For a long time, the sexuality of the English playwright, William Shakespeare, has been a topic of conjectures, speculations, and recurring debate. Although he was married to Anne Hathaway, it is often opined that some of his sonnets were addressed to men.
Shakespearean scholars, Professor Sir Stanley Wells and Dr Paul Edmondson might have a definite answer on that commonly asked question. They analysed 182 sonnets Shakespeare wrote from around 1578 onwards and found that, while ten were written for women, 27 were actually addressed to men, PinkNews reports.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Dr Paul Edmondson says, “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.” “It’s become fashionable since the mid-1980s to think of Shakespeare as gay. But he was married and had children. Some of the sonnets are addressed to a female and others to a male. To reclaim the term bisexual seems to be quite an original thing to be doing.”
“Sonnet 40 begins angrily: ‘Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all’ and includes the line: ‘Then if for my love thou my love receivest’, implying that his love has been betrayed,” he said. “In Sonnet 41 Shakespeare – in spite of the betrayal – 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.’”
The two researchers involved in the project will release all their findings from analysing the sonnets of William Shakespeare in their new book (scheduled for release in September), “All the sonnets of Shakespeare.”
