Political

Elizabeth I
When Shakespeare began his writing career, Queen Elizabeth I had been on the throne
for nearly thirty years, and by the time of her death in 1603 she had ruled over England
and Ireland for forty-five years. She was a popular monarch, and her long reign helped
establish England as a major European commercial and political power. Elizabeth also
supported the arts, which enabled poetry, music, and theater to flourish throughout the
second half of the sixteenth century. Elizabeth belonged to the Tudor monarchy, which
her grandfather, Henry VII, had founded. The Tudors inherited the throne after Henry VII
plunged England into decades of religious turmoil. Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, broke
with the Catholic Church and appointed himself the Supreme Head of a new Protestant
institution known as the Church of England. Henry VIII’s break with Catholicism caused
religious conflict throughout England and inspired the ire of Catholic kingdoms in
Europe. England remained Protestant under Edward I, but when Mary I ascended the
throne in 1553, she declared England Catholic once again. When Elizabeth became
queen in 1558, she inherited a kingdom wracked by persecution and bloodshed, and
her first act as queen was to restore the Anglican Church.

Though from today’s perspective we often consider Elizabeth’s reign a golden age of
English history, at the time things seemed far less certain. Elizabeth spent much of her
time as monarch managing religious strife between Catholics and Protestants, and
trying to satisfy the demands of radical Protestant sects like the Puritans. Such religious
instability rattled the kingdom and made everyday life uncertain. Political threats also
undermined the kingdom’s sense of security. Elizabeth was the target of assassination
plots like the Babington Plot of 1586, which sought to replace Elizabeth with her
Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. After Mary was executed in 1587 for conspiracy,
Mary’s ally, King Philip II of Spain, sought retribution by turning his armada against the
English. Elizabeth’s navy famously defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, and though
in hindsight this victory helped establish England as an important naval power, at the
time the ongoing war with Spain caused much anxiety. Elizabeth’s status as the “Virgin
Queen” also caused anxiety in the kingdom. Her refusal to marry meant that she would
die without an heir, and it was rumored that the King of Scotland, James VI, would
invade if his claim to inherit the English throne wasn’t acknowledged.

 
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Shakespeare never wrote about Elizabeth directly. Perhaps his most direct reference to
the queen herself appears in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when Oberon speaks of
a beautiful virgin, “a fair vestal thronèd by the west” (II.i.). Shakespeare’s history plays
also address the lives of Elizabeth’s Tudor forebears. For instance, Richard
III concludes with Henry Tudor, then Earl of Richmond, killing the king and assuming
the throne as Henry VII. Shakespeare also dramatized the reign of Elizabeth’s father in
his final history play, Henry VIII, which examined the monarch’s break with the Catholic
Church. Shakespeare also found subtle ways to reflect the national mood in the
tragedies and comedies he wrote during the final years of Elizabeth’s reign, when the
queen’s health was in decline and it remained uncertain what would happen after her
death. In Julius Caesar, written around 1599, Shakespeare depicts the outbreak of a
bloody civil war in the aftermath of a beloved leader’s death. Hamlet, which
Shakespeare likely wrote around 1600, dramatizes a power struggle that results in the
prince of a neighboring kingdom invading Denmark and taking the throne for himself.
Finally, in Measure for Measure, likely written in 1603—the year of Elizabeth’s death
—Shakespeare imagines a city-state riddled with corruption and abuse because the
ruler has relinquished responsibility for his people. Each of these plays reflects real-
world tensions and anxieties in Elizabethan England.

James I
After Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, King James VI of Scotland was named her
successor, and he became King James I of England. His new subjects were relieved to
avoid civil war and invasion. James I had the distinction of being the first monarch to
rule both England and Scotland, and it was his greatest ambition to unify the two
kingdoms into a single country, which he wanted to call Great Britain. James was
unsuccessful in his efforts to unify Great Britain, but he achieved his second political
goal in 1604 when he signed a treaty with King Philip III of Spain, thereby ending a
nineteen-year period of intermittent conflict known as the Anglo-Spanish War. Peace
made it easier for the English to cross the Atlantic into the New World, and in 1607 the
first successful English colony in the Americas was founded at Jamestown, Virginia.
James has also gone down in history for authorizing one of the most famous English
translations of the Bible, first published in 1611 and still known today as the King James
Bible. Overall, the arts flourished under James’s reign and England’s influence
continued to extend.

James proved to be a true enthusiast of the theater. Just a few months after assuming
the throne, he officially adopted Shakespeare’s company. With the sponsorship of the
king, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men became known as the King’s Men. For his part,
Shakespeare welcomed the new king with Macbeth, written around 1606. Macbeth is
set in James’s native Scotland, and the play portrays the king’s real-life ancestor,
Banquo, as a good man destined to have monarchs among his
descendants. Macbeth ’s famous witches also appealed to the king’s interests. James
had a longstanding fascination with witchcraft, and he considered himself an expert on
the subject. In 1597, he wrote a book about witchcraft, Daemonologie, which
Shakespeare likely consulted when writing the witches’ spells in Macbeth. In two later
plays, King Lear and Cymbeline, Shakespeare appears to support James’s desire to
unite England and Scotland. Both plays are set in the ancient and semi-mythical period
in which England and Scotland had been a single country known as “Britain.” In King
Lear, the decision to divide Britain into three separate kingdoms has terrible
consequences, which some scholars have read as a warning that implicitly justifies
James’s vision of unification.

Religious

The Reformation
Shakespeare lived during a period of religious upheaval known as the Reformation. For
centuries Europe had been united under the religious leadership of the Pope, head of
the Roman Catholic Church. In the early 1500s, however, a new religious movement
known as Protestantism broke within the Church. Whereas Catholics believed salvation
was achievable through good works, Protestants believed salvation was only possible
through true faith. Europe divided along religious lines, with most of northern Europe
becoming Protestant while most of the south remained Catholic. In the 1530s, Henry
VIII broke from Catholicism and founded the Church of England. Henry VIII’s daughter,
who would rule as Queen Mary I from 1553 to 1558, violently restored Catholicism to
England for a brief time. But in 1559, soon after her accession to the throne, Queen
Elizabeth I reestablished the Anglican Church as the official religion of the land. By the
time Shakespeare was born in 1564, Protestantism reigned. But Catholicism didn’t die
in England. Catholics continued to worship in secret, and Catholic radicals, bolstered by
the Pope’s excommunication of Elizabeth in 1570, felt justified in their pursuit to
assassinate the queen. Catholics were feared and hated by many people in the
Protestant majority.
As with other biographical details, we have little certainty about Shakespeare’s personal
beliefs or how the Reformation affected them. We do have evidence that Shakespeare’s
father was a “recusant,” which means that he either failed or refused to attend
Protestant services on Sundays, and hence had his name added to a public list and had
to pay for each service missed. We also know that Shakespeare’s mother belonged to a
family with various Catholic ties, and hence she may have harbored lingering Catholic
sympathies. As for Shakespeare himself, recent biographers have speculated that he
may have had Catholic loyalties, and that these loyalties may have brought him into
conflict with the escalating anti-Catholic campaign of a local gentleman, Sir Thomas
Lucy. If this is true, then it would help explain why Shakespeare left Stratford in the late
1580s and sought out safety in the comparative anonymity of London.

