It’s time to stop making Shakespeare’s ‘clearly’ gay characters straight, says top theatre director

Artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Greg Doran, believes it’s time to stop with the heteronormativity in Shakespeare’s plays.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today program, he said: ‘I am just aware how many times Shakespeare has gay characters, and how sometimes those gay characters are not played as gay, and I think in the 21st century that’s no longer acceptable.’

For example, Doran believes the character of Antonio in The Merchant of Venice is ‘absolutely clearly in love with the young man Bassanio,’ he said. ‘ Sometimes that is kind of toned down.’

He said their bromance is often wrongly portrayed as ‘we chaps are very fond of each other.’

He then explained a process of ‘heterosexualization’ in Shakespeare’s writing.

Shakespeare wrote a cycle of 154 sonnets and 126 of those are addressed to a man. Doran said academics found evidence to suggest male pronouns changed to female pronouns during the Victorian era.

Mark Rylance as Olivia in the Globe Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

He goes on to theorize Shakespeare was probably gay himself, a common theory in recent years.

The artistic director said: ‘It wasn’t somehow quite kosher for the great national bard to possibly have affections for his own sex and therefore that process, to kind of whitewash through the sonnets.

‘I guess a growing understanding of Shakespeare… makes me realize that his perspective is very possibly that of an outsider.

‘It allows him to get inside the soul of a black general, a Venetian jew, an Egyptian queen or whatever.

‘Perhaps that outsider perspective has something to do with his sexuality,’ he said.

How gay was William Shakespeare?

In recent years, many theorize the famous bard’s sexuality.

One of Shakespeare’s most famous lines was actually written from one man to another.

‘Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?’

There are various theories…

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