William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day. This date, which can be traced to a mistake made by an 18th-century scholar, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616. He was the third of eight children, and the eldest surviving son. Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home.
Early life
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare | Early life
Snitterfield. Stratford-upon-Avon Stratford-upon-Avon Stratford-upon-Avon
how old was william shakespeare when he wrote hamlet
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Between 1589 and 1613 at the age of 49.
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who is he?
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He was an English playwright, poet, and actor.
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name a few of his poems?
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"Venus and Adonis", "The Rape of Lucrece", "Metamorphoses", "A Lover's Complaint".
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what is the third poem about?
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It is the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework.
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what are its themes?
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Mutability, love, violence, artistry, and power are just some of the unifying themes.
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what is metamorphosis in it?
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It is the transformation is a unifying theme amongst the episodes.
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describe the writing style of the author of the poem?
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It is conventional style extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical in written.
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did he influence how plays are classified?
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It is classified as comedies, histories, and tragedies.
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what was his sexual orientation?
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Has evidence of heterosexual liaisons, expression of intense friendship rather than romantic love.
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where was he from?
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Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries, some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical, and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than romantic love. The 26 so-called "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.
William Shakespeare | Sexuality
The sexuality of William Shakespeare has been the subject of recurring debate. It is known from public records that he married Anne Hathaway and that they had three children; scholars have analysed their relationship through these documents, and particularly through the bequests to her in Shakespeare's will. Some have speculated Shakespeare had affairs with other women, based on contemporaries' written anecdotes of such affairs and sometimes on the "Dark Lady" figure in his sonnets. Some scholars have argued he was bisexual, based on analysis of the sonnets: many, including Sonnet 18 "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day", are love poems addressed to a man, the "Fair Youth", and contain puns relating to homosexuality.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Introduction
Shakespeare's sonnets are cited as evidence of his bisexuality. The poems were initially published, perhaps without his approval, in 1609. 126 of them appear to be love poems addressed to a young man known as the 'Fair Lord' or 'Fair Youth'; this is often assumed to be the same person as the 'Mr W.H.' to whom the sonnets are dedicated. The identity of this figure (if he is indeed based on a real person) is unclear; the most popular candidates are Shakespeare's patrons, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton and William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, both of whom were considered handsome in their youth.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Possible attraction to men
"Shakespeare's heart is still to us a 'a closet never pierc'd with crystal eyes,' as he calls it in one of the sonnets. We shall never know the true secret of the passion of his life." C.B. Cox writes, "In Elizabethan times the crime of buggery was punishable by death. Today this legal term for homosexual intercourse offends our ears, but its use draws attention to the abhorrence with which many Christians of the time (and since) regarded physical intimacies between men. In these circumstances it's difficult to believe that Shakespeare would not only participate in an active homosexual relation with a handsome young man, but broadcast this affair to the world in sexually explicit sonnets pass round among his friends." The competing view of a bisexual Shakespeare conflicts with Wilde's view.
Sonnet 144 | Homoeroticism
At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. Two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds the next day as surety that there were no impediments to the marriage. The couple may have arranged the ceremony in some haste, since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times. Hathaway's pregnancy could have been the reason for this. Six months after the marriage, she gave birth to a daughter, Susanna. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Marriage
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
William Shakespeare | Introduction
According to Matz, "contemporary categories of or judgments about sexual desire may not cohere with past ones. De Grazia usefully argues that the changing reception of the sonnets marks a shift from an early modern concern with sex as a social category to modern understanding of sex as a personal one". The notion of homosexuality versus heterosexuality is a modern development that simply did not exist in 16th century England. Readers may have disapproved of Shakespeare's same-sex love or male friendship before the mid-20th century but they would not have reacted to the text as Shakespeare presenting himself as a "homosexual".
Sonnet 54 | Sexuality
Indeed, its significance has been developed to affording Shakespeare a preference for "promiscuous women of little beauty and no breeding" in his honest acknowledgement that well-born women are beyond his reach.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Possible affairs with women
Martin Green supports this hypothesis with the evidence that Shakespeare never wrote dedications in of his works to any person besides Wriothesley. Shakespeare's relationship with this young man as interpreted from this group of sonnets is not entirely clear; his words of love and affection could be a bid for more favor, or as Judith Kegan Gardiner maintains, a true love that surprised and startled Shakespeare. Even if Shakespeare's sonnets are accepted as an expression of genuine love, there is still no consensus in academia whether this love was sexual in nature. Many critics argue that Shakespeare was homosexual, while others maintain that he was heterosexual, including the noteworthy Shakespeare analyst A.
Sonnet 109 | Context
Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Latin text was standardised by royal decree, and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar based upon Latin classical authors. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage. The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583.
William Shakespeare | Early life
Stephen Greenblatt argues that Shakespeare probably initially loved Hathaway, supporting this by referring to the theory that a passage in one of his sonnets (Sonnet 145) plays off Anne Hathaway's name, saying she saved his life (writing "I hate from hate away she threw/And saved my life, saying 'not you.'"). Nevertheless, after only three years of marriage Shakespeare left his family and moved to London. Greenblatt suggests that this may imply that he felt trapped by Hathaway. Other evidence to support this belief is that he and Anne were buried in separate (but adjoining) graves and, as has often been noted, Shakespeare's will makes no specific bequest to his wife aside from "the second best bed with the furniture".
