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
Shakespeare authorship question and Spenser. This poem circulated very widely in manuscript and survives today in more than two dozen contemporary copies; several of these have a fuller, variant title "On Mr. William Shakespeare, he died in April 1616", which unambiguously specifies that the reference is to Shakespeare of Stratford. Shakespeare's are the most studied secular works in history. Contemporary comments and textual studies support the authorship of someone with an education, background, and life span consistent with that of William Shakespeare. There is no record that any contemporary of Shakespeare referred to him as a learned writer or scholar. Ben Jonson and