Shakespeare LET 1746-1 Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile Nicols Antinao, Guillermo Loyola, Vanessa Garrido

The Homoerotics of Shakespearean Comedy

About the Author

Valerie Traub
Fields of study: - Early modern literary and cultural studies. - History of Sexuality. - Gender and Sexuality studies. - Queer studies. - Shakespeare and early modern drama. Some published books: -Desire & Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama (1992). - The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (2002). - Gay Shame (2009).

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Desire and Anxiety

Homoerotism

Desire and Anxiety

Homoerotism

Sexual attraction between members of the same sex, which can be temporary

(Younger, 2005, p.38.)

Desire and Anxiety

Homoerotism Homosexuality

Sexual attraction between members of the same sex, which can be temporary

(Younger, 2005, p.38.)

Desire and Anxiety

Homoerotism Homosexuality

Sexual attraction between members of the same sex, which can be temporary

Permanent state of identity, or sexual orientation

(Younger, 2005, p.38.)

The Boy-Actor
Theatrical and political convention
Embodiment of the meta-dramatic theme of Identity Enables the depiction of desire and axiety Erotic effect of transvestism

Reactions to The Boy-Actor

Anti-theatricalist paranoia about what

(homo)erotism implies for male dominance. Psychoanalytic and feminist reading of transvestism as a liberating effect

Homoeroticism in Twelfth Night

Exploration of desire

Anxiety and Strain

Homoerotic interest fixed onto a marginalized figure

Sexual Economy of Twelfth Night

1. Viola / Cesarios dual desire for Orsino and Olivia

2. Orsinos effeminacy

3. Sebastians responses to Olivia and Antonio

4. Antonios exclusive desire for Sebastian

Sexual Economy of Twelfth Night

1. Viola / Cesarios dual desire for Orsino and Olivia

2. Orsinos effeminacy

3. Sebastians responses to Olivia and Antonio

4. Antonios exclusive desire for Sebastian

Viola / Cesario
What will become of this? As I am man, My state is desperate for my masters love; As I am woman, now alas the day, What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe? O time, thou must untangle this, not I. It is too hard a knot for me tuntie(ii.ii. 36-41)

Viola / Cesario
Viola / Cesario to Olivia:

If I did love you in my masters flame With such a suffring, such a deadly life, In your denial I would find no sense; I would not understand it (i. v. 256-59)
Viola / Cesario To Orsino: Too well what love women to men may owe. In faith, they are as true of heart as we. My father had a daughter lovd a man, As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman, I should your lordship (ii. iv. 105-9)

Viola / Cesario
What predisposes us to credit the second

comment as truth, but the first as false, a suspect performace, is, I suggest, largely our assumption of universal heterosexuality (p. 132)

Viola / Cesario
Viola / Cesarios erotic predicament threaten her/him with destruction:

Therefore, on, or strip your sword stark naked; for meddle you must, thats certain, or forswear to wear iron about you (iii. Iv. 24446)
Viola / Cesarios response:

Pray God defend me! A little thing would Make me tell them how much I lack of a man (iii.iv. 295-96)

Viola / Cesario
Viola / Cesarios erotic predicament threaten her/him with destruction:

Therefore, on, or strip your sword stark naked; for meddle you must, thats certain, or forswear to wear iron about you (iii. Iv. 24446)
Viola / Cesarios response:

Pray God defend me! A little thing would Make me tell them how much I lack of a man (iii.iv. 295-96)

Viola / Cesario
Phallocentrism:

Viola / Cesarios lacking is the signifier of her gender difference Masculinity is embodied in performance rather than biological equipment. Gender is prosthetic.

Antonio and Sebastian

I could not stay behind you. My desire, More sharp than filled steel, did spur me forth, And not all love to see you though so much As might have drawn me to a longer voyage But jealousy what might befall your travel [. . . ], My willing love, The rather by these arguments of fear, Set fourth in your pursuit (iii.iii. 4-13)

Antonio and Sebastian

Homoerotic passion: danger must be transformed into sport

But come what may, I adore thee so That danger shall seem sport, and I will go (ii.ii. 43-44)
Antonios madness and imprisonment as the result of his vocalization of desire:

Let me speak a little. This youth that you see here I snatched one half out of the jaws of death, Relieved him with such sanctity of love, And to his image, which metought did promise Most venerable worth, did I devotion (iii.iv. 356-60)

Antonio and Sebastian

Rhetoric of Penetration:

Appropiate male desire is phallic, whether homoerotic or heterosexual; without that phallic force, men in Shakespearean drama are usually rendered either asexual or nominally heterosexual (p. 136)

Desire and Anxiety

Viola / Cesarios desire for a dual mode of eroticism is more threatening within the play [. . .], but it is less dangerous than the exclusivity posed by Antonio (p. 143)

I am suggesting, then, that the salient concern may be less the threat posed by homoerotic desire per se than that posed by non-monogamy and non-reproduction (p. 141)

Twelfth Night disrupts the cultural code that keeps both men and women in line, subverting patriarchy from within (p. 143)

Discussion

1. Can you think of any other homoerotic, or homosexual, relationship in other Shakespearean dramas?

Discussion
2. When Viola exceeds her text with Olivia, is she depicting a homoerotic or homosexual relationship?

Discussion

3. Do you think transvestism in the visual arts today is as subversive as in Elizabethan times?

References
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth night, or what you will.

Traub, Valerie. Desire and anxiety: circulations of sexuality in shakespearean drama. London: Routledge, 1992.

Yunger, John Grimes. Sex in the ancient world from A to Z. London: Routledge, 2005.

A FABULOUS THANK YOU!

Shakespeare LET 1746-1 Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile Nicols Antinao, Guillermo Loyola, Vanessa Garrido

The Homoerotics of Shakespearean Comedy