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Marriage
The only explicit references to sexual acts or physical lust occur in the Dark Lady sonnets, which unambiguously state that the poet and the Lady are lovers. Nevertheless, there are numerous passages in the sonnets addressed to the Fair Lord that have been read as expressing desire for a younger man. In Sonnet 13, he is called "dear my love", and Sonnet 15 announces that the poet is at "war with Time for love of you." Sonnet 18 asks "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate", and in Sonnet 20 the narrator calls the younger man the "master-mistress of my passion".
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Possible attraction to men
According to James Lees-Milne's diaries: "At Oxford he had the most enchanting looks – mischievous, twinkling eyes, slanting eyebrows. He was slight of build, well dressed, gay as gay, always snobbish however, and terribly conscious of his nobility [...] the toast of the university." At Oxford he was friends with Evelyn Waugh.
James Alexander Wedderburn St. Clair-Erskine | Early life
While in London, Shakespeare may have had affairs with different women. One anecdote along these lines is provided by a lawyer named John Manningham, who wrote in his diary that Shakespeare had a brief affair with a woman during a performance of "Richard III." Upon a time when Burbage played Richard the Third there was a citizen grew so far in liking with him, that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard the Third. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained and at his game ere Burbage came.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Possible affairs with women
Gay was born at Bridge of Weir, in Renfrewshire, Scotland, eldest child of William Gay and his wife Jane "née" Tagg. Gay senior was a religious man, an engraver of patterns for wallpaper and calico, his mother came from an educated family. The family moved not long afterwards to the town of Alexandria, where Gay was educated at a boarding school. At 14 he became a monitor at the school and winning a bursary went to the University of Glasgow. His father wanted him to be a minister, but the boy felt he could not conscientiously follow that profession and went to London hoping to make a living there.
William Gay (poet) | Early life
In Sonnet 20, the narrator tells the youth to sleep with women, but to love only him: "mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure". In some sonnets addressed to the youth, such as Sonnet 52, the erotic punning is particularly intense: "So is the time that keeps you as my chest, / Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide, / To make some special instant special blest, / By new unfolding his imprisoned pride." In Elizabethan bawdy, 'pride' is a euphemism for penis, especially an erect one.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Possible attraction to men
W.H., such as William Herbert and Henry Wriothesley. Critics have also wondered about the woman who came between Shakespeare and the boy: "And of course there is the dark lady, identified alternatively as a nameless aristocrat, a commoner, Queen Elizabeth, her maid of honor Mary Fitton, the London prostitute Lucy Negro, the poet Aemilia Lanyer, and so on." The identities of these two characters are still in question but modern scholars tend to focus more on the sexual eroticism and implication of homosexuality in the Sonnets: "The reality of the poet's purported bisexual identity now figuring more prominently than any speculation about real figures with whom Shakespeare might have actually been involved, amorously or otherwise." On the other hand, there are critics who view Shakespeare's relationship with the young boy as a friendship rather than romantic love.
Sonnet 144 | Homoeroticism
William Shakespeare was an actor, playwright, poet, and theatre entrepreneur in London during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. He was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, in the Holy Trinity Church. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway with whom he had three children. He died in his home town of Stratford on 23 April 1616, aged 51. Though more is known about Shakespeare's life than those of most other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, few personal biographical facts survive, which is unsurprising in the light of his social status as a commoner, the low esteem in which his profession was held, and the general lack of interest of the time in the personal lives of writers.
Life of William Shakespeare | Introduction
Then, message being brought that Richard the Third was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third. The Burbage referred to is Richard Burbage, the star of Shakespeare's company, who is known to have played the title role in "Richard III". While this is one of the few surviving contemporary anecdotes about Shakespeare—it was made in March 1602, a month after Manningham had seen the play—some scholars are sceptical of its validity. Still, the anecdote suggests that at least one of Shakespeare's contemporaries (Manningham) believed that Shakespeare was attracted to women, even if he was not 'averse to an occasional infidelity to his marriage vows'.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Possible affairs with women
From November 1614 Shakespeare was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, Hall. In the last few weeks of Shakespeare's life, the man who was to marry his younger daughter Judith—a tavern-keeper named Thomas Quiney—was charged in the local church court with "fornication". A woman named Margaret Wheeler had given birth to a child and claimed it was Quiney's; she and the child both died soon after. Quiney was thereafter disgraced, and Shakespeare revised his will to ensure that Judith's interest in his estate was protected from possible malfeasance on Quiney's part.
Life of William Shakespeare | Later years and death
The modern reader may read sonnet 20 and question whether or not Shakespeare's sexuality is reflected in this sonnet. When looking at the sexual connotations in this sonnet it is important to reflect on what homoerotism meant during the time that Shakespeare was writing. Casey Charles discusses the idea that there was no official identity for a gay person at this time. There were words that identified what we would consider to be homosexual behaviour, but the idea of a "gay culture" or "gay identity" did not exist. Charles goes on to say that early modern laws against sodomy had very few transgressors, which means that either people did not engage in homosexual behavior or these acts were more socially acceptable than the modern reader would think.
