Shakespeare is in love with another man. Through his sonnets that were not intended for publication, we know William Shakespeare as a gay or bisexual man—one with a decidedly gay side.  Given his literary stature, this is a pleasant thought for many who now can identify with Shakespeare as one of us.

Some think the “real” Shakespeare was actually Edward de Vere, a well-educated, well-traveled aristocrat in the Elizabethan Court.  Even if that is so, we can identify with the legacy these great English language sonnets and plays represent.For more on Shakespeare and his sexual orientation or identity: http://artofmalemasturbation.tumblr.com/Shakespeare

As we develop this page, you will find Shakespeare’s gay sonnets accompanied by photo visualization and commentary.  Peruse the page and come back to see other sonnets posted as time permits.

SONNET 4

In Sonnet 4, Shakespeare urges his lover (youthful actor in his plays, William Hughes?, ten years younger) not just to “traffic with thyself alone,” but rather to share his “bounteous largess” with him (and, perhaps, with a woman who can bear a child in his beautiful image).* Shakepeare is not objecting to W.H. masturbating, but rather that doing so need not exclude love for a lover identified in Sonnet 20 as the “master-mistress [i.e., male-mistress] of my [Shakespeare’s] desire.”  We choose here a photo of one of our brothers in costume to capture the spirit of Shakespeare’s male mistress of his desire otherwise preoccupied with and obviously in deep passion enjoying himself.

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank, she lends to those are free:
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive:
Then how, when Nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unus’d beauty must be tomb’d with thee,
Which used, lives th’ executor to be.

Source of photo: bastianphilly

SONNET 13

Apart from their own amorous, gay relationship, Shakespeare urges his young lover to father a son who will pass his manly beauty to forthcoming generations of men.

O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are 
No longer yours than you yourself here live: 
Against this coming end you should prepare, 
And your sweet semblance to some other give. 
So should that beauty which you hold in lease 
Find no determination: then you were 
Yourself again after yourself’s decease, 
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay, 
Which husbandry in honour might uphold 
Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day 
And barren rage of death’s eternal cold? 
O, none but unthrifts! Dear my love, you know 
You had a father: let your son say so.

Source of photo: http://kenabismo.tumblr.com/ and Source: http://dudetube.tumblr.com/post/3068191611

SONNET 18

The poet is in love with this younger man whose beauty is at the core of this sonnet, thus preserving in verse for all time the object of his love and affection. We  should take PRIDE in how this magnificent sonnet on masculine beauty is written by a man to a man! 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? 
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: 
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; 
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest: 
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Source of Photo: http://freshie.tumblr.com/post/12096971143

SONNET 20

SONNET 20
A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all ‘hues’ in his controlling,
Much steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.

Source of Sonnet:
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/20.html

Source of Photo: lickwid

Notes:
with…painted (1): a natural beauty.

master-mistress (2): likely male-mistress. This line is hotly debated. Please see commentary below for more.

false (4): unfaithful.

rolling (5): straying.

Gilding (6): making the object seem golden.

Comment:
“Sonnet 20 has caused much debate. Some scholars believe that this is a clear admission of Shakespeare’s homosexuality. Despite the fact that male friendships in the Renaissance were openly affectionate, the powerful emotions the poet displays here are indicative of a deep and sensual love. The poet’s lover is ‘the master-mistress of [his] passion’. He has the grace and features of a woman but is devoid of the guile and pretense that comes with female lovers; those wily women with eyes ‘false in rolling’, who change their moods and affections like chameleons. Lines 9-14 are of particular interest to critics on both sides of the homosexual debate. Some argue these lines show that, despite his love for the young man, the poet does not want to ‘have’ him physically. The poet proclaims that he is content to let women enjoy the ‘manly gifts’ that God has given his friend. He is satisfied to love the young man in a spiritual way. But others contend that Shakespeare had to include this disclaimer, due to the homophobia of the time….”

