Ep 39: Shakespeare, Queer Theory, and Queer Culture in Early Modern England

Are we so back??? I hope so!

Thank you to everyone who has patiently waited while I've been working through personal stuff. And congrats to everyone who caught up on the podcast during the break.

I am back with an episode near and dear to my heart about whether Shakespeare was, in fact, a bisexual icon.

Okay, not entirely. In this episode I talk about the long history of questions surrounding Shakespeare's sexuality, whether queer interpretations of his plays are reading "too much" into them, and talk about a wonderful book I read recently, Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare by Will Tosh.

Straight Acting looks at the different facets of Shakespeare's life growing up, going to school, and the theater scene in London and aspects of queerness in the culture at the time that he would have been introduced to and some ways we can see him engaging with it. In particular, I talk about some other writers at the time who were also having fun with gender and sexuality in their works.

As always, I love building out that sweet, sweet context.

Further Reading:

Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeareby Will Tosh

Homosexuality in Renaissance Englandby Alan Bray

The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England by Valerie Traub

Further Listening:

Episode 15: Introduction to Shakespeare's Sonnets

Episode 10: Twelfth Night and Gender Exploration