 
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Despite these speculations, the historical evidence for what Shakespeare himself may
or may not have believed remains thin. Thus, the best resource for understanding how
the Reformation influenced him lies in his writing. If Shakespeare recorded his own
feelings about religion in his plays, then he did so in indirect and complex ways.
In Hamlet, for instance, the protagonist is a student at the university in Wittenberg,
which is the very same university where Martin Luther set the Reformation in motion by
nailing his Ninety-Five Theses against Catholicism to the church door. Yet if Hamlet’s
place of education signals Protestant sympathies, Shakespeare complicates matters by
having the Ghost of Hamlet’s father claim to speak from Purgatory, a Catholic concept
that few Protestant denominations officially recognize. Whereas Hamlet indicates an
ambivalent relationship to religion, The Tempest assumes a mocking tone, as when
the drunken Stephano holds out a bottle of liquor and demands that Caliban “kiss the
book,” caricaturing the Catholic practice of kissing the Bible during mass. Other plays,
like King Lear and Cymbeline, take place in pre-Christian England, making their
relation to contemporary debates about faith especially ambiguous.

The English Bible

In Catholic England it was illegal to publish the Bible in any language besides
Latin, but Protestants believed the Bible should be available in the languages
common people actually understood. The first English-language Bible was
translated by William Tyndale and printed in 1526. But since Tyndale’s
translation wasn’t officially sanctioned, the authorities destroyed most copies
upon its publication. The first authorized translation appeared in 1539. This
edition, known as “the Great Bible,” became a cherished possession for
those who could afford it. But it was not until the Geneva Bible of 1560 that a
mass-produced vernacular translation would be made directly available to
the general public. In addition to being more readily available, the Geneva
Bible also featured more vigorous language than the previous authorized
translation, which had a more popular appeal. However, the vigorous
language offended the bishops of the Anglican Church, who felt that the
Geneva Bible reflected too much influence from the extreme Protestant sects
like Puritanism and Calvinism. As such, the bishops made their own
translation, and the new translation—known as the Bishops’ Bible—began
circulating in 1568. The next major English translation of the Bible would not
appear until 1609, under the reign of King James I.

As a boy, Shakespeare would have heard the Bible read in English every
Sunday at Stratford’s Holy Trinity Church. If Shakespeare attended the King’s
New School in Stratford, as most scholars believe he did, then he would have
studied the Bible there as well. In Elizabethan grammar schools, pupils had
to translate biblical passages back and forth between English and Latin. In
addition to these formal exercises, grammar school students also started and
ended their days by singing psalms, providing yet more opportunities to
absorb biblical lessons. Since Shakespeare was born just four years before
the appearance of the Bishops’ Bible, he likely heard sermons that quoted
from the earlier Geneva Bible as well as from the more recent translation.
However, even though the Bishops’ Bible became standard in Protestant
churches after 1568, many schoolteachers continued to teach from the more
popular Geneva Bible. This tendency helps explain why Shakespeare
references the Preface to the Geneva Bible, in which the editors note that
they “have in the margent noted” passages that support Protestant beliefs.
Likewise, in Hamlet, Horatio makes fun of Osric for using terms so obscure
that they need explanation: “I knew you must be edified by the margent ere
you had done” (V.ii).

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The influence of the Bible on Shakespeare’s writing runs so deep that it’s
sometimes hard to say where the Bible’s language ends and Shakespeare’s
begins. Shakespeare sometimes quotes the text of the Bible directly, but
more often he includes a partial quote, an allusion, or a parody. A typical
example of the way Shakespeare draws on the Bible is the title of the
play Measure for Measure. This title isn’t a direct quote from the Bible, but it
is based on a biblical passage: “with the same measure that ye mete withal,
it shall be measured to you again” (Luke 6.38). Similarly, when Iago says “I
am not what I am” (I.i), Shakespeare’s audience would have understood
that Othello ’s villain is inverting what God tells Moses: “I am that I am”
(Exodus 3:14). To take a comedic example, in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream Bottom declares, “The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man
hath not seen” (IV.i). These words humorously garble another famous biblical
passage: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Puritans
When Elizabeth made it compulsory to attend Protestant church services, Catholics
weren’t the only religious group to refuse. A small but influential group known as the
Puritans believed that the Church of England was not Protestant enough. Discontent
began to simmer soon after Elizabeth’s restoration of Protestantism in 1559. In 1563
Puritan reformers sought to abolish all religious symbols from the churches, but
Parliament narrowly defeated their bill, and frustrations quickly grew. Puritan voices
grew louder in the 1570s, when Dr. Thomas Cartwright, a professor of divinity, preached
that the Church of England’s administrative system had no basis in scripture, and that
archbishops, archdeacons, and other clergy positions should be dissolved. Although
Elizabeth gave some ground to Puritan demands, she strove to maintain the original
terms she established for the Church of England back in 1559. Thus, it wasn’t until the
reign of King James I that Puritanism found greater favor. The new translation of the
Bible, which appeared in 1609, partly responded to Puritan complaints. Though the King
James Bible was not explicitly Puritan in its outlook, several Puritans contributed to the
translation.

The Puritans disapproved of many things in Elizabethan society, and one of the things
they hated most was the theater. Their chief complaint was that secular entertainments
distracted people from worshipping God, though they also felt that the theater’s
increasing popularity symbolized the moral iniquity of city life. For instance, they
regarded the convention of boy actors playing women’s roles as immoral, and some
Puritan preachers even felt that the sinfulness of play-acting either contributed to or else
directly caused London’s frequent outbreaks of plague. Unsurprisingly, Elizabethan
playwrights frequently made fun of Puritans. Shakespeare’s most famous Puritan
character is Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Shakespeare portrays Malvolio as a killjoy and
a hypocrite with social ambitions. However, Shakespeare also shows sympathy for
Malvolio’s point of view. Throughout the play, Malvolio stands in conflict with Sir Toby
Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Shakespeare portrays these characters as
drunken, selfish, and irresponsible. Although we enjoy watching the latter three men, we
can also understand why Malvolio wants to put an end to their fun. In this way,
Shakespeare indicates his willingness to entertain the Puritan perspective while
simultaneously criticizing that perspective’s extremism.

Theatrical

Shakespeare’s Globe Theater

The famous Globe Theater was built in 1599 under duress. Shakespeare’s
company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, had long been performing in a facility
known as the Theater. In 1596, however, the lease on the Theater’s land
expired. James Burbage, who was the father of the company’s leading actor,
Richard Burbage, built a new theater at Blackfriars to replace the old one.
The theater at Blackfriars had a roof, which would enable the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men to perform in the evenings and in the cold of winter. But
fearing the disturbance of theatergoers in their neighborhood, the residents
of Blackfriars convinced city authorities to ban use of the building for
performance. James Burbage died in 1597, leaving all his money tied up in
the now useless Blackfriars facility. With virtually no capital and limited
performance opportunities, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men took drastic action.
Although the lease on the Theater’s land had expired, the building that stood
on that land now belonged to Richard Burbage, who inherited ownership
when his father died. The company resolved to sneak onto the land one night
in December 1598, dismantle the building, and transport the materials to
another site where they could erect a new facility: the Globe.

