Happy 451st birthday, William Shakespeare! If you had lived in modern times you would no doubt have enjoyed yellow cake with chocolate icing. We’ll think of you as we savor each delicious bite.
I had planned a diary with the title, “Shakespeare: Was He or Wasn’t He? And If He Was, Who Cares?” but decided it would be futile. I don’t really care whether or not Shakespeare was bisexual. Whether he was or wasn’t, the fact that Master Shakespeare left us a magnificent legacy in the form of the plays, the sonnets, and the long poems, is enough for me.
To give non-Shakespeare fans some idea as to why Shakespeare’s sexuality is in question, let’s consider two sonnets. (Just two—we don’t want to bore you by ranting on and on about it.) Please undo the ornate Elizabethan lock and follow me into the salon for the discussion.
Is it possible that the sonnets addressed to the Earl of Southampton, who is thought to have been Shakespeare’s patron, simply reflect the anxiety of a man who was not of his patron’s class and therefore could not feel entitled to be in his company?
Sonnet 57
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you;
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave stay and think of nought
Save where you are, how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love, that in your Will
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.
But when one encounters sonnets such as the following, questions naturally arise in one’s mind:
Sonnet 75
So are you to my thoughts as food to life
Or as sweet show’rs are to the ground
And for the love of you I hold such strife
As ‘twixt a miser and his wealth are found.
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure:
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
And by and by clean starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight
Save what is had, or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
Is it possible that this kind of language is merely friendship carried to extremes, as was the case with Eleanor Roosevelt’s letters to her best friend, Lorena Hickok? We shall never know. Probably we are not meant to know.
Does anyone out there spend time thinking about Shakespeare or reading his work? It’s possible that I think about him more often than most people do because lines from the sonnets or the plays drift through my mind six days out of seven. I wish I had time to sit down and read all the plays again but my current mode of life simply does not permit such a thing.
If you would like to say something about the Bard and his birthday (alleged or actual—again, who cares?), or comment on what his work has meant to you, feel free!