Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

Like the late Joseph Sobran , award-winning poet and editor Don Paterson comes down firmly in the gay  camp on the topic of Shakespeare's sexual orientation in his upcoming book, Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets: a New Commentary , to be released in England on November 4, 2010 by Faber and Faber. In an essay titled "Shakespeare's Sonnets by Don Paterson" published October 15, 2010 in The Guardian, Paterson said: However, the question: "was Shakespeare gay?" strikes me as so daft as to be barely worth answering. Of course he was. Arguably he was bisexual, of sorts, but his heart was never on his straight side. Now is not the time to rehearse them all, but the arguments against his homosexuality are complex and sophistical, and often take convenient and homophobic advantage of the sonnets' built-in interpretative slippage – which Shakespeare himself would have needed for what we would now call "plausible deniability", should anyone have felt...

Rufus Wainwright talks about his response to Shakespeare in this brilliant interview by Tim Adams, "I was looking right into her face when my mother died" published February 21, 2010 in The Guardian: When Wainwright was working with Shakespeare's sonnets, he says – he was asked to help create a theatrical cycle of them for the Berliner Ensemble – he found all sorts of echoes of these kinds of experiences in them. One of the sonnets he includes on his album is Sonnet 10, "For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any", and he didn't need to research the scholarly opinion on the "poet", the "dark lady" and the "beautiful boy" to understand that this was the first great coming-out poem in the English language. "I knew immediately, instinctively, that this was the point where the poet first admits his love for the boy. And it is sort of the beginning of the avalanche. I remembered that moment very well…"

Here is my note to Jos. Harker, Response Editor of The Guardian , after The Associated Press scooped The Guardian on the anti-Stratfordian actor issue raised in my letter to the editor -- see text in Sept. 7 blog below. Note: The coalition referred to in the AP story is the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition . Tom To Joseph Harker, Response Editor, The Guardian Dear Joseph, I followed your suggestion of Wednesday, Sept 5 and sent the letter below to letters@guardian.co.uk correcting Prof. Bate's misinformation passed along by your reporter. Apparently nothing was done about correcting the error. Apparently my letter was not printed. Apparently The Guardian has not bothered to look into the error. Now Yahoo has run a story by Associated Press writer D'Arcy Doran providing accurate information about famous actors who have doubted the traditional attribution of Shakespeare authorship which you can link to here: " Coalition Aims to Expose Shakespeare " by D'Arcy Dor...