> That's a point. I'm not trying to categorize him in any way, really. I don't think that the sonnets constitute sufficient evidence that we can call Shakespeare homosexual/bisexual. (To begin with, those categorizations didn't even exist when he lived...) Some of them could be read as homoerotic, but I don't think that any of the first 126 are really eroticized; it'd be totally plausible that these were written within a platonic relationship. I just think it's interesting, is all. ;)
>
So do I. I have just read enough Shakespeare scholarship to be sceptical about definitive pronouncements. It may be that Shakespeare was homosexual, or bisexual, in reality; I don't know that anyone should be definitive about it, as we simply do not know enough.

More importantly, though, people have a tendency to read writing in English from other eras as autobiographical, simply because of the prevalance of that kind of writing in our own day; such an interpretation might be entirely unwarranted, especially when one realizes the considerably more casual attitudes of writers towards what would now be considered plagiarism, and the willingness to consider writing a craft that was separate from the individual writer. Shakespeare himself was writing sonnets in a time when an already existant tradition of the use of archetypal characters in sonnets was established and old.

And I say none of this to argue with you; most of what you said was entirely plausible. This week, talking about Shakespeare's plays with other well-read teachers has put me in a rather contentious and careful scholarly mode;). Myself, I would much rather deemphasize the author in most texts anyway.

But I love to talk about it, so there you are:)