Source of Notes and Comment: http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/20detail.html

SONNET 52

Our gay (or bi) icon, William Shakespeare,  communicates erotically about the man he loves (Sonnet 52)….

The photo* helps visualize Shakespeare’s “sweet up-locked treasure,” the man with whom he cannot always be, however much his desires compel him.  He craves “the fine point of seldom pleasure”—the phallic delight the man he loves can give him in “feasts so solemn and so rare.” He celebrates the man’s “jewels” like gemstones in a necklace and anticipates the “unfolding” of the man’s “imprison’d pride” as arousal withdraws the phallus-covering skin, revealing “the wardrobe that the robe doth hide.”

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since, seldom coming, in the long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.**
So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
To make some special instant special blest,
By new unfolding his imprison’d pride.
   Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope,
   Being had, to triumph, being lack’d, to hope.

* Like gemstones in an ornamental necklace

** Source of photo: http://mypersonalstock.tumblr.com/post/1653917256/boibobsboys-layin-around

Summary of Sonnets

To find a detailed analysis of a particular sonnet (and the photo of a beautiful guy selected for each one), use the search button: Sonnet1, Sonnet2, Sonnet3, etc. 

1. In the first sonnet, the poet expresses a concern repeated in subsequent sonnets that the beautiful man he loves who finds sexual outlet in himself (as most of us do), will not continue his line unless he also fathers sons (or daughters) in his magnificent image.  Age will diminish his beauty in time and death will eventually claim him so, even if he is not oriented toward women, he will need to find one who will mother his offspring.  For detailed analysis accompanying another photo of the mystery man I think was Southampton

Sonnet 2:  The poet continues telling the younger man he loves the importance of passing on his seed.  By the time he’s 40 he’ll no longer have the youthful beauty he now enjoys.  Old age will not improve things—not to mention death.  Life is fleeting even more in the 15th century when most people did not live as long as we do now.

Sonnet 3: The poet continues telling the younger man he loves the importance of passing on his seed.  He marvels over this beauty and wants it preserved in the man’s offspring, even though that means a woman must bear his child.  It is not enough to take care of his own sexual needs (“self-love”) when this means not passing his beauty on to future generations.

4. Sonnet 4: The poet continues telling the younger, “beautiful” man he loves the importance of passing on his seed. How can this lovely guy really be satisfied only having “traffic” with himself (“to spend upon thyself,” i.e., masturbating) when passing his beauty to future generations is so important.  After all, masturbation and making love are not mutually exclusive activities. It’s not really being thrifty to save himself from others because, the poet adds: “When nature calls thee to be gone,” what will be left of you if there are no children in your line?  Put another way, even in an age when technology had not yet facilitated the process, gay (or bisexual) men could still have find a way to father children.

5. In Sonnet 5, the poet reflects on the passing of time and with it the fading of outward forms of youthful male beauty, but the inner beauty of a man can be preserved like “flowers distill’d though they with winter meet, Leese [i.e., lose] but their show; their substance still lives sweet.”  We gaze upon his masculine beauty now fully knowing that like the seasons the magnificence of youth will yield to the ravages of time. Read with the immediately preceding Sonnet 4, we know the young man finds his sexual outlet in masturbation.  The poet is not quarreling with him on self-love so long as it does not exclude attending to the urgent task of making love to a woman to bear his child and thus perpetuate his beauty in forthcoming generations. It is a prescription for eternal summer—youthful beauty sustained even when old age leaves only the memory as the essence of perfume (“summer’s distillation”) preserves the fragrance of flowers whose beautiful bloom has past.  His male beauty will live on in the sons and generations of grandsons born of his seed….

Sonnet 6: The man he loves enjoys autorerotic pleasures, but the poet laments the youth’s wasting his fertile seed that ought to be put to pro-creation of his beauty for generations to come.  Not just one new child in his image, but even better would be ten who will themselves produce their heirs and on and on….

