Are there any gay characters in Shakespeare?

Or rather characters who can be read as gay or were perhaps intended to be? Or did Will leave the love that dare not speak its name to the sonnets?

Orlando in As You Like It is bi. He falls in love with Rosalind in her male guise and her female guise.

Antonio--The Merchant of Venice. He's got it bad for Bassanio! Iago may unconsciously want Othello's Moorish man meat

In TWELFTH NIGHT Duke Orsino also falls in love with Viola when she is dressed as the boy Cesario. In the same play Antonio rusks his life for Sebastian telling hin "I do adore ther so."

Antonio and Sebastian in The Tempest can be seen as lovers

Sebastian in Twelfth Night is trade taking advantage of Antonio.

Sir Andrew Aguecheek is also rather fey.

What do you think Shylock meant by a "pound of flesh"? A big juicy dick...

Girl, I thought I was pursuing a dude named Julio.

Definitely Mercutio.

Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Or at least he was when I played him.

Lady MacBeth was a dyke.

Meh, it wasn't necessary since males played all the female roles.

A year or two ago, the Shakespeare Theatre in DC put on a production of Measure For Measure and their version made it clear that The Duke was gay. As written, he does come off as basically asexual, or at least not interested in women. He spends most of the play walking around disguised as a monk and watching everyone else without revealing himself, so it worked to translate that as him being closeted and pining after hot men from the shadows.

Troilus and Cressida repeats the ancient characterization of Patroclus and Achilles as homosexual lovers (which may not be the original legend's intent, but Plato and others thought so):

Puck.

Constantly creating drama.

Thank you, R14! I was just getting ready to post that. Definitely. Poor Ophelia! It drove her nuts. "To be, or not to be..."

The Duke in "Measure for Measure" is loosely based on James I, who was gay.

R18, I was watching Outlander and they're in Paris where the Stewart prince is trying to raise money to get back to claim the throne of Scotland, and he is very gay acting. He's a Stewart I believe, and the son of James I. I know it's a work of historical fiction, but why portray him that way unless there was some historical basis.

But isn't the Duke obsessed with the woman in Measure for Measure?

or is that another character.?

Hamlet and Horatio.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Iago had a big-time hardon for Othello -- that's why he needed to drive him away from Desdemona and ruin him (very like John Claggart's lust for Billy Budd in Melville's eponymous novel is sublimated into aggression).

King Ferdinand and most of his posse in Love's Labours Lost.

And, of course, Richard II -- 'nuff said.

Honestly, if you look, there are crypto-gay characters in every play.

[quote]Orlando in As You Like It is bi.

Orlando in real life is bi.

It's like Dark Shadows -- who isn't gay?

Horatio basically told Hamlet he'd be dtf if he asked

There was going to be a production of Julius Caesar at the Public, with William Atherton and Richard Dreyfuss as Brutus and Cassius, until the director insisted they play their parts as gay lovers. Disgusted, both actors reputedly quit, the production was canceled, and a musical then in workshop was promoted to a full production.

And that’s how A Chorus Line began.

(I wonder if this experience influenced Dreyfuss to play Richard III as gay in The Goodbye Girl three years later.)

Ostrich in "Hamlet": "Dost thou know this water fly?"

Osric, not Ostrich! (Though the Emu could play Ostrich).

It's impossible not to see Anthony in the Merchant of Venice as gay (and he has to endure the humiliation of seeing a woman who is richer than he is walk off with his boy toy).

Iago has an amazing scene in which he describes sleeping in the same bed as Cassio; he's arguably much more attracted to Cassio than he is to Othello, and wants to destroy Cassio every bit as much as he wants to destroy Othello.

Brutus and Cassius in Julius Caesar have some sort of complex, emotional relationship that can be read as gay.

I don't read the manipulative, predatory Duke in Measure for Measure as gay at all.

Interesting r26. William Atherton is famously an ex-gay. (Though I once saw him looking at male beefcake calendars in a bookstore I worked in.

Richard III was gay in the Goodbye Girl. It was putrid!

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