The construction of the Globe Theater, which was cooperatively owned by

several company members including Shakespeare, ended in 1599. Unlike the
theater at Blackfriars, the Globe’s stage was open to the sky, unless covered
by a cloth canopy. The stage thrust out into the middle of the “pit” or “yard,”
where people who had paid one penny for admission stood around three
sides of the stage. Vendors selling food and alcohol walked around the
audience throughout the performance. Beyond the stage and the pit was an
area called the “gallery,” which contained covered benches. These seats
were expensive and reserved for wealthier patrons. The “heavens” was a
painted ceiling supported by two columns that covered the stage. A trap
door in the heavens enabled cast members to create special effects, such as
dropping flower petals onto the stage during a wedding scene or lowering
actors on ropes for flying entrances. Sound effects such as thunder or
musical cues could also be created in the heavens. Plays were performed in
daylight, usually in the afternoon. When a scene took place at night, the
actors brought flaming torches onstage to signal to the audience that it was
supposed to be dark.

 
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The original Globe did not have a long life. During a production of Henry
VIII in 1613 a cannon was fired, and a stray spark ignited the wooden beams
and the thatching. The Globe burned to the ground. A second Globe Theater
was built on the same site the following year. The second Globe remained in
operation for nearly thirty more years, until 1642, when a Puritan ordinance
shut down all active theaters in the city. Two years after its closure, the
second Globe was demolished in order to make room for the construction of
tenements. More than three centuries later, in 1970, there arose a plan to
build a new Globe Theater. It would take nearly twenty more years before
construction would begin. In 1989 the original foundations of the Globe were
rediscovered, and after archaeologists examined the remains, their findings
were incorporated into the reconstruction plan. The replica theater, now part
of a building complex known as the International Shakespeare Globe
Theater, opened in 1997.

Performances at Court
Neither Queen Elizabeth I nor King James I went to the theater. Instead, they
summoned Shakespeare and his company to perform at their palaces. We
know that Elizabeth saw Shakespeare’s plays performed regularly. Elizabeth
definitely saw The Merry Wives of Windsor and Love’s Labor’s Lost, because
both plays were published with title pages announcing that they had been
performed for the queen. When James first came to London in 1604, he
appointed himself the patron of Shakespeare’s company, which was
renamed the King’s Men. The King’s Men were paid ten pounds per
performance at court, and they were given extra cash to buy scarlet royal
servant robes, which they wore in the procession at James’s coronation.
James enjoyed theater, and Shakespeare’s company performed more often
for him than they had for Elizabeth. The King’s Men performed at James’s
court around ten times a year. Records show that James’s court saw The
Comedy of Errors, Henry V, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Measure for Measure, The
Merry Wives of Windsor, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice (twice).
The audience at the royal court was made up of the most powerful noblemen
and noblewomen in the country. Many of these aristocrats were highly
educated. Elizabeth I spoke several languages and wrote poetry of her own,
while James I authored weighty volumes on political and theological subjects.
The aristocracy was especially interested in history, and noblemen took it
badly if a historical play presented one of their own ancestors in a negative
light. For instance, when Shakespeare originally penned Henry IV, Parts
1 and 2, he portrayed the historical figure Sir John Oldcastle as a drunken
coward. Oldcastle’s descendants took offense, and Shakespeare hastened to
rename the character Falstaff. Curiously, these plays still contain a few jokes
that don’t make sense with the character’s new name. Playwrights whose
works appeared at court also had to take special care not to offend the
monarch, lest they face severe punishment. Shakespeare may have written
his Scottish play, Macbeth, specifically to curry favor with James. Not only did
the play’s strategic use of witches speak directly to the king’s fascination
with the occult, but the moral elevation of Banquo also complimented James,
who was in fact Banquo’s descendant.

Actors
Once Shakespeare joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, he wrote exclusively for that
company. Doing so afforded him an opportunity to write for particular actors whose
abilities as performers he knew personally. Shakespeare wrote the lead roles in his
tragedies for Richard Burbage, who was the best actor in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men
and the most famous actor of his day. A poem written in tribute when Burbage died in
1619 suggests that in Shakespeare’s lifetime, when people thought of Hamlet, Lear, or
Othello, they thought not of the playwright but of Burbage, who created those characters
onstage. Aside from having a powerful stage presence, Burbage boasted an impressive
memory. Thirteen of the characters Shakespeare wrote specifically for him have more
than 800 lines of dialogue. Burbage was also renowned as a stage-fighter, which is one
reason most of the characters he played—including Romeo, Hamlet, Richard III, and
Macbeth—fight duels.

Whereas Burbage was the company’s star tragedian, Will Kemp served as the resident
comedian. Kemp was briefly a shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and he had
a successful comic career in his own right. Kemp played Dogberry in Much Ado About
Nothing and Peter in Romeo and Juliet. He also almost certainly played other
slapstick roles, like Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Costard in Love’s
Labor’s Lost. He was famous for writing and performing jigs, which were semi-
improvised comic plays with satirical plots and slapstick dancing. Given Kemp’s talent
for improvisation, he may sometimes have gone off-script. Shakespeare may have
made a sly reference to Kemp’s shenanigans in Hamlet, when the title character
instructs a troupe of players how to perform a play he has written. He cautions: “let
those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them” (III.ii). In 1599,
probably the same year that Shakespeare wrote that warning, Kemp left Shakespeare’s
company. He was replaced by Robert Armin, an intelligent comedian and singer who
was also a playwright. For Armin, Shakespeare wrote wittier, wordier comic parts with
plenty of songs, like Feste in Twelfth Night.

 
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In Shakespeare’s England, only men and boys populated the stage, since women were
barred from performing. Lacking women actors, companies like the Lord Chamberlain’s
Men relied on boys to play female characters. These boys were taken in as apprentices
and taught the craft of acting. Many of Shakespeare’s most challenging roles were
written for boy actors, including Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra and Lady
Macbeth in Macbeth. Several of Shakespeare’s female characters, like Rosalind in As
You Like It and Viola in Twelfth Night, dress up as young men. This required the boy
actors to play women who were pretending to be men, which would be a challenge for
any actor. Cross-dressing allowed Shakespeare to explore gender and sexuality in
ways that could be provocative. The religiously devout group known as the Puritans
were outraged by the boy actors dressing up as women, and they were even more
outraged when these “women” dressed up as men.
After Shakespeare’s death in 1616, the King’s Men continued to perform his plays.
Performances thrived until 1642, when the Puritans closed all public theaters. In 1649,
the execution of King Charles I inaugurated the period known as the Interregnum,
during which time a republican government ruled England. Theaters remained closed
until 1660, when King Charles II assumed the throne and restored the monarchy. At the
beginning of the Restoration period, Charles granted only two troupes permission to
perform: the King’s Company, which was headed by Thomas Killigrew, and the Duke’s
Company, headed by Sir William Davenant. Performance rights for Shakespeare’s
plays were divided between these two companies, and this licensing system lasted for
nearly two hundred years, until 1843. Many theatrical conventions changed over the
course of these two centuries, and as tastes changed, these two theater companies
altered Shakespeare’s work to suit audience expectations and desires. A particularly
infamous example concerns King Lear. In 1681 the Irish poet Nahum Tate rewrote the
play to give it a happy rather than a tragic ending, and this new version of the play
remained more popular than the original until the middle of the nineteenth century.

