Straight Acting

The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare

Preview

Failed to add items

Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.

Add to basket failed.

Please try again later

Add to wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Remove from wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Adding to library failed

Please try again

Follow podcast failed

Unfollow podcast failed

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free

Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.

Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.

Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.

Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Straight Acting

By: Will Tosh

Narrated by: Will Tosh

Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £17.94

About this listen

'Fluent and witty . . . confident . . . highly readable'
Kathryn Hughes, GUARDIAN

'Brilliant - so vivid and so sharp, fantastically clever and consistently fascinating'
KATHERINE RUNDELL, author of Super-Infinite

Was Shakespeare gay? The answer is both simpler and more complex than you might think . . .

Shakespeare's work was profoundly influenced by the queer culture of his time - much of it totally integrated into mainstream society. From a relentless schooling in Latin and Greek homoeroticism, to a less formal education on the streets and in smoky taverns, from the gender-bending of the early comedies to the astonishingly queer literary scene that nurtured Shakespeare's sonnets, this is a story of artistic development and of personal crisis.

Straight Acting is a surprising portrait of Shakespeare's queer lives - his own and those in his plays and poems. It is a journey back in time and through Shakespeare's England, revealing a culture that both endorsed and supressed same-sex desire. It is a call to stop making Shakespeare act straight and to recognise how queerness powerfully shaped the life and career of the world's most famous playwright.

'Magisterial and saucy . . . This fresh account kickstarts the queer canon of English literature: Shakespeare won't go back in the closet again'
EMMA SMITH, author of This Is Shakespeare

'Engrossing, enlightening and hugely entertaining'
SARAH WATERS, author of Fingersmith©2024 Will Tosh

Art & Literature

Authors

Biographies & Memoirs

Europe

Great Britain

Historical

Literary History & Criticism

Literature & Fiction

Shakespeare

LGBTQIA+

Art & Literature Authors Biographies & Memoirs Europe Great Britain Historical Literary History & Criticism Literature & Fiction Shakespeare LGBTQIA+

Critic reviews

Fluent and witty . . . confident . . . highly readable . . . Tosh's ambition is to present this rich material to a general readership, imagined here as consisting of the thousands of passionate enthusiasts who flock to the Globe each year, expecting to be educated and entertained in equal measure. It's an expectation that he meets magnificently (Kathryn Hughes)

Dynamic . . . A well-judged feat of public scholarship . . . Straight Acting will do much to advance the public sense of how Shakespeare and his world thought and felt about same-sex desire (Tom Cook)

Sparkling . . . bold and fearless. Taking another step towards uncovering a 'hidden canon' of queer desire, Straight Acting is a fitting tribute to a man who wrote for a future where 'love may still shine bright'. Tosh's book returns this future-focused favour, kicking open a door for the next wave of accessible queer histories (Matt Ryan)

A creative and capacious book that moves smoothly between recorded and speculative history . . . [Tosh] offers persuasive readings of expressions of same-sex desire in Shakespeare's writing. This is by any standard a lively and accomplished biography of Shakespeare . . . His gift, rather, is to bring scholarly rigour to bear on queerness in early modern England. Straight Acting shines the same light on Shakespeare's England as some of the Globe's best productions (Sophie Duncan)

An engaging, enthusiastic and informative book about one facet, long denied or ignored, of the most teasing and various of all great writers (Philip Hensher)

Tremendously entertaining . . . Part playful polemic, part queer social history, Straight Acting is a book that casts The Bard's enduring brilliance in a surprising new light

Snappy . . . a necessary provocation (Nick Curtis)

At once magisterial and saucy, Straight Acting gets to the heart of Shakespeare's queer literary formation. Will Tosh writes with clarity and cheek, drawing on forgotten contemporaries, reminding us of the cultural status of ancient Greek texts and their sexual mores, and remapping a homoerotic geography of Elizabethan London. His account is deeply researched - but most importantly, it breaks down the barriers between lived experience and desires today, and four centuries ago. This fresh account kickstarts the queer canon of English literature: Shakespeare won't go back in the closet again (Emma Smith, author of THIS IS SHAKESPEARE)

A scholarly romp through the rich complexities of Shakespeare's queer life, work and culture. Engrossing, enlightening and hugely entertaining (Sarah Waters, author of FINGERSMITH)

Straight Acting is brilliant - so vivid and so sharp, fantastically clever and consistently fascinating. It will change the way people think about Shakespeare, in rich and valuable ways (Katherine Rundell, author of SUPER-INFINITE)

Most relevant

Brilliant unearthing of an entire period in history, where love, sex and literature entwine. Shakespeare, Marlowe and Barnfield are our main characters - and Tosh makes them alive.