Sonnet 20 | Sexuality
The content of Shakespeare's works has raised the question of whether he may have been bisexual. Although twenty-six of Shakespeare's sonnets are love poems addressed to a married woman (the "Dark Lady"), one hundred and twenty-six are addressed to an adolescent boy (known as the "Fair Youth"). The amorous tone of the latter group, which focuses on the boy's beauty, has been interpreted as evidence for Shakespeare's bisexuality, although others interpret them as referring to intense friendship or fatherly affection, not sexual love. Among those of the latter interpretation, in the preface to his 1961 Pelican edition, Douglas Bush writes: Bush cites Montaigne, who distinguished male friendships from "that other, licentious Greek love", as evidence of a platonic interpretation.
Romantic friendship | Shakespeare and Fair Youth
The poems refer to sleepless nights, anguish and jealousy caused by the youth. In addition, there is considerable emphasis on the young man's beauty: in Sonnet 20, the narrator theorises that the youth was originally a woman with whom Mother Nature had fallen in love and, to resolve the dilemma of lesbianism, added a penis ("pricked thee out for women's pleasure"), an addition the narrator describes as "to my purpose nothing". The line can be read literally as a denial of sexual interest. However, given the homoerotic tone of the rest of the sonnet, it could also be meant to appear disingenuous, mimicking the common sentiment of would-be seducers: 'it's "you" I want, not your body’.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Possible attraction to men
Hutt was born in Toronto, Ontario, the second of three children. A graduate of Toronto's Vaughan Road Collegiate Institute (now Vaughan Road Academy), he served five years as a medic during World War II, receiving a Military Medal for "bravery in the field". After the war, he received his BA in 1948 from Trinity College at the University of Toronto, and subsequently joined the Stratford Festival of Canada for its first season in 1953. About his early life, theatre director Richard Nielsen said, "As a young man, he was openly gay at a time when being openly gay was a very dangerous identity.
William Hutt (actor) | Early life
Shakespeare most likely wrote the sonnets that were meant for the young man over a four- or five-year period. There is speculation that the young man Shakespeare is addressing may be named William Hughs or Hews. While Butler raises the question of Shakespeare's homosexuality, other critics such as Wilde refute this claim and maintain Shakespeare had an innocent relationship with the boy. However, no reputable evidence for this theory has been found. Throughout his sonnets, Shakespeare addresses the young man's physical beauty as well as his internal beauty. In this particular sonnet, Shakespeare admits his love for the young man, but he states that he is not able to publicly acknowledge his love due to the shame that might result.
Sonnet 36 | Analysis of relationship between speaker and young man
As described in his memoir, "Drawn from the Life", in his early years Medley believed he was heterosexual and therefore did not understand Auden's erotic intentions toward him until they spent a single weekend together after both had left school. Until he was seduced at 19, he recalled later, "I was still under the illusion that I was entirely heterosexual."
Robert Medley | Early life
By the end of their studies at age 14, grammar school pupils were quite familiar with the great Latin authors, and with Latin drama and rhetoric. Shakespeare is unique among his contemporaries in the extent of figurative language derived from country life and nature. The familiarity with the animals and plants of the English countryside exhibited in his poems and plays, especially the early ones, suggests that he lived the childhood of a typical country boy, with easy access to rural nature and a propensity for outdoor sports, especially hunting.
Life of William Shakespeare | Boyhood and education
A primary source for his life is his address "To the English gentrie" in his "Just Apologie" of c. 1634, which contains autobiographical material.
William Oughtred | Early life
Cox bases his argument on the verb "to have." He argues that why must the verb usage of "to have" mean sexually possess? Elizabethan people had trouble believing "had" meant to have sexually when it came to the young man, but Cox writes, "It's difficult to refute Pequiney's contention that in these three examples (Sonnet 52, Sonnet 75, and Sonnet 87) there is a sexual innuendo in "had," particularly when in Sonnet 129, which concerns heterosexual love for the Dark Lady, everyone agrees that there is such an implication. Elizabethan society feared homosexual desire, but embraced heterosexual conquests. Cox writes, "The poems may be based on personal experience but still that doesn't actually prove that Shakespeare 'had' the youth.
Sonnet 144 | Homoeroticism
William Shakespeare was the eldest son of William and Barbara Shakespeare of Chadsworth, Barbourne, Worcester. He was educated at Worcester Royal Grammar School and joined the 1/8th Worcestershire Regiment (Territorial Force) at the commencement of World War I. He served with this unit at the front for over twelve months. He was given a commission and attached to the 6th Worcestershire Regiment, and afterwards transferred to the Royal Flying Corps .
William Harold Nelson Shakespeare | Early years
The law at the time also stated that the widow of a man was automatically entitled to a third of his estate, so Shakespeare did not need to mention specific bequests in the will.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Marriage
The exact day they married is not known, nor where. The reason for the special licence appeared six months later with the baptism of their first daughter, Susanna, on 26 May 1583. Their twin children, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, named after Shakespeare's neighbours Hamnet and Judith Sadler, were baptised on 2 February 1585, before Shakespeare was 21 years of age.
Life of William Shakespeare | Marriage
He gained a MPhil degree from King's College, Cambridge, in 1991.
Tom Shakespeare | Early life
L. Rowse, who has claimed "Shakespeare is the bawdiest of the Elizabethan dramatists, with the natural bawdy of the highly sexed normal heterosexual".
