Queering As You Like It
"Queerness is a force we can use to expose the boundaries that enclose societally drawn territories of gender and sexuality as artificial and obscuring of the underlying realities they are culturally conflated with, both in analysis and in life. That’s one example of what it means to queer something."
- Madeline Legere
When looking at queerness in Shakespeare, it is important and helpful to think of William Shakespeare's historical location at the time of writing As You Like It. He writes before the modern idea of homosexuality existed. This is not to say that homosexuality and the expression of non-heteronormativity did not exist, but that such expression were considered actions rather than identities. Today, the presiding view of sexuality is a fixed attraction to a particular gender which serves as part of a foundation for a person's identity. In contrast, Renaissance ideas of sexuality focused on its embodied expression, outlawing acts such as sodomy and buggery, umbrella terms which covered any sexual act that did not serve the purpose of procreation, including homosexuality, bestiality, sex with clergy members, and sex in any position other than the church-ordained missionary. However these laws were not targeted toward a specific category of people based on their identity as much as treating a general subversiveness and depravity in the population. In this way we can broaden our understanding of how queerness is portrayed by the characters in As You Like It, as their identity and actions are not entirely co-dependent and also are open to change. Valerie Rohy in her essay on As You Like It in the book Shakesqueer comments on the way Celia and Rosalind open the play by discussing the wiles of Fortune, bringing up a persistent tension in the play between the powers of Fortune and Nature. When we look at this thematic tension through a queer theory lens, the expression of homoeroticism between various characters in the play are allowed by circumstances of Fortune. For example, Rosalind and Celia's proximity and the protection of gender norms allow them to share closeness at Court, while the happenstance meeting between Ganymede and Orlando allows for the exploration of new gender expression while courting. Celia happens to fall in love with Oliver while in the forest, but this does not disqualify the homoeroticism of her relationship with Rosalind. By stepping away from the modern concept of identity politics, these characters are able to express all forms of love and desire with fluidity. In exploration of gender and sexual expression, they may find a new or deeper understanding of their identity depending on the actor's interpretation, but none of Shakespeare's characters were limited to a modern label or definition of their identity.
Queer theory is an approach to literature and culture that assumes sexual identities are flexible and that gender is socially constructed rather than qualities of "masculine" or "feminine" that are natural or innate. It views sexuality as performative rather than normative and the binaries of masculine/feminine and heteronormative/homosexual as a product of cultural institutions.
Was The Bard Queer?
There is evidence to indicate that Shakespeare was in fact queer and had sexual relationships with both men and women during his lifetime. Professor Sir Stanley Walls and Dr. Paul Edmondson rearranged Shakespeare's 154 sonnets from the 1609 edition and the sonnets from Shakespeare's plays in the order they were most likely written in. "The language of sexuality in some of the sonnets, which are definitely addressed to a male subject, leaves us in no doubt that Shakespeare was bisexual,” Dr Edmondson said. Since the 1980s, many believed Shakespeare to be homosexual, but he was married with children and had multiple affairs with women outside of marriage. According to Edmondson, "Some of these sonnets are addressed to a female and others to a male. To reclaim the term bisexual seems to be quite an original thing to be doing." Wells notes "two bisexual mini sequences" in Sonnets 40-42 and 133-134 which feature a love triangle between a male lover, a female lover, and the narrator. Though Shakespeare was married to and had children with Anne Hathaway, he spent most of his marriage in London while she remained in Stratford-upon-Avon. Anne was already pregnant with their first child when they were married. According to one of Shakespeare's peers, a lawyer named John Manningham during a performance of Richard III:
"Upon a time when Burbage played Richard the Third there was a citizen grew so far in liking with him, that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard the Third. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained and at his game ere Burbage came. Then, message being brought that Richard the Third was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third."
One hundred and twenty-six of Shakespeare's love sonnets are addressed to a young man, and these sonnets were dedicated to a Mr. W.H. most commonly theorized to be either Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, and William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke. If Shakespeare was in fact having affairs with men, he could suffer legal persecution which could result in death, but he was able to express his feelings in his creative work.