The Lesbian Shakespeare

Just for a moment, cleanse your mind of the 400 years of scholarship and propaganda about Shakespeare. Imagine a countess, the Countess of Pembroke, a wealthy poet with easy access to the Elizabethan court. She is the second most educated woman in England after Queen Elizabeth, and her mission in life is to create great literature. But, being a woman in the sixteenth-century, she is not allowed to publish plays or sonnets. So she pays a man named Shakespeare to use his name. Now she can freely write whatever she feels. Imagine her writing this sonnet, and you can imagine Mary Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke, a woman-stirred poet.

Sonnet 128

How oft when thou, dear dearest music playest
Upon that blessed wood whose motions sounds,
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently swayst
The wiry concord that mine ear consounds,
O how I envy those keys that nimble leaps,
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reaped
At the wood boldness by thee blushing stand,
To be so touched the fain would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips
O'er whom your fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blessed than living lips.
Since then those keys so happy are in this,
Give them your fingers, me your lips to kiss.

Visit the Mary Sidney Society website 
Original drawing by Sudie Rakusin