Patterns of Cross-dressing in Shakespeare’s Comedies: An analysis of the heroines in the three plays: The Merchant of Venice, As you like It, and Twelfth Night I. Introduction: Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s comedies that used Cross-dressing as a strategy to achieve its goals. The play is reminiscent of a Hollywood movie starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Bynes entitled ‘She’s the man’. In this contemporary movie, cross-dressing was also used. The actress often changed from soccer clothes to dresses. The movie was actually adapted from the play ‘Twelfth Night’ by Shakespeare.
I was actually overwhelmed on the different styles of cross-dressing and how it helped enhance the meaning of the play and the characters’ identities. This essay would be discussing the patterns of cross-dressing in three comedies of Shakespeare and its relation to gender and identity. II. Analysis If we are to judge the position of women in the English Renaissance society by the examples Shakespeare offers us in some comedies, we may believe that women were emancipated and admired for their wit, self-confidence and self-reliance.
However, some historians and sixteenth century documents suggest that although there were streams of thought more friendly towards women in the Renaissance and although there were exceptions from the rule, the ideal to which a woman was to aspire was an obedient, modest, chaste, silent and passive creature, never forgetting her subordination to men, especially her father and husband. Yet, in Shakespeare’s comedies, we find different heroines and the audience applauded them, even though they were nearly everything a woman should not be; dynamic, active both physically and verbally, assertive and independent.
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The characters of Renaissance plays were not intended to offer a realistic picture of the society. A comedy was not a documentary but served as entertainment. Yet, even comedies could not go completely against the values ruling the society; it would threaten the generally accepted order and this would disturb the audience as well as the authorities. If there was a serious deviation from the accepted norms, it had to be neutralized or punished. The playwrights were primarily businessmen and wanted to please their audience, not to annoy it.
However, the Renaissance was a period of transformation; the authority of the old system was undercut, a new system was not fully established yet, the society was trying to cope with an amalgam of contradictory ideas. Attitudes towards women were also in transition: the traditional hierarchical model in which women lived in submission to a male authority was being challenged by the idea of partnership. It enabled playwrights to choose heroines who were, according to some books and sermons, totally unacceptable.
Unlike the heroines of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the comedy heroines do not bring about destruction by their activity, they act as forces of renewal and harmony. Their motivation for active behavior differs, some are active for the fun of it, some have no other choice but to defend their life or their rights in the hostile world, some assert their right to be treated like partners or to choose their future husband themselves. The motives are combined within one character.
The strategies of active behavior are basically four: verbal activity (being a shrew), clever manipulation (may be disguised as sweetness and obedience), open defiance (including elopements) and disguise (especially cross-dressing).
More than one of these strategies can be employed by one character. In As You Like It, for example, the cross-dressing scheme is very complex, as we encounter a boy actor who plays a girl, who pretends to be a boy, who performs in the role of a woman. Moreover, there is a direct reference to the real sex of the actor playing Rosalind towards the end of the epilogue.
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Rosalind steps out of her role, the male actor has just finished playing a part of a woman and addresses the audience in his own voice announcing what he would do if he were a woman. Nevertheless, it takes place just in the end, the epilogue is a transition between the fictional world and the real one, to which the spectators are about to return. The extra-theatrical reality may be fully realized by the audience before and after the play; during the play, the spectators are supposed to cooperate as much as possible with the playwright and the performers by using their imagination, believing the story and feeling with the characters.
In Shakespeare’s comedies, there are several female characters that used cross-dressing as a strategy to achieve their goals. Besides safety and greater freedom of movement, the masculine attire also offers greater freedom of expression. As Dreher (1986) points out, what may sound aggressive from a proper woman like Katherine or Beatrice seems perfectly natural from someone dressed as a man. Cross-dressing appears in one of Shakespeare’s first comedies, The Two Gentlemen of Verona as well as in one of his last plays, Cymbeline.
