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I disagree with the conclusion, but I applaud the way you
are willing to put a real claim to the test here."straight" is not renaissance slang for heterosexual. So
it is at least not self-evident that he's playing
paradoxically with terms for sexual orientation in this
line as you (I think?) assume.King James wrote that there were only a few crimes so
terrible that a king could never in good conscience
forgive them: sodomy, witchcraft, counterfeit, murder, and
incest. Sex between man was a serious crime - though one
that was rarely prosecuted despite the comparative scarcity
of privacy in domestic life. So you can say it was seen as
a serious crime against nature and so didn't happen - or that
it was common and unremarkable despte the legal rhetoric.
Either way, it doesn't fit the response
you attribute to Shakespeare here. Either it was "sodomy" - and so
much more than merely socially embarrassing - or it was commonplace
homoeroticism and was therefore less. To my ear the sentiments you ascribe
Shakespeare are anachronistic.
Posted by Cloten on April 12, 1997 at 15:29:39
In Reply to "A close reading of Sonnet 121" posted by Prof Mike on April 11, 1997 at 03:57:45
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries & Replies From Everyone Else 4.2.97: Top | Help