The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.1228  Friday, 3 May 2002

[1]     From:   Jonathan Hope <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Thursday, 02 May 2002 17:04:48 +0100
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.1225 Re: Portrait of Southampton

[2]     From:   Martin Steward <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Thursday, 2 May 2002 18:07:44 +0100
        Subj:   Gay Southampton

[3]     From:   David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Saturday, 27 Apr 2002 18:40:58 -0400
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.1144 Re: Portrait of Southampton

[4]     From:   Sam Small <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 3 May 2002 00:58:14 +0100
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.1225 Re: Portrait of Southampton

[5]     From:   Philip Tomposki <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 03 May 2002 08:38:05 -0400
        Subj:   RE: Southampton Portrait


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Jonathan Hope <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Thursday, 02 May 2002 17:04:48 +0100
Subject: 13.1225 Re: Portrait of Southampton
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.1225 Re: Portrait of Southampton

>There's nothing to stop a homosexual man having a wife and children.
>Indeed, this can be a 'cover' for those who do not wish their
>homosexuality to be known. Surprisingly, the freedom from persecution
>enjoyed by homosexuals in many modern countries might reduce the number
>of homosexuals in future generations. That's because there might be an
>hereditary component to homosexuality, and if so those homosexuals in
>the past who fathered children had an opportunity to pass it on. Modern
>homosexuals more free of the need for 'cover' presumably have, on
>average, fewer children than their persecuted predecessors and thus
>project fewer copies of their genes into the future.

Gabriel asks for flaws in his reasoning.  This isn't a flaw in his
reasoning (I don't think), but it is a flaw in the argument.  Fewer and
fewer gay men may feel the need to marry and have children as cover -
but more and more are fathering with dyke couples. So his concerns about
a possible decline in the number of homosexuals are, thankfully,
unfounded.

Jonathan Hope
Strathclyde University, Glasgow

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Martin Steward <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Thursday, 2 May 2002 18:07:44 +0100
Subject:        Gay Southampton

Don't seem to have heard the names Alan Bray or Jonathan Goldberg
invoked in these discussions yet. Many of the categories don't make
sense in the light of their work (the former especially).

m

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           David Evett <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Saturday, 27 Apr 2002 18:40:58 -0400
Subject: 13.1144 Re: Portrait of Southampton
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.1144 Re: Portrait of Southampton

Not having seen the possible Southampton portrait, but having looked at
a great many Tudor and early Stuart portraits, I wonder how those who
see painted lips and cheeks in this picture can confidently distinguish
between painting by the subject and painting by the artist.  Less
competent and successful artists managed their colors less well, perhaps
could not afford to buy the best materials or pay some apprentice to mix
them, perhaps had idiosyncratic ideas about the best way to represent
the human countenance.  And there is also the possibility of
C18-19-even20 overpainting, by some clumsy restorer who just wanted to
give the image some life.  To leap from these complicated issues of
pictorial analysis to suppositions about Henry Wriothesley's
psychological and sexual qualities strikes me as, at best, premature.

Art historically,
David Evett

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sam Small <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 3 May 2002 00:58:14 +0100
Subject: 13.1225 Re: Portrait of Southampton
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.1225 Re: Portrait of Southampton

I guess I'll be one of a large list of Gabbie-knockers, but I sort of
agree with what he says.  However he provides no positive definition of
'homosexuality'.  As far as I am aware there is none.  And in any case
homosexuality can completely disappear from a person's personality
behaviour as in the case of the English painter Stephen Spender.  And
any 'straight' could wake up tomorrow morning with the hots for the same
sex neighbour.  I think that Gabriel misses the point in that many types
of sexual behaviour can be mistakenly called homosexuality.  True that
some public homosexuals 'cover' their sexual proclivity with marriage.
Lesbians have been paid to marry such guys.  Rumour has it that one such
couple is in high office in the UK government.  But would such a
homosexual write such erotic and obsessive poetry such as sonnets 127 to
154?  We would have to have documentary proof that other homosexual
artists had written such erotically heterosexual lines.  Bi-sexuality is
even more difficult to define which may be a rough description of
Shakespeare's sexuality - but in the end nothing can be proved.

SAM SMALL
http://www.passioninpieces.co.uk

[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Philip Tomposki <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 03 May 2002 08:38:05 -0400
Subject:        RE: Southampton Portrait

Gabriel Egan asks:      

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