Will’s World
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STRAIGHT ACTING
The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare
by Will Tosh
Seal Press. 304 pages, $30.

STRAIGHT ACTING is an engaging examination of the queer elements in Shakespeare’s time and how they influenced his work. Will Tosh, head of research at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, explores Shakespeare’s life and times to reveal the literary and real-life precedents for same-sex love that Shakespeare absorbed and used in his work. Tosh is less interested in proving that Shakespeare was gay than in showing that the Bard was deeply immersed in a theatrical world in which queerness was everywhere: in the Classical sources for drama, in the gender-bending tradition of all-male casts, and in the subculture of acting companies at this time.

Charles Green, a regular contributor to this magazine, is a writer based in Annapolis, Maryland.