Of course you're still free to believe that they were at it, but it's a misreading to claim that the text actually supports this.

fwiw, I didn't make any such claim. However, you could perhaps say the same thing for Claudio/Benedick, which I did describe as canonical. I'll not deny that my interpretation is largely through a 21st century lens, and I'll agree that one can read it as a platonic friendship - but would you say that a romantic reading would be going against the text? Because it doesn't seem to be so to me with Claudio/Benedick - but I dare say you're a better read Shakespearean scholar than I am, and I'm basing this more on what seems (subjectively) reasonable to me personally than on a list of specific citations.

Thanks Angus. At least I am not crazy or missing something!

I dare say you're a better read Shakespearean scholar than I am

Actually I'm a pretty crap Shakespearean scholar! Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that you personally had made any claims for Hamlet/Horatio, and I'm not really familiar enough with Much Ado to comment on Claudio/Benedick.

My post above was perhaps unnecessarily grumpy, and I apologise; I've just been musing about something someone (they know who they are!) said on another forum about having a problem with slash because it sexualises everything, which I don't completely agree with, but...well, I guess I do agree to a certain extent, at least when slash threatens to stop being a specific and very cool strategy for writing stories and to become a kind of overarching, blunt, one-size-fits-all way of approaching all narrative of any genre or period whatsoever. I'm interested in the history of sexuality, it's what I do, but one of the fascinating things about that history for me is the extent to which our ways of talking about non-sexual things have changed as well, how friendship in particular used to be the object of such passionate discourse, and we lose a bit of that historical texture if we seize on every instance of an early modern bloke telling another early modern bloke he "dearly loves" him or whatever and go "Ha! See! Slash!" Does that make any sense?

Angus, am I still allowed to view Edward II as, well, gay? (The play, that is, not the actual historical character, who shows up in my Homosexuals in History right off the bat, the poor dear.)

How could you see EdII as anything else? In any version, real or fictional?

Actually, I'm very much with Angus, although my gender/sexuality studies tools are utterly rusty these days.

Former high school lecturer on the Scots play piping up from the corner to mostly say, staying out the convo. But one thing: I am right in the middle of the opinion scale. I agree with Angus and his take on having to take the expressions between many same-gender characters from Jacobean and/or Elizabethan lit in a purely historical context.

But I think, and have always thought, that Hamlet is full of homoerotica. I always thought Laertes, as presented, was grieving less for his sister and completely unlikeable father than he was for Hamlet's not loving him.

No strong opinion on the comedies, which do little for me. Except Tempest, which isn't really a comedy. And my old nickname was Sycorax, so the Tempest, yes.

(back into corner)

Well, there is reading Olivia of "12th Night" as a lesbian, since she was rejecting all men, except for the one she heard that didn't really seem like a man, and ended up being a woman in drag.

well, I guess I do agree to a certain extent, at least when slash threatens to stop being a specific and very cool strategy for writing stories and to become a kind of overarching, blunt, one-size-fits-all way of approaching all narrative of any genre or period whatsoever.

Yeah, I've had the same reaction at times, where people see most, if not all, close friendships through the rosy slash-lenses and end up excluding a variety of other factors in taking that interpretation. On the flip side, with the 'sexualized everything' bit--well, I don't think that's a specifically slash-related phenomenon, because women and men's relationships are constantly sexualized where canonically there's only friendship and no one bats an eyelid.

The Hamlet/Horatio thing was something I saw mostly in the performances, and it didn't really strike me until the final scene were Horatio was this close to drinking from the poisoned cup so he could follow Hamlet into death. To me, from my 21st century standpoint, it just seemed that maybe there was more than friendship there. Though it must be admitted that in Shakespeare, people tend towards suicide more easily than is perhaps usual.

Sob. Y'all Brits are giving up wigs? And taking the drama out of the robes?

FWIW, I always told my dad that he should turn up in court in a kaftan and beads and carrying a guitar, saying "I'd like to tell this in my own way."

Ple, yes of course Edward II is gay! (Well, he liked fucking men, anyway). And really, go for it everyone, I'm not used to being the one in the position of discouraging people from reading stuff as gay! I've said my bit.