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Are Shakespeare's works aphobic/homophobic?


Firefly8

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Okay, the title is provocative, but hear me out...

I'm very much enjoying Patrick Stewart's daily readings of Shakespeare's sonnets. He could read a dictionary and I'd enjoy it. I've come to realize though, (at least up through today's sonnet #10) that the sonnets are earnestly trying to convince a young male to fall in love, marry, and have children. I understand that 16th century England was a completely different culture and times. Looking at the sonnets through the glasses of today, they appear to me quite harsh on, or at best, not be considerate of those that are not inclined or that choose to not seek any or opposite-gendered romance, sex, and/or procreation. I've spend a lot of time reading Shakespeare's plays and enjoy those a lot, so it kind of sinks my heart a bit to read such harsh sentiments in his sonnets.

Any Shakespeare fans out there have any thoughts on this? Anyone else enjoying Patrick Stewart's daily sonnet readings?

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Grumpy Alien

Can you elaborate on how they’re harsh or inconsiderate?

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@Kimchi Peanut

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Can you elaborate on how they’re harsh or inconsiderate?


The author is trying to convince a young man to fall in love, marry, and have children. He states that the man is young, but acting old, that he would be wasting his beauty and love selfishly by not sharing it with future society in the form of his offspring. This is described as being a selfish glutton hogging the world's due, and would be their own worst enemy if they didn't procreate. That's just in the first sonnet. They all pretty much harp on this same idea:
#2- It would be an all-consuming shame and lack of pride to be and look old and withered without having raised a child to show for it. Your youth would be made anew in your child.
#3- You would be cheating the world and cursing a woman who would have been happy to give you children if you choose not to. "Die single and thine image dies with thee."
#4&5- Wasting your beauty on yourself would be a bad investment. Your beauty is preserved in your children, otherwise you and your bloodlines die away. You will be happier with children and even happier with more children. Don't be so willfully selfish.
#8- (I understand this is an allegory, but...) it states the man isn't appreciating music because he is single and thus without harmony...harmony is produced with a wife and kids. ..."Thou single wilt prove none."
#9 is the worst of the 10 IMHO, because it equates the idea of remaining single/childless more directly with a "murderous shame" on one's self, or suicide as I interpret it.

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aces&eights

Shakespeare could also be interpreted as racist (making othello act murderous in the final act showing he was innately a savage) or sexist (in all of his plays but particularly the taming of the shrew) or anti-Semitic (merchant of Venice). The list can go on

English teachers who idealise the man like to say that he wasn’t any of these things. He just included the racism, sexism etc to be acceptable in society but secretly he was criticising it through showing it. Personally I think he was racist, sexist and the rest. But I don’t think it makes him bad. Just a product of his time. Which we all are.  At least my thoughts anyway

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I studied The Merchant of Venice in grade 11 English class. The teacher once said of Shakespeare's writings that in Shakespeare's day it was all "sex, drugs and rock & roll".

 

By the way, why would Shakespeare be homophobic? The Goodbye Girl (1977) really drove it home that Shakespeare himself was homosexual.

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Phantasmal Fingers

If you read 'Venus and Adonis' it's rather obvious Shakespeare must have been at least bisexual. Sonnets 20 & 106 seem to me to suggest this also.

 

Marlowe - who seems to have written a few of Shakespeare's sonnets himself, as did others - was most definitely homosexual as far as I can tell from his plays. Interestingly, sonnet 74 seems to me to have been written as if from Marlowe to someone else. I don't think this one was by Shakespeare himself though.

 

Certain sonnets seem to have been written to males, 108 for example.

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Phantasmal Fingers
51 minutes ago, aces&eights said:

Shakespeare could also be interpreted as racist (making othello act murderous in the final act showing he was innately a savage) or sexist (in all of his plays but particularly the taming of the shrew) or anti-Semitic (merchant of Venice). The list can go on

English teachers who idealise the man like to say that he wasn’t any of these things. He just included the racism, sexism etc to be acceptable in society but secretly he was criticising it through showing it. Personally I think he was racist, sexist and the rest. But I don’t think it makes him bad. Just a product of his time. Which we all are.  At least my thoughts anyway

'The Taming of the Shrew' is only sexist if you omit the 'Induction'. 'Kiss me Kate' omits it which makes it misogynistic.

 

I've never understood why some people think The Merchant of Venice is anti-semitic. Shylock isn't perfect - he's painted 'warts and all' - but Portia is the real villain of the piece. She's clearly being satirised when she makes the famous 'Quality of Mercy' speech and doesn't comprehend what she is actually saying.

