This morning, our class went on a walking tour of Shakespeare sites around London led by a Declan McHugh. Mr. McHugh was a great guide; he obviously knew a great deal about the Bard and the period in which he lived and his passion for the subject matter was obvious. However, certain statements he made in regards to Shakespeare the man were. . . controversial among certain members of our class, to say the least. In particular, his assertion that Shakespeare was a closeted Catholic and his more ambivalent pondering of whether the Bard was a closeted bisexual drew some strong disagreements from some.
After the tour ended, I decided to do some in-depth research on the subjects of Shakespeare’s sexuality and religion, and by that I mean I skimmed some Wikipedia articles. Glancing over all this scholarly debate about these incredibly significant aspects of Shakespeare’s character, I was struck by how little we truly know about the man. We have no letters written by him, no tell-all journals, no autobiography nicely spelling out for us exactly who he was and how he thought about the world. Instead, academics and other Shakespeare enthusiasts have had to take a fine-tooth comb to the one existing letter written to Shakespeare, the few times his name appears in various legal documents and registries, and brief comments about him by his contemporaries.
Unfortunately, given the great variety of disparate interpretations I’ve seen just in my own very brief glances into the subject, it appears that clarity has proven elusive. There’s just not enough evidence for any one side to close the case on issues like Shakespeare’s sexual or spiritual leanings, or indeed on many other aspects of his character. It’s certainly frustrating to think that we might not ever get an answer more definitive than “We don’t really know” to questions like these.
We have few definitive answers about Shakespeare’s biographical details, yet we feel we know him well enough to name him “Man of the Millennium.” Perhaps, though, that’s just a testament to the strength of his work: even in the absence of almost any detail about Shakespeare’s life, his plays and sonnets alone have ensured that almost everyone on Earth knows who the Bard is.