Sexuality of William Shakespeare

The sexuality of English playwright William Shakespeare has been the subject of recurring debate. It is known from public records that he married Anne Hathaway and that they had three children; scholars have analysed their relationship through these documents, and particularly through the bequests to her in Shakespeare's will. Some have speculated Shakespeare had affairs with other women, based on contemporaries' written anecdotes of such affairs and sometimes on the "Dark Lady" figure in his sonnets. Some scholars have argued he was bisexual, based on analysis of the sonnets: many, including Sonnet 18 "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day", are love poems addressed to a man, the "Fair Youth", and contain puns relating to homosexuality.

At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. Two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds the next day as surety that there were no impediments to the marriage. The couple may have arranged the ceremony in some haste, since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times. Hathaway's pregnancy could have been the reason for this. Six months after the marriage, she gave birth to a daughter, Susanna. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later.

Stephen Greenblatt argues that Shakespeare probably initially loved Hathaway, supporting this by referring to the theory that a passage in one of his sonnets (Sonnet 145) plays off Anne Hathaway's name, saying she saved his life (writing "I hate from hate away she threw/And saved my life, saying 'not you.'"). Nevertheless, after only three years of marriage Shakespeare left his family and moved to London. Greenblatt suggests that this may imply that he felt trapped by Hathaway. Other evidence to support this belief is that he and Anne were buried in separate (but adjoining) graves and, as has often been noted, Shakespeare's will makes no specific bequest to his wife aside from "the second best bed with the furniture". This may seem like a slight, but many historians contend that the second best bed was typically the marital bed, while the best bed was reserved for guests. The poem Anne Hathaway by Carol Ann Duffy endorses this view of the second best bed, having Anne say: "The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas where we would dive for pearls." On the other hand, "In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on, dribbling their prose". A bed missing from an inventory of Anne's brother's possessions (removed in contravention of their father's will) allows the explanation that the item was an heirloom from the Hathaway family, that had to be returned. The law at the time also stated that the widow of a man was automatically entitled to a third of his estate, so Shakespeare did not need to mention specific bequests in the will.

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