Sexuality of William Shakespeare Sexuality of William Shakespeare The sexuality of William Shakespeare has been the subject of recurring debate. It is known from public records that he married Anne Hathaway and that they had three children; scholars have analysed their relationship through these documents, and particularly through the bequests to her in Shakespeare's will. Some have speculated Shakespeare had affairs with other women, based on contemporaries' written anecdotes of such affairs and sometimes on the "Dark Lady" figure in his sonnets. Some scholars have argued he was bisexual, based on analysis of the sonnets: many, including Sonnet 18 "Shall I compare thee to
William Shakespeare Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites. The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of William Blake, even translated "Macbeth" into German. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular, that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature. In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling, and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now, and his use of language helped shape modern English. Samuel Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his "A Dictionary of the English Language", the first serious work of its type. Expressions such as "with