So Long, And Thanks For All the Analysis

S E X U A L I T Y

As the ostentatious marquee suggests, I chose to follow sexuality through the works of William Shakespeare. In my exact words, "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" (from my first blog post). For my final blog post, I will examine my posts leading up to this point to see how I attempted (and hopefully succeeded in) accomplishing this goal. 

First, let me remind you what we are talking about: the OED definition I cited in my first post defined "sexuality" as 

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.

Well, alright. These definitions were certainly straight forward, but I chose instead to assemble a definition of "sexuality" elsewhere, namely in The History of Sexuality by French philosopher Michel Foucault. I read this text over the course of the semester as a worked with "sexuality" in Shakespeare's plays, and my conception of "sexuality" shifted irrevocably toward the posits in THoS. In his influential work, Foucault stressed the idea that "sexuality" as a unified concept did not exist before the early nineteenth century. Foucault traces the use of sex and sexuality back through the ostensibly repressive Victorian era to discover that, in its earliest usages, "to express" sexuality was not indicated that one "possessed" anything at all (beside, perhaps, a hefty libido); it was not until the later modern decades that sexuality became this "thing" that is intrinsically "possessed."

As I went into battle against the early work of Shakespeare, new definitions and conceptions in hand, one of the first problems I had to first combat was the inevitable anachronism that will emerge when looking for "sexuality" in the 1500-1600s, where it did not exist then as it does for us now. I attempted to mitigate this problem in one of two ways:

a) Whenever possible, I would try to relate the work of Shakespeare back to a modern adaptation or, if there was no pertinent adaptation, to a similar scene or exchange of dialogue to highlight the anachronism rather than attempting to obscure it. One example of this technique is in my second post, "Shakespeare and Film Noir," where I used a scene from The Taming of the Shrew and from Double Indemnity, the archetypal 1950s film noir, to talk about concupiscent exchanges between characters, and the differences found between Shakespeare's characters' sexes and the more "modern" sexualities of the twentieth century. As it turns out, the libidinous exchanges were more alike than different; one could even argue that the Shakespeare dialogue was more explicitly sexual.

b) Another technique I used was to toss out comparison completely and to read the work of Shakespeare solely through a modern, critical eye. Any questions that would arise from this anachronistic reading would be then examined to find out exact why the question arose in first place. Two examples of this (and, I would argue, two of my stronger posts) are my third post, "A Queer Reading of Romeo and Juliet," and my fourth, "Venus as a Boy." These two posts were important not just in the way they deepened my understanding of sexuality, queerness, and the performance of gender, but also for how they deepened my understanding of how Shakespeare might have used, talked about, and written sexuality for his characters. The connection I argued between the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet became important for its modern resonance and potential application, while Venus and Adonis became a gold mine for sexual reference and suggestion straight from the pen of the Bard. These two posts can also be viewed together to provide a holistic image of what sexuality could have meant to Shakespeare, and what his deployment of sexuality can mean to us.

To break down this last posit for the ending note: "a holistic image of what sexuality could have meant to Shakespeare"—Shakespeare would not have seen sexuality in the same ways that we see it now; telling the Bard that you are straight, gay, bisexual would have literally no meaning to him whatsoever. How, then, did Shakespeare construct his characters? Around what central locus? His characters were simply allowed to use sex without the daunting task to possess it, and perhaps this allowed for sex to appear in myriad, eclectic ways.

Finally, "what his deployment of sexuality can mean to us"—in my reading of Romeo and Juliet, I connected the story of the two youths, with their love forbidden by societal regulations and their resulting suicides, to the recent suicides of LGBT youth who, like the two lovers, find themselves hopelessly unable to "fit in." Obviously, Shakespeare had no intent of writing a tragedy to show (and maybe critique) the terrible, even deadly, burden of societal stigmas and expectations. He had no idea of what his plays could come to mean, and so perhaps it is up to us to figure it out for him. 

A Mingling of Blood

Blood seems to paint the edges of many important historical events; whether that be bloodshed or bloodlines, blood saturates historical circumscriptions of wartimes, patrilineal primogeniture, familial royal dominance, and, in more modern terms, blood as contamination and disease. The Henriad tetralogy, being fully immersed in the bloody borders of history, evokes crimson imagery linguistically in many moments, most notably, I would argue, in the final play, Henry V, during many of Henry's great speeches. From "once more unto the breach," to "St. Crispin's Day," through the relations and conquering of France, to Mistress Quickly, and more, blood saturates the edges of Shakespeare's Henry V, blending the corporate bodies and sexualities of his characters with their bloodlusts for imperialism and war.

