Straight Acting: The many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare

A fascinating and eye-openingly informative book. The sense of a queer sub-culture subtly embedded in certain aspects of society is riveting and illuminating. It was gratifying to see Barnfield properly and so publically acknowledged but it’s also very pleasing and encouraging to see this acknowledgement in a book such as this.  The style and approach of this book means that someone who was only initially known in the restricted academic world (which was where I first discovered him) can now come out and take his place in the queer pantheon.

The book is not written as a ‘typical’ academic work, as the author acknowledges, most notably with introductory fictional speculations to each chapter, although some are considerably more effective e than others. There is also a lack of in-text footnotes although specific sources are given their sources by means of page references at the end of the book. Also at the end of the book, there is an account of the major sources used for that chapter. I must admit I would have liked a full, formal alphabetical bibliography but this way of dealing with sources manages to be both academically thorough and non-academically friendly. I suspect that I need to learn to be a little less rigid about the ‘best’ or ‘right’ way to reference sources.