Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare

by Will Tosh

Was Shakespeare gay? The answer is both simpler and more complex than you might think . . .

Shakespeare's work was profoundly influenced by the queer culture of his time - much of it totally integrated into mainstream society. From a relentless schooling in Latin and Greek homoeroticism, to a less formal education on the streets and in smoky taverns, from the gender-bending of the early comedies to the astonishingly queer literary scene that nurtured Shakespeare's sonnets, this is a story of artistic development and of personal crisis.

Straight Acting is a surprising portrait of Shakespeare's queer lives - his own and those in his plays and poems. It is a journey back in time and through Shakespeare's England, revealing a culture that both endorsed and supressed same-sex desire. It is a call to stop making Shakespeare act straight and to recognise how queerness powerfully shaped the life and career of the world's most famous playwright.

Genres: Nonfiction, Shakespeare, History, LGBT, Biography, Queer, Gay

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 13, 2024

Reviews

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the easiest 5 stars I've ever given a book.

Tosh managed to write an academic text (Foucault mention within 4%) for a public audience and writes an extremely convincing message.

The book includes fictional, literary passages intended to paint the scene, followed by a chapter of historical analysis. It allows the reader to place Shakespeare within a cultural context and, while unpacking that culture, draw logical conclusions. The book provides much needed nuance to constructivism without making unfounded claims and also provides a reasonable take on queerness pre-19th century.

This is very readable; Tosh's writing is excellent - never tedious, but never jumping to conclusions. That said, I wouldn't describe this as an easy read. It is focused, streamlined, and is a deep dive into early modern sexuality and masculinity.

I truly hope this won't be Tosh's only book intended for a public audience. Thank you NetGalley and Seal Press for an ARC of this book!

[Evie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect balance of academic and accessible, sincere and witty, and meticulously researched (astonishingly so). You couldn't ask for a more knowledgeable or passionate guide than Tosh, as he takes you on a tour of not only Shakespeare's queer life and characters, but some of his other queer male contemporaries (John Lyly, James I, Richard Barnfield etc) and the place of male homoeroticism in the late 16th century in general.

[bri]

An incredible read for anyone interested in Shakespeare and/or queer history. Through fictional vignettes and a glorious web of research, Will Tosh provides a clear picture of Shakespeare's life and world through a queer lens.

This book has sparked so many interests and has introduced me to so many new rabbit holes to dig down, and I can't wait to investigate the inspirations for this book and the many queer contemporaries of Shakespeare.

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

This title is an absolute must-read if you have any interest in theatre history, Tudor history, and/or queer history. If I could, I would give it a scale-breaking six stars.

Author Will Tosh is doing something new and fascinating here. There has been speculation off and on concerning whether Shakespeare was what we would now call queer. That's not the topic Tosh is exploring. He begins with an assumption that there simply isn't enough information to be able to know Shakespeare's what we would now call gender identity. However, what there is enough information on relationships among men—both those we now call straight and those we now call queer—in Tudor England that we can examine Shakespeare's works for evidence these various types of relationships among men and query what they might tell us about Shakespeare's world view and experiences.

This is fascinating stuff. Tosh portrays a type of idealized male-male relationship, purportedly superior to any possible male-female relationship, that was celebrated during the reign of Elizabeth I and James I. Such relations were based on classical models and were etched into the psyches of young men with enough money to go to school and to spend time working their way through Latin and Greek texts in the original languages.

Were these relationships sexual? Sometimes, yes; sometimes, no. The penalty for sodomy in Tudor England was death, although such cases were a rarity. But the idealized male friendship helped create a space in which some men did manage to engage in queer sexual activity without winding up on trial for their lives. This space, however, was small, and the turbulent religious and political battles of the time meant that one couldn't count on being able to remain in this space.

Tosh also looks beyond Shakespeare's works to consider other texts from the time and how their authors were viewed: Marlowe, Greene, Fletcher, and Nash among them. In some cases the were-they-or-won't-they question can be answered with a bit more certainty.