In Henry's first big speech, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more" (Act III, Scene 1), blood is named and used twice. First, Hal cries out 

On, on, you noblest English,
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof (18-19)

in an attempt to empower his men with the idea that the blood in their veins can only be their fathers' blood, and, being descended from soldiers, making it virtually impossible for the soldiers to have no fighting spirit within them. Henry empowers his men here, but then uses their blood against them in a kind of challenge. A few lines later, he cries

Dishonor not your mothers. Now attest
That those whom you called fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. (23-26)

He tacitly implies bloodlines in his challenge for his men to make their mommas proud and to prove their patrilineage; he also specifically references the lesser blood of common men that can apparently be intermingled with the good blood of his current soldiers and taught how to fight by example. Hal uses blood almost paradoxically, or at least contrastingly, by calling his men to shed the blood of the French to prove that war, that bloodlust, is in their mixed blood.

This use of blood, along with the tacit reference to intermingling blood in war, is used similarly in the later "St. Crispin's Day" speech:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother (Act IV, Scene 3, 62-64)

Blood is again brought up, and like the pedagogical use of blood in the earlier speech, it is evoked as intermingling. Hal once again mixes allusions to bloodshed in war and familial bloodlines more explicitly than before; here he literally claims that those men whose blood spills in war along with his blood will make them more than soldiers, but family, "brothers."
This intermingling of blood carries different connotations for modern readers, for whom the stigma of disease has been sutured onto blood through and after the eighties and the AIDS epidemic. Blood and sex became inextricable; AIDS was seen as bodily uncleanliness of the blood brought about by sexual perversities. This interpretation, of course, would be misplaced in an earlier interpretation, as exemplified by this passage from Hal's speech. There is a homophilic aspect within the suggested mixing of blood, whether that be in warfare or family relations or both, rather than a sexual connotation. The blood of men is seen as a brotherly bond, even if modern readers subconsciously project sexual suggestions onto this bond.

However, let's continue tracing blood in Henry V, putting our modern conceptions of blood aside again for a moment. There is a contrast between women and the use of blood pertaining to them towards the plays end. Two contrasting images are evoked from the blood of the play's (limited) female characters, Mistress Quickly and Catherine of Valois. Their blood is never mentioned explicitly, but it is implied through their roles and the ultimate outcomes of the play. Catherine, and her French blood, represents blood as familial relations or ties: her union with Henry V, and his subsequent adoption by the French king, mingles not only Henry and Catherine's bloods but also the bloods of England and France, the latter of which referred to the former as a "bastard son" earlier in the play. It appears that, at the play's close, with the mingling of blood, the wrongdoing of the blood of the bastard is rejuvenated.
However, this cleansing is verbally rejected or parodied in the speech that kills off Mistress Quickly. Her death is revealed from Pistol, who says

News I have that my Nell is dead
I'th' spital of a malady of France. (Act V, Scene 1, 11)

This "French" blood, even if not recognized as such, has infected Nell and killed her. Nell's blood represents the sexual side of blood, which is wholly ignored with Katherine's symbolism. The women create a competing image of blood, specifically the blood of France: one offers English rejuvenation, the other, a sexual death.

The question of what it means for English blood's intermingling with France's is unanswered, or rather, hypothetically answered with many possible outcomes. What does stand out from this discourse is how blood is used in history in many compelling, contrasting, questioning, and revelatory ways, exemplified in the bloody language of Henry V.

If You're Ready, Go and Get It

 

Sonnet 4, one of Shakespeare's Procreation Sonnets (1-17), falls into the familiar rhythmic critique of chastity, a rhythm previously orchestrated in Romeo and Juliet. I have previously done a queer reading of Romeo in Juliet (which can be read here), which places the "star-crossed lovers" in a queer (non-monogamously heterosexualized) context; following my own footsteps and the motif of the Bard himself, I will do another queer reading of another one of Shakespeare's "carpe diem," beauty-disseminating, etc., etc., poetic works.

