SOURCE: “William Shakespeare,” in A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition, Yale University Press, 1998, pp. 93-107.
In the essay below, Woods discusses homoerotic and homosexual interpretations of several Shakespearean plays, particularly Troilus and Cressida. He also offers a synopsis of the critical debate about whether Shakespeare's sonnets to the young man delineate homosexual desires, and contends that the sonnets are profoundly concerned with the distinction between male friendship and male sexual love.
