William Shakespeare's sexuality has been the subject of frequent debates. It is known from public records that he married Anne Hathaway and had three children with her; scholars have examined their relationship through documents, and particularly through the bequests to her in his will. Some historians 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, are love poems addressed to a man (the "Fair Youth"), and contain puns relating to homosexuality. Whereas, other scholars criticized this view stating that these passages are referring to intense platonic friendship, rather than sexual love.[1][2] Another explanation is that the poems are not autobiographical but fiction, another of Shakespeare's "dramatic characterization[s]", so that the narrator of the sonnets should not be presumed to be Shakespeare himself.[3][4]
- ^ Dutton, R., in Schoenfeldt, M. (ed), A Companion to Shakespeare's Sonnets, John Wiley & Sons, 2010, p. 124.
- ^ Wells, Stanley (2004). Looking for sex in Shakespeare. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 8–9. ISBN 978-0-521-83284-7.
- ^ Schoenbaum (1977: 179–181)
- ^ Bate (2008: 214)