Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern England

Abstract

A celebrated article in Shakespeare Quarterly opens with the question, "how many people cross-dressed in Renaissance England?" Jean Howard, who posed this intriguing question, suggests that disruption of the semiotics of dress, gender, and identity during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods points to "a sex-gender system under pressure" and a patriarchal culture disturbed by profound anxieties and contradictions. Even if the answer to her question turns out to be "very few," the discourse surrounding the practice reveals an area of critical and problematic unease. Female transvestism on the streets of London, male transvestism on the stage, and vituperative attacks on cross-dressing by Protestant reformers are among the symptoms that indicate that "the subversive or transgressive potential of this practice could be and was recuperated in a number of ways." Dressing boy actors for female roles, for example, was not simply "an unremarkable convention within Renaissance dramatic practice," as some scholars have suggested, but rather a scandalous "source of homoerotic attraction" arousing "deep-seated fears" of an "unstable and monstrous" and feminized self.

Teaching Jessica: race, religion, and gender inThe Merchant of Venice

“…In particular, commercial contact brought home the threat of miscegenation and infiltration which would harm English economic interests at home (Hall, 2006;see Bovilsky, 2008). Religious, racial, and national difference was becoming further destabilized by Moors, Negroes, Romany, and others who were claiming charity on England's shores, not to mention the tensions in gender and class roles shown by crossdressing (Howard, 1988;Bullough & Bullough, 1993;Cressy, 1996) and passing (Mounsey, 2001), fake or disguised identities (a deception reflected in the wording of the 1597-98 vagrant laws) (Eliav-Feldon, 2012). The clandestine presence in England of Spanish and Portuguese converses is only one example of false identities and "counterfeit professions" in an atmosphere of intrigue, espionage, and suspicion.…”

‘The Man‐Woman Murderer’: Sex Fraud, Sexual Inversion and the Unmentionable ‘Article’ in 1920s Australia

“…David Cressy argues, in reference to early modern England, that cross-dressing in practice was 'neither … subversive abomination nor … eroticised transgression'. 19 The work of queer theorists, such as Judith Butler and Marjorie Garber, has been criticised for its ahistorical nature. Textualising the body, as exemplified in Butler's analysis of drag as parody, argues Susan Bordo, gives free 'reign to meaning at the expense of attention to the body's material locatedness in history, practice, culture'.…”

Hedgerows and Petticoats: Sartorial Subversion and Anti-enclosure Protest in Seventeenth-century England

“…Gender confusion and controversy in the period 1570-1620 stemmed in part from the 'reigns of a manly queen and a queenish king'. 7 The 'sex-and-gender role[s]' for both Elizabeth and James were 'under intense scrutiny'. 8 These social and political pressures may have influenced the emergence of male cross-dressing as a form of protest in the early seventeenth century.…”