LONDON, January 25:  –  A top Shakespearean scholar has defended the integrity of LGBT History Month, in suggesting students consider the Bard’s sexuality when studying the sonnets.

“There are some famous people in history who clearly we would now describe as gay or lesbian. Florence Nightingale had relationships with women,” Paul Patrick, co-chair of Schools Out, said on Radio 4’s Today programme.

“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,” he added.

The chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Professor Stanley Wells, in an interview with icBirmingham, came to the defence of Mr. Patrick.

“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,’ he said.

Many tabloid newspapers have carried prominent homophobic and transphobic attacks on LGBT History Month.  Some focused on a small grant of £16,000 (the grant being specificly for the group’s website) from the DfES, while the Sunday tabloid The People rivalled the Bard himself, with puns like ‘A Mid-bummer Night’s Dream’.

Also on the Today programme, Tory Education spokesperson, Tim Collins, attacked the initiative for including primary schools in our target group.  “I do think we ought to protect the innocence of young people at that age,’ he told the BBC.

‘These uneducated, bigoted attacks just prove the need for better education,” explained Nigel Tart, the Schools Out spokesperson.  “There is evidence of widespread use of homophobic language in primary schools, so we need to start educating to prevent it – just as we treat race issues seriously, from an early age.”

The Anti-bullying Network, based at Edinburgh University, reported that children as young as seven are victims of homophobic bullying.

Schools Out, which is co-ordinating LGBT History Month in schools during February, point out that LGBT people have made massive contributions to world history and culture, but their sexuality has all too often been hidden. There are many who have made great contributions to LGBT history in many subject areas:

          ■  From Sappho to Shakespeare (English)
               ■   From Mae West to Sir Ian McKellen (drama)
               ■   From Tchaikovsky to Freddie Mercury (music)
               ■   From Alexander the Great to Florence Nightingale (history)
               ■   From Newton to Alan Turing (maths)
               ■   From Michelangelo to Andy Warhol (art)

LINKS

Schools Out website
 

25 January  2005