Why did Shakespeare dedicate most of his love sonnets (1-126) to a man ("Fair Youth")? Was he bisexual?

Question

Why did Shakespeare dedicate most of his love sonnets (1-126) to a man ("Fair Youth")? Was he bisexual?

Answer 1

Let me quote the first four lines of sonnet 144:



   "Two loves I have of comfort and despair,

    Which like two spirits do suggest me still:

    The better angel is a man right fair,

    The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill."

With Fair Youth Shakespeare's love was spiritual while with Dark Lady it was simply physical. Now ask yourself: should one still think Shakespeare was bisexual? Perhaps you're caught in the age-old misconception that love naturally and necessarily leads to s*x.

Answer 2

Perhaps the passages are not sexually motivated at all, but are instead a compassionate and heartfelt embodiment of the feelings Shakespeare had for his late son, Hamnet. The loss of Hamnet was no doubt a tremendous blow for Shakespeare but could have provided some of the inspiration for his great and varied works.

Answer 3

If you consider that in Shakespeare's day male actors portrayed female characters in his plays (and he was a bread-and-butter playwright then, above all else) sexuality may have been perceived quite differently than it is now.

And even today, hasn't many an aspiring male actor/model been through the 'casting couch' ? The power of patronage has always been strongest in showbiz - then and now... and people have had to compromise time and again to gain and retain fame.

Answer 4

It is a suspicion... we don't know but some people do think this!

Answer 5

go to shakespeare and also ask the same for me

Answer 6

Possibly, no-one really knows.

Answer 7

Ok, there is one version, that Shakeshpeare was really a lady who was great in writing - but during those times women were not allowed to write or publish - so it goes that the lady wrote under the pen name of Shakespeare and she even disguised like a man - that can be one reason as to why it was all for a man. Truly speaking we do not have correct information abt Shakes - technology and religion and literature might claim that there are many things found about him, but nothing stands vindicated and u cannot believe everything of that since almost 5-6 centuries stand between him (or her) and us and there are rounds of politics to cover up things - similar to things about another great person Jesus Christ  - I know this will evoke - but there are proofs that his clan moved out from India, he lived in India and finally died in India at an older age - but politics and religion is covering up things !

Answer 8

Its a possibility, but Shakespeare was also hired to write sonnets, so he doesn't decide who they are dedicated to. A woman or man in love with a man could say, hey write this and dedicate it Tom or whatever, so it wasnt necessarily him.