Why is Rosaline so unsympathetic in the first version? It is because at this point in his life, Shakespeare was himself not attracted to women (or so he thought). He could be sympathetic to them (see The Taming of the Shrew), or covertly hostile (as he is to the manipulative Portia in The Merchant of Venice). He apparently viewed himself as a homosexual; “sodomite” is the Elizabethan term. His friend and fellow playwright, Christopher Marlowe was a homosexual.^[8] In Sonnets 1 to 126, the beloved is male. In Sonnet 20, there is an anatomical reference that should calm any discussion, when the speaker tells the subject:

LAYOUT & ARTWORK BY Merrilee McCommas
(1996 Production, Love's Labor's Lost)

Sometime between 1590 and 1596, Shakespeare discovered — to his horror — that he was after all attracted to women. In Sonnet 127, Shakespeare begins to write about a woman or women, using “her.” You probably know Sonnet 130, which begins with “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.”^[9] I say “to his horror,” because Shakespeare’s mother was a very tough cookie, like the mothers of Richard III and Coriolanus, like little William’s mother in Merry Wives, who doubts that her son has any intellectual ability. From his experience with Mom, Shakespeare feared the whole sex. When he became aware of his female attraction, he was horrified, and proceeded to attach this horror to his characters.^[10] For example, here is Berowne’s reaction when he finds himself falling for Rosaline in Love’s Labor’s Lost:

And of course, you are familiar with Hamlet’s ambivalent feelings about Ophelia. He tries simultaneously to seize her and to get as far away from her as possible. Ophelia describes it:

When Shakespeare realized he liked women, the character of the brittle, knife-wielding Rosaline no longer satisfied him, and he began thinking about rewriting Love’s Labor’s Lost. There was no hurry. The original play was both a commercial and critical success. Meres had praised it (which I take for critical success), and it was printed in Quarto (ordinary people would pay real money to own it). Shakespeare’s only reason to revise it was that he himself was no longer satisfied with it. But he was very busy. Theaters in general and his plays in particular were hugely popular then. Between 1593 and 1599, scholars guess that he wrote Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King John, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing and Henry V — not necessarily in that order. On top of these plays, he was plotting Hamlet.