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Renaissance Drama & homoeroticism


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. .
             Returning to the issue of homosocial behaviour I wish to concentrate on ideas of gentlemanly friendship. Jeffrey Masten, in his book Textual Intercourse, refers to a variety of discourses in demonstrating prevailing ideas of friendship in Renaissance culture. He shows us Richard Braithwaite's The English Gentleman as a guidebook to the qualities displayed by gentlemen and one such quality is that of 'acquaintance' and in defining such Braithwaite says that it should seek to be like 'two Twins [who] cannot be more naturally neare, than these [two such 'acquaintances'] be more affectionately deare' (Masten, 1997, p.32). Braithwaite goes on to suggest that gentlemanly friendship includes a sharing of one soul in two bodies and that 'a friend is nothing else than a second selfe.


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