I really cannot understate how much I enjoyed reading this book, how much I appreciate Tosh's research and the research of others he draws on, and how precise and engaging Tosh's prose is. This is a book I know I'll reread because I want at least one or two more rounds of the eye opening and assumption challenging experiences it can offer.

I received a free electronic review copy of this text from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

As someone who thinks that queer sensibility ≠ queer identity, that language and art can carry queer resonance without needing to declare a stable identity, I believe Will Tosh does Shakespeare a disservice. Straight Acting reads less like scholarship and more like autobiographical criticism, a fanboy letter (especially those fictionalised sketches of William’s supposed queer life) turned into an overidentification with the ambiguity of the life & work, and this says more about Tosh’s need for belonging and allegiance than about Elizabethan times and Shakespeare’s relationship to desire, intimacy, and genre play. There’s a difference between reading Shakespeare queerly (and that’s always fun and games!) and clamorously rebranding the historical figure as queer, even if it’s dressed as celebration. The writing is not particularly good either…

I guess I’m asking for more from any criticism on our Quill Daddy. Sorry, not sorry!

[Keelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sooo good not only as an academic yet accessible journey through Shakespeare’s life, but also through the writings and experiences of authors and poets and men around him, some of whom I’d never heard of despite my interest in and knowledge of both the period and queer history. I listened to the audiobook so I would love to get my hands on a physical copy to delve into the bibliography and notes, as there were definitely some quotes in there I would like to look up.
A very excellent addition to queer history and the overflowing Shakespeare shelf

[Zeynep T. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was Shakespeare gay? I see the value in discussing this topic, especially for the future of queer literature, as the author pointed out at the start. However, it seems like there’s a strong effort to establish Shakespeare's queerness. Personally, I find that the historical insights and the analysis of his plays and sonnets are what truly make this book engaging.

Thanks to NetGalley and Basic Books | Seal Press for the ARC of the book.

[Jen (Fae_Princess_in_Space) · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you follow my reviews you’ll know that I don’t read non-fiction, ever. However when I spotted this book, and saw the author is going to be doing a talk near me, I thought what the heck; I loved Shakespeare at School and Uni and I am an avid theatre fan… and holyyyy heck I’m so glad I picked this book up! It’s so well written and I’ve come away from it feeling a hell of a lot more educated than I went in!

This book looks at Shakespeare’s life through a queer lens (which is pretty clear… as a young newly-out queer at secondary school, I absolutely lapped up the gender-fluid mistaken identity in his plays, and that was with a teacher who was far more interested in me looking at the rhymes and metres than the obviously queer shenanigans going on!) and looking at how his experiences, the politics at the time and his fellow writers influenced him.

I loved reading how much influence he took from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as current politics (had no idea James I of England was literally king of the queers) and about the other writers who influenced and were influenced by him (justice for Richard Barnfield!). I also enjoyed the discourse on the allure of the young men who played these characters on the stage, how their existence was designed to titillate the audience, and how their lives were affected by the characters they brought to life.

My concern going in to this book was whether this was going to be an accessible read… my biggest fear with non-fiction is I’m going to get swamped down in technical language I don’t understand and as there are no ‘characters’ to connect to, I’ll get disconnected. I am pleased to report that this book is beautifully written and accessible to anyone, regardless of whether you have read any Shakespeare or not!

I absolutely recommend this book, not just for Shakespeare fans, but also for fans of queer historical fiction (my personal love!) and anyone with an interest in the development of queer culture and theatre ✨

Read Straight Acting for:
✨ Non-fiction look at the queerness of Shakespeare’s life, plays and written works
✨ Details around his formative schooling years
✨ A comprehensive look at the works that inspired him and a generation of writers
✨ Historical context at the time, including queer royals and political manoeuvres
✨ Brief look at other artists whose influence can be seen; Kit Marlowe and Richard Barnfield to name two
✨ A look behind the curtain at the boys and young men who brought his characters to life
✨ Accessible and immersive writing which you don’t need a degree to understand! 💕

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was AMAZING, honestly every chapter was really useful for my diss. Highly recommend though even if you’re reading it for fun, it’s very accessible while being very informative at the same time. And of course it’s a pleasure to read anything written by the wonderful Will Tosh!

