To be or not to be....

This past week I read an article published in The Guardian by Don Paterson in which he implies that Shakespeare was clearly or obviously a homosexual. Perhaps he was sexually frustrated. He married Anne when he was 18 and they did have eight children together. If he was in love with a man why would he be engaging in sex with his wife as often? Frustration, that he couldn't be who he truly wished to be.

He wrote so passionately about love, in Romeo and Juliet there is young love that is so pained by the rifts in their families they take their lives to be together forever in death. Macbeth and his wife were consumed by each other and a want of power. They stood in each others corners until they were literally driven crazy as a result of their control.  Did he write from a personal place or was it from what he observed around him? Was a friend of his the subject of his writings? As in Sonnet 18, he had written,"So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee." So many questions still, so many that can not be answered, the answers are buried with Sir William himself. He has given me entertainment by his comedies, brought me through pain with his tragedies and baffled me with his sonnets. It's been quite the trip Sir William Shakespeare, it really has.

Shakespeare's woman

Anne Hathaway, the wife of William Shakespeare, lived in a farmhouse. A goal for most woman from Anne's social upbringing was marriage. She met William when she was 26, still single at such an age is unusual. She wasn't single for long because the young Anne became pregnant before they were married. Chaste she was not! She is said to have been domestically educated and illiterate. So ironic that a man who is known to have created all these amazing literary works of ART was married to a woman that would likely not have been able to read what he wrote.

She likely wondered if her husband was faithful to her. The talk was that in his many travels he was having affairs. However a woman like Anne seems lucky to have gotten married to someone like William Shakespeare at all. Maybe he was having affairs and she was willing to overlook them, knowing that she was married and not frowned upon by society being an old maid.

Sir Walter's ladies...

 

Elizabeth Throckmorton, was affectionately known as Bess. She was a maid to Queen Elizabeth I.  She was a wife to Sir Walter Raleigh.  However before she was his wife she was to be faithful to Queen Elizabeth. The Queen was not the type to give a blessing to a man who was already in her favor to marry one of her courtiers.  The Queen lavished Walter with riches and expected him to remain at her beck and call. However Bess was in love with him and didn’t back away. Quite the contrary Bess continued to go after the man she loved and in effect “won” in every sense of the word. 

Bess was described as being intelligent, passionate and courageous; all of these would not be typical of a Renaissance woman. She was not the chaste woman she was expected to be.  This is obviously proven by her child with Sir Walter conceived in the summer of 1591 when she hadn’t married him until that fall. The marriage was a very secret affair. All of these attributes seem very unbecoming a woman of such times.   

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

Queen Elizabeth I: [during a briefing with Walsingham and Bess] We shall have to look out a husband for you soon, Bess.
Elizabeth Throckmorton: Not too soon, my lady.
Sir Francis Walsingham: There are husbands to be had.
Queen Elizabeth I: [to Bess] Don't you want to be married?
Elizabeth Throckmorton: I'll want the marriage if I want the man.

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0055971/quotes

This is very uncharacteristic of a woman in the Renaissance. Typically marriage is the goal. She is portrayed as not wanting a marriage unless the man makes it worth the step.