Sonnet 109 | Context
Keeping the language ambiguous enabled multiple interpretations of the writings without the danger of being branded as homosexual. What is more, the words we would use to describe homosexual behavior is either anachronistic to the time period or it carried different meanings. For example, there is no seventeenth-century equivalent word for homosexual. Additionally, "sodomy" and "sodomite" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have a radically different meaning than modern perceptions. It is not clear if sodomy even had any specific representation of sexual behavior between men. It could be used for sexual activity between men, women, or either sex and an animal.
Sonnet 35 | Homosexuality in Shakespeare's Sonnet 35
The critic Clement Scott noted that while Sothern was "as handsome a man as ever stood on the stage", he was not naturally suited to romantic roles.
Edward Askew Sothern | Early years
Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.
William Shakespeare | Early life
The bishop then remitted the outstanding sum to Shakespeare's former parish "as a matter of convenience".
Religious views of William Shakespeare | Shakespeare's known religious affiliation
The religious views of William Shakespeare are the subject of an ongoing scholarly debate dating back more than 150 years. The general assumption about William Shakespeare's religious affiliation is that he was a conforming member of the established Church of England. However, many scholars have speculated about his personal religious beliefs, based on analysis of the historical record and of his published work, with claims that Shakespeare's family may have had Catholic sympathies and that he himself was a secret Catholic.
Religious views of William Shakespeare | Introduction
Most modern biographers agree that Frederick was primarily homosexual, and that his sexual orientation was central to his life. After a dispiriting defeat on the battlefield, Frederick wrote: "Fortune has it in for me; she is a woman, and I am not that way inclined." At age 16, Frederick seems to have embarked upon a youthful affair with Peter Karl Christoph von Keith, a 17-year-old page of his father. Rumors of the liaison spread in the court and the "intimacy" between the two boys provoked the condemnation of even his elder and favorite sister, Wilhelmine, who wrote, "Though I had noticed that he was on more familiar terms with this page than was proper in his position, I did not know how intimate the friendship was." Rumors finally reached King Frederick William, who cultivated an ideal of ultramasculinity in his court, and derided his son's "effeminate" tendencies.
Frederick the Great | Sexual orientation
He was educated at Sevenoaks School and then St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he was the first T. R. Henn Scholar and a Charles Oldham Shakespeare Scholar. He took a double first in English and then returned to the college to complete his PhD on "Shakespeare and the English Romantic Imagination" and then become a Research Fellow, after a year at Harvard University, where he held a Harkness Fellowship.
Jonathan Bate | Early life
He then attended the Los Alamos Ranch School in New Mexico, which was stressful for him. The school was a boarding school for the wealthy, "where the spindly sons of the rich could be transformed into manly specimens". Burroughs kept journals documenting an erotic attachment to another boy. According to his own account, he destroyed these later, ashamed of their content. He kept his sexual orientation concealed from his family well into adulthood, due to the context in which he grew up and from which he fled – that is, a "family where displays of affection were considered embarrassing". He became a well-known homosexual writer after the publication of "Naked Lunch" in 1959.
William S. Burroughs | Early life and education
This intercourse contributed to the charity towards those who differed from him in religious opinion, which ever afterward formed a feature in his character.
Robert Leighton (bishop) | Early life
Sonnet 35 deals with the speaker being angry with the young man for an apparent betrayal through infidelity. The apparent homoeroticism between the speaker and the young man has spurred debates about the sexuality of the speaker and consequently Shakespeare himself. There are 3 main points to discuss with this issue: the problem of ambiguity in the writing, the possibility of applying an anachronistic view of love and consequently mistaking these sonnets homoerotic, and finally the implications of Shakespeare's life and homosexual tendencies. Paul Hammond argues the difficulty in pinning down the sexual language lies in the intentional ambiguity. First, one must keep in mind that in the early modern period the death penalty was still in effect for sodomy, so it was extremely important that writers remain vague to protect their own lives.
Sonnet 35 | Homosexuality in Shakespeare's Sonnet 35
Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596. After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the "complaints bill" of a law case before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years".
William Shakespeare | Early life
Montagu knew from an early stage of life that he was bisexual, and while attending Oxford was relieved to find others with similar feelings. In a 2000 interview he stated, "My attraction to both sexes neither changed nor diminished at university and it was comforting to find that I was not the only person faced with such a predicament. I agonised less than my contemporaries, for I was reconciled to my bisexuality, but I was still nervous about being exposed."
Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu | Sexuality
The broad humor and slapstick, as well as the eroticism of the burlesque performances, would inform his art and humor throughout his career.
Warrington Colescott | Early life and influences
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. His exact date of birth is not known—the baptismal record was dated 26 April 1564—but has been traditionally taken to be 23 April 1564, which is also the Feast Day of Saint George, the patron saint of England. He was the first son and the first surviving child in the family; two earlier children, Joan and Margaret, had died early. A market town then of around 2000 residents about northwest of London, Stratford was a centre for the marketing, distribution, and slaughter of sheep, hide tanning and wool trading, as well as for malting to supply brewers of ale and beer.
Life of William Shakespeare | Family origins
Shakespeare's awareness of the possible homoeroticism in Sonnet 20 does not necessarily illuminate whether or not he himself was actually practicing homosexual behavior. One of the most famous accounts to raise the issue of homoeroticism in this sonnet is Oscar Wilde's short story "The Portrait of Mr. W.H.", in which Wilde, or rather the story's narrator, describes the puns on "will" and "hues" throughout the sonnets, and particularly in the line in Sonnet 20, "A man in hue all hues in his controlling," as referring to a seductive young actor named Willie Hughes who played female roles in Shakespeare's plays.
