Editing Boys: the Performance of Genders in Print

Abstract

Or better yet, ‘what did the English stage take boys for, as boys?’ Here are some of the terms used to address and describe Viola when she becomes Cesario in Twelfth Night. Of course, to refer to this figure on stage as Viola is already to get ahead of ourselves, since, as is well known, Viola is not named in the dialogue as ‘Viola’ until 235 lines into Act 5 of the play; in her first scene, she is simply ‘lady,’ and ‘madam.’3 Like Violenta, the ghost-name of which she is apparently the subject in an entrance direction in the folio text, one might say, the name ‘Viola’ is an effect of print — of stage directions and speech prefixes and only eventually dialogue.4 In performance, in her female gender, she has no name until the end of the play. Whatever we may make of this apparent lacuna, the terms of address and description are only more variable after her first appearance. Concealing herself, she becomes ‘an eunuch’ in 1.2, ‘a gentleman’ in 1.5, and self-addresses ‘As I am a man’ and ‘As I am a woman’ in 2.2. The dialogue first refers to this figure as Cesario in 1.4. He speaks of himself as part of the group ‘We men’ in 2.4 — which Orsino corrects or amends by addressing him as ‘boy’ almost immediately thereafter. He speaks as a ‘friend’ to the adult Feste in 3.1; swears by his ‘youth’ and is ‘almost sick’ for a beard in the same scene