Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20

This, probably the best known of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, is central to discussions of homosexuality in Shakespeare.  It is possibly addressed to a cross-dressed young man, or at least a young man with androgynous beauty.

'A woman's face, with Nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false woman's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hew all Hews in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes, and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prickt thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.'   

Proposed identifications of the young ‘master-mistress’ include Willie Hughes and Henry Wriothesley, to both of whom we will return.

• “Sonnet 20”.  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_20

Who was Wanda Tinasky?

Wanda Tinasky was the pseudonym used by the writer of a series of letters sent to the Mendocino Commentary and the Anderson Valley Advertiser, both in northern California, between 1983 and 1988. Wanda is self-described as a bag lady living under a bridge. Her opinions on many topics were witty, irreverent and sometimes harsh.

Bruce Anderson, the editor of the AVA, was later struck, while reading Vineland, with the stylistic and biographical similarities to Thomas Pynchon (1937 - ), and published a book to that effect. The same thesis was taken up by Fred Gardner and TR Factor (alias Diane Kearney and C.O. Jones), who also published a book on the thesis.

The alternate opinion has been put forward by Don Foster, Shakespeare scholar and literary detective, that Wanda is in fact an obscure beat poet, Tom Hawkins (1927 – 1988) who killed his wife and committed suicide at the time of the last Tinasky letter. More matches of biographical details turned up, and his poetry is recycled in the letters.

*Not Diane Kearney, the HBS advocate.

• Bruce Anderson (ed). The Letters of Wanda Tinasky to the AVA, The: The Complete Casebook San Francisco: Anderson Valley Advertiser 1995.
• TR Factor (ed). The Letters of Wanda Tinasky. Portland, Or: Vers Libre Press 1996.
• Don Foster. “Wanda, the Fort Bragg Bag Lady”. Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous. New York: Henry Holt 2000.
• “Wanda Tinasky”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_Tinasky.

Madame Sesostris

The character, Mr Scogan appeared in Aldous Huxley's first novel, Chrome Yellow, a 'roman à clef' published in 1921. Mr Scogan appeared at the village fair as Madame Sesostris, 'the Sorceress of Ecbatana'. In this role he read palms and tried to set up selected female clients for seduction.

It is generally agreed among critics that Mr Scogan is based on the philosopher and womanizer, Bertrand Russell.

The very same year, T.S. Eliot, in his much to be discussed poem The Waste Land, used the character (with a slight spelling change, and perhaps influenced by the fact that Russell had had an affair with his wife Vivienne) to give a tarot reading anticipating the rest of the poem:

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor ...

P.Lal, the Indian poet, renders homage in 1960:

All that they knew.  In Sly hieroglyph
Floating on time’s gauze, Psammetichus
Carved more than carvers of the carious cliff …
Ask the wild sea.  It is all on the rock.
But Cheops sleeps: he has not heard of birth.
And Sesostris: he has not heard of death.

In episode 2.8 of the television series, Witchblade, Roger Daltrey of the Who, plays a priest who has a second persona as Madame Sesostris.

'Sesostris' is the name of three twelfth dynasty Egyptian pharaohs, and another pharoah whom Herodotus tells of as invading Europe. Ecbatana is in Iran. To conflate the two is an example of orientalism, the Western custom of projecting fantasies upon the East, a custom that often features cross-dressing.  This is the kind of thing that Marjorie Garber discusses in Vested Interests, 1992, although she did not use this particular example.

• Aldous Huxley.  Crome Yellow.  A Triad Grafton Book.  1977 (original 1921):  chp XXVII.
• T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land in The Complete Poems and Plays, 1901-1950.  Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.  1971: line 43-59.
• Grover Smith.  The Waste Land.  George Allen & Unwin. 1983: 67-8.
• Calvin Bedient.  He Do the Police in Different Voices: The Waste Land and Its protagonist.  The University of Chicago Press. 1986: 52,55.