Shakespeare's Homoeroticism

[Ganymede]

Some of the sonnets seem to imply that Shakespeare went both ways.  How do you read this attraction?  Is it simply a romantic friendship, or do you think that more was involved?  And how do high school's teachers miss all the great raunchy stuff hidden in iambic pentameter?  

Ah, non-normative behavior is such a turn-on...

[shaxper]

Well, I don't know if I'd call it going "both ways".  Keep in mind that "homosexuality" as a cultural construct did not exist back in Shakespeare's time.  Men did sometimes sleep with other men, but usually for fun, with no emotional commitment attached, and no exclusive preference for men.  

As for Shaky, himself, in his Sonnets, it seems that what he's doing is exploring his confusion about social designations.  Elizabethan England was a time of social upheaval, what with the rise of the Merchant middle class, the shifting national religion at the top of the Great Chain of Being which told everyone their stations in life, etc.  Not to say that social designations were ever 100% concrete, but people's doubts in them were larger at this point, which is why laws were being passed about what you could wear and such.  If God and nature didn't designate what a person was, then what seperated royalty  from peasants, and men from women?

This is what Shakespeare seemed to be getting at when he found himself attracted to a boy or man who seemed like a woman to him.  He wasn't attracted to his masculinity per se; anything but.  I suspect he may have been attracted to one of the boys who performed in his troop and acted the role of a full grown woman.  After all, when the play was done, where was the line drawn between the boy and the woman?  If all that mattered was genitelia, then (to be blunt) there were still places for Shakespeare to park his William.  What was wrong with loving a boy?  

[Ganymede]

Perhaps Shakespeare tried to rationalize his attraction to a boy by claiming that it was the boy's feminine nature that attracted him, rather than admitting that it was the masculine body.  Or, it could be that it was the blurring of gender that turned Shakey on-- the boy in female clothing, rather than the body or the female persona.  

Shakespeare's sonnets seem anything but sexless to me.  Some of them seem hyper-sexed, very interested in the body and its genitalia.  If it was just a question of love, this wouldn't be so important.  Perhaps Shakespeare was confused himself.  The genitalia doesn't line up between males.  So, he explained it away by saying, it's the boy's feminine face that attracted him, and that nature "pricked" the boy to be a woman, but screwed up and made him a boy instead.  Oh, if only he were a woman, I'd give him some lovin', but alas, he's got male parts.  Oh well, I love him anyway.  

To me, it's important to recognize the sexual nature of these poems.  Even today, sexual attraction is a hard thing to talk about and explain.  But we must not marginalize sexual attraction.  It seemed to be an important part of Shakey's life, and obviously affected his work.

Finally, it makes me doubly uncomfortable that Shakey's homoeroticism is explained away.  If it was desire for a female, would the world be just as quick to rationalize it as something else?  

[shaxper]

Well, Shaky's homoeroticism is only being explained away if it is homoeroticism.    I think that you can easily read the sonnets either way.  Is he considering the feminine qualities of the boy because he is uncomfortable about being attracted to the male body, or is he attracted to the male body because he is attracted to the feminine qualities of the boy and has sexual feelings that go along with that attraction?  

I still don't see it as homoeroticism; not because I find such a thing unacceptable, but because I simply don't think it adds up.  I see Shaky's time as one in which all personal divisions were blurred, and especially since boys and women were often grouped together or compared to one another in both appearance and behavior, it seems doubly likely to me that it was gender confusion, and not an attraction to the same sex that Shakespeare was attempting to deal with.  

Rosalind and Viola could "become" boyish men because (from that culture's perspective) they resembled boys, just as boy actors could play the parts of women.  I think that it would be impossible not to become mystified and taken with this gender blurring if you were working in the theatre.  Shaky may have been trying to justify homosexual desires.  But, given his environment, it seems more likely to me that he couldn't figure out precisely where boys and women (and, more importantly, feelings towards boys and men) differed.

You're not necessarily wrong.  It can be seen either way.  I just believe that the gender blurring theory is more likely.

Looking forward to a reply  

[Ganymede]

I don't understand why it doesn't add up.  He's writing about a boy, a male.  It's possible that he's attracted to his feminine qualities, or attracted to his androgynous qualities (mixture of both male and female).  But it's equally possible that he's rationalizing his desires.  Although homosexuality was not labeled as such in Shakey's time, homosexual acts (which did occur) were labled as deviant acts, ones that might taint one's masculinity.  Perhaps, Shakey tries to say he's attracted to the boy's feminine side to avoid being labeled as effeminate.  Of course, if Shakey wanted to penetrate (rather than be penetrated), that would alleviate some of the stigma, but still sex with a woman was culturally preferable.  

Anywho, I'd like to pick your brain, if I may.  I still don't quite understand why Shakey being in love with a boy isn't a viable option for you.  Perhaps you could point me to a sonnet?  

[Viola]

I point to the sonnets about the dark lady.  That was really a man, I think.  So that's homoerotic.  But whether it was culturally homoerotic remains to be seen, but I would think that maybe the homoerotic element was left out of reports of history.  So history does not report homoeroticism, but that does not mean that it did not exist as a concept and as a phenomenon.

that's my two scents, you pennystinkers!

[Bardolph]

I don't have anything against the concept of homoeroticism in The Sonnets.  I just don't think that it's there.  The procreation sonnets are very focused on just that issue.  Sonnet XX is very clearly a declaration of WS's heterosexuality.  If you take The Sonnets out of their Elizabethan context it is easy to misidentify their intentions.  WS's language to a young nobleman that he wished to urge toward marriage are entirely ordinary for the time.  If not, their publication in 1609 would have raised an extraordinary scandal. Residual traces of that would probably remain in the documentary record, particularly for one who had achieved such fame.  My personal belief is that the two epic poems written for Southhampton were insufficient to sustain WS and that he took a commission from the parents of the Fair Youth to urge him toward procreation.