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Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939

"Sexual Inversion"


[84] See account of Udall in the _National Dictionary of Biography_.
[85] _Complete Poems of Richard Barnfield_, edited with an introduction by
A.B. Grosart, 1876. The poems of Barnfield were also edited by Arber, in
the English Scholar's Library, 1883. Arber, who always felt much horror
for the abnormal, argues that Barnfield's occupation with homosexual
topics was merely due to a search for novelty, that it was "for the most
part but an amusement and had little serious or personal in it." Those
readers of Barnfield, however, who are acquainted with homosexual
literature will scarcely fail to recognize a personal preoccupation in his
poems. This is also the opinion of Moll in his _Beruehmte Homosexuelle_.
[86] See appendix to my edition of Marlowe in the _Mermaid Series_, first
edition. For a study of Marlowe's "Gaveston," regarded as "the
hermaphrodite in soul," see J.A. Nicklin, _Free Review_, December, 1895.
[87] As Raffalovich acutely points out, the twentieth sonnet, with its
reference to the "one thing to my purpose nothing," is alone enough to
show that Shakespeare was not a genuine invert, as then he would have
found the virility of the loved object beautiful.


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