Sexiest Shakespeare Yet

I have to admit that while studying Shakespeare throughout high school and college, I never conjured a particularly attractive image of the man himself. Brilliant? Certainly. Enviable genius wordsmith? Indeed. Handsome? Not so much. Not even the rumors that some of his sonnets were allegedly written for male lovers was enough for me to give The Bard a second thought as a man.

Then, in 1998 I saw the film Shakespeare in Love. Actor Joseph Fiennes made me rethink my image of Will. He was young and handsome and, well, hot. (And his character was friends with another actor Ned Alleyn, played by ViewAskew alum Ben Affleck. Two hotties for the price of one movie.)

Alas, handsome as he is, Fiennes doesn't really trip my trigger, so Shakespeare was relegated to the back of my mind once again.

Until yesterday. Yesterday I got a DVD in the mail from a friend of mine in the U.K. with the first two episodes of the third "new" series of Doctor Who. The second episode was entitled "The Shakespeare Code" and featured an actor who will now be burned into my memory as the permanent image of The Hot Bard: Dean Lennox Kelly.

Kelly's Shakespeare is a fully bearded, hairy chested, bear of a man. His rock star swagger as The Bard is engaging and um... arousing. Of course, once I finished watching the episode (I love the new Who series, by the way -- RTD is a genius!) I hit the 'net to learn as much about him as I could. I leave you to do that for yourself, dear reader.

But do yourself a favor: when Sci-Fi starts showing the new Doctor Who episodes, make sure you catch "The Shakespeare Code." The story, full of witches and historical references and fun, is reward enough. But Dean Kelly is the reward within the reward.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate,"
-Sonnet 18