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My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose (in 4th Grade!)

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My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose (in 4th Grade!)

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One of the first assignments still remember was having to memorize the Robert Burns poem and recite in front of class.  Memorable because of the trauma...

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Looking back on it, this was the first time I was given real book choice (1982!).  I definitely bit more than I could chew choosing this from the school library.  Again, an oral book report that I dreaded so much that I hid the book in my dresser and was very successful at shoving it from my mind until the night before–convincing myself that I was a fantastic speed reader.

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I read this in a weekend in 1986 (in think) with OMD's Junk Culture on repeat in my walkman.  Scared me silly and then I couldn't get enough of Stephen King.

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Jumping to college and I hadn't quite picked my major yet, but wanted to take the Shakespeare class with popular professor Caroline Brown who loved to play "what if" with famous works as a way to get students thinking about modes of literary criticism. Hooked again!

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Mr Doran said academics had found "a process of hetereosexualisation of those sonnets during the Victorian period", where the pronouns in them were changed.

He 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 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."

Mr Doran said the character of Antonio in The Merchant of Venice is "absolutely clearly in love with the young man Bassanio and sometimes that is kind of toned down".

Their love had been wrongly portrayed as "we chaps are very fond of each other".

He went on: "It's not, it's clearly a very particular portrait of a gay man and I think in the 21st century it's no longer acceptable to play that as anything other than a homosexual."

The debate over Shakespeare's sexuality erupted three years ago when leading scholars clashed in the letters page of the Times Literary Supplement about the issue.

Sir Brian Vickers triggered the spat by criticising a book suggesting sonnet 116 appeared in a "primarily homosexual context".

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Shakespeare may have been gay, says artistic director of RSC

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Mr Doran said academics had found "a process of hetereosexualisation of those sonnets during the Victorian period", where the pronouns in them were changed. He 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.