Broussard, Post #1 - Sexuality

sexuality (n) - 

1. Biol. The quality of being sexual or possessing sex. Opposed to asexuality.  

2. Sexual nature, instinct, or feelings; the possession or expression of these.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) gives us these two slivers to define sexuality:
One of these is a biological definition, ascribing to something the marker of reproducing by a combination of two or more cells (e.g. sex) rather than by mutation or budding (e.g. non-sexy bacteria). Fair enough.

Now, the second definition included by the OED is far more inclusive and loaded with interesting terminology: sexuality can be non-biologically described as the "possession or expression" of sexual "nature, instincts, or feelings" (apparently not all three simultaneously). The suggestion here forces sexuality up and out into the ether, portraying it as something that is owned (or not) and something that is shown (or kept quiet). Curiouser still is the fact that the earliest use of sexuality cited by the OED is in 1833, taken from Traditionary Stories Old Families by Andrew Picken:

This, like most matters of love and sexuality, became the bitter bottoming of many sorrows.

This is sexuality in the second sense, having first shown its fresh, baby face two-hundred-something years after Shakespeare wrote most of his plays. As for sexuality in the first, biological sense, the OED cites a quotation from John Walker's Elements of geography, and of natural and civil history from 1797, which claims that

The Linnaean system..is founded on the sexuality of plants.

These are the two earliest mentions per the OED: one describing sexuality as bottoming for sorrow and the other describing a crop of sexy plants. And both of these rudimentary definitions come well after Shakespeare's time.

One can only assume that Shakespeare and the people of his time had sexualities (I doubt he'd bequeath Anne the second-best bed unless it had been previously broken-in), although the use of these "natures, instincts, and feelings" may be different from the myriad contemporary employments. Published firstly in 1976, Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality sought to re-think the myth of "sexual repression" that allegedly ran rampant through the Victorian era, arguing instead that this era was marked by an explosion of sexual discourse, from confession at church to the pornographic novellas of the time (such as the 19th century's anonymous publication of My Secret Life). 

But before all that, Shakespeare was writing a bunch of plays, many of which involved innuendo (Taming of the Shrew, Merchant of Venice) and plot-pertinent sex between characters (Romeo and Juliet, Richard III). He played around often with sexual potency and also sexual duality. At certain instances in Shakespeare's, the audience was asked to extend their views on sexuality to encompass certain plot points: in Twelfth Night, the audience watches the Duke begin to fall for his male friend Cesario (although it is known that he is actually Viola in disguise); in The Comedy of Errors, the audience watches Luciana flirt with her sister's husband Antipholus (though the audience knows it is really her sister's brother-in-law, Antipholus of Syracuse). The Elizabethan audience's views on sexuality and how sexuality is entertained on-stage appear to be far more capacious than the eras that followed.

Being that Foucault is talking only about the later 1800s — still well after Shakespeare's time — my main question for this Critical Concepts blog is to examine and track how Shakespeare allows his characters to discuss their sexuality, how sex appears and is used in both his comedic and tragic (and historical) plays, and compare the pre-Victorian, Early Modern era's "possession [and] expression" of sexuality with our own "modern" conceptions.