Censorship
The Elizabethan period was a time of rapid change and instability, when new
crises could arise suddenly and without warning. In order to keep the peace
in a time of constant threat, the government relied on censorship.
Censorship was not new, however. Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, had
introduced censorship measures in the 1530s. Queen Mary I intensified these
measures in 1557, when she made every publisher in the land officially enroll
with the Stationers’ Register in London. Mary’s registry survived into
Elizabeth’s reign, and the new queen further required every new book to be
vetted by members of the Privy Council. Any book published that
undermined the queen’s dignity was asking for trouble. In 1579, for instance,
John Stubbs wrote a pamphlet arguing that a marriage between Elizabeth
and the duke of Anjou would pose a threat to the nation. The duke was 22
years younger than Elizabeth, but even more galling than the age gap was
the fact that the duke was French and Catholic. Elizabeth was furious, and
she punished both Stubbs and his publisher by chopping off each man’s right
hand.

As a public form of entertainment, the theater business came with political

risks. As with books, all plays were subject to censorship by a government
official called the Master of the Revels, whose job it was to ensure that no
political issues were addressed directly onstage. Shakespeare’s plays were
examined by the Master of Revels, which may explain why his more overtly
political plays are set in either Rome or medieval England. In those settings,
Shakespeare could explore questions about how a country should be ruled
without appearing to criticize the government of his own day. However,
despite the care he took to avoid censorship, Shakespeare fell afoul of the
censor in 1601, after the Earl of Essex sponsored an unsuccessful revolt
against the queen. As it turned out, Essex’s followers had attended a
performance of Richard II just before the revolt, and Elizabeth believed the
play had encouraged the men to act. Her specific concern regarded the
scene in which the king gets deposed from the throne. Her censor agreed,
and he required the deposition scene to be removed from all editions of the
play.

 
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Perhaps the most infamous case in which Shakespeare’s plays were
censored occurred at the beginning of the nineteenth century, nearly two
hundred years after the playwright’s death. In 1807 a man named Thomas
Bowdler published a book titled The Family Shakespeare. Edited by his sister,
Henrietta, the Bowdler version removed the many indelicacies of expression
so common in Shakespeare’s plays. The title page described the edition as
one “in which nothing is added to the original text: but those words and
expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be allowed in a family.”
Despite their intentions to create a family-friendly Shakespeare purged of all
blasphemy and immorality, the Bowdler edition is now considered a
touchstone example of the negative effects of literary censorship. Indeed,
the case is so infamous that the name Bowdler has since become
synonymous with censorship. The common English verb bowdlerize means to
remove from a text any material deemed offensive or improper.

Literary

Contemporaries
When Shakespeare arrived in London in the late 1580s, he found himself in the midst of
an exploding theater scene dominated by a group of highly educated writers and poets
known as the “university wits.” The main figures in this group included Robert Greene,
John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, and Thomas Nashe, all of whom were educated at
either Cambridge or Oxford. These men shared a strong interest in tragic heroism, and
their plays featured some of the most famous tragic heroes to grace the English stage.
Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine represent two of the most
important tragedies of the period. Thomas Kyd, who was also associated with the
university wits despite his lack of education, wrote a similarly influential play, The
Spanish Tragedy. An important feature of each of these plays was their portrayal of
complex tragic characters. In contrast to the rather flat characters of earlier drama, and
especially of Christian morality plays, the tragic dramas of the university wits brought a
new sophistication to the stage. This sophistication inspired Shakespeare, and
Shakespeare in turn pushed it to even greater heights over the course of his career.
Aside from the university wits, Shakespeare’s most important contemporary was Ben
Jonson, a bricklayer’s son and self-taught writer whose best plays were as popular as
Shakespeare’s. Jonson’s most successful comedies, The
Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair, had English settings that were more familiar to
audiences than the mostly foreign settings of Shakespeare’s comedies. The two
playwrights certainly knew each other, and according to contemporary accounts they
may have engaged in conversation at London’s Mermaid Tavern. We also know that
Shakespeare acted in at least two of Jonson’s plays. Though the men were friends, they
were also rivals. Another contemporary, William Drummond, wrote of a conversation
with Jonson in which the playwright ridiculed certain incongruities in Shakespeare’s
plays and concluded that Shakespeare lacked skill. Drummond’s report aligns with an
account that Jonson himself wrote. In a brief recollection, Jonson recalls hearing that
Shakespeare “never blotted out a line,” to which he responded, “Would he had blotted a
thousand.” Yet Jonson also expressed admiration for Shakespeare, describing him as
“honest and of an open and free nature.” After Shakespeare died, Jonson contributed a
moving elegy to the First Folio edition of his departed friend’s plays.
Sources
Shakespeare only ever wrote two plays with original plots: Love’s Labor’s
Lost and The Tempest. For all his other works he borrowed plots from other writers,
often re-ordering events, inserting subplots, and adding or removing characters. The
book he relied on most heavily for plot ideas was Holinshed’s Chronicles. Published
in 1577, the Chronicles is a collaborative work written by Raphael Holinshed and
others. The volume includes histories of England, Scotland, and Ireland from the
earliest time of inhabitation to the mid-sixteenth century. The Chronicles served as
Shakespeare’s source for nearly all of his history plays. The plot of Macbeth also came
from the Chronicles, as did plot elements for King
Lear and Cymbeline. Shakespeare’s second most important source was a book by the
Roman historian Plutarch, titled Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans.
Shakespeare may have read the book in the original Latin, but he definitely read
Thomas North’s English-language translation. We know this because Shakespeare
clearly based Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Timon of
Athens on North’s translation. Indeed, sometimes Shakespeare followed North’s
wording so closely that a reader can figure out which page of Lives he drew on for
particular scenes.
Aside from these major works, Shakespeare also borrowed from dozens of other
writers. He borrowed many plot ideas from Italian writers, especially from a medieval
collection of stories called The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio. He also borrowed
from Roman writers, especially Ovid, Seneca, and Plautus, and from the great medieval
English poets Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower. He even updated stories that had
been popular just a few decades earlier. For instance, The Winter’s Tale (written
around 1609) was based on a much-loved narrative published in 1588 by Robert
Greene, and Romeo and Juliet (written around 1595) is closely based on a long
narrative poem by Arthur Brooke that was popular in the 1560s. Shakespeare also
occasionally drew inspiration from current events. Although the plot of The
Tempest (written around 1610) has no precursor, Shakespeare based the catastrophic
storm that opens the play on accounts of a shipwreck that occurred in Bermuda in 1609.
He also interwove thematic elements from works by his contemporary Ben Jonson, the
Roman poet Ovid, and the French essayist Michel de Montaigne.

Influences
Shakespeare read widely and took inspiration from everything he read, but some writers
proved especially influential. One important influence was Christopher Marlowe.
Marlowe pioneered the use of blank verse, the form Shakespeare uses in all his plays.
Like Shakespeare, Marlowe also portrayed complex tragic characters on stage. He was
only two months older than Shakespeare, but he was already the most famous
playwright in England when Shakespeare began his career. The two men probably
knew each other personally, but they could not have had a long friendship. Marlowe
died young, killed in a tavern brawl in 1503 at the age of 23. Shakespeare paid tribute to
Marlowe in several of his plays. As You Like It addresses Marlowe directly and quotes
one of his poems: “Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, / ‘Whoever loved that
loved not at first sight?’” (III.v.). The play also references the circumstances of
Marlowe’s death: “When a man’s verses cannot be understood . . . it strikes a man more
dead than a great reckoning in a little room” (III.iii.). In these lines, “reckoning” refers to
the bar bill Marlowe fought over, and “little room” refers to the room in the tavern where
Marlowe was killed.
The French essayist Michel de Montaigne was another important influence on
Shakespeare’s plays. Montaigne’s essays address a dazzling range of ideas, and
Shakespeare’s plays often explore similar ideas. In The Tempest, for instance,
Gonzalo imagines the “commonwealth” he would create if he ruled the island where the
play is set. His speech closely follows a passage from Montaigne’s essay, “Of the
Cannibals.” But Shakespeare goes further than adapting the essay’s language. He also
adopts the essay’s sympathy for so-called “cannibals” and “savages,” who Montaigne
believed superior Europeans due to their “natural innocence.” Shakespeare reflects this
sympathy in his depiction of Caliban, whose critiques of the oppression he faces under
Prospero are some of the most powerful and moving in the play. In addition to “Of the
Cannibals,” Shakespeare also drew influence from the essay, “Of the Affection of
Fathers to Their Children,” in which Montaigne argues that aging parents should not
demand gratitude from their offspring. Shakespeare explores this topic in King Lear, in
which terrible consequences befall a father who does precisely what Montaigne advises
against.

