Gender in play on the Shakespearean stage: boy heroines and female pages

Abstract

Cross-dressing, sexual identity, 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 historically contextual study to date of Shakespeare's uses of the heroine in male disguise--man-playing-woman-playing-man--in all its theatrical social complexity.Shapiro's study centers on the five plays in which Shakespeare employed the figure of the page: Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Cymbeline. Combining theater social history, Shapiro locates Shakespeare's work in relation to controversies over gender roles cross-dressing in Elizabethan England.The popularity of the page is examined as a playful literary theatrical way of confronting, avoiding, or merely exploiting issues such as the place of women in a patriarchal culture the representation of women on stage. Looking beyond 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 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 the balance of critical perspectives it brings to bear on them. --ChoiceMichael Shapiro is Professor of English, University of Illinois, Urbana.