Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction. Queer Shakes / Madhavi Menon  1

All is True (Henry VIII) The Unbearable Sex of Henry VIII / Steven Bruhm  28

All's Well That Ends Well Is Marriage Always Already Heterosexual? / Julie Crawford  39

Antony and Cleopatra Aught an Eunuch Has / Ellis Hanson  48

As You Like It Fortune's Turn / Valerie Rohy  55

Cardenio "Absonant Desire": The Question of Cardenio / Philip Lorenz  62

The Comedy of Errors In Praise of Error / Lynne Huffer  72

Coriolanus "Tell Me Not Wherein I Seem Unnatural": Queer Meditations on Coriolanus in the Time of War / Jason Edwards  80

Cymbeline desire vomit emptiness: Cymbeline's Marriage Time / Amanda Berry  89

Hamlet Hamlet's Wounded Name / Lee Edelman  97

Henry IV, Part 1 When Harry Met Harry / Matt Bell  106

Henry IV, Part 2 The Deep Structure of Sexuality: War and Masochism in Henry IV, Part 2 / Daniel Juan Gil  114

King Henry V Scrambling Harry and Sampling Hal / Drew Daniel  121

Henry VI, Part 1 "Wounded Alpha Bad Boy Soldier" / Mario Digangi  130

Henry VI, Part 2 The Gayest Play Ever / Stephen Guy-Bray  139

Henry VI, Part 3 Stay / Cary Howie  146

Julius Caeser Thus, Always: Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln / Bethany Schneider  152

King John Queer Futility: Or, The Life and Death of King John / Kathryn Schwarz  163

King Lear Lear's Queer Cosmos / Laurie Shannon  171

A Lover's Complaint Learning How to Love (Again) / Ashley T. Shelden  179

Love's Labour's Lost The L Words / Madhavi Menon  187

Love's Labour's Won Doctorin' the Bard: A Contemporary Appropriation of Love's Labour's Won / Hector Kollias  194

Macbeth Milk / Heather Love  201

Measure for Measure Same-Saint Desire / Paul Morrison  209

The Merchant of Venice The Rites of Queer Marriage in The Merchant of Venice / Arthur L. Little Jr.  216

The Merry Wives of Windsor What Do Women Want? / Jonathan Goldberg  225

A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare's Ass Play / Richard Rambuss  234

Much Ado About Nothing Closing Ranks, Keeping Company: Marriage Plots and the Will to be Single in Much Ado About Nothing / Ann Pellegrini  245

Othello Othello's Penis: Or, Islam in the Closet / Daniel Boyarin  254

Pericles "Curious Pleasures": Pericles beyond the Civility of Union / Patrick O'Malley  263

The Phoenix and the Turtle Number There in Love Was Slain / Karl Steel  271

The Rape of Lucree Desire My Pilot Is / Peter Coviello  278

Richard II Pretty Richard / Judith Brown  286

Richard III Fuck the Disabled: The Prequel / Robert McRuer  294

Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet Love Death / Carla Freccero  302

Sir Thomas More More or Less Queer / Jeffrey Masten  309

The Sonnets Momma's Boy / Aranye Fradenburg  319

Speech Therapy / Barbara Johnson  328

More Life: Shakespeare's Sonnet Machines / Julian Yates  333

The Taming of the Shrew Latin Lovers in The Taming of the Shrew / Bruce Smith  343

The Tempest Forgetting The Tempest / Kevin Ohi  351

Timon of Athens Skepticism, Sovereignty, Sodomy / James Kuzner  361

Titus Andronicus A Child's Garden of Atrocities / Michael Moon  369

Troilus and Cressida The Leather Men and the Lovely Boy: Reading Positions in Troilus and Cressida / Alan Sinfeild  376

Twelfth Night Is There an Audience for My Play? / Sharon Holland  385

The Two Gentlemen of Verona Pageboy, or The Two Gentlemen of Verona: The Movie / Amy Villajero  394

The Two Noble Kinsmen Philadelphia, or War / Jody Greene  404

Venus and Adonis421 Venus and Adonis Freeze / Andrew Nicholls  414

The Winter's Tale Lost, or "Exit, Pursued by a Bear": Causing Queer Children on Shakespeare's TV / Kathryn Bond Stockton  421

