User:Pick27/Shakespeare's Queer Sonnets/Bibliography

William Shakespeare was believed to have been born in April of 1564 in the town of Stratford, England. He grew up to be one of the most influential writers of all time. Shakespeare wrote almost 40 plays and over 150 sonnets, all of which have been translated into almost every language in the world. They continue to be studied and reinterpreted hundreds of years later. The plays were released for the first time collectively in the infamous “First Folio” which was published in 1623. The sonnets were omitted from this work as they had been published in 1609, a few months after the death of his wife Ann Hathaway, under the title “Shakespeare’s Sonnets.”   There are not a lot of surviving records of Shakespeare’s personal life, so scholars have had to make assumptions based on his writings, more specifically his sonnets. The lack of discussion on religion in his sonnets and the surprising gender and sexual fluidity present a lot of opportunity to interpret.

In 1563, just one year before the birth of Shakespeare, Elizabeth I reinstated the Buggery Act of 1533, which declared all “deviant” sexual behaviours, including sodomy and beastiality, illegal and punishable by death.

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