A. L. Rowse

From Philosopedia

Rowse, A(lfred) L(eslie) (4 December 1903 - 3 October 1997)

Rowse was a poet, biographer, and Tudor historian who wrote some ninety books. In his several works about Shakespeare (1963, 1973, and 1977), he argued that Emilia Bassano Lanier, daughter of an Italian court musician, was the “dark lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets. He also argued that Shakespeare was “a strongly sexed heterosexual” and a man “more than a little interested in women—for an Englishman,” denying that any of the sonnets were written for a male lover. Rowse himself was homosexual. His 1942 memoir, A Cornish Childhood, was a best seller and made him a bona fide scholar celebrity.

Rowse is not known to have been a theist nor an active member of any organized religion. His not having been accorded any honors by the Crown until he was ninety, at which time he was made a Companion of Honor, has been ascribed to Isaiah Berlin, who was the Crown’s chief but unofficial adviser on academic honors and who had negative views about him.

{OEL, Paul Johnson, The New York Times, 12 November 1997}