[norah · Rating 5 out of 5]

thanks to NetGalley for the eARC

⭐️=5 | 😘=5 | 🤬=4 | ⚔️=4 | 18+

summary: what it says in the title (homosocial early modern environments + gay poems + gay Romans inspiring gay poems + analyzing early modern gay poets and their work and their misogyny also and what it says about their culture at large et cetera)

thoughts: iconic. necessary. so informative and delightful and queer and perfectly nerdy?? like this scratched an inexplicable itch in my brain and now I want a queer biography of all my favorite classic authors.

[Agathe · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is an enlightening book about queerness and homoeroticism in the Elizabethan era; however, I would have appreciated a more thorough analysis of those themes in each of Shakespeare's works.

[Nev · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m by no means a Shakespeare expert or a history scholar. I read like maybe 3 or 4 of his plays back in school, but a lot of it definitely went over my head. So while I was interested in reading this book because the idea of learning about queer influences on Shakespeare sounded great, I was also a bit hesitant. I was worried that I’d just feel lost or not have enough background knowledge of him, his works, or the time period to fully appreciate the book. But I’m glad to say that didn’t happen. The author Will Tosh made the subject completely engaging and understandable for someone reading it from a non-expert position.

This isn’t a book that is trying to definitively prove that Shakespeare was absolutely gay and “here look at these sources that prove he slept with men” or whatever. It’s about showing the queer elements that existed in his society, queer stories he would’ve learned in school, queer works from other poets and playwrights working at the same time, and discussing the queer characters and themes present in his poems and plays. It was really interesting to see recurring references to queer Greek or Roman myths that kept popping up in different works. Or to think about the different meanings that lines could take on when the female roles were being performed by men on stage.

I just had a great time reading this book. It has inspired me to want to read some more of Shakespeare’s plays or to seek out adaptations of them. I think people interested in queer literary history should definitely check this book out.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an advance copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Shalini · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have long kept my distance from Shakespeare. Anything bearing his name tended to summon dreary visions of England’s past — a heritage proudly clutched only by the English. Yet, despite my resistance, the Bard is hard to avoid. Whether accompanying visitors to Stratford-upon-Avon, encountering novels like Hamnet, or watching contemporary London stagings of plays such as Coriolanus, Shakespeare has a habit of reappearing. Will Tosh’s work has intriguingly cracked open a period I had mostly written off: the Early Modern era. His approach doesn’t merely rehash academic reverence; it invites curiosity. For instance, what did Shakespeare do when the playhouses were shut during the plague? He turned to erotic epic poetry — or more precisely, the epillyon. And what of his sexuality? Tosh wisely resists reductive labels, instead illuminating the complexities of desire, identity, and expression in that time. It's refreshing, too, to see that the moralists were just as noisy then as they are now — reminding us that cultural policing is nothing new. Thanks to Will Tosh, I find myself not only more open to Shakespeare but actually eager to read and explore further.

[Ashley Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. I consider myself to be decently well read? I mean I have an English degree//I am an English teacher and I also taught a mythology course but I still found myself Googling a lot during this book. Including the vocabulary! The reading was dense and felt outside of my zone of proximal development sometimes tbh. There would be homoeroticicism and tongue in cheek moments that kept me going but low key read similar to Shakespeare itself. I didn’t hate it overall and I like thinking about Shakespeare being gay. Could have been more accessible. Like who is this book for? Other Shakespeare scholars? Niche.

[Siona Adams]

I got this for a book club hosted by Peppermint (a trans woman who does drag and has been on Drag Race before), but it wasn’t exactly for me. There was some interesting information in the book, but the writing style was very dry and I had to force myself to even skim read passages. I wouldn’t say this was a bad book, just not perfect for me.

