Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female PagesCross-dressing, sexual identity, and the performance of gender are among the most hotly discussed topics in contemporary cultural studies. A vital addition to the growing body of literature, this book is the most in-depth and historically contextual study to date of Shakespeare's uses of the heroine in male disguise--man-playing-woman-playing-man--in all its theatrical and social complexity. Shapiro's study centers on the five plays in which Shakespeare employed the figure of the "female page": The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Cymbeline. Combining theater and social history, Shapiro locates Shakespeare's work in relation to controversies over gender roles and cross-dressing in Elizabethan England. The popularity of the "female page" is examined as a playful literary and theatrical way of confronting, avoiding, or merely exploiting issues such as the place of women in a patriarchal culture and the representation of women on stage. Looking beyond and behind the stage for the cultural anxieties that found their way into Shakespearean drama, Shapiro considers such cases as cross-dressing women in London being punished as prostitutes and the alleged homoerotic practices of the apprentices who played female roles in adult companies. Shapiro also traces other Elizabethan dramatists' varied uses of the cross-dressing motif, especially as they were influenced by Shakespeare's innovations. "Shapiro's engaging study is distinguished by the scope of interrelated topics it draws together and the balance of critical perspectives it brings to bear on them." --Choice Michael Shapiro is Professor of English, University of Illinois, Urbana. |
From inside the book
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Page 3
... theatrical symbol . As Wil- liam Slights has pointed out , although the androgyne could be a poetic or philosophical emblem of " unity , concord , and perpetuity " in Renais- sance literature , on stage ( especially when the female page ...
... theatrical symbol . As Wil- liam Slights has pointed out , although the androgyne could be a poetic or philosophical emblem of " unity , concord , and perpetuity " in Renais- sance literature , on stage ( especially when the female page ...
Page 4
... theatrical and social forms of cross - dressing in the period , nor does it matter to her which direction the cross - dressing takes , as crucial a difference for early modern England as for our own day . Like Garber's book , the work ...
... theatrical and social forms of cross - dressing in the period , nor does it matter to her which direction the cross - dressing takes , as crucial a difference for early modern England as for our own day . Like Garber's book , the work ...
Page 5
... theatrical scripts and other forms of dis- course . What Woodbridge and Belsey share is a sense that the dramatic heroine in male attire could stir up considerable anxiety , raise troubling questions about sexual identity and gender ...
... theatrical scripts and other forms of dis- course . What Woodbridge and Belsey share is a sense that the dramatic heroine in male attire could stir up considerable anxiety , raise troubling questions about sexual identity and gender ...
Page 6
... theatrical , nightmares and fantasies could be witnessed with impunity , and potentially disruptive energies could be safely agitated . 13 At the same time , choices made within fields of play could rehearse or help formulate attitudes ...
... theatrical , nightmares and fantasies could be witnessed with impunity , and potentially disruptive energies could be safely agitated . 13 At the same time , choices made within fields of play could rehearse or help formulate attitudes ...
Page 7
... theatrical vibrancy . I do not believe it is restricted to boy heroines donning male attire , but I maintain that it was encouraged by the combination of cross - gender disguise and cross- gender casting and that it served to contain ...
... theatrical vibrancy . I do not believe it is restricted to boy heroines donning male attire , but I maintain that it was encouraged by the combination of cross - gender disguise and cross- gender casting and that it served to contain ...
Contents
A Brief Social History of Female CrossDressing | 15 |
Male CrossDressing in Playhouses and Plays | 29 |
CrossGender Disguise plus CrossGender Casting | 49 |
Bringing the Page Onstage The Two Gentlemen of Verona | 65 |
Doubling CrossGender Disguise The Merchant of Venice | 93 |
Layers of Disguise As You Like It | 119 |
Anxieties of Intimacy Twelfth Night | 143 |
From Center to Periphery Cymbeline | 173 |
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Common terms and phrases
actresses androgyny Antonio argues audience audience's Bassanio Bellario boy actor boy bride boy heroine Bridewell Cesario cheeky Comedy court cross-dressed cross-dressed heroine cross-gender casting cross-gender disguise Cymbeline disguised heroine donned male dramatic dramatists dressed Elizabethan English Renaissance evoke female character female cross-dressing female impersonators female pages female roles feminine Fletcher Gallathea Ganymed gender identity Gentlemen of Verona heroine in male heroine's Hic Mulier homoerotic homosexual Imogen intimacy Jacobean Jonson Julia King's Lady Lady Mary Wroth layers of gender layers of identity London lover Lylian male actors male apparel male attire male disguise male identity male performer Merchant of Venice Middleton motif Mulier narrative Olivia onstage Orlando Orsino page's Philaster play play-boy play's playhouse playwrights plot Portia prostitutes Proteus reflexive reveals Roaring Girl romance Rosalind Sebastian servant sexual Shakespeare Silvia social spectators stage theater theatrical vibrancy thee tragicomedy transvestism transvestite Twelfth Night Viola wife woman women
Popular passages
Page 268 - Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (New York: Free Press, 1967), p.