Renaissance Drama & homoeroticism

An examination of this kind requires one first to examine the prevailing beliefs, customs and practises that existed in Renaissance society so that one can understand the relationship between homosocial and homoerotic desire as it was actually played out. This understanding of the boundaries that existed in Renaissance culture must be explored before we can apply contemporary texts and productions and ask of them whether they conform, oppose or are ambivalent towards the structures and practises that they comment upon.

We may first examine the terms 'homosocial' and 'homoerotic' themselves and ask the pertinent question of whether our modern day understanding of the terms is the same as the understanding held in the Renaissance period. The OED defines 'homosocial' as being of or relating to social interaction between members of the same sex, typically men and for our purposes we shall consider this term in relation to it's manifestation in friendship to which we will return later. The OED also defines 'homoerotic' as that concerning or arousing sexual desire centred on a person of the same sex or that wh

ich we in the 21st century would call a homosexual desire. Reference to the OED stems from the need to demonstrate the conceptual differences that exist between present day and Renaissance understanding of homosexuality. Foucald states that it was only in the nineteenth century that a 'homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history and a childhood' (Foucalt, 1978, p.43) so it is apparent that prior to this a taste for male/male sexual intercourse did not define one's identity. So demonstrating and experiencing homoerotic impulses did not then qualify one as a homosexual in the way that it might today or as Alan Bray puts it 'to talk of an individual in this period as being or not being "a homosexual" is an anachronism and ruinously misleading' (Bray, 1982, p.16). However the 'temptation to debauchery, from which homosexuality was not clearly distinguished, was accepted as part of the common lot, be it never so abhorred' (Bray, 1982, pp.16,17) and it was in this generalisation of debauchery and it's associated terms where the practise of male/male sex struggle to hold it's own against other concepts of sexual perversions such as heterosexual sodomy, bestiality and prostitution. The nearest terms that can be found that identify with our understanding of homosexuality is that of 'bugger' and 'sodomite' and these terms are more general in that they include those ‘sins’ as described above and these were temptations 'to which all, in principle at least, were subject' (Bray, 1982, p.16). It seems then that lacking a fit description to apply to one with homoerotic desires that there will be a further muddying of the waters when one tries to identify behaviour other than the sexual act as homoerotic. If follows then that if there exists a confusion of what is homoerotic behaviour then any boundaries that it has with homosocial behaviour will not be as clearly defined as one would suppose.

In Marlowe's Edward II we are presented with a relationship that certainly suggests not just homoerotic public behaviour but in the manner of Edward's death we may suppose that this behaviour took it's physical form privately too. Much of the play's language is written innn terms that we can identiy with friendship but there are moments within the play where suggestions of a homerotic relationship are much clearer. Gaveston talks of 'tthe lovely boy in Dian's shape...[who has] in his sportful hands an olive tree/To hide those parts which men delight to see' (Act I.I. 60-64)

Considering the above it becomes apparent that there is a problem in differentiating behaviour asso

Some topics in this essay:
English Gentleman, Alan Bray, , II Scene, III3 Antonio, Sebastian Braithwaite, Edward II, Reference OED, Twelfth Night, Sebastian Antonio, twelfth night, bray 1982, gentlemanly friendship, renaissance culture, homosocial homoerotic, bray 1982 p16, oed defines, sexual desire, 'idle market', edward ii, masten 1997, marlowe's edward ii, masten 1997 p32,