Let us proceed down this sonnet line by line, quatrain by quatrain: 

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?

Fiscal responsibility and a great theme of economic exchange is evoked within the first line, "spend," and the metaphor continues to be used throughout the other 14 lines. 

Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free:
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?

Again with money (where is the sex? I'm getting there): "Nature," asserts Shakespeare, is this fiscal lender, lending the youth their beauty which, as lending goes, "she" will someday take back. The poet chastises the poem's addressee for apparently hoarding this loan from Nature, which, according the poem's first couplet, is beauty. 
Here again we see a theme previously explored in Romeo and Juliet: the idea of "seizing the day," that beauty and youth are both fleeting and should be shared with others before it is too late. This is seen in Romeo's initial despondence in the wake of his rejection from Rosaline, who has decided to stay chaste, "and with her dies her store [her beauty]," as Romeo tells us. The speaker of the poem is beginning to form an argument against what he sees as an "abuse" of nature's loan of beauty. 

Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.

And finally the idea of carpe diem and using beauty (what can only be interpreted as some sort of sexual relation) is verbally evoked: this "usurer" now stands accused not only of usury (a major crime in Shakespeare's time) but an usury that is self-harming as well. It appears that the poet wishes to warn the usurer of 1) not spending his beauty when he has the time, and also 2) spending too much beauty on himself, "having traffic with thyself alone."
The last of these lines heavily implies a danger in autoerotic sex (masturbation), but not in an expected way. Having "solo-traffic" is not made dangerous with implications of a diseased mental or sexual health, but rather "thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive," which once could interpret as a warning against falsely portraying the self to the self, suggesting that masturbation beguiles the lone-star and robs him of pleasures that can be found in sharing beauty (alloerotic sex).
Perhaps that last bit is somewhat of a stretch; let's move on to the last four lines:

Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
Which usèd lives th' executor to be.

As in many of Shakespeare's notions of legacy, the lovely spectre of death is resurrected in the eleventh line, "nature [calling] thee to be gone ... thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee." It seems as though the poet is instructing his addressee to share his beauty (his sex) not only for pleasure but also for economic duty. The poet rhetorically asks what the addressee expects to leave behind, "what acceptable audit canst thou leave," implying that sharing his beauty, by means of what is commonly believed by sonnet-scholars to be by procreating (hence being one of the "procreation sonnets"), will do good with nature's gift bestowed upon him, e.g. passing it onto a child to be used and shared again.

It is true that these sonnets (1-17) deal commonly with procreation and the notion of passing on not just beauty but also legacy for the next generation to use. The language of the poem does suggest a passing on of one's beauty and/or legacy, such as one might pass down wealth to next of kin (to continue the economic metaphor); however, allow me to extend this alleged "call to procreate" by further delving into the metaphor of market transactions. If nature did loan this man a sum of money, he would not immediately pass it on the his kin, but rather spend it, exchange it, and share it with those who have also been given nature's loan. In this reading, it seems that the addressee is not meant to pass on his beauty by means of procreation, but meant to share this beauty with others by means of sexual relations. Rather than "having traffic" (which Pelican Shakespeare footnotes as meaning "commerce [or] dealings," suggesting a direct market transaction) with oneself only (suggesting masturbation, as I have pointed out), the poet claims that to be a "good businessman" one mustn't horde nature's loan of beauty but rather exchange it as much as possible before death.

Of course, this notion is inevitably tied up in procreation, being that sex apart from procreation was not a concept at all in Shakespeare's time (contraception was not repressed, per se, but still obviously nowhere near being scientifically feasible); therefore, the poet's assertion to go spread one's beauty to other lovers does innately carry an implication of passing on genes, of procreating. However, this idea of procreating was not a concept foreign to Shakespeare's time (and, fun fact, acknowledging the drive to procreate would not have made one "heterosexual") and I can only assume that men were not wasting away masturbating (this is pre-internet porn, after all) and so his "wild" claim to go have reproductive sex does seem almost redundant.

Perhaps the poet is suggesting that the addressee go spread the love with others in alternative, less reproductive ways? How very queer; how very queer indeed. 

