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This is the seventh in a series of articles showcasing the wide variety
of notable gays and lesbians that have made contributions throughout
history. This time, we'll take a look at some homosexual dramatists.
Euripides (480?-406? B.C.) was a gay Greek dramatist.
Agathon (450?-400? B.C.) was a gay Athenian dramatist. He was the first
to eschew mythology as a source and invent his own characters and
subjects.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) was a gay British playwright and poet.
Marlowe was brilliant and well-read; however, his caustic wit, "impish
love of destroying other people's cherished idols," and reckless and
violent nature made him many enemies. In his short six-year career (he
was stabbed to death in a drunken tavern brawl) as a playwright, his
only competition was William Shakespeare (see below), who acknowledged
Marlowe's genius and "incorporated references to Marlowe into over half
his plays, sometimes lifting entire lines." For instance, the line "the
face that launched a thousand ships," describing Helen of Troy, was
originally Marlowe's, although we remember it from Shakespeare's
Troilus and Cressida. Marlowe was called the "morning star" of
Elizabethan poetry; "his surviving works, to one degree or another,
contain homoerotic passages of unsurpassed beauty." One of his more
well-known epigrams was, "All they that love not tobacco and boys are
fools." Marlowe's plays included Tamburlaine the Great, The Jew of
Malta, Edward the Second, and Doctor Faustus.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) may have been gay, as was mentioned
last time in our discussion of poets. Better known for his plays than
his sonnets, it is his sonnets, the content of which is often
explicitly homoerotic, that make the case that the Bard was gay,
according to some. Of course, it is interesting that Shakespeare spent
much of his time in London...while his wife and children remained at
home in Stratford-on-Avon. "When he died he left her his 'second-best
bed;' we don't know where the best bed went." As with the discussions
as to whether Shakespeare really wrote all those plays, the discussions
regarding his possible homosexuality probably will never end. In both
cases, we are unlikely to ever be sure, since the evidence doesn't
change (much), only interpretations of the evidence.
Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere (1622-1673) was a possibly gay French
playwright and actor. When he was in his late forties, "Moliere fell in
love with fifteen-year-old Michael Baron, 'the talented young actor
whom he had taken into his own home...' " Moliere's wife was not amused
and insisted that he chose between Baron and her. Three years later, it
was Baron who was with Moliere at the dramatist's deathbed.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was a gay Irish-born British playwright, poet,
essayist, lecturer, novelist...and social gadfly. He first "became well
known for being well known." His most highly regarded play is The
Importance of Being Earnest, hailed as the first modern comedy in
English; his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray included "thinly
veiled allusions to the protagonist's homosexual lifestyle." Wilde's
hot-and-cold sexual relationship with gay British poet Lord Alfred
Bruce Douglas (see previous installment) led to his downfall; the young
Lord's father, the eighth Marquess of Queensberry (considered mad, even
by his family) publicly harassed Wilde until Wilde filed a libel suit
against him; Wilde lost, and was arrested, convicted (after two
trials), and sentenced to two years hard labor. After his release, he
wandered around Europe for the last three years of his life, pursued by
young men enamored of him (as Wilde was of them).
Sir James M. Barrie (1860-?) was a gay Scottish playwright and
novelist. He created Peter Pan. Barrie's marriage was never consumated
..."but, then, Barrie never consumated any relationship with anyone,
including his strange friendship with the three Davies boys." George
Davies, only five years old when they first met, was the great love of
Barrie's life.
Jacinto Benavente y Martinez (1866-1954) was a gay Spanish dramatist.
He wrote over 170 plays, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1922.
Thorton Wilder (1897-1975) was a gay American playwright and writer.
Wilder is best known for his masterpiece Our Town. On April 16th of
1997, the United State Postal Service issued a 32-cent stamp honoring
Wilder; no mention was made of his gayness, of course.
Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973) was a gay British playwright, composer,
actor, and singer. He was a prolific writer, with over fifty stage
productions to his credit. Coward appeared in three feature films, In
Which We Serve, Paris When It Sizzles, and The Italian Job. He was
knighted in 1970, the same year he received a special Tony Award.
Coward and Graham Payn had a 29-year relationship, which Payn (with
Barry Day) wrote a book about, My Life with Noel Coward. Cole Lesley,
Sir Noel's valet, also wrote a biography, Remembered Laughter?, which
tells all...or almost all, anyway.
Thomas Lanier (Tennessee) Williams (1911-1983) was a gay American
playwright, short story writer, and poet. "With the possible exception
of Eugene O'Neill, Williams was the greatest American dramatist of this
century." He was less successful as a screenwriter--in 1943, MGM turned
down his screenplay Gentleman Caller; two years later, The Glass
Menagerie opened on Broadway. His play Rose Tattoo won a Tony Award in
1951. The best known of his other plays are A Streetcar Named Desire
(1948), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), and The Night of the Iguana, the
first two of which won Pulitzer Prizes. Williams acknowledged his
homosexuality, but was never comfortable with the gay liberation
movement. His secretary and lover for 15 years was Frankie Merlo
(1922-1963). Williams received Kennedy Center Honors in 1979. On
October 13th of 1995, the United State Postal Service issued a stamp
honoring Williams; as with Thorton Wilder (see above), no mention was
made of Williams' gayness. In June of 1997, Variety reported that
actress Vanessa Redgrave, while going through some of Williams' papers,
discovered a "lost" gay play, entitled Not About Nightingales; the
Royal National Theater announced that it will produce the play, which
reportedly deals with the complexities of gay life in prison and pulls
no punches, in the spring of 1998.
