[BRIEF NOTE] On physical stereotypes and sexual orientation and Shakespeare

[rfmcdonald]

A recent feature in Details magazine, Simon Dumenco's "Is This A Gay Face I See Before Me? "

If William Shakespeare were alive today, a couple of things would be certain. Gawker commenters would be linking his name with gossip-column blind items ("What married wordsmith was seen canoodling with another man at The Box?"). And Perez Hilton would be scrawling pearl necklaces onto his paparazzi shots. Not just because of his famously homoerotic sonnets but because Shakespeare seems to have had—let's be blunt here—a serious case of gayface.

We have this from no less an authority than the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England, which in March unveiled a newly discovered portrait some historians think might be of the Bard. "This Shakespeare is handsome and glamorous, so how does this change the way we think about him . . . and his sexuality?" wondered a statement from the trust to the press. In other words: "Gayface!" (the new way of saying "Dude looks totally gay!"). Which suggests that the contemporary compulsion to pin down sexual identity has no limits, not even the grave. Because somehow it's important to us to think we "can just tell" that even guys who have been dead for 400 years were gay.

[. . .]

The Bard is a rather obvious magnet for gay rumors—and not just because he wore tights and was in the theater. There is the matter of his queer circle, says London gay-culture historian Rictor Norton: "If Shakespeare was as good-looking as this portrait demonstrates, then it is easy to see why he attracted the attention of his first patron, Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton"—a reputed dabbler in manly hookups. But, Norton adds, "we should not read the subject of the portrait as gay because of a certain softness about the eyes or whatever."

Or wait—maybe we should. "It appears that Shakespeare's eyebrows are higher here than in others of his portraits," says Nicholas Rule, a researcher at Tufts University's Interpersonal Perception & Communication Lab. "Women have a greater distance between their eyes and brows than men do"—and on a guy, those lofty brows might be subconsciously perceived as "gay." (Quick, somebody measure Ryan Seacrest's brow rise!) Rule adds that "the corners of his mouth are not turned down, as in some other portraits of him, which gives the hint of a smile." And subtly smiley portraits—think the Mona Lisa—suggest femininity.

This sort of thing is entirely convincing to me. It's a well-known fact that queer men are able to pick out other queer men on the basis of small differences from the heteronormative norm, in language or in gestures or in clothing. At least, they are able to do so with men in the same culture; men in other cultures, now, are more tricky. The past is another country . . .

So, do you think that he was, y'know? The sonnets are famously homoerotic and all.