Gay - to be or not to be?

I've long since held the view that there was something a bit iffy about dear old William Shakespeare, something a bit different, that he was a bit light on his feet, a bit more of the dancing side of the group than the fighting end. You know that he was one of the gang, a friend of Dorothy (Gee I've not heard that expression for a long time, not since John Wellington was in the UK!) But anyway, what I'm finally getting round to is the point that I've long held suspicions that the Bard, our very own William Shakespeare was more boy mad than girl mad, that he was in fact another famous Homo!

Yes, there have always been stories, rumours and conjecture that dear old Shaky was a fruit and fudge packing with the best of us. Yes, I've heard the one about how an early manuscript was found long ago and the word Julius was scratched out and replaced my Juliette which could explain everything, yet nothing at the same time. It's true that Shakespeare was mates with well known homo's of the day, but maybe we should read too much in to that, after all he was in the theatre don't ya know, and we all know that profession attracts those of a more creative bent, it does now and it did then.

I am not alone of my questioning of Willies sexuality, oh no, "This Shakespeare is handsome and glamorous, so how does this change the way we think about him . . . and his sexuality? Came from a statement from The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, in Stratford-Upon-Avon, back, in March when they flashed off to the world a newly discovered portrait, that some of the clever so and so's (them that call themselves experts!) think might is our hero of the literary kind.

It appears what some of my friends both straight and gay have said for years, you can sometimes tell just by looking at someones face if they play hide the sausage with boys or girls, is true. Just by taking a gander at someones boat-race, you can tell their sexuality, but that's not just my view, "It appears that Shakespeare's eyebrows are higher here than in others of his portraits," says Nicholas Rule, a researcher at Tufts University's Interpersonal Perception & Communication Lab. "Women have a greater distance between their eyes and brows than men do"— Rule adds that "the corners of his mouth are not turned down, as in some other portraits of him, which gives the hint of a smile." And that could well be a sign of the Bards attraction to the boys!

"Our research suggests that sexual orientation is processed automatically." last year they conducted some top, experimental social psychology on a group of student, where they selected 45 gay guys face photos and 45 straight boy's faces, riped from personal ads. Just to make sure there were no other clues they cut and pasted each photo onto a white background, all 90 guys chosen had no facial jewellery or glazing and were also minus facial hair which could have been a big arsed clue. They, that's the professors, recorded reactions of Tufts students the 90 faces, and guess what? Seventy whopping per cent of the time the students guessed correctly, even if they were given just 33 milliseconds to gawp at each pic. So there you have it friends and enemies, there is such a thing as a gay face, apparently you can tell just by looking at 'em if they are Arthur or Martha, if they dance at the other end of the ballroom or dine at the downstairs garden.

You can read more about this research at the Journal of Experimental Psychology and the style mag Details.