Figuring Sex between Men from Shakespeare to Rochester [Paperback]

Paul Hammond explores the representation of sexual relations between men in English literature of the seventeenth century. He includes detailed readings of Shakespeare's Sonnets, and shows how his plays added homosexual elements to his source stories. He also analyses the satirical representation of homosexual kings such as James I and William III, and the homoerotic poetry of Marvell and Rochester.

A Note on Texts and Abbreviations
1. Figuring Sex between Men
2. Shakespearean Transformations
3. Politics and 'Sodomy'
4. Marvell's Ambiguities
5. Rochester and Restoration Homoeroticism
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

A difficult project accomplished with considerable aplomb.... Deft handling of both the canonical texts and a wealth of unpublished manuscripts; must-have for any serious student of Shakespeare or Renaissance literature. --Virginia Quarterly Review

This useful and learned study charts a trajectory from the homoeroticism and homosexual displays of Jacobean courtly society and its written lyrics of male-male passion to the greater textual 'closeting' of such expression at the close of the century.... This suggestive, provocative, and useful book introduces much new information , especially little-known manuscript texts and clarifying variants for better-known published works... Admirable and worthwhile. --The Scriblerian

[Hammond] examines many texts, both famous works and obscure items (some from manuscript), elucidating in impressive...fashion the rhetorical resources of gay language.... The book's tour de force [is] a reading of the most celebrated poem of heterosexual love in the language, Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress,' as a tissue of 'homosexual pre-texts'.... Hammond's informed and informative volume abounds in new ideas and new readings; students and scholars in Renaissance literature neglect it at their peril. Highly recommended. --Choice