# Was Shakespeare gay?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-shakespeare-gay/104907>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [April 22, 2002, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-shakespeare-gay/104907 "2002-04-22T02:24:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2002, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-shakespeare-gay/104907/21 "2002-04-22T16:49:29Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by gobear \*  
> \*\*  
> The difference, of course, is that Hammerstein put those words in the mouth of Nellie Forbush, a female., while Will was writing as himself, and not as a character.  
> \*\*

How do you know that Will was writing as himself? Just because a poem is in the first person, that doesn’t mean it’s the poet speaking. Do you really think a raven appeared in Edgar Alan Poe’s study saying “nevermore” because the poem is a first-person account of the incident?

Further, you were able to disprove my case because you knew outside information about Hammerstein. _From the lyrics alone,_ the case can be made that Hammerstein was gay, just like you can make the case that Shakespeare is gay from his poems alone. But neither proves anything. You need more than just the words.

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**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2002, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-shakespeare-gay/104907/22 "2002-04-22T17:12:52Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> Further, you were able to disprove my case because you knew outside information about Hammerstein. From the lyrics alone, the case can be made that Hammerstein was gay, just like you can make the case that Shakespeare is gay from his poems alone.

But the Hammeristein lyrics are not alone; they’re excerpted from the play _South Pacific_. Nellei forbush is a character, a Navy nurse in the Pacific theater during WWII. Only a simpleton (or a Ph.D. member of the MLA; they’re hard to distinguish) would think that Hammerstein was speaking for himself.

In \*The _Sonnets_, however, the author uses the words “I” and “the poet”; it’s not readily apparent if he’s addressing a real young man or not.

Read the rest of my previous post.

> [@](#):
>
> Of course, he could have been using the metaliterary trick of including the author as a character, as John Fowles did in The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

Poems of homosexual love or mere literary license? Who knows? Biased as I am, I like to think that Will was addressing a real young man, perhaps a lad playing one of the female leads just a little too well.

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