Shakespearan Homoeroticism Expressed by Nana , at 7:59 PM, in

So my English Higher Level class is reading Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ and I’m having a blast! From hearing Prospero profess his undying love to Miranda for ‘preserving him’, to seeing Miranda go weak in the knees from inner-thigh tremors when she meets Ferdinand for the first time and ‘e’er sighs’ for him, ‘The Tempest’ is laden with sexual undertones in the words of all the characters (ok…more like half). Funnily, quite a while ago I read some theory about how Shakespeare’s work contains a lot of sexual references (can’t remember what exactly). But when a classmate mentioned that Prospero’s dialogue with Miranda was took sexually-connotative and that he was definitely quenching his lustful thirst in an incestuous manner, it set of a chain reaction of finding naughtiness in all Shakespeare’s characters. My favourite by far, though, has to be from Ariel to Prospero, probably because I didn’t expect homosexual yearnings (or quenchings of yearnings?) to be expressed so openly in Shakespeare’s time:

“Ariel:

All hail, great master! Grave sir, hail! I come

To answer thy best pleasure – be’t to fly,

To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride

On the curled clouds. To thy strong bidding task

Ariel and all his quality.”

hmm…What say you?