The myth of Shakespeare’s sonnets

Abstract

Until recently, Shakespeare’s sonnets were read as the autobiographical record of a love triangle between the author, a fair-haired youth and a Dark Lady. Shakespeare’s relationship with the man was either seen as an idealizing friendship, or as homoerotic. In my article, I treat this reading of the sonnets as a flexible myth, which allows us to construct a Shakespeare according to our needs. I investigate two aspects of this myth: the addressees’ gender and the speaker’s sexual orientation. With British, American, Dutch and German examples, I argue that analogous responses to these issues have emerged in various cultures.