The (In)significance: “What the age might call sodomy” and Homosexuality in Certain Studies of Shakespeare’s Plays

Abstract

The (In)significance: “What the age might call sodomy” and Homosexuality in Certain Studies of Shakespeare’s Plays Joseph Pequigney S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W Y O R K A T S T O N Y B R O O K AsalientdevelopmentinShakespearestudiesoverthepasttwodecadesorso has been the amount of attention devoted to the same-sex desire represent¬ ed in the plays and sonnets. The topic is one that editorial and other com¬ mentators had failed to recognize or had suppressed for nearly two cen¬ turies, and its emergence was one of the many fortunate results of the gay liberation movement. That movement certainly had apronounced effect the direction my own scholarship would take. During the later 1970s and early1980sIwasatworkonmystudyoftheSonnets,SuchIsMyLove,andI could not and would not have undertaken such abook, on what Icalled “thegrandmasterpieceofhomoeroticpoetry”(1),verymuchearlier.And even during those years the ascendancy, the strong academic presence, and theesteemsinceachievedbygayandlesbianstudiesandthenqueertheory hardly foreseeable. Practitioners of the discipline(s), usually menibers of English departments, have by now created aconsiderable body of critical and scholarly work focused on Shakespeare’s imagination of sexualities o^ differentkinds.HereIproposetoexamineandevaluatesomeofthatwork. Imustconfessattheoutsettofindingmuchofitmethodologicallyand hermeneuticallyflawed,sothat,insteadofcelebratingitasIshouldpreferto do, Ihave to perform the regrettable task of disclosing its shortcoming^ Toooftenthewritersinquestionexhibitadeficiencyinexegeticalskills,wth close reading generally contemned by them as new-critical formalism. Most oftheminsistonadoptingahistorico-theoreticalapproachtoliterature,the onethatlargelyderivesfromwritingsofthesocialhistorianAlanBrayando MichelFoucaultasahistorianofsexuality.Regardedasauthoritauve,ey provide the conceptual grounds that enable lesbian and gay Shakespeareans toproblematizethenotionsof“sodomy”and“homosexuality,withte firstaccepted,thesecondtabooed.Myprocedurewillbe,first,todiscussthe conceptionofsodomyanditsuseandmisuseintheShakespeareancommen¬ tary;nexttodiscusshomosexualityandhowitisdealtwiththere;and,in concluding,toventuresomerecommendationstowhoevermaytakeon future scholarly projects on the sexualities in Shakespeare. o n w e r e 1 “Sodomy” (in Latin sodomia), or the sin of Sodom {Sodoma in the Vulgate), derives, of course, from the name of the city that, along with Gomorrah, is 1 1 7 Intertexts, Vol. 8, No, 22004 ©Texas Tech University Press 1 1 8 I N T E R T E X T S destroyed by fire and brimstone in Genesis 19. The word sodomia dates from the mid-eleventh century, originating in the theological discourse of St. Peter Damian. He conceived of the vice as restricted to males, and in his Book of Gomorrah listed the four increasingly grave sexual forms it may take: self-pollution, the mutual handling and rubbing of male organs, intercourse “between the thighs,” and penetration “in the rear” (Jordan 29, 46). It would be another two centuries before the foremost medieval theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, provided his lucid and rigorous taxonomy of sexual sins. Those that preclude generation, the proper end of sexual acts, are thereby sins against nature {peccata contra naturam), and they are more grievous than the sins that do not preclude reproduction, such as fornication or adultery, and thus accord with nature {peccata secumdum naturam). He distinguishes four unnatural vices, which are, in an ascending order of culpa¬ bility: 1. masturbation {mollities)\ 2. heterosexual relations where the repro¬ ductive organs are improperly employed; 3. the sodomitical vice {vitium sodomiticum), committed with someone of the same sex; and 4. bestiality, committed with amember of adifferent species. Within this category of vio¬ lationsofnature,sodomysignifiescarnalrelationsbetweenmenorbetween women, though St. Thomas puts greater emphasis on the former, which he refers to as coitus masculorum, anal intercourse between men {Summa 2a2ae.l54,ll),orelseasconcubitusmasculorum^men’ssleepingtogether (Jordan146),whichmaydesignateawiderrangeofsexualpractices. The word “sodomy” entered the English language at the end of the tiiirteenth century. The OED defines it as “an unnatural form of sexual intercourse, esp. tiiat of one man with another,” citing six examples of this usage in English between 1297 and 1650; the definitions of “sodomite” and sodomitical”citefurtherearlyexamples. During the reign of Henry VIII, in 1533-34, Parliament passed “an act forthepunishmentoftheviceofbuggery.”Thisstatutemadesodomya felonypunishablebyhanging,whichreplaced“thetraditionalbiblicalpun¬ ishment of death by fire,” then still in effect on the Continent. Sir Edward Coke,inapassagefromhismid-seventeenthcenturyInstitutes^writesof buggery,whichheelsewheresaysistheEnglishnameforthe“sinof Sodom,”thatitis“amongstChristiansnottobenamed,”asin“againstthe ordin^ceoftheCreatorandtheorderofnature,”andiscommitted“by mankind with mankind, or with brute beast, or by womankind with brute beast”(Smith43-45,50-51). Inthetheological,lexical,andlegaldataassembledabove,sodomyis conceived of as sex between men, though the conception also covers solitary sexforDamian,sexbetweenwomenforAquinas,andsexbetweenhumans and animals for Coke. By now some readers may be thinking, but what is...