William Inge (1913-1973) was a gay American dramatist. He was
"encouraged and inspired" by Tennessee Williams (see above). Inge's
best-known works are Come Back, Little Sheba; Splendor in the Grass
(his screenplay adaptation won an Academy Award in 1962); and Picnic
(which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1953). Inge was a distant relative of
John Wilkes Booth.
Arthur Laurents (1917-) is a gay playwright, screenwriter, novelist,
and Broadway director. Laurents' The Enclave was "one of the first
Broadway plays to deal openly and honestly with homosexuality." In
addition to plays, he has been involved with several Broadway musicals,
including Gypsy (book writer), La Cage aux Folles (director), and West
Side Story (book writer). Oh, he also discovered Barbra Streisand (who,
at 19, played a 50-year-old spinster in the first musical he directed,
I Can Get It for You Wholesale).
George Birisima (1924-) is a gay American actor and dramatist.
Edward Albee (1928-) is a gay American playwright. His best-known play
is the Tony Award-winning Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1963),
referring to the lesbian writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). His plays A
Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1994)
all won Pulitzer Prizes.
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was a lesbian American dramatist.
Joe Orton (1933-1967) was a gay British playwright. Orton was killed by
his lover of 16 years, gay British writer Kenneth Halliwell
(1926-1967), who then committed suicide. Well, Orton did say, "I have
high hopes of dying in my prime."
Larry Kramer (1935-) is a gay American playwright, screenwriter,
novelist, and activist. He was also a "film executive at Columbia and
United Artists" for many years. Kramer's best-known work includes his
play The Normal Heart (and its 1993 sequel, The Destiny of Me) and his
first novel Faggots. "His film adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's Women in
Love won four Oscar nominations" in 1970. Kramer was one of the
founders of both Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT UP, and he remains
active--and very vocal--in the gay movement. He received a Public
Service Achievement Award from Common Cause in 1996.
Mort Crowley (1935-) is a gay American dramatist. He is best-known for
his play The Boys in the Band., later made into a feature movie.
Lanford Wilson (1937-) is a gay American playwright. His works include
Balm in Gilead, Fifth of July (which was made into a television movie
for Showtime and PBS), Hot l Baltimore, Burn This, The Redwood Curtain,
the Pulitzer Prize-winning Talley's Folly, and the Obie Award-winning
Sympathetic Magic.
Robert Patrick (1937-) is a gay American dramatist. He is "New York's
most frequently produced playwright."
Terrance McNally (1939-) is a gay playwright. His best-known works are
the Tony Award-winning Love! Valour! Compassion! (McNally also wrote
the screenplay for the movie) and Kiss of the Spiderwoman.
Doric Wilson (1939-) is a gay American dramatist. His best-known work
is Street Theatre, which chronicles the Stonewall riots. Wilson is "one
of a handful of leading contemporary playwrights who deal frankly with
the gay experience."
Christopher Hampton (1946-) is a gay British dramatist.
Craig Lucas (1951-) is a gay playwright and screenwriter. He is the
author of Prelude to a Kiss and Longtime Companion.
Harvey Fierstein (1954-) is a gay American playwright and actor. His
best-known work is probably Torch Song Trilogy, originally a Broadway
play (it won an Obie while off-Broadway, followed by a Tony on
Broadway) and later a feature film, in which he also starred with Anne
Bancroft, Matthew Broderick, and Brian Kerwin. Fierstein's other acting
work includes Garbo Talks, Mrs. Doubtfire, Bullets Over Broadway, Dr.
Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, and Independence Day, as well as the voice of
Homer Simpson's male secretary (who is gay) on The Simpsons. Fierstein
studied under Ira Gershwin at one time.
Tony Kushner (1956-) is a gay dramatist. His best-known works are
Millennium Approaches (1993 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner) and
Perestroika (1994 Tony Award winner), which form the diptych Angels in
America.
Paul Rudnick (1957-) is a gay playwright and screenwriter. His best-
known work is Jeffrey.
William Finn (?-) is a gay Tony Award-winning Broadway playwright and
composer, best known for Falsettos.
Michael Kearns (?-) is an openly gay (and publicly HIV-positive)
American dramatist, actor, and author. He currently teaches acting in
Los Angeles. His writings include T-Cells & Sympathy (a collection of
34 monologues on AIDS). Although primarily a stage actor, he has
appeared on television and in the porn flick L.A. Tool & Die.
Dwight Okita (?-) is a gay Japanese-American poet and playwright.
Martin Sherman (?-) is a gay playwright. His best-known work is Bent,
"about the lives of a gay male couple in Germany and a concentration
camp."
Michel Tremblay (?-) is a gay Quebecois novelist and dramatist.
Jane Wagner (?-) is a lesbian playwright, life partner of lesbian
entertainer Lily Tomlin (1939-).
Chay Yew (?-) is a gay Singapore-American playwright. He is just
beginning to be noticed in the United States. His 1993 play Porcelain
(about an interracial gay relationship) won the London version of an
Obie for best play. Yew's play A Language of Their Own has four gay
characters, three of whom are Asian-American; it opened in New York in
1995, starring the gay Asian-American actor B.D. Wong (of M. Butterfly
fame). One of Yew's other plays was banned in Singapore for "promoting
homosexuality."
Our Gay and Lesbian Heritage by Bruce Britton - Part 6
Our Gay and Lesbian Heritage by Bruce Britton - Part 8
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