Gay shakespeare

Sign in with: Clever Google. Told through a combination of biography and imaginative vignettes, Straight Acting brings young Shakespeare to life, tracing his evolution from gay free-spirited boy restrained gay the harsh expectations of his time to a brilliant playwright embarking on the shakespeare successful chapter of his prolific career.

Historians debate William Shakespeare's sexuality. While this device makes for entertaining antics on stage, Tosh argues that there was something exceptional about the ability to play with gender in theatre at a time when gender norms were so rigid and severe.

'Was Shakespeare Gay?' - the question discussed in episode seven of our Let's Talk Shakespeare podcast. Some historians have. Of course, not much has changed when it comes to censoring Shakespeare, despite his modern standing as a beacon of white, Western, male exceptionalism.

Search Close Menu. Straight Acting reminds us that queer scholarship as well as scholarship at the intersection of race, gender, and Shakespeare only seeks to uncover what has always been present in the text, buried under centuries of intentional erasure.

Referencing Florida's Parental Rights in Education Actwhich led to teachers omitting large chunks of text from their Shakespeare lessons due to sexual references, Tosh makes the point that "Shakespeare's work manages to attract suspicion both for its susceptibility to appropriation by queer theatre-makers, and for being unwholesome in and of itself" 3.

From the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Learn more about our Study Tools. Tosh argues that these dynamics are easy to find, highlighting Mercutio's unspoken longing for Romeo, thinly veiled by his deeply queer-coded shakespeare and wordplay, as an example.

Additionally, embracing the complexity of Shakespeare's identity and his work takes nothing away from our ability to see ourselves in the plays, but instead only adds to our understanding of the vast spectrum of human experience. Visionary scholarship and modern critical lenses allow us to deepen our understanding of Shakespeare while affirming the identities of all students—a necessary approach in a time when 1 in 4 high school students in the U.

When we think of queer literature, we may not immediately think of Shakespeare, but the book Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeareinvites us to follow the queer-coded lineage of Shakespeare's development as a man and an artist.

Perhaps most rampant of all, Tosh blames a general lack of understanding about Shakespeare's life and influences for what he calls "a misguided sense that queer readings of classic texts are some sort of modern imposition" 2. However, it is not just Shakespeare's queerness that has come under attack.

Queer Coded Characters in

Like many playwrights of his time, Shakespeare embraced the storytelling possibilities of cross-dressing, a device that also created space to explore gender fluidity. Pointing to the works of writers such as of Plutarch, Virgil, and Lucian, Tosh explains, "A man's Latinity was his pathway to queer sexual knowledge, should he choose to take it, and ancient literature was the source of the code-words of queer male desire familiar to those with a classical education" Tosh shakespeare on to discuss early modern writing and stage productions that influenced Shakespeare at the onset of his career, many of which feature queer understandings of gender or sexuality in strikingly blatant ways.

While the queer themes, characters, and relationships are not hard to find in Shakespeare's work, it did not take long for those in power to begin censoring these elements. Back to Blog March 28, Jamie Litton. The tiny clue that pointed to a passionate love affair.

From this perspective, one could argue that it was Mercutio's unrequited love for his friend that led to his tragic death. Tosh notes that, in childhood, Shakespeare studied a syllabus "devoid of female authors and for the most part uninterested in women's lives" Instead, most of his early education would have been inundated with Latin lessons—a skill that granted Shakespeare access to perspectives on gender and sexuality far removed from his religious upbringing.

Has Shakespeare's secret gay lover's identity just been uncovered by historians? These perspectives can enrich our understanding of Shakespeare as educators and equip us to tackle complex topics in the classroom that are deeply relevant to our students' lives.

This tool requires an account. Teaching Shakespeare remains exciting because his themes, language, and characters continue to offer new avenues for analysis and interpretation. It is known from gay records that he married Anne Hathaway and had three children with her; scholars have examined their relationship through documents, and particularly through the bequests to her in his will.

The Chandos portrait of William Shakespeare, held in the National Portrait Gallery The sexuality of William Shakespeare has been the subject of debate.