"Literature has always been concerned with questions of kinship, love, marriage, desire, family relationships. The central and privileged stories have tended to assume that desire will be desire between girl and boy. Obstacles are thrown in the way of desire. In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1597), the heroine and hero cannot marry because their families, the Montagues and the Capulets, are feuding. The obstacles which stand in the way of same-sex...

How does Shakespeare's treatment of human sexuality relate to the sexual conventions and language of his times? Wells draws on historical and anecdotal sources to present an account of sexual behavior in Shakespeare's time, particularly in Stratford-upon-Avon and London. He explores sexuality in the poetry of the period and the ways in which Shakespeare treats sexuality in his plays and relates sexuality to love.