Sonnet 20 | Sexuality
Young Jonathan was enthralled. Although he could seldom afford tickets to them, Broadway plays were also an early interest. He detested his Bronx accent and by high school cultivated an English one in its place, watching British B-movies at the arts theatre. He also developed interests in archaeology, Latin, romantic poetry and Shakespeare. In 1931, at age 16, he graduated from James Monroe High School, where his classmates included Estelle Reiner. He had difficulty fitting in with peers, with the exception of his girlfriend and future wife, Gertrude Bregman.
Jonathan Harris | Early life
In nearby Boston she met the Shakespearean actor E. H. Sothern, with whom she appeared in a production of "Richard Lovelace". She moved from Boston to New York City by 1900, and began pursuing acting as a career.
Clara Blandick | Early life
Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him. Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London. John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will.
William Shakespeare | Early life
The common belief in Elizabethan England was that motherhood before sixteen was dangerous; popular manuals of health, as well as observations of married life, led Elizabethans to believe that early marriage and its consummation permanently damaged a young woman's health, impaired a young man's physical and mental development, and produced sickly or stunted children. Therefore, eighteen came to be considered the earliest reasonable age for motherhood and twenty and thirty the ideal ages for women and men, respectively, to marry. Shakespeare might also have reduced Juliet's age from sixteen to thirteen to demonstrate the dangers of marriage at too young of an age; that Shakespeare himself married Anne Hathaway when he was just eighteen might hold some significance.
Juliet | Juliet's age
Finding life at sea even more restricting, he pretended to be both deaf and lame so skilfully that he deceived the doctors at Madeira. On his return to England, he sought the protection of his uncle, Moses Kean, a mimic, ventriloquist and general entertainer, who, besides continuing his pantomimic studies, introduced him to the study of Shakespeare. At the same time, Charlotte Tidswell, an actress who had been especially kind to him from infancy, taught him the principles of acting.
Edmund Kean | Early life
Shakespeare Hirst was the son of Henry Hirst and Mary Shaw, both of whom were woollen weavers. He was born in Almondbury, Yorkshire, and baptised there on 11 April 1841. While there are no records as to where Hirst was educated, the 1851 England Census Record does list him as a "scholar". Hirst had a brother, George and a sister, Ann.
Shakespeare Hirst | Early life
William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day. This date, which can be traced to a mistake made by an 18th-century scholar, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616. He was the third of eight children, and the eldest surviving son. Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home.
William Shakespeare | Early life
Another cause of marital tension (and later political tension) was his capriciousness; he could rage against someone one day, and be extremely polite the next.
William III of the Netherlands | Early life
According to unverifiable, apocryphal accounts, Malet had significant, multiple ties to the Anglo-Saxon elite before the Norman Conquest.
William Malet (companion of William the Conqueror) | Early life
His parents were John Shakespeare, a successful glover originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire, and Mary Arden, the youngest daughter of John's father's landlord, a member of the local gentry. The couple married around 1557 and lived on Henley Street when Shakespeare was born, purportedly in a house now known as Shakespeare's Birthplace. They had eight children: Joan (baptised 15 September 1558, died in infancy), Margaret (bap. 2 December 1562buried 30 April 1563), William, Gilbert (bap. 13 October 1566bur. 2 February 1612), Joan (bap. 15 April 1569bur. 4 November 1646), Anne (bap. 28 September 1571bur. 4 April 1579), Richard (bap. 11 March 1574bur.
Life of William Shakespeare | Family origins
He was originally educated at Castle Park School in Dublin, the Wellington College, Berkshire eventually studying law at University College Oxford.
William Harvey-Kelly | Early life
English grew up "100 metres away from Shakespeare's birth place in Stratford-upon-Avon" and graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2011 with an MA in fashion design.
Phoebe English | Early life and education
Shakespeare's marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582 may have been officiated by, amongst other candidates, John Frith in the town of Temple Grafton a few miles from Stratford. In 1586 the crown named Frith, who maintained the appearance of Protestantism, as a Catholic priest. Some surmise Shakespeare married in Temple Grafton rather than the Anglican church in Stratford in order for his wedding to be performed as a Catholic sacrament. He was thought to have rushed his marriage ceremony, as Anne was three months pregnant.
Religious views of William Shakespeare | Possible Catholic wedding
Paget's outrageous and flamboyant lifestyle, his taste for cross-dressing, and the breakdown of his marriage, have led many to assume that he was gay. Writing in 1970, the homosexual reformer H. Montgomery Hyde characterised him as "[t]he most notorious aristocratic homosexual at this period". One journalist wrote, “I am driven to the conclusion from much that I have seen that there are men who ought to have been born women, and women who ought to have been born men … Bearing the form of a man, he yet had all the tastes, something even of the appearance, of not only a woman, but, if the phrase be permissible, a very effeminate woman.” Norena Shopland wrote that "there is little doubt that Henry must be included in the history of gender identity." There is no evidence for or against his having had any lovers of either sex: performance historian Viv Gardner believes rather that he was "a classic narcissist: the only person he could love and make love to was himself, because, for whatever reason, he was 'unlovable'".
