Researchers have claimed that Shakespeare was bi-sexual, as he seemed to be interested in both women and men, according to a recent analysis of his sonnets.
The new finding regarding the greatest English dramatist of the sixteenth century will be published in the form of a book later this year. Apparently, these results suggest that the Bard had been involved in bisexual relations during his 34-year-old married life with Anne Hathaway.
According to The Telegraph, Professor Sir Stanley Wells and Dr. Paul Edmondson have compiled 154 Sonnets from Shakespeare’s 1609 edition in the order in which they probably were written.
After this finding, the number of Shakespeare’s Sonnets has increased to 182, and these were probably written during or after 1578.
Researchers have also concluded that previously held beliefs about Shakespeare that he was preoccupied with “Fair Youth” could be wrong, and they were misled by “Dark Lady”. Instead, they now claim, these characters were the allusions for multiple individuals, belonging to either sex.
Dr. Edmondson says that “In some of his sonnets, the Bard addresses to a male subject, and the language he uses regarding sexuality leaves us no doubt that Shakespeare had bisexual tendencies.”
It has been believed since the 1980s that Shakespeare was gay. But the fact remains that he was married and bore children, too.
In his sonnets, the dramatist addressed to females and the male subjects alternatively. In this regard, the claim that he developed an interest in both women and men seems justified.
Shakespeare’s sexual tendencies have been a focus of many researchers for years. Professor Wells, who raised this debate the last time in 2014, is now again proactive in reviving it. He recently challenged the British researcher, Sir Brian Vickers’ statement, that seemed to claim Shakespeare was not gay, or bi-sexual.
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Vickers is a visiting professor at University College London. He claimed that a Times Literary Supplement book review wrongly stated that Shakespeare’s 119 sonnets had a “primarily homosexual context”.
The professor said, “When a poet… writes poems of…unabashed sexual frankness which puns on the word “will”- 13 times in Sonnet No 135… it is fair to conclude that he may be writing from the depths of his own experience.
