Delving into the works of famous English poet and playwright William Shakespeare, new research has apparently managed to provide fresh insight into his sexuality, The Telegraph reports.
According to the newspaper, the authors of the new study, Professor Sir Stanley Wells and Dr Paul Edmondson, have chronologically re-arranged Shakespeare's 182 sonnets, both standalone and those from his plays, concluding that "these were not sequences of sonnets, but individual or sometimes interrelated poems written over at least 30 years".
In their research, the scholars have determined that, out of "some of the most powerfully lyrical, resonant and memorable poems ever written about what it feels like to experience romantic love", 27 are addressed to males and 10 to females, while most are "open in their directions of desire".
"The language of sexuality in some of the sonnets, which are definitely addressed to a male subject, leaves us in no doubt that Shakespeare was bisexual", Dr. Edmondson remarked."“It’s become fashionable since the mid-1980s to think of Shakespeare as gay. But he was married and had children. Some of these sonnets are addressed to a female and others to a male. To reclaim the term bisexual seems to be quite an original thing to be doing."
The researchers also believe that previous assumptions about Shakespeare being "captivated by the so-called 'Fair Youth' and led astray by the 'Dark Lady'” are not true, as said characters "never existed in his life and were in fact multiple people".