Straight Acting

"Fluent and witty."—Guardian

"An engaging, enthusiastic and informative book about one facet, long denied or ignored, of the most teasing and various of all great writer."—Spectator

"Snappy . . . a necessary provocation."—Evening Standard

"A lively and accomplished biography of Shakespeare."—Literary Review

“An engaging examination of the queer elements in Shakespeare’s time and how they influenced his work.”—The Gay and Lesbian Review

“Very few books aimed at a wider audience have explored same-sex desire in the canon of England’s most famous dramatist. With Straight Acting Will Tosh, otherwise Head of Research at Shakespeare’s Globe, fills that void with sparkling aplomb… [a] bold and fearless book.” —History Today

“As a dramaturg of long standing and head of research at the Globe, [Tosh is] fully steeped in things Shakespeare, cunningly able to scatter bread crumbs along the path to lure the reader deeper into the forest on a merry chase.”—Lavender Magazine

"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

"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."

"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."—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!