Abstract
Cross-dressing in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon marks anxieties or conflicted ideas about royal absolutism. Love's Cure, The Loyal Subject, Philaster, and The Maid's Tragedy display anxiety about the intersection of gender and authority. Tragicomic dramaturgy lends itself to the social function of embodying rather than resolving contradictions. And a new kind of "femaleness" in these plays, encoding passive versions of male virtue, implies a redefinition of maleness that conflates passivity with heroism. Mingling the discourses of gender and of sovereignty, Beaumont and Fletcher created immoral or inept monarchs and women whose conduct reassured an androgynous masculinity.
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