Cross-dressing in Twelfth Night, As You Like It, and The Merchant of Venice
Any theatrical performance requires a two-fold exchange. The performers must act in such a way as to engage the audience and draw them into the story of the stage. However, the audience itself must yield to the imagination, allowing at times the irrational to take precedent over rational expectations. This exchange between performers and audience creates the dramatic experience; one cannot exist without the other.
In the context of Shakespeare's works this relationship becomes exceedingly important. Not only was scenery minimal on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, thus forcing audience members to imagine great battles, enchanted forests, and ornate palace courts, but the absence of actresses put an increased burden on the audience's imagination and actors' performance because young, cross-dressed boys performed all female roles. Though the rational logic of the audience recognized the performer as male, the imaginative mind had to assume a feminine gender. Robert Kimbrough has noted: “people going to the theatre check their literal-mindedness at the door and willingly believe anything they are asked to believe; the theatre is where illusion becomes reality” (17). This reality demonstrated on the stage flourishes in the mind of the audience member where both rational comprehension and imagination coexist.
Thus, though it has been argued that the boy actors' cross-dressing allows for a potential “sodomitical” pleasure to the male audience member (Sedinger 69), such a relationship seems highly unlikely given the nature of theater and the imaginative/rational relationship. It is necessary to understand Shakespeare's female cha...
... middle of paper ...
...-33.
Howard, Jean E. “Crossdressing, the Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England.” Shakespeare Quarterly 39.4 (1988): 418-40.
Newman, Karen. “Portia's Ring: Unruly Women and Structure of Exchange in The Merchant of Venice.” Shakespeare Quarterly 38.1 (1987): 19-33.
Orgel, Stephen, and A. R. Braunmiller, eds. The Complete Pelican Shakespeare . New York: Penguin, 2002.
Rackin, Phyllis. “Androgyny, Mimesis, and the Marriage of the Boy Heroine on the English Renaissance Stage.” PMLA 102.1 (1987): 29-41.
Sedinger, Tracey. “‘If sight and shape be true': The Epistemology of Crossdressing on the London Stage.” Shakespeare Quarterly 48.1 (1997): 63-79.
Shakespeare, William. As You Like It . Orgel and Braunmiller 407-37.
---. The Merchant of Venice . Orgel and Braunmiller 293–323.
---. Twelfth Night . Orgel and Braunmiller 446-73.
Overtime individuals endure opposition, be it personal or societal, but the conflict against opposing forces can lead to the strengthening of unifying forces. Such an idea is expressed in Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - a historical fiction following the family of Joads, along with thousands of others, who are forced from their agrarian, single-farmer lifestyle into a trek across the United States in hopes of finding jobs, land, and a better future. Set during the Great Depression, Steinbeck emulates the experiences of farmers during the Dust Bowl, in which millions of acres of crops withered and died in the lack of rain. The Joads find themselves in a fight against losing their land and the elements, consequently, are in a fight for family,
The play Twelfth Night, or What You Will by William Shakespeare is a 1601 comedy that has proven to be the source of experimentation in gender casting in the early twenty-first century due to its portrayal of gender in love and identity. The play centrally revolves around the love triangle between Orsino, Olivia, and Viola. However, Olivia and Orsino both believe Viola is a boy named Cesario. Ironically, only male actors were on the stage in Shakespeare’s time. This means that Olivia, Viola, and other female characters were played by young boys who still had voices at higher pitches than older males.
Pitt, Angela. "Women in Shakespeare's Tragedies." Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint of Shakespeare's Women. N.p.: n.p., 1981.
Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment incorporates the significance of murder into the novel through a multitude of levels. The act of killing is not only used to further the plot point of the novel, but also offers insight to the reader of Raskolnikov’s ideology and psyche. This is portrayed through both his initial logic and reasoning behind the plotting of the crime, as well as through his immediate and long term reactions after killing Alyona Ivanovna. The emotional and physical responses instilled in Raskolnikov after killing Alyona Ivanovna as well as his justification for doing so helps illustrate his utilitarianism by offering accurate insight into the character’s moral values. These reactions also serve to show the instability of Raskolnikov’s character due to his changing emotions from being completely justified as the ubermensch to showing a sense of great regret. By including the act of killing, Dostoevsky further develops Raskolnikov’s character, and provides another level of detail to readers concerning his ideology and beliefs prior to his actions.
Novy, Marianne L. Love’s Argument: Gender Relations in Shakespeare. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
Dash, Irene. Wooing, Wedding, and Power: Women in Shakespeare’s Plays. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
Howard, Jean E. “Crossdressing, the Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England.” Shakespeare Quarterly 39.4 (1988): 418-40. Print.
Though its primary function is usually plot driven--as a source of humor and a means to effect changes in characters through disguise and deception—cross dressing is also a sociological motif involving gendered play. My earlier essay on the use of the motif in Shakespeare's plays pointed out that cross dressing has been discussed as a symptom of "a radical discontinuity in the meaning of the family" (Belsey 178), as cul-tural anxiety over the destabilization of the social hierarchy (Baker, Howard, Garber), as the means for a woman to be assertive without arousing hostility (Claiborne Park), and as homoerotic arousal (Jardine). This variety of interpretations suggests the multivoiced character of the motif, but before approaching the subject of this essay, three clarifica- tions are necessary at the outset.
Kemp, Theresa D. Women in the Age of Shakespeare. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2009. Print.
Shakespeare, William, Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Andrew Gurr. The Norton Shakespeare. Second ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. Print.
Doesn't everyone want someone to love, someone to care for you as much as you care for him or her. Someone who will keep you company in lonely times or who will act as if your brains are tuned into the same wavelength. Share an inseparable bond and grow old with. Love is a very powerful emotion and can be misused because it is thrown around too casually, and be swept up in it very quickly like Viola is with Orsino when she says,” Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit, Do give thee five-fold blazon: not too fast: soft, soft! Unless the master were the man. How now! Even so quickly may one catch the plague?” (1.5.48).
Garner, Shirley Nelson, and Madelon Sprengnether, eds. Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indian U, 1996.
This paper will look at the different conceptions highlighted by Bulman in his article through the use of different methods used by the actors in the play. Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare captures the different conceptions of gender identity and different sexualities within the Elizabethan period.
Cohen, Walter, J.E. Howard, K. Eisaman Maus. The Norton Shakespeare. Vol. 2 Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. New York, London. 2008. ISBN 978-0-393-92991-1
Evans, G. Blakemore. Ed. The Riverside Shakespeare. by William Shakespeare. 1552- 1616. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974.