the English plays, to which I have devoted a little more than half the book, to form Volume Two.
In preparing this book, I have made as much use as I could of all sorts of general reference books: encyclopedias, atlases, mythologies, biographical dictionaries, histories-whatever came to hand.
To one set of books, however, I owe an especial debt. These are the many volumes of "The Signet Classic Shakespeare" (General Editor, Sylvan Barnet, published by New American Library, New York). It was, as a matter of fact, while reading my pleasurable way through these volumes that the notion of Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare occurred to me.
Part I. Greek 1. Venus And Adonis
Of all Shakespeare's writings, Venus and Adonis is the most straightforwardly mythological and traces farthest backward (if only dimly so) in history. For that reason, I will begin with it.
Earl of Southampton
"Venus and Adonis" bears a dedication:
To the Right Honourable Henry Wriothesley, Earl of South ampton, and Baron of Tichfield.
-Dedication
Southampton was a well-educated youth of considerable wealth, who was presented at the court of Queen Elizabeth I in 1590, while he was still a boy in his teens. He quickly became a generous patron of poets, Shakespeare among them.
It is suggested that one of Shakespeare's early plays, Love's Labor's Lost (see page I-421) was written for a premiere performance at Southampton's house before an assemblage of his friends and guests. If so, the play must have pleased Southampton tremendously; his patronage to Shakespeare extended (so at least one report goes) to the gift of a thousand pounds-an enormous sum in those days-for the completion of some purchase. Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that Shakespeare made his dedication to Venus and Adonis florid, indeed.
Nevertheless, considering that we know Shakespeare as a transcendent genius, and that Southampton was merely a rich young man who was no more than twenty years old when Venus and Adonis was published, there is something unpleasantly sycophantic about the dedication. Shakespeare pretends to worry, for instance-
- how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burthen;
- Dedication
Can he really doubt his own power so, or overestimate the young man so egregiously? Surely not. Can he be indulging in sarcasm? That would be foolishly risky and nothing in Shakespeare's career would lead us to suppose him a devil-may-care. He was rather the reverse.
Well then, is he merely buttering up a patron with a fat money belt? Perhaps so. It is easy to believe that this is the ordinary language of poets to patrons but it would still hurt us to suppose that Shakespeare would conform to so degrading a custom.
But, to be complete, it is also possible that there was a homosexual attachment and Shakespeare was writing out of love. This is possible. Some think most of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets were written in this period of his life; most of them seem addressed to a young man, possibly (but not certainly) to Southampton [Shakespeare's sonnets, and a handful of other short poems attributed to him, are not taken up in this book. They are primarily emotional and personal, with little or none of the type of background I am dealing with here.]. The twentieth sonnet seems to have the frankest homosexual content. It begins:
A woman's face, with Nature's own hand painted, Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
- lines 1-2
But it denies overt homosexuality, ending:
And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till Nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting
And by addition me of thee defeated
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.
- lines 9-14
In addition, there are a number of events in Shakespeare's plays that can be interpreted from a homosexual point of view, yet which Shakespeare presents most sympathetically. There are the close male friendships, even to threatened death, as is Antonio's for Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice (see page I-501). There is Lucius' passion for Fidele in Cymbe-line (see page II-72) and the scene in which Orlando woos Ganymede in As You Like It (see page I-571).
But too little is known of Shakespeare's life to go any further than this. Any speculations as to his homosexual urges and to the extent to which he gave in to them, if they existed, can never be anything more than speculations.