The sonnets addressed to men rather than women

Scholars who believe Shakespeare was gay or bisexual base much of their argument on his sonnets. Most of the sonnets, particularly some considered to be the most idealised, are addressed to men rather than to women.

Sonnet 20 is often at the centre of debate. It begins: “A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted / Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion.”

And the end couplet is: “But since she [Nature] prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure, / Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.”

Sir Stanley Wells said Sonnet 133 “implies that he is involved in a triangular affair with a man and a woman; he writes of it with anguish and implies that both his male and his female lover have abandoned him in a manner that deprives him of his sense of identity: ‘Of him, myself, and thee I am forsaken.’ So it seems pretty clear that he had at least one actively gay relationship.”

Sir Stanley went on: “In his plays, the most clearly gay couple are Patroclus and Achilles in the partly historical Troilus and

Cressida. You can’t avoid playing them as gay. In

Twelfth Night, the sea-captain Antonio speaks of his desire ‘sharp

as fil’d steel’ for the young Viola’s twin brother, Sebastian, which is pretty unambiguous, and in The Merchant of Venice

another Antonio offers his life for the man he loves, Bassanio, who however is in love with, and marries, a woman, Portia. ‘Love’ doesn’t necessarily imply a sexual relationship, but it’s hard to avoid, and most productions over the past half century have played Antonio as gay.”