SHAKES-QUEER? New Evidence Emerges to Prove William Shakespeare may be Gay

Ananova Breaking News Wire and the London Daily Sun ^ | Monday, April 22, 2002 00:14 GMT | What Tomorrow's Newspapers Say Staff

[glorygirl]

And Peter the Great.

"Nevertheless we learn nearly all the facts we need to know about our hero's violence and alcoholism, his probable homosexual relations with Menshikov"

[AKA Elena]

Frankly, who cares about Shakespeare's sexual proclivity anyway? We are obsessed with sex in our society -- period! No disrespect intended, but EVERY subject seems to be framed by some hue of sexual depravity or unwarranted emphasis, at any rate, whether normal or perverse ... a sign of the times ... but we help the spiral downward very well!

[real saxophonist]

None of y'all heard Hugh Hewitt's show with the guy who teaches Shakespeare at Annapolis, I guess...

[Reactionary]

"New Evidence Emerges to Prove William Shakespeare may be Gay"

Exactly. You don't prove "may." And you don't say that someone "may be gay" who happens to be... dead.

[glorygirl]

Catherine the Great took a little longer.

"Catherine even stated that she felt "unloved" since childhood(Alexander 21). Johanna delivered a final blow before she left St. Petersburg by ordering the removal of Maria Zhukora, one of Catherine's close friends, from the royal court. Elizabeth agreed; both feared a possible lesbian relationship between the two women."

[SR71A]

Does anybody remember when the 1890 decade was called "The Gay '90s", and it meant it was a time of happiness and prosperity? No doubt the history books are being revised as we speak.

[Intolerant in NJ]

New Evidence Emerges to Prove William Shakespeare may be Gay...ain't the post-modern deconstructionist movement great? Find one little item about some character and from it spin a complete fantasy "proving" whatever you want others to believe about your subject - I'm betting this is all based on the fact that Shakespeare is depicted as wearing a fluffy collar in some his supposed pictures....

[aruanan]

We know Shakespeare's father was a Catholic even after that became illegal, and there is good reason to believe that Shakespeare himself was educated as a Catholic when that was illegal.

Are you talking about the guy named Shakespeare or the one who wrote everything attributed to him?

[Skooz]

"his probable homosexual relations with Menshikov"

I remember leftist "historians" trying to make the case that Peter was gay. They used as their "evidence" that Peter often slept together with his friends in the same bed or all gathered on the floor. What they fail to mention is that that was the custom of Russians of the day. Close friends would often sleep in a dogpile after a night on the town or a party. There is absolutely NO evidence whatsoever that Peter and Menshikov had "homosexual relations." None--except in the minds of hopeful heterophobic "historians" who wish to ram their left-wing agenda down everyone's throats.

Russians are still that way to a point. I remember a visit to the Ukraine in which a friend was attending a pastor's conference with a large group of Ukranian pastors and lay people. His big concern was that he would encounter the dreaded "kiss on the lips" greeting common throughout Russia and Ukraine. He did. The pastors were not gay, that is just the custom. Nevertheless, if he somehow becomes famous he will probably become gay, too.

[weegee]

Well, let's see. Robin Hood was fictional (and therefore had no sexual relations). They aren't even positive of who Shakespeare was but someone claims to know that he was gay?

Let me guess, anything to do with the fact that women's roles were played by men?

[weegee]

But the guy who wrote "A Beautiful Mind" wasn't homosexual even though he admitted to cruising men's rooms for pickups (just as he wasn't anti-semetic)...

[weegee]

So some overpaid "scholars" are spending all their research time investigating William Shakespeare's sex life?

When we had investigators doing this of the top public official, we were told that "it's just sex". "it's his private life", etc.

I'd be real interested in hearing this scholar's take on Ken Starr...

[weegee]

Which list do Janet Reno and Hillary Clinton fall into?

[Junior]

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays were spent hanging around in bars
Bedecked as women.

[weegee]

I recall reading someplace a list of the top 3 people who have fictional quotes attributed to them:

Winston Churchill
Lawrence "Yogi" Berra

and I forget the third...

[weegee]

Before anyone brings it up, now that we are on the subject of Catherine the Great:

The Straight Dope

The simple answer to your question is no, the rumor is not true. However, this will not stop us from repeating the rumor, to wit: that Catherine the Great, empress of Russia in the latter part of the 18th century, was crushed to death when attendants lost their grip on the ropes supporting a horse that was being lowered on her for, ahh, sexual purposes. This is without doubt the most outrageous story I heard during my entire college career, which is when you usually come across these little historical tidbits.

The boring truth is this: Catherine the Great died of a stroke while sitting on the commode in the palace at St. Petersburg.

The story about Catherine's alleged yen for horses probably has its roots in the fact that she had an active and unusually public sex life. She had numerous lovers throughout her long reign, one of whom, Grigori Potemkin, procured young men for her after their own relationship cooled. The lucky stud would be "tested" by one of Catherine's ladies-in-waiting, and if he showed class he would be appointed adjutant general, or something along those lines, and spend a couple soft years performing as required.

Nothing mentioned about women with Catherine.

[Neanderthal]

"That's right, everyone who ever lived, is living, and will live in the future is a homo.

Does that include the Neanderthals? Is that the reason they went extinct?"

I can assure you that not all of the Neanderthals were gay. And they're not really extinct.