References  429

Further Reading  449

Contributors  467

Index  477

Madhavi Menon

Steven Bruhm

Julie Crawford

Ellis Hanson

Valerie Rohy

Philip Lorenz

Lynne Huffer

Jason Edwards

Amanda Berry

Lee Edelman

Matt Bell

Daniel Juan Gil

Drew Daniel

Mario DeGangi

Stephen Guy-Bray

Cary Howie

Bethany Schneider

Kathryn Schwarz

Laurie Shannon

Ashley T. Shelden

Hector Kollias

Heather K. Love

Paul Morrison

Arthur L. Little

Jonathan Goldberg

Richard Rambuss

Ann Pellegrini

Daniel Boyarin

Patrick M. O'Malley

Karl Steel

Peter Coviello

Judith Brown

Robert McRuer

Carla Freccero

Jeffrey Masten

Aranye Fradenburg

Barbara Johnson

Julian Yates

Bruce Smith

Kevin Ohi

James Kuzner

Michael Moon

Alan Sinfield

Sharon Patricia Holland

Amy Villarejo

Jody Greene

Andrew Nicholls

Kathryn Bond Stockton

“There’s something for every queer scholar and Bard-lover in the anthology; from bears in Henry VIII to eunuchs in Antony and Cleopatra, from the death drive in Hamlet to precariously heterosexual marriages in All’s Well that Ends Well, the contributing authors chart Shakespeare’s varied engagements with queerness, putting pressure on assumptions that Shakespeare has nothing to offer to contemporary queer theory. . . . The assorted essays assert that Shakespeare has as much to offer queer theory as queer theory can contribute to understanding and deconstructing the Bard’s texts. This book belongs on every bookish queer’s shelf, right where the leather-bound Complete Works of William Shakespeare butts up against Butler and Foucault.”—Kestryl Cael Lowrey, Lambda Book Report

“If you're looking for clues to Romeo and Mercutio's secret romance in the new academic volume Shakesqueer : A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by Madhavi Menon (Duke), you're barking up the wrong yew tree. American University professor Menon and her queer-theorist contributors find queerness in Shakespeare in that term's most all-encompassing meaning of oddball, unusual, or non-normative. But when you come to think of it, fairy queen Titania falling in love with an ass named Bottom is pretty queer, in all senses of the word.”—Roberto Friedman, Bay Area Reporter

“Few works of literary criticism deserve the descriptor ‘monumental,’ but this one does. . . . The book is both readable and witty. It is also important, for it drives the final nail into the coffin of 20th-century Shakespearean studies. . . . No hierarchies survive this book. Every play and poem receives a fresh new reading. . . . Essential. All readers.”—M. J. Emery, Choice

“This fascinating collection of essays explores the queer elements within all of Shakespeare’s works. With contributions from scholars of both queer studies and Shakespeare, the volume represents a joining of the two fields rarely attempted before.”
—Charles Green, Gay and Lesbian Review/Worldwide

“It is rare to see a volume that does so much, and does it with such consistent wit, thoughtfulness, and creativity. . . . In putting together this volume, Menon has done scholars from all fields and periods an immense service. Shakesqueer gives us a very queer new reading ‘’companion’’ — friend, helpmeet, comrade-in-arms — that makes us exquisitely aware of the need for the perverse and disruptive critical practice its essays so pleasurably model.”—Melissa E. Sanchez, Renaissance Quarterly

“When studying endless Shakespeare plays on English Literature courses, we always had a hunch there were some exceptionally queer goings on beyond some same sex sonnets and this collection of essays proves us right. Earl on earl analysis sits beside complex queer theories on the bard.”—Gay Times

“Take forty-eight smart and interesting thinkers working in the field of queer theory – some of them Shakespeareans and early modernists, some not – that is one for each of the forty-five works by Shakespeare, plus three for the Sonnets. Get them to write – more or less reluctantly – their observations on the individual work of William Shakespeare allocated to them. . . . Then, in a deliciously hip anachronistic move, apply the notion of queerness to Shakespeare’s opus in order to uphold the idea of its continuing relevance. By rearranging the pixels on the icon of Shakespeare, turn him into an altogether different, modern, fresh, re-thought kind of icon; yet an icon nevertheless. Or, as the Bard himself puts it: one must be cruel only to be kind.”—Danijela Kambasković-Sawers, Parergon

“[T]he only collection that engages the entirety of Shakespeare’s body of work with queer theory. It is a much-needed addition to both queer and Shakespearean scholarship, broadening and enriching both fields of study and loosening their constraints.”—Helen Deborah Lewis, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism

“In the end, this book is a big, glorious mess, full of playful juxtapositions and frightening possibilities. It is thrilling. Theatre scholars, queer theorists, actors, directors, and dramaturges will all find something useful and interesting.”—Michael Cramer, Sixteenth Century Journal

“[A] valuable resource for theatre historians, scholars, artists, and edagogues. This assortment of forty-eight short essays puts queer theorists in conversation with all the extant (and a few lost) Shakespearean works. Exhaustive in scope, theoretically expansive, and critically provocative, this ambitious project explores ‘what is odd, eccentric, and unexpected in the canonical Shakespeare’ (24).”—Chad Allen Thomas, Alabama Review

“Taken together, these essays offer fresh avenues of research on desire and sexuality for Shakespeare criticism to wrestle with and address.... Shakesqueer deserves to be read by queer theorists of all stripes.”—Graham Hammill, BRYN MAWR REVIEW OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

