Straight Acting

An engaging, enthusiastic and informative book about one facet, long denied or ignored, of the most teasing and various of all great writers

Spectator

Tremendously entertaining . . . Part playful polemic, part queer social history, Straight Acting is a book that casts The Bard's enduring brilliance in a surprising new light

AnOther Magazine

Snappy . . . a necessary provocation

Evening Standard

At once magisterial and saucy, Straight Acting gets to the heart of Shakespeare's queer literary formation. Will Tosh writes with clarity and cheek, drawing on forgotten contemporaries, reminding us of the cultural status of ancient Greek texts and their sexual mores, and remapping a homoerotic geography of Elizabethan London. His account is deeply researched - but most importantly, it breaks down the barriers between lived experience and desires today, and four centuries ago. This fresh account kickstarts the queer canon of English literature: Shakespeare won't go back in the closet again

Emma Smith, author of THIS IS SHAKESPEARE

A scholarly romp through the rich complexities of Shakespeare's queer life, work and culture. Engrossing, enlightening and hugely entertaining

Sarah Waters, author of FINGERSMITH

Straight Acting is brilliant - so vivid and so sharp, fantastically clever and consistently fascinating. It will change the way people think about Shakespeare, in rich and valuable ways

Katherine Rundell, author of SUPER-INFINITE

Will Tosh's tour through the spaces of Shakespeare's childhood, youth and early years as a dramatist is utterly captivating. Marshalling his deep knowledge of the period and of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, he convinces us of the queerness of these times - and queerness not in the margins but in familiar structures of thought and feeling, in the everyday places where men learned, socialised, slept and were entertained, and in what Shakespeare wrote and had performed. He shows us that queerness wasn't just in a dance with the normal in Shakespeare's Stratford and London, it was in a profound sense part of what was normal. He thus pushes us to question how a sense of queerness weaves through our present and how it should figure in the ways we think about, stage and represent Shakespeare and his astonishing work now

Prof Matt Cook, Jonathan Cooper Chair of the History of Sexuality, University of Oxford

A remarkable work of scholarship. Will Tosh brings Shakespeare's world to life, revealing the queer connections between his life and works in an amusing and accessible manner

Paul Baker, author of CAMP!

As well as a deep analysis of one man's life, Straight Acting is a treasure trove of queerness from the Elizabethan era as a whole. I loved it, and it is required reading for anyone who thinks they know Shakespeare

Sacha Coward, author of QUEER AS FOLKLORE

Seeks to breathe queer life into the dusty tomes of Shakespearean plays, drawing attention to the queer coding in sonnets, plays and the playwright's own life

Attitude