I’ve just received an e-mail from someone concerned about claims that Shakespeare was a homosexual. My correspondent wrote that, at the place at which she teaches, “we are mired in Gay History Month and its anticipations, and references are being made to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20. I wondered if you could shed any light on this?”
Here’s my response:
The problem with “gay history” is that it is an invention of the last fifty years. It never existed prior to its invention. This is not to say that homosexual practice did not exist, of course, though it would not and could not even be called “homosexual” in Shakespeare’s time because that word is itself an invention of the late nineteenth century, when it was employed to signify something pathological. The word “gay”, of course, is even newer, deriving from mid-twentieth century homosexual underworld slang. The point is that Shakespeare would have been baffled at first and then horrified to discover that gutter-minded “academics”, employing the doubles-entendres of twentieth-century adolescent toilet humour, had inverted his meaning to signify sodomy, which would probably be the only word he would have used to describe the practice of homosexuality.
This being said, let’s humour the inventers of “gay history” by looking at the evidence they present. Sonnet 20, to which you refer, seems to be the strongest evidence that they have to offer. It does talk of “love”, though love meant love to the Elizabethans, not fornication or copulation, and still less sodomy. The word “love” was not used as a mere innuendo, nor would Lennon’s understanding of love as something self-centred and lacking in self-sacrifice have been comprehensible to an Elizabethan. Of course, a cad might feign “love” for vicious purposes but that would make him a liar, not a lover. Since “love” meant “love”, it was often employed to describe a man’s feelings towards another man. Love meant love, as in caritas, something which every Christian is commanded to feel towards every other person, male or female.
To the extent that Shakespeare uses healthy bawdiness in the sonnet, it is absolutely clear that the poet is not interested in the one thing in which homosexuals are obsessed. The “addition” of male genitalia to the person to whom the sonnet is addressed is the “adding [of] one thing to my purpose nothing”, i.e. the poet has no purpose for the additional appendage, which signifies that “Nature [had] prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure”. Shakespeare’s meaning is clear enough. Men are not interested in something that Nature has designed for women’s pleasure. If Sonnet 20 is the best that “gay historians” can do to make a case for the “pinking” of the Bard, they are not likely to convince anyone other than their own in-crowd, or should that be out-crowd!
Thanks for pointing this out! I had first heard of these accusations from the late Joseph Sobran. He loved Shakespeare, but was quite adamant that he was a sodomite. And that was by no way something he admitted lightly, he was in no one a fan of ‘gay’ anything. I guess that is what puzzles me. The queer crowd always paints everyone worthy of note as one of their own, another example of why they are full of it. But why was Sobran, very much a conservative Catholic, convinced that Shakespeare was a homosexual?
Do you have any ideas on this Mr. Pearce? I know your busy, but I would like to hear what you have to say on this issue.
Quite frankly, the issue of Shakespeare’s sexuality seems quite immaterial. It makes as little sense to argue that sonnet 20 means that Shakespeare wasn’t homosexual as it does to argue that sonnet 20 means that Shakespeare was homosexual. In general, the “fair lord” poems are ambiguous enough to be interpreted either way, if they are intended to be expressions of Shakespeare’s personal feelings at all. On that note, I see no reason why homosexuals could not use the sonnet even if Shakespeare was strictly heterosexual: heterosexual couples have no problem with using Elton John to celebrate their love, after all!
On the broader subject, however, I would like to note that homosexuality is quite latent in western culture, and that one obvious reason why explicitly “gay history” is that homosexuality has often been publicly suppressed under Christendom. Prior to Christendom, and indeed in many societies outside it, homosexual relationships were quite common and normal (with a few notable cultural exceptions), so that it hardly seems as though distinctly “gay history” would even have been needed. I think the current interest in homosexuality throughout history has been as a method of critiquing the Church’s claims that homosexuality is contrary to the natural law: the ubiquitous nature of the practice suggests that it is perhaps more complicated.
Touche, Joseph!
In my reading over the years I’ve noticed that male authors who are exclusively or strongly homosexual by inclination — something never, I suspect, of their choosing — cannot convey in an imaginatively convincing fashion the romantic attraction which women hold for ordinary, heterosexual men. I instance two fine authors who were fine men. Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim invests convincing romantic idealism in his portrayal of Jim, just as Waugh does in Brideshead Revisited in his portrayal of Sebastian Flyte; yet Conrad cannot convey convincingly the sexual love which he maintains Jim feels for Jewel, just as Waugh cannot convey convincingly the sexual love which he maintains Charles Rider feels for Julia Flyte.
