but it seems absolutely impossible to regard them as the inventions of a 

mere gallows-bird such as this informer was.[86] Moreover, Marlowe's 

poetic work, while it shows him by no means insensitive to the beauty of 

women, also reveals a special and peculiar sensitiveness to masculine 

beauty. Marlowe clearly had a reckless delight in all things unlawful, and 

it seems probable that he possessed the bisexual temperament. Shakespeare 

has also been discussed from this point of view. All that can be said, 

however, is that he addressed a long series of sonnets to a youthful male 

friend. These sonnets are written in lover's language of a very tender and 

noble order. They do not appear to imply any relationship that the writer 

regarded as shameful or that would be so regarded by the world. Moreover, 

they seem to represent but a single episode in the life of a very 

sensitive, many-sided nature.[87] There is no other evidence in 

Shakespeare's work of homosexual instinct such as we may trace throughout 

Marlowe's, while there is abundant evidence of a constant preoccupation 

with women. 

While Shakespeare thus narrowly escapes inclusion in the list of 

distinguished inverts, there is much better ground for the inclusion of 

his great contemporary, Francis Bacon. Aubrey in his laboriously compiled 

_Short Lives_, in which he shows a friendly and admiring attitude toward 

Bacon, definitely states that he was a pederast. Aubrey was only a careful 

gleaner of frequently authentic gossip, but a similar statement is made by 

Sir Simonds D'Ewes in his _Autobiography_. D'Ewes, whose family belonged 

to the same part of Suffolk as Bacon's sprang from, was not friendly to 

Bacon, but that fact will not suffice to account for his statement. He was 

an upright and honorable man of scholarly habits, and, moreover, a trained 

lawyer, who had many opportunities of obtaining first-hand information, 

for he had lived in the Chancery office from childhood. He is very precise 

as to Bacon's homosexual practices with his own servants, both before and 

after his fall, and even gives the name of a "very effeminate-faced youth" 

who was his "catamite and bedfellow"; he states, further, that there had 

been some question of bringing Bacon to trial for sodomy. These 

allegations may be supported by a letter of Bacon's own mother (printed in 

Spedding's _Life of Bacon_), reproving him on account of what she had 

heard concerning his behavior with the young Welshmen in his service whom 

he made his bedfellows. It is notable that Bacon seems to have been 

specially attracted to Welshmen (one might even find evidence of this in 

the life of the Welshman, Henry VII), a people of vivacious temperament 

unlike his own; this is illustrated by his long and intimate friendship 

with the mercurial Sir Toby Mathew, his "alter ego," a man of dissipated 

habits in early life, though we are not told that he was homosexual. Bacon 

had many friendships with men, but there is no evidence that he was ever 

in love or cherished any affectionate intimacy with a woman. Women play no 

part at all in his life. His marriage, which was childless, took place at 

the mature age of 46; it was effected in a business-like manner, and 

though he always treated his wife with formal consideration it is probable 

that he neglected her, and certain that he failed to secure her devotion; 

it is clear that toward the end of Bacon's life she formed a relationship 

with her gentleman usher, whom subsequently she married. Bacon's writings, 

it may be added, equally with his letters, show no evidence of love or 

attraction to women; in his _Essays_ he is brief and judicial on the 

subject of Marriage, copious and eloquent on the subject of Friendship, 

while the essay on Beauty deals exclusively with masculine beauty. 

During the first half of the eighteenth century we have clear evidence 

that homosexuality flourished in London with the features which it 

presents today in all large cities everywhere. There was a generally known 

name, "Mollies," applied to homosexual persons, evidently having reference 

to their frequently feminine characteristics; there were houses of private 

resort for them ("Molly houses"), there were special public places of