[Dr. des. Siobhán · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Shakespeare scholar this book was great fun. I listened to the audiobook while playing Mario Kart & it was so enjoyable. Would love to teach a class where we read one chapter of this each week & then talk about the Shakespeare plays mentioned. But I'm leaving university, so I'll just keep these ideas in my head. Well done, Will Tosh, Shakespeare research accessible and entertaining! 5 stars

[Archie Hamerton · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are countless academic books on the queerness of Shakespeare’s texts — and countless more speculative conspiracies about the queerness of their author, too. Will Tosh’s ‘Straight Acting’ is a different beast entirely. Straight acting combines the thorough research of traditional biography with elegant literary analysis of the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, interspersing both with flashes of really quite touching fictional episodes, imaginings of what Shakespeare’s life among the queer writing culture of Jacobethan London would have been like. The work is by no means a tawdry attempt to sniff out some sodomy in the bard’s biography. It is a portrait of a queer age, an age which — in some respects — afforded far greater leniency and license to its queer men and writers. That said, I found Tosh’s chapters on Barnfield incredibly moving, a sensitively handled account of the social stigmatisation and persecution of a brilliant gay writer which seems to preceded the more famous cases of the same in the later 19th century. A very readable addition to some of the brilliant queer non fiction being released this year!

[Katie Bogdan · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars

As a burgeoning Shakespearean scholar myself, it is of vital importance to me to read as much as possible about the man in all of his complex, multi-faceted glory. Tosh's Straight Acting asks us to stop fixating on the question of whether or not Shakespeare was queer and puts forth a portrait of our artist as a young man flourishing in a society where same-sex desire was simultaneously repressed and sustained. Even with my fairly extensive background knowledge, I found this book to be a treasure trove of information about the social milieu of London, about the writing of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and about Shakespeare's response to these works as seen through his own plays and poetry. This is not an interrogation where Shakespeare's words are held up to a microscope so that a queer reading can be discerned line by line; it is a excavation and celebration of the articulated queerness of the early modern era (our most-likely-bi king Billy Shakes included!).

Thank you to NetGalley and Seal Press for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review!

[Mya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, I learned a lot about queer culture and gender, and queer artists in early Modern England. However, the insights into Shakespeare's personal queerness were much more speculative than I expected. Interesting queer analysis of his texts, and the queer works and lives of his queer contemporaries, but the work or broader norms don't necessarily reflect his own orientation or behaviour. Perhaps they do, but maybe he was just a great ally, or exploiting what he knew was popular (as Tosh points out he was often inspired by prior famous queer texts). We can't know for certain. I was hoping for more certainty and insight into his personal life, but of course Shakespeare is notorously difficult to pin down for large chunks of his life. (And I had to skip the chapter introductions which were essentially fan fiction.) Still, I assume everyone is bi until I'm proven otherwise, and this book didn't convince me he was straight...

[N]

(Sampled: 15%) Ack, I hate the recent cost-saving drive by publishers that has led so many unqualified authors to read their own audiobooks. Will Tosh here, complete with heavy breathing and 'noisy mouth', sounds like he recorded this muffled audiobook on an iPhone 5. Truly, unlistenable.

In terms of the book itself, ehhh. If there are queer people desperate to see themselves in Elizabethan England and this book helps them, great. But I find the recent mania for slapping modern labels on historical figures (Boudica had ADHD!* William the Conquerer was pansexual!) to be a little cringe. Not, to be clear, because I think every person in history was straight, cis and neurotypical, but because the opposite was probably true: people throughout history were way more likely to be queer and 'abnormal' in some way. Therefore, this entire genre is one giant SHRUG to me.

*Actually, I'd read the Boudica ADHD book. 'She was a creative thinker, but she was always forgetting where she parked her horse.'

[Michelle Graf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Basic Books for the ARC.

I know the most popular Shakespeare plays. Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Midsummer’s. I was never interested in studying more because I thought he was overdone in the academic world, so I took a Milton course in college instead (mandatory dead white guy course for English majors). I'll be damned, this book makes me want to read Shakespeare. Rather than getting into the was he/wasn't he argument, Tosh goes over the queer subtext in the literature of Shakespeare's education, the works and lives of his contemporaries, and how that can show in his own works. All this is in a way that a novice can understand, perfect for someone who went out of their way to avoid reading more Shakespeare in the past.

