A literary curiosity

[alexxkay]

I've been reading a book of Oscar Wilde short stories, and just finished The Portrait of Mr. W. H. It's rather odd, but fascinating. It's not so much a story, per se, as a layer of fictional plausible deniability wrapped around an intriguing literary theory. One presumes that the theory itself was not one that could be seriously advanced in the middle of Victorian England.

The characters in the story posit that the subject of Shakespeare's Sonnets (the mysterious Mr. W. H.) was in fact a boy actor in his troupe. While the story doesn't actually *explicitly* discuss homosexual love, it's *far* more broadly hinted at than I recall seeing in any other mainstream Victorian lit. Now I have this strong urge to go re-read the Sonnets, and also to see what the current literary historian types think of Oscar's version...

Comments

[tpau]

i don't think it is jsut his version. i rescently read a book on the question of who wrote shakespear, and the question of the sonnets came up. it appeared to me to be a descently supported theory about the boy actor, with several theories supposing it was another gentleman, one to whom some poetry and plays got dedicated.

[jdulac.livejournal.com]

There's been a lot of intense study of the Sonnets, especially by historians of early modern sexualities (gay/queer/feminist theorists among them).

I recommend "The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets" by Helen Vendler. It's a technical poetic analysis, not so much a social one, but very worthwhile.

This book has a great analysis of the Sonnets:
Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England: A Cultural Poetics
by Bruce R. Smith

And what is probably a necessary context-setting book is Alan Bray's "Homosexuality in Renaissance England"

[pamelina.livejournal.com]

There is lots of support for the beautiful youth in the sonnets being the son of a particular noblewoman who hired Shakespeare (during plague time when the theatres were closed) to convince her son to get married and produce an heir. Look at #20, how could it be clearer?

A woman's face with natures own hand painted
Hast thou, the Master Mistress of my passion,
A woman's gentle heart but not acquainted

(acquainted has an Elizabethan cunt euphemism, so the beautiful youth is not, er...cunted)

With shifting change as is false womans fashion,
An eye more bright then theirs, less false in rolling:
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,

(in other words: nature made you as beautiful as a woman, with brighter eyes, and a soft heart like a woman, but without a woman's fickleness, or a woman's cunt, and everything you gaze upon is made more beautiful by your attention to it)

A man in hew all Hews in his controlling,
Which steals mens eyes and womens souls amazeth,

(I think: hew'd like a man, but so beautiful all types of people, both men and women (all hues) fall in love with him)

And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,

(The Goddess Nature was making you into a woman until she fell in love with you as she was creating you)

And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

[So Nature added (by addition) one "thing" an obvious euphemism for penis, which made you the wrong sex for me (to Shakespeare's purpose no"thing")]

    But since she prickt thee out for womens pleasure,
    Mine be thy love and thy loves use their treasure.

(Since Nature gave thee a prick for women's pleasure, You can just give me all your love, and just use women for fucking. Which makes me actually think Shakespeare might not have physically consummated his love for the young boy, but I'm not certain of that. It's clear to me that he wanted to, and it's clear to me that he had mistresses.)

Also, that the "dark Lady" was a court musician, possibly a particular Spanish jewess. I feel no doubt that Shakespeare felt himself head over heels about the young man, as well as the dark lady seductress, who tormented Will by getting romantically involved with the young man, too. (it's in the sonnets)