Shakespeare’s sonnets reveal he was bisexual, say academics
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was undeniably bisexual, according to new research by leading scholars.
Prof Sir Stanley Wells and Dr Paul Edmondson, of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, claim their new analysis of language used in his sonnets prove some were addressed to women, and others to men. They say their findings, to be published in a new book, should end all speculation over the playwright’s sexuality and whether he had affairs during his 34-year marriage to Anne Hathaway.
The two scholars rearranged the 154 sonnets of the 1609 edition into the order in which they were probably written, interspersing them with those from Shakespeare’s plays, to present him as a writer of 182 sonnets.
The new edition concludes that these were not sequences of sonnets, but individual or sometimes interrelated poems written over at least 30 years.
It observes that of “some of the most powerfully lyrical, resonant and memorable poems ever written about what it feels like to experience romantic love”, only 27 are addressed to males while just 10 are to females and most are “open in their directions of desire”, including the famous Sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”. They also conclude that long-held assumptions that Shakespeare was captivated by the so-called “Fair Youth” and led astray by the “Dark Lady” are not true, as the characters never existed in his life and were in fact multiple people.
Previous research suggested he had affairs with both, and they have become so synonymous with Shakespeare’s life story that they have featured as characters in modern day adaptations telling the story of his life.
It challenges the long-held assumption that Sonnets 1 to 126 are all addressed to or concern the Fair Youth, and that Sonnets 127 to 154 are all about a Dark Lady. Dr Edmondson said: “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... To reclaim the term bisexual seems to be quite an original thing to be doing.”
Prof Wells singled out, for example, “two bisexual mini-sequences”, Sonnets 40 to 42, and 133 to 134, which have “profound implications for how we understand Shakespeare’s life”.
In those, he addresses a shift in a three-way relationship when his male lover takes his mistress away from him. In Sonnet 41 Shakespeare 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.”
All the Sonnets of Shakespeare will be published by Cambridge University Press on Sept 10.