How Sexy Was Shakespeare?

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

History Hit

History, Education, Scandal, Sex, Society

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There's a bit of interest around Shakespeare at the minute - can we call this the Paul Mescal effect?

The Bard’s work featured many references to sex and sexuality - some more obvious than others. But what does the work reveal about the sexuality of Shakespeare himself?

Despite being married with three kids to Anne Hathaway in the sleepy suburbs of Stratford-upon-Avon, there’s much to suggest he lived a more extravagant life during his visits to London.

Joining Kate today is author of The Life of the Author: William Shakespeare, Anna Beer, to unpick the hints and clues to the playwright’s sexuality that lay within his work.

This episode was edited by Tomos Delargy. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.

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All music from Epidemic Sounds.

Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello again, my lovely betwixters. It's me. Do you remember earlier this year when we went
0:04.6	completely mad and we did a betwixt live show? Well, it went so well that we are now doing it
0:10.7	again next year. Only we are doing two shows. We have one in Edinburgh on the 23rd of May and one in
0:17.6	London Town on the 25th of May. And tickets are available right now, just in time for
0:23.6	Christmas. Go to Fanefanef-a-N-E.com.uk and search for betwixt and we will see you there.
0:30.4	Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. How are you doing? I hope everything has been
0:36.1	okay and that the chaos is starting to
0:38.8	subside. And in order to get you through the festive period, we are here with another episode
0:45.1	of Betwixt the Sheets. But you know what's coming before I can let you enter the hallowed
0:50.4	vaults of Betwixt the Sheets? Yeah, it's the fair do's warning. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an
0:56.6	adulteryty way covering a range of adults subjects and you should be an adult too.
1:00.4	Right, now we can crack on.
1:04.2	Oh, thou, my lovely boy who in thy power doth hold time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour, who hast by waning, groaned,
1:16.2	and therein showest, thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self growest.
1:23.7	You can throw many accusations at us hereon betwixt, but you can't say that we're not fucking
1:28.6	eyebrow after that. That was an excerpt from Shakespeare's sonnet 128, and is the case with many
1:36.5	of his love sonnets. It was written by a man to another man. You may well raise your eyebrows betwixters, but what can this tell us about the man
1:47.8	who wrote it? And his sexuality, his sexual leanings, can it tell us anything at all? Was he
1:54.1	happily married with three kids living a hundredrum life in Stratford-upon-Avon? Or was he living
2:00.5	life on the wild side in London?
2:02.6	Today, we are slipping between the Shakespearean sheets to find out about the sex life of the Bard himself, William Shakespeare.
2:11.6	And we're going to try and answer all of those questions and more. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheeds, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister.
	...

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