However, the focus of this essay rests on the plays chronologically placed between these two: The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. The strategy is evident – the heroines are using cross-dressing. But the question is: Is their motivation and performance similar as well? Rosalind obviously enjoys her freedom and uses it for her own purposes: she escapes from the court, tests her lover’s feelings and arranges the final marriage scene. But why did she come to the forest? She was forced to do it; her uncle gave her only two possibilities—to leave the court immediately, or to die.
In fact, for a moment Rosalind is so overcome by the news and shocked by her uncle’s sudden hostility that it is her cousin Celia, who has to start planning their escape. Rosalind is only able to join in after a while and plan some practical details, including the idea to dress herself as a boy for greater safety. Once dressed as a boy she starts taking advantage of the physical and verbal freedom the role gives her. When a girl falls in love with her as Ganymede, she is not as unhappy as Viola but seems to enjoy the joke and easily manipulates the girl into a marriage with someone else.
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Only when her goals are achieved and when she decides that the game is over, she becomes Rosalind again. Although she does not manage to solve all the problems of the play (she is not responsible for Oliver’s repentance and her uncle’s conversion is caused by her actions only indirectly as he meets the holy man when he strives to find her and Celia) she contributes to the healing and playful atmosphere of the forest of Ardenne. She does not actually need Hymen in the end to help her; he is there at her service, rather a best man at the wedding than a deus ex machina, to bless the marriages she arranged.
Yet, her relation to the male public sphere is realized primarily through her father and his status, otherwise she remains more or less in the private sphere, the one traditionally thought more suitable for women; she is concerned with love and relationships and does not go far beyond this border. The Merchant of Venice quantitatively displays more instances of cross-dressing than As You Like It or Twelfth Night. Besides Portia, there is her accomplice Nerissa and, for a moment, Jessica. However, Jessica’s cross-dressing is only formal, she uses it to efy her father and safely elope with Lorenzo. Everyone knows she is a woman, she does not have to assume male identity as well as clothes. Nerissa’s disguise, then, is just imitative she only follows and supports Portia. From the three it is only Portia who can be matched with Rosalind and Viola. Her cross-dressing is briefer than theirs, but she perhaps gets further. After her dutiful but rather reluctant compliance with the wishes of her dead father, she is in charge till the end of the play.
Her submission to Bassanio is beautifully worded, but seems to be purely formal, because she conducts the bethrotal and decides when the marriage is to take place, she sends Bassanio to Venice, she remains the mistress of the house. As for the cross-dressing, she plans the strategy and performs her part without hesitation or doubt. Back in her female clothes she carries out the rest of her plan. She leaves the domestic sphere assigned to women and not only enters the public scene, but stands in its center and triumphs. It is her choice to go to Venice; the circumstances do not press her to do it.
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What is quite obvious is her self-assurance and her fully justified belief that she can solve the problem better than any man in Venice. Viola is the least active of all heroines. It is a fact that she is very optimistic and resourceful, but to a great extent she is steered by the circumstances. Her motive for cross-dressing is survival or at least safety because she is left alone in a foreign country. Moreover, she must support herself (she thought her brother was dead) and the only possible household where she could find employment is closed for her.
She therefore assumes the role of a pageboy to be able to take care of herself in a potentially dangerous belonging to the unmarried duke while avoiding the dangers the world has in store for a young unprotected woman. She is successful, and yet unhappy in her role. She uses her wit in the service of her master and reluctantly woos Olivia for him. She does not move far from the domestic sphere; she just moves between the two Illyrian households uneasily as she moves between her masculine (Cesario) and feminine (Viola) identity. The double identity is more a burden than a key to freedom.
Moreover, unlike Portia and Rosalind, she has no female friend to share her uneasiness with, only herself and the audience. Portia may be a mistress of a great household, she can undertake a daring journey and solve a difficult legal case, teaching all men and her husband in particular a lesson, but in some respects she remains feminine. She obeys her dead father’s wish and lets the casket trial select a husband for her, although she feels frustrated by her inability to choose for herself. She gives, at least formally, herself, her fortune and the rule over Belmont to Bassanio.
