Sex with Shakespeare: Here's Much to Do with Pain, but More with Love

A provocative, moving, kinky, and often absurdly funny memoir about Shakespeare, love, obsession, and spanking

When it came to understanding love, a teenage Jillian Keenan had nothing to guide heramp;#8212;until a production of The Tempest sent Shakespeareamp;#8217;s language flowing through her blood for the first time. In Sex with Shakespeare, she tells the story of how the Bardamp;#8217;s plays helped her embrace her unusual sexual identity and find a love story of her own.

Four hundred years after Shakespeareamp;#8217;s death, Keenanamp;#8217;s smart and passionate memoir brings new life to his work. With fourteen of his plays as a springboard, she explores the many facets of love and sexualityamp;#8212;from desire and communication to fetish and fantasy. In A Midsummer Nightamp;#8217;s Dream, Keenan unmasks Helena as a sexual masochistamp;#8212;like Jillian herself. In Macbeth, she examines criminalized sexual identities and the dark side of amp;#8220;privacy.amp;#8221; The Taming of the Shrew goes inside the secret world of bondage, domination, and sadomasochism, while King Lear exposes the ill-fated king as a possible sexual predator. Moving through the canon, Keenan makes it abundantly clear that literature is a conversation. In Sex with Shakespeare, words are love.

As Keenan wanders the world in search of connection, from desert dictatorships to urban islands to disputed territories, Shakespeare goes with her amp;#8212;and provokes complex, surprising, and wildly important conversations about sexuality, consent, and the secrets that simmer beneath our surfaces.