Henry Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey | Sexuality
Stanley was Barnfield's patron and the subject of his homoerotic sonnet cycle "The Affectionate Shepherd", which implied a romantic relationship between the pair.
William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby | Shakespearean authorship question
published the 1,300-page "This Star of England", now regarded as a classic Oxfordian text. They proposed that the "fair youth" of the sonnets was Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, the offspring of a love affair between Oxford and the Queen, and that the "Shakespeare" plays were written by Oxford to memorialise the passion of that affair. This became known as the "Prince Tudor theory", which postulates that the Queen's illicit offspring and his father's authorship of the Shakespeare canon were covered up as an Elizabethan state secret. The Ogburns found many parallels between Oxford's life and the works, particularly in "Hamlet", which they characterised as "straight biography".
Shakespeare authorship question | Other candidates emerge
His MA thesis (1933) was on the Elizabethan dramatist, Henry Chettle. This thesis was supervised by W. W. Greg, and was subsequently published as "The Life and Work of Henry Chettle".
Harold Jenkins (Shakespeare scholar) | Early life
Elizabeth Hall was born to Susanna Hall and Doctor John Hall. She was baptised in the Holy Trinity Church of Stratford-upon-Avon, England. She was the only grandchild William Shakespeare ever knew, because her three cousins were born after his death in 1616.
Elizabeth Barnard | Early life
Because of the shift in style, as well as Shakespeare's physical state, there has been much debate about why the late plays were written as they were. Dowden created a biographical view that suggested that Shakespeare was suffering from depression when he wrote his tragedies, and had worked his way out of it to create the romances. SirEdmund Chambers suggested that he suffered a breakdown while writing "Timon of Athens," and the romances reflect a kind of psychological convalescence. Clifford Leech viewed the romances as infected with a kind of fantastical puritanism that came from Shakespeare's personal revulsion from sex.
Shakespeare's late romances | Criticism
He was descended from the English Birkbecks, a Quaker family with an interest in education.
William Knox D'Arcy | Early life
This family history seems to invite a biological explanation, and it made Pillard start thinking about the origins of sexual orientation."
Richard Pillard | Early life and family
In 2002 Shakespeare married dancer and disability rights campaigner Caroline Bowditch. They have a son and a daughter. He is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). By 2010 he had split with his wife and he lived in Geneva with his partner, Alana. In 2016 he featured on the ITV show "500 Questions", winning £14,000 by answering 42 out of 50 questions. He received a standing ovation for his efforts.
Tom Shakespeare | Personal life
He was the youngest child of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden and the brother of William Shakespeare. He followed William to London to become an actor. While an actor, he had an affair with an unknown woman, probably around 1600 although there is no firm evidence. He fathered a son, Edward Shakespeare, in one record noted wrongly as Edmund Sharksbye. He died in 1607, at the age of 27, four months after the death of his son. Twenty shillings was paid for his burial (possibly by William) at St Saviour's in Southwark (known today as Southwark Cathedral) "with a forenoone knell of the great bell".
Edmund Shakespeare | Life
He is said to have had two brothers, Thomas and William, and a sister Dorothy (died 1569), who married first John Newport (died 1566) of Hunningham, Warwickshire, then William Underhill (died 1570) of Idlicote, Warwickshire, whose son, also William Underhill (died 1597), sold New Place to William Shakespeare. Hatton's education is said to have been supervised by his maternal uncle, William Saunders (died c. 1583). Otherwise nothing is known of his life until he entered St Mary Hall, Oxford as a gentleman commoner at the age of 15 or 16. He left Oxford without a degree and enrolled in the Inner Temple on 26 May 1560.
Christopher Hatton | Early years
During the 1690s rumours grew of William's alleged homosexual inclinations and led to the publication of many satirical pamphlets by his Jacobite detractors. He did have several close male associates, including two Dutch courtiers to whom he granted English titles: Hans Willem Bentinck became Earl of Portland, and Arnold Joost van Keppel was created Earl of Albemarle. These relationships with male friends, and his apparent lack of mistresses, led William's enemies to suggest that he might prefer homosexual relationships. William's modern biographers disagree on the veracity of these allegations. Some believe there may have been truth to the rumours, while others affirm that they were no more than figments of his enemies' imaginations, and that there was nothing unusual in someone childless like William adopting or evincing paternal affections for a younger man.
William III of England | Allegations of homosexuality
His early (non-porn) acting career were principally in off-Broadway theater for La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, New York Theater Ensemble and National Shakespeare Company.
Harry Reems | Early life
that Shakespeare "understood Latin pretty well: for he had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country", etc.
William Beeston | Later years
This may seem like a slight, but many historians contend that the second best bed was typically the marital bed, while the best bed was reserved for guests. The poem "Anne Hathaway" by Carol Ann Duffy endorses this view of the second best bed, having Anne say: "The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas where we would dive for pearls." On the other hand, "In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on, dribbling their prose". A bed missing from an inventory of Anne's brother's possessions (removed in contravention of their father's will) allows the explanation that the item was an heirloom from the Hathaway family that had to be returned.
Sexuality of William Shakespeare | Marriage
Fuller was born in Chicago on January 9, 1857. He never married. His journals from his teenage days make it clear he was in love with some dormitory roommates at Allison Classical Academy. At the age of nineteen, he wrote in an imaginary personal advertisement: "I would pass by twenty beautiful women to look upon a handsome man". At the age of 34 he wrote that he was in love with an adolescent boy who had blue eyes and strawberry blonde hair. Five years later, Fuller wrote and published a short play, "At Saint Judas's", about a homosexual who commits suicide at the wedding of his former lover.
