With the Royal Shakespeare Company now celebrating its 50th anniversary, its main theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon newly revamped, Adrian Gillan asks: was Shakespeare bi, or even full-on ‘gay’?

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets (quite possibly not intended for their 1609 publication, by a notoriously unscrupulous publisher), the vast majority (126) seemingly addressing the love of ‘the Poet’ for a young man, ‘the Fair Lord’, often assumed to be the same person as the 'Mr W.H.' to whom the sonnets are dedicated: perhaps one of Shakespeare's patrons – most likely either Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton; or William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, both considered handsome in their youth.

The Bard himself being a married man with several children, the sonnets have thus led some to suggest Shakespeare was, at the very least, bisexual, if not actually fully homosexual.

Against this, others counter that Shakespeare was not expressing his own feelings here, but merely those of a character, ‘the Poet’; or, if he was, that many of the frequent tender gushing expressions of love for, and admiration for the beauty of, ‘the Fair Lord’ (most famously, 'Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’) are made on a purely platonic, non-sexual, level, in a manner now alien to us.

Moreover, the only completely explicit references to sexual acts or physical lust occur in ‘the Dark Lady’ sonnets, which unambiguously state that ‘the Poet’ and ‘the Dark Lady’ are lovers.

The debate will rage and the best, surely only, answer we can hope for, at this distance of time, lies in the sonnets themselves. Read and place your bets. Having so done myself, this humble writer thinks it beyond all reasonable doubt that Shakespeare was hopelessly, helplessly besotted by another male - the sonnets being his heartfelt, oft-anguished and well-nigh obsessive love-letters to him.