After seeing a very funny and definitely off-color reference to Sonnet 20 on Twitter, I went to look it up and saw it tagged as the one that “surely” proves Shakespeare’s homosexuality.  I don’t have the time right now to dig into it, but you know what it did remind me of?  Scrubs.  How many people watch this TV show?  I love it, and for awhile even had a web site dedicated to it. In the show, for those that don’t watch, there’s the very complicated best-friend relationship between Turk, the masculine black surgeon, married with kids, who spends his time playing basketball, working out, high-fiving and chest-bumping his like-minded surgeon friends…and J.D., the emotional needy nerdy white guy who spends his time fantasizing about things that most certainly border on homoerotic, to say the least. Some examples from the history of the show…

J.D. “Dude I don’t want to sound girly or anything, but for the last 5 years you’ve kinda been like my wife.” Turk  “How is that girly?”

or this

J.D. “Come on, it’s not like we’re married.” Turk “Dude, we’re married a little.”

or the fact that in their musical episode there is an entire number entitled “Guy Love”:

Guy love, that’s all it is!  Guy love, he’s mine I’m his!  There’s nothing gay about it in our eyes. 

This is a very trendy topic, ranging from the reality show “Bromance” to the recent movie “I Love You, Man.”  But in this relationship it’s pretty clearly lopsided, with JD being far more “expressive” in his feelings.  Take this running joke, as part of the best friends’ celebration:

Turk:  Upstairs! (They bump chests.) JD: Downstairs! (They bump crotches.) Turk:  I don’t really like ‘downstairs’. JD:  No?  I wanted to try it.

That was a few years ago.  Just last night they revisited the joke:

JD: Downstairs!  (They bump crotches.) Turk:  I still don’t like ‘downstairs’. JD: Really?  You haven’t come around yet?

Just a few minutes later, Turk received some good news:

Turk:  Downstairs! JD: Really? Turk:  No!  What’s *wrong* with you?

I guess my point, other than wanting to showcase my love of my favorite TV show, is that that’s sort of how I view the whole “Was Shakespeare gay?” thing.  No, I don’t think he was.  Can you cite examples where it really really really looks like he was?  Probably.  But so can I.  After all, the JD character above has a child of his own, and also been through relationships with many women.  I think the bigger issue is how some people deal with the topic.  It’s like the rule goes a little something like this:  No amount of heterosexual activity will be proof positive that you are heterosexual, but the one bit of homosexual evidence is enough to prove otherwise. If that’s how you want to play it, fine.  But personally I find it a pretty boring topic.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/performing-arts/rachel-and-juliet,1155453.html No, it’s not what you think.  This is a play by Lynn Redgrave (sister of Vanessa, children of Sir Michael, if I read that right) about her mother (Rachel) and “the role that would beguile her all her life”, Juliet.

On the day his mother died, the celebrated actor Sir Michael Redgrave had a matinee and an evening performance to give as Hamlet. Backstage at the theater, he sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Then he went out front. "And he did two of the greatest Hamlets he ever played."

The article makes it sound like the father is the more interesting character, a man who was so preoccupied with other things that the birth of his child doesn’t even appear in his diary, so obsessed with the stage that on his deathbed he whispered “How’s the house?” But Lynn Redgrave already wrote that play  – Shakespeare For My Father.  This one is different, as is her relationship with her mother.

Lynn describes her mother as a funny and perceptive woman, afflicted with self-doubt. "She suffered from her lack of security, making room for my father’s career," she says. "Rachel and Juliet," then, is "a love letter" to Kempson, who retained an attachment to Juliet into her golden years: At age 90, she recited a speech of Juliet’s at the wedding of one of Lynn’s three children, daughter Pema.

I was not aware of the apparently deep connection between the Redgraves and Shakespeare.  I shall have to keep an eye out for more of that.