[Nick Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read!

I’d read most of the work cited in the first part of Tosh’s bibliography in grad school. And that provides the foundation on which he builds this queerly fascinating in which Shakespeare lived and wrote. Painting the picture of The Bard as a modern man, influenced by the trends and poets of his time, adds a humanity that is almost-all-but missing to most who have elevated him to a god-like status.
And, I must admit I’ve got quite a long list of new books added to my to-be-read list.
Well worth your time!

[Sarah Wahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read some of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets through a queer lens, which was brought up in this novel, but what I didn't fully know was his inspiration! I find it utterly fascinating to see how Shakespeare got his start not just with writing, but with writing queer stories. I now want to read some of the plays mentioned by Tosh because seeing the breakdown helped me understand the influence of good old Willy Shakes; however, I would love to read and analyze them myself! 4 stars because it was captivating but at times seemed to drag. It is helpful to see who inspired his works, but I didn't necessarily need the full life story of the "supporting cast."

[Jemma Forster · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Will Tosh has no fans I’m dead.

Also the perfect book to read while drafting my Shakespeare chapter. Reminded me to stop trying to resolve all those sexy multiplicities and just bed down right inside in them.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

So little is known about Shakespeare that it is possible to claim he was almost anything. This worked best as a record of sexuality in Shakespeares time, and a brilliant inter-textual analysis. Where it was less enjoyable was in walking the difficult tightrope of popular academia. The difficulty is that it ends up too academic to be a really easy read, and too popular to be robustly academic. Decent though. A good read.

[morgan bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

okay this was very good but there’s only so many times i can read the same three words before my brain starts to melt

[Kariss Ainsworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing how much they managed to pull out of this considering how little is known about him

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a delightful and genuinely novel romp through the queer influences that may or may not have impacted upon erstwhile playwright and sonneteer William Shakespeare. I myself was struck by how nasty and sexist the sonnets are when I read them in collection (although without the long-form poem ‘A Lover’s Complaint’ with which they were originally published). It’s nice to be vindicated! It’s also fun to come across historical plot points that a straight historian would have ignored or bypassed, like the inherent crudity of Ovid, or the brief and tragic career of poet Richard Barnfield. It reminds me of how historians were puzzled for literal decades about Queen Victoria’s monthly illnesses, until they started letting women become historians, and women were like, um, PMS? I think having a particular slant in approach is not only interesting, but universal – it’s just the the slant is usually a white straight man’s.

‘William received about 2000 hours of teaching per year, roughly double that of a pupil at school in most countries today. Almost all of that time was spent in learning to read, write and speak Latin.’

I think that’s more than people at UNIVERSITY get.

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A dazzling portrait of Shakespeare as a young artist, revealing how his rich and complex queer life informed the plays and poems we treasure today

“Was Shakespeare gay?” For years the question has sent experts and fans into a tailspin of confusion. But as scholar Will Tosh argues, this debate misses the sex, intimacy, and identity in Elizabethan England were infinitely more complex—and queer—than we have been taught.

In this incisive biography, Tosh reveals William Shakespeare as a queer artist who drew on his society’s nuanced understanding of gender and sexuality to create some of English literature’s richest works. During Shakespeare’s time, same-sex desire was repressed and punished by the Church and state, but it was also articulated and sustained by institutions across England. Moving through the queer spaces of Shakespeare’s life—his Stratford schoolroom, smoky London taverns and playhouses, the royal court—Tosh shows how strongly Shakespeare’s early work was influenced by the queer culture of the time, much of it totally integrated into mainstream society. He also uncovers the surprising reason why Shakespeare veered away from his early work’s gender-bending homoeroticism.