 
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Shakespeare’s sonnets, and his long narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The
Rape of Lucrece, show a wide range of influences. Shakespeare’s sonnets in
particular would not have been possible without the work of the fourteenth-century
Italian poet Petrarch. The sonnet was invented in the thirteenth century, but Petrarch
perfected the form and took it further by stringing series of sonnets into thematic
sequences that usually addressed a love object. Petrarch’s most famous sequence
concerns his idealized love for a young woman named Laura. Beginning in the sixteenth
century, many English writers used sonnet sequences to tell romantic stories. Though
Shakespeare’s use of the sonnet form does not in itself indicate that he knew Petrarch’s
work, Romeo and Juliet provides evidence that he had indeed read Petrarch’s
sonnets. For instance, the language Romeo uses to idealize Rosaline at the beginning
of the play clearly satirizes Petrarch. In a less satirical mode, Shakespeare inserts a
sonnet into the scene where Romeo and Juliet first meet. Their dialogue forms a shared
sonnet, with each lover providing one half of the rhyming poem. At the conclusion of the
fourteen lines the lovers seal the sonnet with a kiss.
Shakespeare also knew the work of other English poets inspired by Petrarch, including
Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, who were both favorites of Queen Elizabeth.
Edmund Spenser wrote influential narrative poems such as The Shepheardes
Calendar and The Faerie Queene. But by far the biggest influence on Shakespeare’s
own narrative poems is the epic Metamorphoses by the Roman poet
Ovid. Metamorphoses was often studied at schools like the one Shakespeare
probably attended in Stratford, and Shakespeare demonstrated a deep knowledge of
Ovid in his earliest poems. Venus and Adonis is a retelling of an episode
from Metamorphoses, and Shakespeare’s poem imitates Ovid’s playful and erotic
style. Ovid also influenced Shakespeare’s plays. In A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, the play-within-a-play performed by the Mechanicals is based on the story of
the lovers Pyramus and Thisbe from Metamorphoses. Although the Mechanicals
bungle the play enough to turn it into a comedy, the original story is tragic. A more
faithful version of Pyramus and Thisbe appears in Romeo and Juliet, which also tells
the story of two lovers who must keep their love secret from their parents and who die
due to a misunderstanding.

Authorship Controversy
In the nineteenth century, just as Shakespeare’s reputation as the greatest writer in the
English language seemed undeniable, doubts began to creep in regarding whether
Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was really the author of the plays and poems
attributed to his name. Theories began to circulate, speculating that Shakespeare may
have served as a front for another author who could not publicly take credit for their
work. So-called “Anti-Stratfordians” are skeptical that the son of a tradesman who had
so little education could have written the complex and wide-ranging works attributed to
him. They cite Shakespeare’s spotty biographical record as another point of suspicion,
as well as the fact that his will neglects to mention any papers or unpublished
manuscripts. Despite shared skepticism, however, there remains no consensus about
who the “real” writer is. Some eighty candidates have been put forward, though the
most favored candidates include the philosopher and statesman, Sir Francis Bacon, and
the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. Some also believe that Christopher Marlowe was
the real Shakespeare. In proposing different candidates, Anti-Stratfordians frequently
rely on circumstantial evidence, such as biographical similarities with characters. They
also identify hidden codes they believe to be embedded in Shakespeare’s writing and
cite these codes as evidence for their claims.

Most modern scholars reject the claims of Anti-Stratfordians, citing historical and
documentary evidence as sufficient proof that Shakespeare of Stratford really is the
author of the plays and poems that bear his name. Additionally, there is no evidence of
skepticism among any of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, including other poets,
playwrights, actors. Although most scholars believe Shakespeare is the real
Shakespeare, there is also increasing recognition that other writers contributed in
various ways to the plays historically attributed solely to him. In Elizabethan England,
playwrights frequently collaborated in order to produce new plays as quickly as
possible. Such may have been the case with some of Shakespeare’s early plays. For
instance, modern scholars who have carefully analyzed the writing style suggest
that Henry VI, Part 1, may have been written by a team of collaborators that included
Shakespeare and the political satirist Thomas Nashe. Likewise, Shakespeare may have
either cowritten Titus Andronicus with George Peele or else revised an earlier version
by Greene. We also know that at the end of his career Shakespeare adopted an
apprentice, John Fletcher, with whom he cowrote Henry VIII and The Two Noble
Kinsmen. However, few scholars think such collaborations undermine Shakespeare’s
overall credibility.
Social Context

Shakespeare's Women

Women in Shakespeare’s England

Elizabethan England was a fiercely patriarchal society with laws that heavily restricted
what women could and could not do. Women were not allowed to attend school or
university, which meant they couldn’t work in professions like law or medicine. Most of
the guilds, which trained skilled workers like goldsmiths and carpenters, did not officially
admit women. Even the disreputable profession of acting was off limits to women. The
only trades legally available to women were those that could be mastered and practiced
in the home, such as hat making and brewing. Women were also barred from voting,
and though they could inherit property from their father or their husband, they could not
themselves purchase property. In addition to these legal restrictions, women were also
bound by strict social expectations that did not apply equally to men. Sermons and
books written during the Elizabethan era encouraged women to be silent and obedient
to male authority, whether that of their father or their husband.

Marriage in Elizabethan England replicated society’s patriarchal structure. Legally a girl

could marry as young as 12 with her parents’ consent, though young women typically
married in their late teens or early twenties. When a woman’s father deemed her ready
to marry, he had a large degree of control of who she married. Among the aristocracy,
where marriages were often more about politics than love, women often had no say at
all in who they married. Upon entering marriage, a woman ceased to be her father’s
responsibility, and her husband became her legal master. Shakespeare reflects this
condition in The Taming of the Shrew, when Petruchio refers to his wife as “my
goods, my chattels . . . my ox, my ass, my anything” (III.ii.). As his wife’s legal guardian,
a husband was permitted to punish his wife as he saw fit, particularly in cases of
infidelity. In several of his plays Shakespeare showcases the real danger that male
anxiety over infidelity posed for women. Hermione in The Winter’s Tale  is imprisoned
because her husband mistakenly believes that she is pregnant by another man.
In Othello, Desdemona is murdered by her husband because he believes (again
mistakenly) that she is having an affair.