Then she plans to play a masculine part in a bold and entertaining way, but we never see her do it, she settles down in a calmer mode and instead of a boastful boy we encounter a serious young lawyer. Later she needs a male authority behind her to introduce her as Balthasar at the court in Venice. It was also not quite sure whether Antonio’s defense is purely her own work or whether her male cousin Bellario devised the strategy. When Portia solves the case, she leaves the punishment to the male authority again. In the end, she returns to her feminine attire but she remains the mistress of the house and of the situation.
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However, the last replica of the play is given not to her but to Graziano, although he only confirms and develops what she has just said. From all the cross-dressed Shakespeare’s heroines Rosalind enjoys the man’s part best. She remains in the center at the end of the play, she is given the epilogue (an uncommon practice in the Elizabethan drama to have a woman speaking the epilogue) and in its first lines draws attention to her femininity. Like Portia, she may stay in charge till the end partly because her femininity is stressed visually by her return to a feminine dress.
Throughout the play she is active and resourceful, but in the moments of crisis she proves her feminine sensitivity; it takes her some time to recover her wits and join Celia in planning their flight. She faints when she sees blood on Orlando’s scarf. The name Ganymede refers back to someone who is perhaps not feminine, but definitely less than masculine. To test and at the same time enjoy Orlando’s love, Rosalind-Ganymede decides to play a woman’s part, but Ganymede’s Rosalind points back more to Ganymede’s masculinity and masculine prejudices about women than to Rosalind’s femininity.
Talking to Orlando, she moves between the parts of Ganymede, Ganymede pretending to be Rosalind and the real Rosalind. Left alone with Celia, all masculinity and self-assurance are gone and we see and hear just a young girl in love. When she decides that she had enough fun playing a boy, that the danger is no longer urgent and that it is time to get married, she resumes her female garments and after a brief reunion with her father she gives herself to Orlando. To make sure everything runs smoothly, she elies on a male and divine authority to bless the marriages. Viola seems to be the most feminine of all three. She cross-dresses purely for safety and does not enjoy the part at all as she sees herself as a deformity. In her scruples and her femininity apparent even in the male disguise, she is different from Portia and Rosalind. She needs a male authority of the sea captain to be able to start her role. Moreover, her first plan is not to pretend to be a man but a eunuch, someone less masculine than a man. She obediently woos another woman for her beloved.
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She is alone with her secret; there is no female character with whom she could be Viola and not Cesario. Unlike Rosalind, she does not find entertaining the fact that Olivia has fallen in love with her; she is troubled because it further complicates her already difficult relationship with Orsino. The absence of Viola’s woman’s garments has also an important function in the play; it postpones the happy ending and the play is concluded in a darker atmosphere of Malvolio’s threat and the melancholy mood of Feste’s final song.
The ending of comedies usually brings the fictitious world back to balance; Shakespeare’s heroines often leave their active days behind and gladly accept the authority of the present men. Today’s audience is often left to wonder whether the husbands the comedy heroines get serve as a reward or as a punishment for their activity. Bassanio, for instance, can easily be read as a fortune-hunter who irresponsibly spends vast amounts of borrowed money and is primarily interested in Portia because she is very rich. Orsino is presented as a self-absorbed egoist who cannot take ‘no’ for an answer.
Orlando seems to lack negative qualities; he is a virtuous youth who can wrestle well, but otherwise he is nothing to write home about and we cannot help feeling that the lively and intelligent Rosalind perhaps deserves something better than that. Nevertheless, all the three heroines get what they wanted and there has not been a better alternative for them. At least, Portia and Rosalind are not silenced towards the end as many other comedy heroines are, to conform to the Renaissance ideal of a silent and obedient wife.
