Here's a guest piece I wrote for Bilerico.com that ran last Sunday.
I’m getting some lovely praise for my new novel, HER
MAJESTY’S WILL. I wrote it as a tongue-in-cheek spy story starring Will
Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe, and it seems to be received (mostly) as I would
have hoped – with mirth, laughter, and joy. Yes, a couple reviews declaimed
loudly against the “crude” nature of the relationship between Will and Kit, but
I kinda expected that. I brush it off, knowing history is on my side. Marlowe’s
“infamy” is well established, and there’s plenty of reason to think that, if
not gay, Will Shakespeare’s sexuality spanned a wide vista of possibilities.
But one question has surprised me. It goes like this: “David,
you’re straight. What was it like writing a gay love scene?”
Are you kidding me?
First and foremost, love is love. Writing about the
excitement of a kiss, of a caress, is the same across the board. Thinking about
a first meeting of lips, or even a touch of a hand, is an electric,
heart-hammering human experience. The best part is acknowledging what fools we
are for love, how desperately grateful and fearful we are when it’s dangled
before us.
Secondly, let us all agree that there are more far factors
in human attraction than mere gender. One of them is talent. Talent is sexy. Talent
is a force of attraction. And in a time when words were prized, when publishing
was new, when reading was exciting, when instead of saying “Let’s go see a
play” people said, “Let’s go hear a
play,” there were few talents bigger than Marlowe and Shakespeare. A pair of brilliant
young men, thrown into each other’s company and on the run for their lives –
from the Catholics, the government, the dregs of London, and a bear – the
attraction was as natural as anything I’ve ever written.
In fact, the love scene between two teenagers in my novel
FORTUNE’S FOOL was infinitely harder to craft. In that story, the couple are so
young and stupid, so timorous and full of the weight of their actions, it was a
hurdle to write. Whereas Will and Kit came together quite naturally, kissing
spontaneously after a wild and breathless chase.
No, Will Shakespeare might not have been gay. But he
certainly wasn’t straight. With all the cross-dressing, the veiled pining, the
inside jokes, he showed that human experience trumps gender. He played with
attraction, loss, pining, devotion, and the dark side of desire across the
board. Most of all, he understood that love transcends sex. It’s universal.
Hell, how could he not see it plain as day, when his Juliet
was played by a young man in drag? Yes, Shakespeare wrote the greatest love
lines between a man and a woman, and he wrote them to be spoken by two men. I wonder if anyone asked him if
it was hard writing a love scene between a straight couple? If so, I like to
think he laughed in their faces. Just like I do.