Shakespeare and Film Noir; Sexuality, Post #2

Let's talk about sex. Let's talk about Luciana and Antipholus of Syracuse. Let's talk about Katherina and Petruchio. Both of these comedies use the multifarious sexualities of the characters for an assortment of reasons and plot devises—most overtly, for the amusement of the audience. There are moments in both of these plays where a lot of legwork is asked of the audience in order to keep certain lascivious views in flux.

On of these moments comes in The Comedy of Errors (Act III, Scene 2), when Antipholus of Syracuse shamelessly hits on Luciana, the sister of his alleged wife. The scene is charged with a lot of romantic language and coy refutations; however sweet these verses may be, Luciana still believes that she is speaking to the husband of her sister. Though it is true that from Antipholus of Syracuse's point of view he is only flirting with a single mistress, the breath of adultery and sordid desire still obfuscate the scene. The audience is simultaneously being affronted with AoS's sexuality as well as Luciana's contemptible response to AoS's advances.

Luc: It is a fault that springeth from your eye.
AoS: For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by.

Well, at least she said no that time. 

Luc: Gaze where you should, and that will clear your sight.
AoS: As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night.
Luc: Why call you me “love”? Call my sister so.
AoS: Thy sister's sister. 
Luc: That's my sister. 
AoS: No, it is thyself, mine own self’s better part,
Mine eye’s clear eye, my dear heart’s dearer heart,
My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope’s aim,
My sole earth’s heaven, and my heaven’s claim...
Luc: O soft, sir! Hold you still.
I’ll fetch my sister to get her goodwill. 
(III. 2. 55-64, 69-70.) 

Alas, Luciana does spurn AoS's advances. That's good, right? She couldn't possibly hope to score her brother-in-law right after giving a speech about how wives should be obedient; one can only assume not facilitating cheating is something that is expected from a potential good-wife. However, this scene also reveals to the audience that AoS is attracted to Luciana, and would court her if not for the ubiquitous, eponymous errors running amok. Shakespeare keeps playing with the sexualities of his contemporary audience: at this point in the play, the spectators would have wanted—gasp!—Luciana to return his advances. They know that she is right in following what her sexuality is telling her (namely, that she is attracted to this flirtatious Antipholus), and yet it is expected that she turn him down. Luckily, all of these libidinous desires get properly aligned as the play enters its denouement.

The Taming of the Shrew also puts its audience on a roller coaster of sexuality—this time through witty word play. One of the more famously salacious scenes in Shrew is, like the aforementioned scene in The Comedy of Errors, a courting scene. When Petruchio begins to court Katherina, she acts as expected: shrewish. Spurring even the most basic of his advances, Petruchio calls her waspish, to which Katherina famously replies:

"If I be waspish, best beware my sting." (II. i. 208.) 

Oh-ho-ho! Petruchio follows up on this suggestive warning, spurning the following dialogue:

 

P: My remedy is then to pluck it out.
K: Ay, if the fool could find where it lies.
P: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.
K: In his tongue.
P: Whose tongue?
K: Yours, if you talk of tales, and so farewell.
P: What, with my tongue in your tail? (II. i. 209-214.) 

The "tail" being referred to is believed to be an overt reference to Katherina's genitalia. Petruchio appeals to Katherina's sexuality directly in an attempt to deflect and undermine her shrewish defenses. 

To juxtapose these sexually charged dialogues with one from our quasi-contemporary culture, below is one of the most famous "patter-dialogues" of the film noir genre, coming from Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity:

Here is a dialogue where sexuality and its repression are being volleyed verbally. This dialogue from the 1944 "pragmatic film noir" is incredibly similar in form to Luciana and Antipholus of Syracuse's banter, though centuries separate the two. Katherina and Petruchio's dialogue is surprisingly more salacious than the other two combined; Luciana and AoS's dialogue, as well as the dialogue from Double Indemnity, both deal with sexually charged suggestion but any reference to sexuality is clouded with the threat of adultery. 

 Most interestingly, it is how those two dialogues get un-clouded that reveal the most about how sexuality was treated in these two eras: in The Comedy of Errors, Luciana and Antipholus end up together happily. Despite Luciana's initial rejection of her sexuality, it ends up that after all, it was pointing it in the right direction. Conversely, in Double Indemnity, Walter Neff listens to his sexuality and begins an affair with Phyllis soon after this scene. However, this leads him down a road of broken promises, murder, and death.

  Now, in which era was sexuality more repressed?

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.