’s a choice.
ShiningSex
he was at least bi. come on folks. no straight man would write like that.