Sonnet 7: As in previous sonnets, the poet observes how the beauty shown here is a transient phenomenon that fades with the passing of the days (and years) of one’s life—this male beauty preserved only in the man he loves also fathering a son.  The man he loves should have a son who will carry on his beauty even as his own fades with age and would otherwise fade into oblivion….

Sonnet 8: As in previous sonnets, the poet wants the male beauty of the one he loves preserved by his friend fathering a son. Though not drawn to women, the man he loves needs to take a wife if for no other reason that she can bear his progeny.  The poet is speaking to us about an issue gay men (and women) have faced over the centuries—how to procreate without sexual intercourse.  Present-day reproductive technologies help resolve this matter, but mothers (or women willing to be surrogate mothers) remain a vital part of the present-day experience.

Sonnet 9: Although the man he loves also loves men, the poet—as in the earlier sonnets—urges his man to make love to a woman who will bear his children.  Masturbation may satisfy his sexual needs in single life, but he laments the loss of his beauty to the world forever were he to die without offspring—his semen to no reproductive end: “Beauty’s waste hath in the world an end, And kept unused, the user so destroys it.”  So beautiful is he, what “murderous shame” will be his should he erase himself from humanity! Strong stuff!  Or is such over-the-top language a form of sardonic humor?

Sonnet 10: Although the man he loves also loves men, the poet—as in the earlier sonnets—urges his man to make love to a woman who will bear his children.  Masturbation may satisfy his sexual needs in single life, but he laments the loss of his beauty to the world forever were he to die without offspring—his semen to no reproductive end: “Beauty’s waste hath in the world an end, And kept unused, the user so destroys it.”  So beautiful is he, what “murderous shame” will be his should he erase himself from humanity! Strong stuff!  Or is such over-the-top language a form of sardonic humor?

11. The poet is in love with a younger man, but also wants him to procreate—that nature intended he “print more, not let that copy die.”

12. In this beautifully worded sonnet the poet laments the loss of his man’s beauty to time, fathering offspring the only human remedy to what otherwise would be a complete loss to posterity.

13. As in earlier sonnets, the poet urges the man he loves to have a son who will carry his beautiful self and sustain the family in generations to come: “You had a father: let your son say so.”

14. The poet is in love with a younger man in whose eyes he finds truth and beauty as stars in the night:

“from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive….”

But alas, we are mortal and with us go our truth and beauty.  Read with the preceding sonnets, this is part of the poet’s plea that the young man also make love to a woman who can bear him a son in his image and likeness—immortality through offspring.

15. In earlier sonnets the poet urged his man to make love to a woman to bear a son who would carry his beauty to future generations.  In this sonnet, however, Shakespeare shifts gears, embedding his love’s beauty in poetry that also will survive the passage of time.

16. The poet continues in this sonnet to urge the man he loves to defeat the ravages of time by planting his seed in his choice of maidens who desire his affection, who want him as a lover.  The flower of his youth can be passed on through a woman who will bear his child.  That he loves men need be no obstacle to his fathering children—flowers in his beautiful image!

17. The poet is in love with a younger man whom he urges to produce a child who will capture the beauty of which he writes in living form—passed on from generation to generation, thus giving credence to the poet’s verse.

18. The poet is in love with this younger man whose beauty is at the core of this sonnet, thus preserving in verse for all time the object of his love and affection. We  should take PRIDE in how this magnificent sonnet on masculine beauty is written by a man to a man! 

19. The poet is in love with a younger man.  Lest his love’s beauty be devoured by time, he is preserved in the poet’s verse and in the seed the poet’s lover passes to future generations through the agency of a woman who will mother his offspring.

20. If you wonder whether the poet is really gay or bi, in Sonnet 20 he tells us he is in love with this younger man, the “master-mistress of [his] passion.” Women can bring him offspring in their love for him, but the poet can love him as only a man can.