This section is no longer in use, please click on the links below to view news and sport from:
Was Shakespeare gay, children
Jan 22 2005
A campaign aimed at encouraging children to question whether William Shakespeare was homosexual has been defended by the head of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
The campaign, launched by the Schools Out! lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender group, aims to teach children in schools about historical figures and their sexuality.
Other famous figures on the Schools Out! website - backed by a Department for Education and Skills grant - include Florence Nightingale, King James I, Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci.
Schools Out! chairman Paul Patrick, said: "There are some famous people in history who clearly we would now describe as gay or lesbian. Florence Nightingale had relationships with women.
"As for William Shakespeare, the sonnets - his most personal writing - actually talk about a relationship with another man. Whether that is Shakespeare writing about himself or whether it is a conceit for the poetry is the question."
Professor Stanley Wells, chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and editor of the Oxford Complete Works of William Shakespeare, said: "What Mr Patrick says about the sonnets is absolutely true and I don't think any Shakespeare scholar would disagree. If school teachers were teaching the sonnets then they would be obliged to raise the question of Shakespeare's sexuality."
Shadow education secretary, Tim Collins, said it was "achingly politically correct" but junior Education Minister Ivan Lewis defended it as part of a Government anti-bullying strategy.