“There’s something for every queer scholar and Bard-lover in the anthology; from bears in Henry VIII to eunuchs in Antony and Cleopatra, from the death drive in Hamlet to precariously heterosexual marriages in All’s Well that Ends Well, the contributing authors chart Shakespeare’s varied engagements with queerness, putting pressure on assumptions that Shakespeare has nothing to offer to contemporary queer theory. . . . The assorted essays assert that Shakespeare has as much to offer queer theory as queer theory can contribute to understanding and deconstructing the Bard’s texts. This book belongs on every bookish queer’s shelf, right where the leather-bound Complete Works of William Shakespeare butts up against Butler and Foucault.”—Kestryl Cael Lowrey, Lambda Book Report

“If you're looking for clues to Romeo and Mercutio's secret romance in the new academic volume Shakesqueer : A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by Madhavi Menon (Duke), you're barking up the wrong yew tree. American University professor Menon and her queer-theorist contributors find queerness in Shakespeare in that term's most all-encompassing meaning of oddball, unusual, or non-normative. But when you come to think of it, fairy queen Titania falling in love with an ass named Bottom is pretty queer, in all senses of the word.”—Roberto Friedman, Bay Area Reporter

“Few works of literary criticism deserve the descriptor ‘monumental,’ but this one does. . . . The book is both readable and witty. It is also important, for it drives the final nail into the coffin of 20th-century Shakespearean studies. . . . No hierarchies survive this book. Every play and poem receives a fresh new reading. . . . Essential. All readers.”—M. J. Emery, Choice

“This fascinating collection of essays explores the queer elements within all of Shakespeare’s works. With contributions from scholars of both queer studies and Shakespeare, the volume represents a joining of the two fields rarely attempted before.”
—Charles Green, Gay and Lesbian Review/Worldwide

“It is rare to see a volume that does so much, and does it with such consistent wit, thoughtfulness, and creativity. . . . In putting together this volume, Menon has done scholars from all fields and periods an immense service. Shakesqueer gives us a very queer new reading ‘’companion’’ — friend, helpmeet, comrade-in-arms — that makes us exquisitely aware of the need for the perverse and disruptive critical practice its essays so pleasurably model.”—Melissa E. Sanchez, Renaissance Quarterly

“When studying endless Shakespeare plays on English Literature courses, we always had a hunch there were some exceptionally queer goings on beyond some same sex sonnets and this collection of essays proves us right. Earl on earl analysis sits beside complex queer theories on the bard.”—Gay Times

“Take forty-eight smart and interesting thinkers working in the field of queer theory – some of them Shakespeareans and early modernists, some not – that is one for each of the forty-five works by Shakespeare, plus three for the Sonnets. Get them to write – more or less reluctantly – their observations on the individual work of William Shakespeare allocated to them. . . . Then, in a deliciously hip anachronistic move, apply the notion of queerness to Shakespeare’s opus in order to uphold the idea of its continuing relevance. By rearranging the pixels on the icon of Shakespeare, turn him into an altogether different, modern, fresh, re-thought kind of icon; yet an icon nevertheless. Or, as the Bard himself puts it: one must be cruel only to be kind.”—Danijela Kambasković-Sawers, Parergon

“[T]he only collection that engages the entirety of Shakespeare’s body of work with queer theory. It is a much-needed addition to both queer and Shakespearean scholarship, broadening and enriching both fields of study and loosening their constraints.”—Helen Deborah Lewis, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism

“In the end, this book is a big, glorious mess, full of playful juxtapositions and frightening possibilities. It is thrilling. Theatre scholars, queer theorists, actors, directors, and dramaturges will all find something useful and interesting.”—Michael Cramer, Sixteenth Century Journal

“[A] valuable resource for theatre historians, scholars, artists, and edagogues. This assortment of forty-eight short essays puts queer theorists in conversation with all the extant (and a few lost) Shakespearean works. Exhaustive in scope, theoretically expansive, and critically provocative, this ambitious project explores ‘what is odd, eccentric, and unexpected in the canonical Shakespeare’ (24).”—Chad Allen Thomas, Alabama Review

“Taken together, these essays offer fresh avenues of research on desire and sexuality for Shakespeare criticism to wrestle with and address.... Shakesqueer deserves to be read by queer theorists of all stripes.”—Graham Hammill, BRYN MAWR REVIEW OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

“What happens when queer theory gets into bed with Shakespeare? A play in forty-eight acts, this spirited group production never ceases to entertain and surprise with its queer cast of characters: virgins, eunuchs, and lechers; queens, kings, and pageboys; tyrants, assassins, and killjoys; lions, tigers, and bears—oh my! Full of toil and trouble, wit and wisdom, Shakesqueer succeeds where few other edited collections do: it puts the play back in playwright, and the fun back in theory.”—Diana Fuss, Princeton University

“The adventurous essays in Shakesqueer demonstrate that queer theory does indeed need Shakespeare, if only to defy rumors of its own demise: the essays show what is vital about a queer studies that might have been thought by this point too domesticated or reified or ‘fixed’ to be intellectually vibrant.”—Carolyn Dinshaw, author of Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern

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