By contrast, nowhere in literature is the romantic and sexual appeal which a good and beautiful woman can hold for a good man more convincingly conveyed than in Othello’s love for Desdemona, and Romeo’s for Juliet. Moreover, nowhere in Shakespeare’s plays is any kindred feeling of one male for another imparted, even though male-to-male friendship is constantly called “love” in the plays, as was conventional at the time. The only reasonable conclusion which can be drawn is that Shakespeare had experienced strong heterosexual attractions but no homosexual ones.
As for the sonnets, they seem to me as they have seemed to many to be artificial exercises, like piano-pieces whereby the pianist seeks to demonstrate his virtuosity but not his feelings. Genuinely felt snippets such as Sonnet 73’s “Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang” prove the point by their very rarity.
What is “absolutely clear” is that there is no “one thing” in which homosexual persons are “obsessed”, nor is any obsession a hallmark of homosexual persons. “Love” can be used to “describe a [homosexual or bisexual] man’s feelings towards another man”.
R.C., Here’s my response as requested:
However worthy Joseph Sobran may have been in other areas of his writing, he was quite frankly wrong-headed about Shakespeare. Sobran was an Oxfordian, i.e. he did not believe that Shakespeare was Shakespeare, and his book on the subject, “Alias Shakespeare”, was not only poor scholarship but bad journalism.
I didn’t know you had a blog Prof. Pearce. I have your audio lectures on Shakespeare’s Catholicism, and currently been reading your book, The Quest for Shakespeare. Until I came across your lectures and book, I too was an agnostic on the question of Shakespeare’s religion. You have convinced me!
And I had been wondering what your thoughts would be on Shakespeare’s supposed homosexuality. I had a discussion with a friend a while back on this subject. She’s about to receive her PhD now and she specialized in Renaissance literature, while I only have a Masters and my specialty is the modern British novel. She’s very knowledgeable on Shakespeare, and especially his sonnets where you find any modicum of suggest to his homosexuality. And while my friend is relatively moderate for a Lit professor, moderate in today’s Liberal Arts is still solidly on the left side of the cultural divide. I’m squarely conservative. So we had this little friendly debate, but unfortunately she had the better of it, given her advantages in this field. I think she cited sonnet 57 to further support her argument. But I’m definitely not convinced. I’m glad to have come across your thoughts and your blog. I will definitely be a follower.
Thanks for the response Mr. Pearce!
Yes, I did forget that Sobran was an Oxfordian, I guess that should have tipped me off. While I like Sobran’s work, his Shakespeare stuff always had me shaking my head.
I see alot of weird comments on this post, I’d like to make a few of my own…
As to what Scotty said, well I have to just disagree. Homosexuality was not a staple of the the entire world before Christianity came about. There was the practice of it in some areas, but not most. And as to the practice, I mean ritualized sodomy, which is not the same thing as ‘homosexuality’. And again, not in most places in the world, including western civ. The Barbarian north did not practice it, only Greece/Rome. Some places in the middle east as well. But it was not as widespread as some have made it out to be. Just look at Japan for instance, they were not even aware of homosexuality until they were westernized. Christendom was not the only place that supressed ‘homosexuality’, and by that I mean sodomy. Another example of this is spread of ‘gay rights’, they would not need to be pushed all over the earth if most cultures had already imbraced homosex. And even considering ancient Greece/Rome. Not everyone thought highly of sodomy. Many disdained it, including Aristotle. And on the matter of ‘homosexuality’ in the ancient world, this is very different than the modern variation, what with it’s marriage and adoption desires. Homosex in the ancient world was just that, sodomy. A man was still expected to love a women.
To Colin Jory, are you implying that Evelyn Waugh was gay?
To Paul, you know what Pearce meant, and I think obsession was the right word choice. And as to ‘love’, however it is expressed today is beyond the point. ‘Love’ in Shakespeare’s would not have been used to express those desires, that is what pearce meant.
You mean the author of this piece has written a book saying Shakespeare was Catholic? That is just as much fringe and a perversion of the truth as his homosexuality.