Like most readers of the Review, I purchase most of my wardrobe from yard sales. Despite what my ex-wives say, there’s no shame in that. One man’s soiled sweatpants are another man’s treasure, and it’s not as if you can just walk into a Rodeo Drive boutique and buy a vintage Molly Hatchet “Flirtin’ With Disaster” t-shirt.
And so it was that last Saturday I found myself at such a sale, buying a pair of yellow corduroy pants with only a small tear in the seat, when I noticed a stack of papers and books on a card table. I idly looked them over, deciding that nothing was worth buying (Action Comics #1? Who the hell reads comic books from 1938?) when I spied a weather-beaten piece of parchment. I only had to so much as glimpse at the title to realize that I was holding in my hands the document whose very existence has been the object of much conjecture over the past 400 years, discussed by scholars and even by those who write “web logs”: the original manuscript of William Shakespeare’s lost Sonnet 155, in which Shakespeare addresses the rumors, or rumours, that he was gay. The goodly proprietor obviously had no idea of the worth of this treasue, pricing it at fifty cents.
Trying to act casual, I paid for the pants and the document and walked to my car, giddy with excitement. I haven’t yet found the time to have this document authenticated, but it looks like the real thing to me, and isn’t that what really counts?
I’m proud to be able to share this sonnet with the readers of the Sherman Oaks Review of Books, and thus with the entire world. You’re welcome.
Sonnet 155 (“No Homo”)
It’s been alleged that I, your fav’rite bard,
Am somewhat of a dandy, let us say:
A man who likes companions young and hard,
A skin-flute play’r, a queer, a fop. A gay.
And while it’s true I wear my breeches tight,
And I’ve been known to prance about the stage,
In men I’ve found that I take no delight,
Despite the habits of my younger age.
No, your bard Will is straight, I must confess.
It’s for the ladies that my cap is set:
A young coquette garbed in a mini-dress
(Come on! I coin new words!) I hope to get.
If this be error, I shall take it back—
Forsooth! That girl has got a wond’rous rack!
V. M.
Parma, Ohio
http://tinyurl.com/q5bfg63
Erin Stevenson O’Connor