III. Critical reflection On cross-dressing: One of the twists that I find most interesting comes when women, for whatever reason, perpetrate masculinity. The ability of a story to develop intriguing plot twists is by no means found singularly in character cross-dressing. Yet, when characters find themselves in a position where cross-dressing seems to be their only resort, audiences then find themselves waiting anxiously for the moment of disclosure; such a moment seems not only plausible, but inevitable.
One reason for the inevitability of disclosure lays in the expectations of the heterosexual social construct: it is expected that regardless of the reason for cross-dressing, the time will come when the cross-dresser must step into the socially accepted world by donning the proper gender specific attire and accepting the social role assigned to their sex. However, history has revealed many women and men who have challenged genitally assigned social roles without ever accepting heterosexual expectations.
For Shakespeare, to challenge gender roles by having female characters portray males is to say something about Shakespeare’s personality. Considering the obstacles still associated with gender identity, Shakespeare could easily be referred to as progressive. I have to wonder if Shakespeare’s inclusion of passing women was a subtle commentary on the life of actors and the fact that women, who were barred from acting because of their gender, were intelligent enough to cross the gender divide in order to achieve their goals.
If Shakespeare’s inclusion of cross-dressing females took into account the possibility of real-life passing women within his company, then truly Shakespeare was a genius at subtlety, for certainly one could consider such character roles as tailored for passing women. Of course, there is always the possibility that Shakespeare knew that for the success of his plays, female roles would be required. On Gender and identity: First and foremost, our society must understand that gender is taught. It is not something that we are born with.
Gender is not the same as the sex of a person. Sex is the physiological build of a person while gender is the social identification of oneself. These two terms are often used improperly in our society which shows how prevalent gender roles are. Sex is whether someone is a male or female, while gender of a person is how the person should behave based on their sex. Gender, is therefore unnecessary in our society. Whitney Mitchell, a writer for the humanist magazine, commented on gender vs. sex in her article “Deconstructing Gender, Sex, and
Sexuality as Applied to Identity”. In this article she states, “Our society commonly uses the equation gender = sex. This is a naive and oversimplified statement”. The fact that Mitchell uses the word naive is showing that gender roles are mainly established by people subconsciously. Most people do not realize that gender roles are detrimental on our youth. People feel that gender and sex is the same thing. This gender = sex misconception is so deeply rooted in our society that parents tend to establish these roles upon their children as soon as the sex is determined.
However, some may feel that gender roles are needed so that children are socially accepted by their peers. Some parents really just want to spare their children the agony of being taunted by their peers, which is why they stick so strongly to these outdated gender roles. An example of this would be a teacher and mother of two sons, when she spoke of the time when she took her 5-year-old son to get a new bike. Since his favorite color was pink he wanted a pink bike. Since she doesn’t believe in enforcing gender roles on her children, she took him to get a pink bike.
She stated, “But the salesman said he couldn’t have a pink bike, pink was a girl color and he had to have a red or blue bike”. The boy did indeed get his bike, but then had to deal with being tormented by his peers who were calling him gay. A five year old does not know the meaning of the word gay. These children are just victims of pointless gender roles and enforcing what their parents taught them to be right. Girls also have pressure on how they should be, according to their peers.
What these gender roles are teaching our children is superficiality. Beauty is only skin deep and should not be stressed as the most important feature of a woman. What we should be teaching our children is that what other people might say about you does not matter. Children should be taught that it does not matter if their peers do not understand them or accept them. What matters most is that their parent’s acceptance is what is most important. Parents are who influence their children before they even start pre-school.
As long as parents accept their children for who they are, that is all that should really matter. In conclusion, children are what shape our future. This is why we should let them explore their options, all of them, and let them make this world their own. We should let them be creative so that they can make innovations in the future, and do not make them feel like outcasts so that they may all get along. If parents stop enforcing these roles on their children they will be looking towards a brighter future.