Item 20: "Had Shakespeare Asked Me..." (1896)

Few artists and writers stood by Oscar Wilde during his 1895 prosecution and imprisonment for “gross indecency,” the legal term for sex with other men. Beerbohm, however, attended the final trial and reported on it to his friend Reginald Turner. Another staunch supporter was the Irish-American author Frank Harris (1855–1931), who enjoyed a successful career in London as editor of The Saturday Review. Harris, who loved to brag about his heterosexual exploits, asserted at an 1896 luncheon that Wilde’s genius made questions of sexuality irrelevant. Claiming to know nothing about homosexuality, he stated nonetheless that if Shakespeare had “asked” to sleep with him, he would “have had to submit.” Beerbohm depicted this deliciously absurd scenario of time-traveling celebrity sex.