Review: Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare by Will Tosh

As a huge fan of Shakespeare and as someone who studied Drama in college, I was eager to get my hands on Will Tosh’s new book Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare. Tosh is the Director of Education at Shakespeare’s Globe, London, and his book reflects his decades of studying and working on Shakespeare.

Tosh is not particularly interested in the question of whether Shakespeare was or was not queer in his personal life.  As he writes in his “Prologue”:

Treating Shakespeare’s sexuality like some sort of cold case awaiting investigation misses the point. Sodomy between men was technically a capital crime in Early Modern England (although prosecution was very rare), but same-sex desire was also articulated and sustained by institutions across the land. What we now call queerness wasn’t just–or even mostly– a matter of criminal law in Shakespeare’s time. As we’ll see, questions of identity aren’t the be-all and end-all when it comes to uncovering Shakespeare’s queer lives. This book reveals Shakespeare the queer artist–one of the greatest artists of same-sex desire in the English language. And, just as importantly, it celebrates a queer Renaissance society that has long been overlooked

While the book does include queer readings of plays such as Twelfth Night and As You Like It, I was particularly interested in how Tosh put Shakespeare in the context of other Renaissance playwrights and poets from whom he may have drawn inspiration. Chief among these was Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593).  Tosh describes how Marlowe’s Edward II–which focuses on the relationship between King Edward II and his “favorite” Piers Gaveston– served as a model for Shakespeare’s Richard II.  Marlowe led an extremely fascinating life and deserves to be studied in greater detail. Earlier this year, Tosh was featured on a special episode of the Bad Gays podcast to talk about Marlowe in great depth. The episode is well worth listening to. 

In addition to Marlowe, Tosh introduces the reader to Richard Barnfield (1574- 1620). He argues that Shakespeare’s sonnets– a large part of which are written to a “fair youth”– were possibly inspired by Barnfield’s The Affectionate Shepherd (1594) and Cynthia, with certain Sonnets (1595). These were some of the earliest sonnet sequences with openly homoerotic content.  Barnfield’s fate however, was very different from Shakespeare’s. His openly queer work caused him to be disinherited by his aristocratic family and he died in relative obscurity.  In contrast, Shakespeare’s sonnets became famous (though many 19th century critics subjected them to “de-gaying”).

In conclusion, Straight Acting is an accessible and readable introduction to queerness in Shakespeare’s works and in the culture of Early Modern England. I would highly recommend it to Shakespeare fans and to those interested in queer theory.