Offering a subversive sketch of Elizabethan England, Straight Acting uncovers Shakespeare as one of history’s great queer artists and completely reshapes the way we understand the Bard’s life and times.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Whaaat?! You mean there's credible evidence that heteronormative readings of the Bard aren't the whole picture?! Well, I never! Next you'll tell me that William Rufus and Richard Lion-Heart *were* big ol' 'mos!

Folks...men brought Juliet, Portia, Lady Macbeth, Desdemona, et alii to life. Not because they were second best choices, or because this is boarding school and that's all there is, but because they brought these female roles vibrantly and intensely, convincingly and alluringly, to life. Actors were out in drag, making people believe, and lust for, the females Shakespeare knew as he was writing them would be played by males. He most likely had an image of who he wanted for each role. He was a man of the theatre, a playwright and actor, it would be weird if he had not.

That means...wait for it...he knew what made a man beautiful, and chose ones he knew could evoke the many, complicated responses his characters do from an audience. Including lust.

Time to stop the disingenuous "there was no such thing as gayness in Shakespeare's time! And look at all those sodomy laws! No homo, bro!" True, the entire QUILTBAG spectrum was not conceptualized then.

Because there was no need. Not like y'all heteronormative people think. There was no need in the culture to label things that didn't affect you, weren't relevant to your life. The Church was the self-appointed bedroom behavior regulator; sex lives of strangers was their job to judge and police, not some random dude on the street. This was the time of "don't make me notice you and I won't be forced to call in the law." That law, civil or religious, was Draconian. The denouncements of sodomites from the pulpit, in that god-ridden age, was as good as the Police Gazette in eighteenth and nineteenth century England was at getting the word out on who was a sodomite. But given how many men and women get up to a spot of sodomy (about 46% per good ol' Alfred Kinsey in his as-yet-unmatched surveys) we can feel sure it was the loudest, loosest, and least able (or willing) to pass by being quiet who make up the extensive case evidence in court archives the world over.

Shakespeare, operating in a world I'd call a straight guy's paradise aka the theatre, wouldn't have been much attended to as to his personal life. Married with children, no reason would've been found...unlike with Marlowe, who was aggressively Other in a time where conformity was more rigidly enforced on the surface than it is even now. His obscene plays, though no patch on PG-13 films today, his louche life of spying and, there's credible evidence to suggest, bonking the boys, all while knowingly on the radar of the Queen's secret police, was the index case for how to get yourself in bad trouble. There's a cautionary tale in Deptford. No such tale exists in our hero's life. He was rather shockingly absent from public records. He never appeared before a judge, he wasn't going to make waves...that family in Stratford needed supporting, even though he wasn't going to be there in the flesh. After all, even Will's "rival poet" Richard Barnfield, known to be author of a very explicitly homoerotic poem that he was later, when under fire from Authority for its naughtiness, glad enough to disavow, had asked for it by being indiscreet. Examples of consequences make it easy to justify internally toeing the line.

Using the technique of writing short fictional vignettes at the beginning of each chapter that set the scene for the reader will turn some off hard. I appreciated it because it wasn't presented as facts of Shakespeare's life. Still, as noted, we can't know if any of the things in those vignettes are realities Shakespeare would've experienced. As with all people long dead, we will never be possessed of certainty about his nature, his feelings, his thoughts and prayers.

This fact does not stop the heteronormies from saying, "see? see? he couldn't have been queer!"; as always, ignoring the giant flaw in their reasoning: Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

Was he, wasn't he, will we ever know ye , Will?

Nope. And that's okay. It's got to be. There can never be a fully known person of his five-hundred-years-gone era. The evidence for his bisexuality and attraction to other men is all over his work. But it can never be proof, either to the heteronormies or the queering crowd.

Enjoy this excavation of sex, sexual identity, and societal accommodation of gender and sexual minorities in Shakespeare's time, and then think your own thoughts about him. He certainly won't care.
NB THE BLOGGED REVIEW CONTAINS INFORMATIVE LINKS

[magpie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little more speculative than I would’ve liked, and perhaps more about the early modern context of male homoeroticism than specifically about Shakespeare, but a well-researched and informative read nonetheless.