Henry Blake Fuller | Personal life
Yet when watered down, Pequigney argues that this simply states that Shakespeare is only acknowledging that he enjoyed knowing the young man. The use of romantic language masks the idea that this is purely a platonic love between the two males. In the sonnets addressed towards the young man, such as sonnet 87, there is a lack of explicit sexual imagery which is prominent in the sonnets addressed towards the dark lady. This, as Pequigney claims, is further proof "that nothing sexually amiss is to be found in the lyrics of that Shakespeare composed for the youth." A. L. Rowse, another Shakespearean critic, also rejects the existence of homoerotic suggestion in sonnet 87, arguing that the language of the time is simply so far from how we communicate today.
Sonnet 87 | Sexuality
Variations on Barrell's argument have been repeated by Diana Price and Roger Stritmatter. Brenda James and William D. Rubinstein argues that the same passage points to Sir Henry Neville. Mainstream scholars assert that Edwards is discussing two separate poets, and it has also been suggested that (as in the final stanzas of "Venus and Adonis") the purple refers to blood, with which his garments are "distain'd", and that the poet could be Robert Southwell, under torture in the Tower of London.
History of the Shakespeare authorship question | Alleged early doubts
Marlowe is believed to have been homosexual. Some scholars argue that the identification of an Elizabethan as gay or homosexual in a modern sense is "anachronistic," claiming that for the Elizabethans the terms were more likely to have been applied to sexual acts rather than to what we understand to be exclusive sexual orientations and identities. Other scholars argue that the evidence is inconclusive and that the reports of Marlowe's homosexuality may be rumours produced after his death. Richard Baines reported Marlowe as saying: "all they that love not Tobacco & Boies were fools". David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen describe Baines's evidence as "unreliable testimony" and "These and other testimonials need to be discounted for their exaggeration and for their having been produced under legal circumstances we would regard as a witch-hunt".
Christopher Marlowe | Sexuality
Shakespeare and his immediate family were conforming members of the established Church of England. When Shakespeare was young, his father, John Shakespeare, was elected to several municipal offices, serving as an alderman and culminating in a term as bailiff, the chief magistrate of the town council, all of which required being a church member in good standing, and he participated in whitewashing over the Catholic images in the Chapel of the Guild of the Holy Cross and taking down the rood screen some time in the 1560s or 1570s. Shakespeare's baptism and those of his siblings were entered into the parish church register, as were the births of his three children and the burials of family members.
Religious views of William Shakespeare | Shakespeare's known religious affiliation
His earliest literary efforts were in fiction: "thrilling romances", composed for the delectation of his schoolfellows. His first essay in poetry was at the age of fourteen, when a poem of his appeared in the pages of "Young England", December 1861.
William Crossing | Early life
Contemporaries of William raised concerns about a court dominated by homosexuality and effeminacy, although this appears to have had more to do with their luxurious attire than with actual sexual practices. The historian Emma Mason has noted that while during his reign William himself was never openly accused of homosexuality, in the decades after his death numerous medieval writers spoke of this and a few began to describe him as a "sodomite". Modern historians cannot state with certainty whether William was homosexual or not; however, he never took a wife or a mistress, or fathered any children. As a bachelor king without an heir, William would have been pressed to take a wife and would have had numerous proposals for marriage.
William II of England | Sexuality
Williamson earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Eastern Michigan University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.
Afton Williamson | Early life
On 27 November 1582, Shakespeare was issued a special licence to marry Anne Hathaway, the daughter of the late Richard Hathaway, a yeoman farmer of Shottery, about a mile west of Stratford (the clerk mistakenly recorded the name "Anne Whateley"). He was 18 and she was 26. The licence, issued by the consistory court of the diocese of Worcestor, 21 miles west of Stratford, allowed the two to marry with only one proclamation of the marriage banns in church instead of the customary three successive Sundays. Since he was under age and could not stand as surety, and Hathaway's father was not living, two neighbours of Hathaway, Fulk Sandalls and John Richardson, posted a bond of £40 the next day to ensure that no legal impediments existed to the union, that she had the consent of the bride's "friends" (in lieu of parents or guardians had she been under age), and to indemnify the bishop issuing of the licence from any possible liability for the wife and any children should any impediment nullify the marriage.
Life of William Shakespeare | Marriage
After this, he studied civil law at Christ Church, University of Oxford. William II had a string of relationships with both men and women which led him to be blackmailed. The homosexual relationships that William II had as crown prince and as king were reported by journalist . The king surrounded himself with male servants whom he could not dismiss because of his 'abominable motive' for hiring them in the first place.
William II of the Netherlands | Early life and education
He was born in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were a Broadway stagehand and a costume designer. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology from Quinnipiac University in 1971.
William C. Weldon | Early life and education
A 'wretched student' by his own admission, he transferred to Goddard College in rural Vermont, where he studied under playwright David Mamet. He studied theatre at HB Studio in New York City.