 
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Despite the intensely patriarchal nature of the society Shakespeare grew up in, for the
majority of his life a woman occupied the throne—and an unmarried woman at that.
Throughout Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, debates raged about whether a woman could
rule as effectively as a man. Elizabeth constantly struggled to prove herself in the face
of male doubt. When speaking to her troops ahead of a Spanish invasion, she famously
reassured them: “I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and
stomach of a king.” Yet Elizabeth enjoyed a long and politically stable reign,
demonstrating the effectiveness of female rule. It is possible that Elizabeth’s success as
a ruler inspired other women to demand more freedom, particularly within their
marriages. The period between 1595 and 1620 saw a sharp increase in the number of
disputes and separations between aristocratic wives and their husbands. By the same
token, however, the rise in women’s dissatisfaction with the constraints of marriage also
gave rise to the trope of the “shrew”—that is, an aggressively assertive woman who
speaks her mind. The trope of the shrew in turn reinvigorated the idea that husbands
need to discipline their wives, again renewing patriarchal norms.

Women in Shakespeare’s Writing

The majority of Shakespeare’s major female characters are young and involved in
romantic plots that revolve around choosing a husband. The conflict between a father
and daughter regarding who represents an ideal suitor had the potential to create
serious quarrels in families, and Shakespeare repeatedly stages such quarrels in his
writing. Two of Shakespeare’s tragedies begin with the struggle of a young female
character to free herself from male control. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet sneaks out of
her home to marry Romeo, and then fakes her own death to escape the husband her
father has chosen for her. In Othello, Desdemona also sneaks out at night to marry the
man she has chosen against her father’s wishes. Although these heroines free
themselves from their fathers, they do not free themselves from male control altogether.
Juliet loses her chosen husband when he is drawn into the ongoing feud between the
men of the Capulet and Montague families. Desdemona remains faithful to Othello, but
her history of defying male authority makes him anxious. He comes to suspect her of
adultery and ultimately murders her.
Whereas Shakespeare’s tragedies usually feature women in secondary roles, or roles
that share top billing with a man (like Juliet or Cleopatra), Shakespeare’s comedies
often feature women as main characters. As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night all center on young women
determined to choose their own husbands or, like Olivia in Twelfth Night and Beatrice
in Much Ado About Nothing, determined not to marry at all. Like the tragedies, these
plays show that the apparent ability to choose a husband or to avoid marriage does not
amount to much freedom after all. In the end, both Olivia and Beatrice are persuaded to
marry. Likewise, both Rosalind in As You Like It and Viola in Twelfth Night don
disguises and enjoy comic adventures that come to an end once they take off their
costumes, get married, and begin new lives in their roles as wives. The Merchant of
Venice offers a slightly more empowering ending. In that play Portia and Nerissa
disguise themselves as men and test their new husbands by tricking them into giving up
their wedding rings, a symbolic gesture which suggests both women intend to exercise
power within their marriages.

 
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Women dress up as men in many of Shakespeare’s plays, often as a dramatic device to
further the plot. By making his female characters cross-dress, Shakespeare gave
himself the opportunity to put them in situations from which real-life women would have
been barred. In Twelfth Night, for instance, Viola disguises herself as the young man
“Cesario” and offers to help Duke Orsino woo Countess Olivia, something a
noblewoman would never have been allowed to do. Elizabethans largely believed that
women lacked the intelligence, rationality, courage, and other qualities necessary to
perform roles reserved for men. However, whenever Shakespeare’s cross-dressing
women take on traditionally male roles, they usually do a better job than their male
counterparts. In The Merchant of Venice, none of the male characters can think of a
way to rescue Antonio from a contract that allows the moneylender Shylock to take “a
pound of flesh” from his body. But when Portia arrives in court disguised as a lawyer,
she demonstrates a legal savvy that no other male character possesses. Portia
brilliantly points out that Shylock may be legally entitled to a pound of Antonio’s flesh,
but that “no jot of blood” can be spilled in the process.
Although shrewd young women appear frequently in Shakespeare’s plays, mature
women are conspicuously absent. Mothers in particular are missing. In The
Tempest, Prospero lives alone with his daughter Miranda as castaways on a remote
island. When Prospero gives an account of their escape from Milan, he only references
her mother once, and only in order to confirm that Miranda is indeed his daughter: “Thy
mother was a piece of virtue / And she said thou wast my daughter” (I.ii.). Mothers are
missing in plays from across Shakespeare’s career, from Titus Andronicus to King
Lear, and like The Tempest, many of these plays focus intensely on the relationships
between fathers and daughters. Two notable exceptions to the rule of missing mothers
include Gertrude in Hamlet and Volumnia in Coriolanus, both of whom have difficult
relationships with their adult sons. The example of Gertrude also points to
Shakespeare’s tendency to present mature women as being devious, even dangerous.
Hamlet believes his mother to be complicit with the king’s assassination. Lady Macbeth
provides another example of a devious older woman. Cleopatra may offer the only
example of a powerful, mature woman whom Shakespeare portrays as being noble and
dignified.

Shakespeare's "Others"

Jews in Shakespeare’s England

Few people in Shakespeare’s England would ever have met a practicing Jew. The
kingdom’s Jewish population had been expelled in 1290, more than two hundred years
before Shakespeare’s birth, and practicing Jews would not be permitted to enter the
country until after Shakespeare’s death, in 1660. Despite the expulsion of the Jews in
the Middle Ages, a small group of Portuguese Jews, comprised of just under one
hundred people, survived in London by living quiet lives, and mostly avoided trouble
with authorities. Elizabethan London was also home to a small number of Jewish
converts to Christianity. In spite of their conversion, however, these Jewish people
remained subject to anti-Semitic prejudice. In 1594 the royal physician Roderigo Lopez,
a Spanish Christian of Jewish ancestry, was found guilty of plotting to poison Queen
Elizabeth. When he spoke to the crowd who had gathered to watch his execution,
Lopez insisted that he “loved the Queen as well as he loved Jesus Christ.” The crowd
laughed at him. They believed that he hated the queen, so his choice of words only
confirmed that he hated Jesus Christ as well and hence secretly remained a practicing
Jew.

Anti-Semitic prejudice ran deep in England. Conventional wisdom held that Jews who
refused to convert to Christianity were delaying the salvation of mankind. In the
medieval period many Christians also believed that Jews killed Christian children as
part of their religious practice, and this rumor persisted during Shakespeare’s lifetime.
Perhaps the most widespread stereotype of Jews that survived in Shakespeare’s time
related to usury, the practice of lending money at interest. In many parts of Europe,
Christians were legally forbidden from collecting interest. Though not legally barred from
the practice, Jews who did charge interest on loans came to be seen as greedy and
devious. Shakespeare addressed this stereotype in The Merchant of Venice, a play
that has proven ambivalent for many audiences through the centuries. Shakespeare’s
depiction of the Jewish moneylender Shylock has struck many as anti-Semitic. Yet the
play is also at pains to show that cruelty and greed, as well as pain and suffering, are
traits that can be found in Jews and Christians alike. Shakespeare clearly indicates that
Shylock’s cruelty partly arises in response to his experience of discrimination and
abuse, yet within the play itself there is no empathy for the vilified man, who disappears
in disgrace at the end of the fourth act.

