Tosh’s work provides invaluable insight into gender and sexuality in Elizabethan England. While focusing primarily on Shakespeare’s life and works, Tosh explores topics at a societal level as well, such as breeching, education, and specific groups and events of the time. The detailed analyses of queerness in Shakespeare’s work are great but having them act as a bridge to the time-period itself was an unexpected treat.

This book avoids jargon and fully explains any individuals, events, and texts that readers need to know to understand the concepts discussed. Tosh also crafts interesting vignettes at the beginning of each chapter to contextualize where Shakespeare is at that point in time. This approach made it easy to follow the narrative and fun to learn what would happen next.

Much of the queer representation here is male-focused, so some may want more focus on women and/or trans and gender-non-confirming individuals, but I think Tosh does a good job of explaining why information on them is not more readily available. In his analyses, he also readily explains to lesbian, trans, and genderfluid readings and representations. I thought his approach to queerness was as inclusive as possible.

I think anyone interested in Shakespeare, queer histories, and the intersection of the two would find this book both enjoyable to read and valuable in its information. I hope this book inspires others to pursue the work of tackling queer history and queer biography, as more certainly exists despite centuries of burying.

I loved learning about Shakespeare throughout my life so I was very intrigued to learn about the queer life he led, this book was very informative and easy to read.

thanks to NetGalley for the eARC

⭐️=5 | 😘=5 | 🤬=4 | ⚔️=4 | 18+

summary: what it says in the title (homosocial early modern environments + gay poems + gay Romans inspiring gay poems + analyzing early modern gay poets and their work and their misogyny also and what it says about their culture at large et cetera)

thoughts: iconic. necessary. so informative and delightful and queer and perfectly nerdy?? like this scratched an inexplicable itch in my brain and now I want a queer biography of all my favorite classic authors.