William H. Macy | Early life
There's an element of playfulness in the sexual innuendoes, a delight in wit as if Shakespeare is enjoying his own virtuosity and may not have expected to be taken literally... In his poems to the youth he may be using sexual innuendo as a kind of joke, a playful but at times almost serious hint that his affection may even extend to physical desire."
Sonnet 144 | Homoeroticism
Shakespeare was born as John Stanley Cave in 1948 and grew up in Dulwich Hill, New South Wales. He was the only son of Stanley John Cave (ca. 1922–1962), a greengrocer, and Elizabeth May (née Thursfield, died 1971). The Cave family lived in Dulwich Hill for most of his early life. He was vocalist for beat music group, the Amazons, with Nick Barlow on guitar, Harry Brus on bass guitar, Chris Carroll on guitar and Dally Carroll on drums. In 1966, they released a single, "Ain't that Lovin' You Baby". After The Amazons, Shakespeare continued performing in Sydney clubs as Johnny Cabe.
William Shakespeare (singer) | Early life
A direct explanation, however, comes from the facts of the story in the contemporary accounts of the period; Prince Henry had left his dear friend Oldcastle to his fate after he had failed to persuade the stubborn old knight to recant when he was imprisoned for lollardry. Archdeacon Richard Davies, an 18th-century Anglican cleric, wrote of Shakespeare: "He dyed a Papyst". The "Catholic Encyclopedia" (1912) states that "Davies, an Anglican clergyman, could have had no conceivable motive for misrepresenting the matter in these private notes and as he lived in the neighbouring county of Gloucestershire he may be echoing a local tradition" but concludes that Davies' comment "is by no means incredible, but it would obviously be foolish to build too much upon an unverifiable tradition of this kind".
Religious views of William Shakespeare | Historical sources
From 1806 he lived in Ceylon.
William Daniell | Early life
The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca. "The Comedy of Errors" was also based on classical models, but no source for "The Taming of the Shrew" has been found, though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived from a folk story. Like "The Two Gentlemen of Verona", in which two friends appear to approve of rape, the "Shrew's" story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences.
William Shakespeare | Plays
Shakespeare addresses many of his sonnets to a young male, whom many have assumed to be identical with Mr. W.H., the person to whom the sonnets as a whole are dedicated. Scholars debate the nature of Shakespeare's relationship with his male companion and question whether it was a close friendship or a romantic love. The sonnets indicate that a woman who Shakespeare describes as the dark lady comes between the poet and Mr. W.H. Sonnet 144 addresses this conflict. Critics have been unsuccessful at pinpointing the exact identity of Mr. W.H. Douglas Trevor points out that the young boy mentioned in the sonnets may not be a specific person: "Scholars puzzled over the identity of the speaker's male friend, debating whether or not he is one male or a composite, rooted in real life or a purely literary conjuring." Scholars have developed a few possibilities for the identity of Mr.
Sonnet 144 | Homoeroticism
Some suggest this theory is invalid, saying the poet views the Fair Youth as a son rather than a lover. Majority tend to lean towards the idea of a homosexual relationship due to choice of wording in some sonnets (see Sonnet 20). During the era in which Shakespeare's sonnets were written, any "sexual acts that do not result in reproduction" were condemned. In David Hawkes's article, 'Sodomy, Usury, and the Narrative of Shakespeare's Sonnets', he "argues that by using the language of 'unnatural' usury to expound the merits of 'natural' marriage and procreation, Shakespeare is ironically undermining the assumption that, because homosexual sex is non-reproductive, homoerotic desire is 'unnatural'."
Sonnet 8 | Exegesis
He graduated from Sydney Academy High School, where he was heavily influenced by one of his English teachers, William Mould, who encouraged him to read Shakespeare. He entered Mount Allison University at age 16, and edited the University's student newspaper and yearbook.
Nathan Cohen (critic) | Early life
J. B. Steane remarked that he considered there to be "no evidence for Marlowe's homosexuality at all". Other scholars point to homosexual themes in Marlowe's writing: in "Hero and Leander", Marlowe writes of the male youth Leander: "in his looks were all that men desire..." "Edward the Second" contains the following passage enumerating homosexual relationships: Marlowe wrote the only play about the life of Edward II up to his time, taking the humanist literary discussion of male sexuality much further than his contemporaries. The play was extremely bold, dealing with a star-crossed love story between Edward II and Piers Gaveston.
Christopher Marlowe | Sexuality
This sonnet is featured in Derek Jarman's film "The Angelic Conversation", which discusses homosexuality. It is the first poem shown in the film, the only one not read aloud, and one of only two partially and not wholly portrayed (the last two lines of Sonnet 57 are also omitted). Only the first two lines of the poem are seen on screen. Jarman is attempting to challenge the idea that Shakespeare was solely heterosexual. In the context of his film, the opening two lines seem to communicate that conscience and ethics come from sexual attraction.
Sonnet 151 | In film
Rowe was the first biographer to pass down the tradition that Shakespeare retired to Stratford some years before his death; but retirement from all work was uncommon at that time, and Shakespeare continued to visit London. In 1612 he was called as a witness in the "Bellott v. Mountjoy" case. A year later he was back in London to make the Gatehouse purchase. In June 1613 Shakespeare's daughter Susanna was slandered by John Lane, a local man who claimed she had caught gonorrhea from a lover. Susanna and her husband Dr John Hall sued for slander. Lane failed to appear and was convicted.
Life of William Shakespeare | Later years and death