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Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.Ok. Now the question is: do we see it or not. Well,
it's true that friendships between men were normally more
intense in the renaissance - and that while sex between
men was criminal, hugging, kissing,
sharing a bed etc. could be part of a perfectly
legitimate-seeming relationship between men. But there
are still several ways of seeing that Shakespeare is not
simply depicting friendships.For example, the name Rosalind takes in AYLI - Ganymede
is also the name of a mythic cupbearer to Zues who was
in renaissance Europe a figure for sodomy. This adds to
the complexity of the old boy actor playing woman role
farce. A boy actor is playing the part of a woman who is in
disguise as a boy named Ganymede who is roleplaying the
part of Orlando's beloved. That says that Shakespeare is
at least interested somehow in differently gendered relationships
and how they relate to one another.And both Antonios (in MOV and TN) are left out of the
marriages at the end of the play, as if to say that their
friendships are in some tension with the heterosexual
conclusions of those plays.None of this tells us anything about the sexual life of
the writer, mind you. But it does mean that questions of
homoeroticism are not just imagined in the works.Moreover, Shakespeare is not alone among renaissance dramatists
in this interest. Christopher Marlowe's Edward II - to name only the
most obvious example - has intense male friendships which
other characters in the play tar with accusations of
sodomy. Mind you, even though we have contemporary accounts
which do accuse Marlowe by name of sodomy, I do not think
that we can extapolate anything about that writers sexual
life from his own works or even these accusations.So I'm not going out of my way to read homosexuality into
literature. I'm saying its willfull and blind to pretend
that such issues are necessarily irrelevant to the texts.
Posted by Cloten on April 10, 1997 at 16:20:41
In Reply to "Just because you see it, doesn't mean it's there." posted by Reality Chuck on April 10, 1997 at 12:13:27
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