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Desexing Shakespeare

By Bradley Winterton
CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Sunday, Jan 27, 2002, Page 18

Sexual Shakespeare By Michael Keevak 175 Pages Wayne State University Press Available at Bookman Books

In a week of Tolkien mania, it is well to remember the name of William Shakespeare -- resonant in the ways Tolkien is resonant, but in numerous other ways as well. And in the opinion of many subsequent writers he is probably the most versatile and continuously absorbing literary practitioner (whose creations have survived) the world has ever seen.

For some time now, however, an assault has been mounted in many universities on his status. It's true that historically England saw an attempt by elite national interests to co-opt him for their own purposes, adopting his image to promote imperialistic and nationalistic ends. If this is the connection that it's judged desirable to break, all well and good. But if, as has happened in some places, a parallel attempt is made to deny his extraordinary abilities as a writer and imaginative artist, then this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

This is not to say that Shakespeare is necessarily an appropriate vehicle for education at all levels, or where English is a second language. But for the ablest students to be taught that he was merely one among many dramatists of his era, all of equal ability (as is done in the more extreme camps) is farcical. When the disadvantaged peoples, who these critics see themselves as championing, finally achieve parity, they will no doubt stand up and say "So then, can we now have what the elites used to enjoy? How about Shakespeare, for a start?" "Oh," the radicals will reply, "we threw all that stuff out years ago."

And it's the image of Shakespeare that Michael Keevak is concerned with in this new publication. He is a professor at Taiwan National University and so this book, his first, is of considerable local interest.

The 18th century saw a huge rise in bardolatry, patriotic enthusiasm for the Swan of Avon, with the discovery of his so-called birthplace, favorite tree, supposed strands of his hair, and so on. This industry -- by no means dead -- Keevak tracks with frequently ironic glee. He also devotes an entire chapter to the portraits of the poet, and how they were manipulated.

Keevak's main concern, however, is with the sexuality given to, or withheld from, ideas of Shakespeare. His main thesis is that an erotic dimension has been kept at bay, as earlier generations didn't (as politicians still don't) expect to see sex mixed up with literary grandeur. If he was going to be not of an age but for all time, he could hardly be seen as inhabiting a mere body. Keevak's aim is to put Shakespeare back inside a human body, and readers familiar with the works will know that this is where he has always been. Sexual puns abound, and not only in the frequently erotic and possibly autobiographical sonnets, most of which are addressed to another man.

The publishers categorize the book as, among other things, belonging to "Queer studies," a growing area of interest and specialization in humanities departments. Keevak is at pains to point out that any suggestion of homosexuality (even though the term was unknown, and the concept itself only to develop later) was rigorously kept away from Shakespeare's image once he had been established as national Bard.

The sonnets themselves were tampered with a mere generation after his death, their order changed and some masculine pronouns changed to feminine ones. Once the authentic, or at least original, version was put back in place, masking strategies were undertaken to make out that the poems were simply following literary convention, merely described an idealized form of friendship, and so on.

Keevak's other area of interest is forgery, notably the documents created in the late 18th century by the teenager William Ireland. These included, along with a letter from Queen Elizabeth to the poet, a "lost" play. Interestingly, Keevak's next book will be about another fraud, this time by an 18th century impostor who claimed to be Taiwanese, and published a book in London purporting to describe the island, but who had never set foot east of Germany.

Keevak concludes with a skeptical and funny chapter on the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, plus the many books now available offering Shakespeare without tears, Shakespeare for Dummies, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Shakespeare and the like. Once again any suggestion of sexual ambivalence in the great man is duly whited out, as if nothing had changed since the bardolatrous and de-eroticisizing days of 200 years ago.

Indeed, at times Keevak appears wearied of absurdities both ancient and modern. "These are indeed `idiot's guides' in the truest sense of the word," he laments, "and one may well wonder whether they were meant to appeal to the self-described idiot or whether they just make you into one."

As for the war between the traditional critics, who generally take Shakespeare's exceptional verbal power for granted, and the younger ones who are anxious to use him as a quarry for arguments about inequalities of race, class and gender in the modern world, Keevak is tactfully silent, implicitly reserving his position. Also, because he is surveying attitudes to Shakespeare's reputation over the centuries, the actual works themselves don't figure prominently. Hence he is able to remain non-committal about questions of their intrinsic quality, if indeed he believes such an evaluation has any meaning.

This is a book that addresses itself adroitly to both an academic and a quasi-popular readership. It's good to know that English language literary scholarship in Taiwan's premier university is being carried out with such a combination of meticulousness, discrimination, and elan.
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