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Grumpy Alien

I mean... it was written 400 years ago. I mostly read Shakespeare on my own - the only time we ever did Shakespeare in school was Julius Caesar in 8th grade. But we did quite a lot of more recent works such as Of Mice and Men that were problematic by modern standards. Even at a young age, we were basically taught that universal morality doesn’t exist. You can’t look at another world through your own lens. It doesn’t justify their ethics to understand where they’re coming from. We wouldn’t recognise the world that was England in the late 1500s and early 1600s. I mean first of all, we wouldn’t be able to effectively communicate. Fresh fruit and vegetables were considered to be for the poor because the came from dirt but everything “nice” was smothered with honey or sugar because who cares about bones or teeth? It was a time of food poverty so things like poaching were rife. Unfortunately, if you were a beggar or you poached on someone’s property at night, you could be put to death. 🤷‍♀️ That was just normal. Going to see a hanging is a fun day out for the whole family. Kids drank diluted beer because the water wasn’t safe so literally everyone just drank beer when they were thirsty. Famously, everyone had to be Church of England. If your flock of sheep were looking sickly, it was because your neighbour was a witch and if convicted, would be put on display in an uncomfortable position to be publicly abused. It was a very weird time compared to ours but to the people who lived it, it was just life. You got married to someone of the opposite sex, you had children, you worked your ass off, you drank yourself silly, gave your kids beer to drink and scoffed at vegetables, you called people in the pillories horrible names, you took your son to see a thief hang, etc. That was just “the done thing.” Anything deviating from “the done thing” was considered “wrong”... much like it is today. It would be unfair to hold them to our own modern standards.

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Phantasmal Fingers

 To turn to the plays for a moment, in the First Folio 'Romeo and Juliet' is billed as a tragedy, which is exactly what it is I think. But from an aro-ace perspective the romance is clearly a subplot.

 

In the society in which Romeo and Juliet live Montagues and Capulets are not supposed to see each other as human. But the two main protagonists do because they're in love, i.e. each can see beyond the hatred of them vs us. But they're trapped in a society that won't accommodate that view. Romeo has to kill Tybalt - he ends up in a kill or be killed situation. Hence when Romeo - who has been forced into losing his humanity and become a murderer - next sees Juliet he perceives her as dead - which is exactly the way the society he lives in wants him to see her. So he kills himself. When Juliet wakes up she sees that he is dead - morally and physically - so she kills herself. The play is clearly first and foremost a tragedy, the love story being very much a subplot.

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It's... not smart to judge works from the past based on morals from the present.

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I don't know what you'd expect from stuff that was literally written to get the highest quantity of peasants into a theater.

 

Shakespeare isn't real highbrow stuff from the age, it's fun pop culture. Fun pop culture to this day isn't exactly 100% on the supportive bandwagon and typically shoots for representing the majority.

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It was written in a time when sodomy was punishable by death, women were considered to be tainted by original sin and needed to be controlled via marriage, the church dictated that you were only allowed to have sex in the missionary position, where being the wrong religion was punishable by death etc. so what did you expect? By the standards of the time many of Shakespear's works were actually rather progressive, and there is speculation that he was homosexual himself. If you are only at Sonnet #10 I suppose you haven't got to the love poems yet, but some of the most famous love poems in English history were written be Shakespeare to the "Fair Youth" he is encouraging to marry and procreate in earlier sonnets. It's been speculated that the sonnets depict a rather tragic bisexual love triangle.   Judging historic fiction by the standards of today in rather silly and will inevitably lead to disappointment.

 

Disclaimer: I dislike Shakespear and haven't read anything of his since leaving school so I may be miss-remembering things.

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Anthracite_Impreza

I don't get the hype about Shakespeare anyway, certainly not wasting time trying to figure out his political views through 400 year old writings. Fact is we will never know cos he's long dead; wait until you see him in the afterlife and ask then.

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I've just read a small number of his plays.  I don't know if he was homophobic or such, as stated he may have been somewhat bisexual himself (though I haven't actually read the sonnets); suggesting someone should procreate, while something I absolutely disagree with (as an antinatalist, blah), may just be more an assumption that the person he's addressing isn't totally adverse to doing so; I think a lot of people are barely aware of asexuality for that matter, though more than used to be; I think Shakes was probably a number of other things-- anti-Semitic, racist, whatever else....  It may be disappointing but it doesn't change that Hamlet is pretty terrific (in my opinion, anyway).  Probably a number of writers or actors or whoever, whose work I like, may have views or have made statements that I disagree with or even find outright horrible.

 

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DarkStormyKnight

I don't have much to add but I am LOVING Patrick Stewart's daily Shakespeare sonnets, they're giving me life right now.

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lilyofthevalley

The other thing to remember about Shakespeare is that the heavy amount of censorship at the time limited what could be published. A variant of, say, the merchant of Venice with a wholly sympathetic Shylock a)wouldn’t have sold and b) would have been seen as heretical. 

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