 
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Other plays written and performed during Shakespeare’s lifetime reflect a similar
ambivalence about Jews. Perhaps the most famous of these plays is The Jew of
Malta, written by Christopher Marlowe around 1589. Marlowe’s play tells the story of
Barabas, a wealthy and villainous Jewish merchant who falsely converts to Christianity
to further his devious plans. Eventually Barabas is tricked into falling into his own trap,
which results in his being burned alive. Like Shakespeare’s The Merchant of
Venice, it remains unclear for many modern readers whether The Jew of
Malta condones anti-Jewish fantasies, or if the play works to critique those fantasies.
Though Marlowe’s original title categorized the play as a tragedy, the play is also darkly
comic and may have inspired cynical laughter among its original audiences. Another
play that was popular in the 1580s and 90s offers a less ambivalent portrayal of a Jew.
Robert Wilson’s comedy The Three Ladies of London, written around 1581, pitted a
moral and sympathetic Jewish merchant against a wicked and scheming Italian
merchant. Unlike the later plays by Marlowe and Shakespeare, Wilson’s play clearly
rebukes the overriding anti-Semitism of Elizabethan England.

Moors in Shakespeare’s England

The Moors were a Muslim people of mixed Berber and Arab descent who populated the
Maghreb region of northwest Africa during the Middle Ages and the early modern
period. Despite originating on the African continent, in the eighth century the Moors
conquered the Iberian Peninsula—what we know today as Spain and Portugal. The
Moors controlled the Iberian Peninsula until the fifteenth century, when European forces
finally drove them out. In the early modern European imagination, the Moors fit in with
the other Muslim populations that were seen to threaten Christendom. For centuries,
Christian Europe had been in conflict with the Ottoman Empire, which stretched from
modern-day Turkey into the Middle East and across North Africa. Starting with the
earliest Crusades in the eleventh century, and continuing into Shakespeare’s lifetime,
the clash of Christian and Muslim civilizations posed a military and religious threat that
destabilized Europe and contributed to negative views of the Moors.

Although Moors had dark skin, it is important to note that in Shakespeare’s time
Europeans had not yet developed the concept of “race” as it came to be understood in
later centuries. Unlike today, early modern Europeans did not link skin color to genetic
or evolutionary heritage, which are two concepts that arose in the nineteenth century
with the emergence of modern biological science. Even so, early modern European
culture did maintain a color prejudice that stemmed from two very different sources. The
first source was medieval climate theory, which linked dark skin to sun exposure and
thus connected the hot climate of Mediterranean North Africa with blackness. The
second source stemmed from Christian theology, which tells the story of how God
cursed Noah’s son Ham to be “black and loathsome.” The blackness of Ham’s lineage
does refer to skin color, but blackness chiefly plays a metaphorical role in that story,
marking Ham’s sin. Shakespeare refers to this latter tradition rather than a racial
stereotype when, for example, he has Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus declare
that his villainous deeds will make “his soul black as his face.”

 
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An important historical source on the Moors appeared in 1550, when a Moorish convert
to Christianity named Johannes Leo Africanus published A Geographical History of
Africa. Leo, whose Arabic name was al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Wazzān al-Zayyātī,
described his extensive travels in Africa and attempted to list the traits of African people.
His descriptions are neutral, listing both good and bad traits. These traits became
increasingly stereotyped as Leo’s book was translated in European languages and the
translators made his descriptions more negative. In the English translation by John
Pory, published in 1600, Leo says that Africans are “most honest people” but also
“subject to jealousy.” They are “proud,” “high-minded,” “addicted unto wrath,” and
“credulous.” Shakespeare likely read Leo in Pory’s translation. We know this because
Shakespeare’s most famous Moorish character, Othello, demonstrates many of these
traits. Iago exploits Othello’s credulousness and jealousy to make him suspect
Desdemona of adultery, and it is the Moor’s tendency to wrath which causes him to
murder his wife. Leo also says that Moors are vulnerable to the “falling sickness,” which
may lie behind Othello’s “epilepsy.”

Sex and Shakespeare

Sexuality in Shakespeare’s England

Though the term didn’t exist at the time, “heterosexuality” was compulsory
in Shakespeare’s England. Heterosexual relationships—those between a man
and a woman—were carefully managed through the institution of marriage.
Marriage was thought to play a particularly important role in controlling
women’s sexual desires. Many people believed that all women were tainted
by Eve’s original sin, as told in the biblical book of Genesis. As a result of this
sin, women were believed to have a naturally insatiable desire for sex. In
order to curb female desire, sex had to be confined to marriage and
restricted to acts of reproduction. Women’s sexuality was further restricted,
such that they were not allowed to engage in sexual acts while
menstruating, pregnant, or breastfeeding. The Church had a strong influence
on sexuality within marriage. Married couples were only allowed to have
intercourse in the “missionary” style, and they were not allowed to have sex
during Advent, Easter week, Lent, or on feast days. As much as Elizabethans
followed these rules, they also broke them. Male adultery was especially
common. The same could not be said for women, however, since female
adultery could have violent consequences. A man who suspected his wife of
infidelity could freely beat her with no legal recourse—unless he killed her.
Just as the term “heterosexuality” didn’t exist in Shakespeare’s England,
neither did the term “homosexuality.” Even so, Elizabethans did
acknowledge the existence of same-sex desire, and cultural attitudes toward
same-sex desire were somewhat flexible. Although intercourse between
people of the same sex was a serious crime, same-sex friendship, and
especially friendship between men, was often expressed in language that
seems romantic or even erotic to a modern reader. Friends spoke and wrote
of their love and longing for one another. Close friends were expected to be
physically affectionate, which meant it wasn’t unusual for people of the same
sex to embrace, kiss, or share a bed. Because passionate non-sexual love
between people of the same sex was encouraged, it’s hard to know how
same-sex desire was understood by the people who experienced it, or how
often they acted on these desires. Regardless of their sexual feelings or
behaviors, a person in Shakespeare’s time would not have identified as
“gay,” “lesbian,” or “bisexual,” as those designations were not yet available.

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Homosexual sex was rarely written about in direct language. The most
obvious direct reference appears in the “Buggery Act” of 1530, which made
sodomy a capital offense and punishable by death. The Buggery Act defined
sodomy as acts of anal penetration or bestiality, and it characterized such
acts as unnatural and against the will of God. The only other surviving direct
references to homosexual relationships appeared in the wake of the Buggery
Act, in accusations of sodomy lodged against men. Written accusations of
sodomy don’t necessarily tell us anything about the way homosexual
relationships actually happened, but they do tell us what circumstances
made ordinary Elizabethans suspicious that a friendship between men had
become a sexual relationship. Men who were close friends could be
suspected of homosexuality if they came from different socioeconomic
classes, or if one friend appeared to be committed to the friendship primarily
for financial reasons. Certain social groups, especially those subject to other
prejudices, were also considered more likely to commit sodomy. One such
group was the unpopular community of Italian merchants.