I just had an idea in the comments, maybe it will help me explain my position a little better.  Bear with me for a second. Once upon a time a man by the name  of Joseph Weisenbaum wrote a book called Computer Power and Human Reason.  In it, he described something he called the “compulsive programmer”, someone who we would now call a “hacker”.  I cite this example because this is very much my life, I identify greatly with his description and when I stumbled across this particular analogy it stuck with me for life. What he said (and this is drastically paraphrased) was to imagine computer programming like a chessboard.  You’ve got a finite space, and a fixed set of rules and logic for the interaction of entities within that space.  It is a closed universe.  And yet, it is effectively infinite, and the chess master is god over that space.  That is how the compulsive programmer feels about his computers. I know *exactly* what he’s talking about there, but maybe that’s just because I’m one of them, so I hope I haven’t lost people already.  Still with me? Compare that analogy to the study of Shakespeare the man, and the body of Shakespearean work.  We end up with three different universes in which to work. The words we have (and their punctuation!) are the first finite space.  Which words were used, how often, in what combinations?  When is punctuation the core of an idea, and when is it used more or less at will?  The second “finite” space is the world described by those words.  The characters are the pieces, the words determine their moves.  And it is only our understanding of what it means to be human that we take it to the next level, making the difference between “Hamlet said this because Shakespeare said so” and “Hamlet said this because Ophelia died.”  (I imagine asking a computer AI that question and getting the first answer.)  Much like a chess set there are still effectively infinite interpretations (which is why I said “finite” like that), but they all have to be prefaced with a “maybe…but there’s my evidence why I think that.”    It is a world that still presents itself as having a finite set of rules.  Does that make sense? The third space is infinite – it is Shakespeare the man.  We don’t know why he did anything, or what he meant.  Technically we don’t even know if he existed in the form that we know as the Author.  As soon as a sentence starts with “Shakespeare meant…” or “He did this because” or “He wanted to show…” then you are in this space.  There is nothing finite about the world of Shakespeare the man.  We are playing with a partial set of rules on an infinite space.  Some people are comfortable with theorizing about how to fill the spaces, some are not. That’s why things like the Authorship question exist (not to mention the whole sexuality thing, etc etc …)   Phew.  That’s a lot to type.  Having done so, I can say it simply – it is that second space where I live.  99% of the time I see the plays as something like a roadmap / recipe of what it means to be human.   Sure, sometimes I dabble in that first space, mostly because as a software guy I have the ability to make a computer analyze the work on that level.  Almost never am I comfortable in that third space.  While it may be true that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth for specific reasons having to do with his political affiliations, that is simply of neglible interest to me other than as a curiosity.  It in no way changes my view of the play, any more than if you told me that we were all just puppets being controlled by some alien race.    There, how’s that?  Bigger can, more worms?

http://www.millsworks.net/blog/2009/04/05/shakespeares-whos-on-first/ I don’t even have time to go through all the embedded video on this one post alone, but let me hit you with the highlights: * Shakespeare Who’s On First * Looking for Richard * Theatre of Blood * The Flying Karamazov Brothers’ Comedy Of Errors with a whole bunch of other references in the text tying it all together.  Great stuff.

We’ve been doing the sonnets lately, and I happened to see a reference to #73 today on Twitter.  So, why not? That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
  Honestly I’ve never even looked at this one until now, so any analysis here is off the top of my head.  Disclaimer, I might be totally incorrect! When we talked about “forty winters” we saw that Shakespeare deliberately chose certain seasons to paint the picture he wants.  So, what season is he talking about the openly lines? Brilliantly he doesn’t just say it, he describes it: “that time of year when a few yellow leaves are left on the trees, whose branches shake in the cold wind.”  Sounds like autumn to me.  What’s more, it puts you right there.  Who hasn’t woken up one cold fall morning to exactly that feeling?  There are times (particularly for those of us here in foliage heavy New England) where you can look forward to fall – the changing colors, the coming holidays, the start of school, seeing friends you haven’t seen in months.  But on more mornings than not, you’re most likely thinking “Blah, summer’s over and pretty soon it’s going to be winter.” This sonnet is fairly depressing in that respect.  The poet is telling the “fair youth”, “This is how you see me – as a man in the autumn of my life.”  Someone who is going to die one day.  The whole sonnet is like that, actually.  “I remind you of sunsets, and the coming darkness of night.  In me you see the ashes that remain of what was once the fire of youth.” The whole thing sounds pretty self serving, like the poet was having a bad day.  It’s not like he’s saying “You called me old” or even “I can see on your face how you think of me.”  Everything the poet says about “this is what you think” is really, “this is what I think you think.”  In other words, “This is what I think of myself and I’m projecting that onto you.  I am upset about my own age and wasted youth.” If there is an optimistic bit here, it comes in the last two lines:  “You see in me what it means to get old, it makes you appreciate your own youth more because you know that you too will have to give it up someday.” What I find unusual, and I’m sure my experts will enlighten me on this one, is that there’s no reference to the relationship between the two men.   The poet never says why the youth would see him any differently than any other individual.  At first I thought that the love reference in the second to last line referred to the love of the youth for the poet, but in context it does not, it refers to a love on one’s fleeting youth. …and you know what?  As I read that it looks like it could well refer to the poet.  “Your feelings for me are stronger because you realize now that I’m not going to be around forever.”    That’s enough from me, for now.   Let’s see if this one gets as much chatter as the iambic pentameter one 🙂