Sexuality in Shakespeare’s Plays

Shakespeare reflected Elizabethan standards of heterosexuality in his plays by
emphasizing the importance of marriage, and particularly the importance of remaining
chaste until marriage. In The Tempest, for example, Prospero threatens Ferdinand not
to break Miranda’s “virgin-knot” (IV.i.), and the young man quickly assents. Other
Shakespearean couples piously await marriage before having sex, including young
lovers in The Merchant of Venice (Portia and Bassanio), A Midsummer Night’s
Dream (Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius), Much Ado About
Nothing (Beatrice and Benedick), and many others. Just as Shakespeare highlighted
the importance of pre-marriage chastity, he also referenced the importance of sex within
marriage, and particularly the role of sex in the consummation of marriage. This
represents an important plot point in Romeo and Juliet. When the young couple wakes
up after having apparently slept together in Juliet’s room the night after Friar Laurence
marries them, Shakespeare leaves it ambiguous as to whether they actually had sex.
Church doctrine insisted that marriage must be consummated by the sexual act, so the
ambiguity in this scene leaves it unclear whether the lovers’ marriage can be considered
legally binding.
With regard to representations of same-sex desire, all plays were subject to official
censorship, and Shakespeare would have been in trouble if any of his plays or poems
had depicted homosexuality directly. A certain amount of same-sex eroticism was built
in to all Elizabethan drama, because female parts were taken by boys. This cross-
dressing invited male spectators to appreciate the beauty of boy actors as if they were
women. Boys playing female roles also meant that all onstage kissing and caressing
took place between male actors. Several of Shakespeare’s plays enhance these effects
by requiring a female character to dress as a man. Rosalind in As You Like It dresses
as a boy and flirts with the man she loves by asking him to pretend that “he” is really a
girl. In those scenes, Orlando, a man played by a man, is wooing a boy actor playing
the part of a girl who is dressed as a boy. If nothing else, As You Like It strongly
suggests that gender is not the most important aspect of the attraction between two
people.

 
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Twelfth Night offers Shakespeare’s most complex approach to the themes of gender
and sexual desire. The play’s main character, a young woman called Viola, dresses up
as a man called “Cesario.” Her chosen name can be read as a reference to the
supposed bisexuality of Julius Caesar. As “Cesario,” Viola becomes a servant to Duke
Orsino, who asks “Cesario” to help him woo the woman he loves, Countess Olivia.
During the course of the play, Orsino falls in love with “Cesario,” though he is not able to
declare his feelings until “Cesario” reveals that “he” is really a woman. As soon as Viola
reveals her true gender identity, Orsino asks her to marry him. Viola is still dressed as a
man when Orsino proposes, and he even continues to call her “boy” during his
proposal. Countess Olivia falls in love with “Cesario” as well. Although she believes
“Cesario” is really a man, she is attracted to “his” feminine looks and way of speaking.
At the end of the play, Olivia marries Viola’s twin brother Sebastian, believing him to be
“Cesario.” When she discovers her mistake, Sebastian tries to console her by
suggesting that he, like “Cesario,” is ambiguously gendered: “maid and man.”

Sexuality in Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Shakespeare’s exploration of sexuality in his sonnets is highly unusual. Sonnet
sequences were popular in the sixteenth century, and they traditionally featured a poet
either wooing a woman of great beauty and virtue or else lamenting her coldness or lack
of affection. Shakespeare undermines this tradition in the first sequence of 126 sonnets,
which are intimate in tone and clearly written in the voice of a male narrator and
addressed to a young male lover, a “lovely boy” (sonnet 126) who possesses great
beauty yet lacks virtue. Many of the poems in the initial sequence are explicit in their
same-sex desire, though none is more forthright than sonnet 20, where the poet refers
to the young man as “the master-mistress of my passion.” In the final couplet of this
sonnet the poet laments that since nature “pricked thee out for women’s pleasure,” the
poet will have to resign himself to not having the youth for himself: “Mine by thy love and
thy love’s use their [i.e., women’s] treasure.” Though the sonnet clearly expresses
same-sex desire, these final lines deny that any sexual intimacy actually took place,
which was important in a time when homosexual acts were punishable by death.

Following the 126 sonnets devoted to the fair youth, the sequence turns to a series of
26 sonnets about the poet’s sexually voracious mistress. This shift in focus is
precipitated by a transgressive act on the part of the youth, who apparently slept with
the poet’s dark-haired lady. More upset by the youth’s betrayal than by his mistress’s
infidelity, the poet turns away from the formerly “sweet boy” (sonnet 108) and delves
into his complex relationship with his mistress. The opening lines of sonnet 138 reveal
that this relationship is tortured and emotionally difficult: “When my love swears that she
is made of truth / I do believe her though I know she lies.” By the end of this poem the
poet resolves to remain sexually involved with this woman despite the fact that neither
can fully trust the other: “Therefore I lie with her, and she with me, / And in our faults by
lies we flattered be.” In these closing lines the verb “lie” has a double function, meaning
both “tell a falsehood” and “have sex with.” In this and other sonnets featuring the “dark
lady,” sexuality is painfully bound up with deceit.

Sex in Shakespeare’s Writing

Sex could not be portrayed explicitly on the Elizabethan stage. Even kissing was
considered risky, not least because a “heterosexual” kiss between a male and a female
character was in reality a kiss between two male actors. Although Shakespeare
frequently indulges in sexually suggestive wordplay, many of his plays emphasize pre-
marriage chastity. For instance, Shakespeare’s romantic comedies often feature
amusingly suggestive romps but nevertheless remain strictly chaste, with no actual
intercourse happening before the young couples can marry. In A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, two young couples, Hermia and Lysander as well as Helena and Demetrius,
fall under a fairy spell and experience a wild night in the forest, lost in a comedic game
of magic-induced desire and repulsion. The next morning Duke Theseus discovers the
couples sleeping together on the ground just outside the forest. The couples lay
together so suggestively that Theseus jokes, “Saint Valentine is past. / Begin these
woodbirds but to couple now?” (IV.i.). The audience knows they have not begun to
couple, but laughs at his inference nonetheless.
Whereas many of Shakespeare’s plays emphasize chastity before marriage, there are
some instances that indicate the possibility of pre-marriage sex. The most famous
example appears in the third act of Romeo and Juliet, when the young couple wakes
up after having spent the night together in Juliet’s room. Shakespeare does not confirm
that the couple had sex, but he does provide suggestive evidence. When Romeo says,
“I must be gone and live, or stay and die” (III.v.), he means that he needs to leave
before he is found and condemned to death. Yet the word “die” is also slang for orgasm,
indicating that Romeo may be playfully referencing sex. Furthermore, the speech Juliet
gives to Romeo appears in the form of an aubade, a type of poem about lovers parting
at dawn. The use of this poetic form suggests that the couple may have engaged in
sexual intimacy, but in itself the aubade is inconclusive and leaves the matter
ambiguous. Another example of ambiguity appears in Hamlet. Although Shakespeare
makes no direct reference to a sexual relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia, when
Ophelia goes mad she sings several popular folk songs about unmarried sex that imply
they may have had sex: “Young men will do it / When they come to it” (IV.v.).

 
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Despite the ban on portraying sex onstage, sexual language largely escaped
censorship so long as it was comic, and sexual puns and erotic innuendos abound in
Shakespeare’s plays. In fact, many of Shakespeare’s jokes are so explicit that they
were removed from editions of his plays published in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Shakespeare mastered the art of making dirty jokes through the liberal use of
puns and double entendres. Early in Romeo and Juliet Mercutio refers to Romeo’s
affection for Rosaline as a “driveling love [that] is like a great natural that runs / lolling up
and down to hide his bauble in a hole” (II.iv.). The phrase “lolling up and down” strongly
implies sexual intercourse, as does the phrase “hide his bauble in a hole,” where
“bauble” and “hole” are slang for penis and vagina, respectively. The use of slang and
puns to refer to sex and genitalia appear virtually everywhere in Shakespeare’s
comedies as well as tragedies and histories. Amusingly, Shakespeare may even have
made the first “your mom” joke in history when he wrote the following exchange in Titus
Andronicus :
CHIRON: Thou has undone our mother.

AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.

Bawdy humor like this allowed Shakespeare to delight popular audiences without ever
depicting sex directly.