The Representation of Gender and the Construction of the Female Self in Shakespeare´S Crossdressing Comedies

The Representation of Gender and the Construction of the Female Self in Shakespeare´s Crossdressing Comedies Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie vorgelegt von Christina Elisabeth Weichselbaumer 1311151 am Institut für: Anglistik Betreuer: Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. phil. Martin Löschnigg Graz, Dezember 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I want to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis advisor Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. phil. Martin Löschnigg, who has been supportive in so many ways since the moment I started writing the first page. He had a sympathetic ear for all my questions or concerns and his office door was always open for me to drop in and start discussing some aspects of my writing. – Thank you for your patience! I would also like to thank the team of the Globe Library and Archive in London for granting me access to archive material and assisting me in my research. The costume bibles in particular proved to be very helpful. I also would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Clare McManus who has initially fuelled my interest in gender studies and the conception of early modern femininity. In addition, I would like to thank my former teachers Mag. Werner Pleschberger and Mag. Liselotte Keller for having stirred my enthusiasm and love for reading and literature. Besides, I am deeply grateful for George Kiernan´s contribution of proof-reading my thesis so thoroughly and quickly. Many other friends have read the manuscript, given me feedback and supported my work in important ways. I am indebted to all of you. Thank you! Last but not least, special thanks go to my family, who have always loved and supported me – not only in the process of writing my thesis but throughout my years of study. This accomplishment would not have been possible without you! STATEMENT OF AUTHENTICATION I hereby declare that I have written this thesis independently, without assistance from external parties and without use of other resources than those indicated. The ideas taken directly or indirectly from external sources are duly acknowledged in the text. __________________________________ Graz, December 2017 TABLE OF CONTENT 1 Following the Feminine in Shakespeare´s Plays ............................................................ 1 1.1 The Place of Women in the World of Shakespeare – Early Modern Femininity ........... 3 1.2 Shakespeare´s Theatre and Modern Reception ............................................................... 4 2 The Genre of the Comedy and Shakespeare´s Theatrical Woman ................................... 5 2.1 “Are You a Comedian?” – Metatheatricality and Discrepancy of Awareness ............... 7 2.2 “All the World´s a Stage” – Theatrical Crossdressing and Historical Realities ............. 8 2.3 Crossdressing and the Boy Actress Phenomenon ......................................................... 10 3 Women in the Renaissance Theatre Audience ............................................................. 12 4 Clothes Make the Woman – The Performance of Gender and the Role of Costume in Early Modern Plays ................................................................................................... 13 5 Alternative Shakespeare – Costume and Clothing in Modern Productions .................... 15 6 “Do You Know I Am a Woman?” – Shakespeare´s Comic Heroines ........................... 16 6.1 Portia and the Structure of Exchange in The Merchant of Venice ................................ 17 6.2 Jessica and her Father´s Blood – The Dramatization of Gender in Cross-Cultural Encounters .................................................................................................................... 21 6.3 Viola – A Complex Love Triangle and the Nature of Stage Illusion in Twelfth Night 22 6.4 Threating the Gender System: Olivia and the Pattern of the Unruly Woman .............. 25 6.5 As You Like It, Rosalind – Duplications and Staged Intimacy .................................... 26 7 Women and Marriage ................................................................................................ 29 8 The Hermaphrodite ................................................................................................... 32 9 Femininity Shaped through Experiences of Masculinity .............................................. 33 10 Fatherless Women on Stage ....................................................................................... 34 11 “My Daughter! O my Ducats! O my Daughter!” – Connections between Women and Property .................................................................................................................... 36 12 Locus Amoneus or the Golden World in Shakespeare´s Comedy ................................. 38 13 “If Music Be the Food of Love – Play On”: Love – Its Facets and Implications for the Construction of the Female Self ................................................................................. 39 13.1 Glimpsing at Lesbian Poetics and Homoerotic Desire ............................................... 41 13.2 Sexuality and Eroticism on the Early Modern Stage .................................................. 44 13.3 The Sexualized Female Body ..................................................................................... 47 14 Shakespeare – An Early Modern “Feminist”? ............................................................. 48 15 The Social Effectiveness of Stage Illusion .................................................................. 50 16 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 50 17 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 53 18 List of Abbrevations .................................................................................................. 59 1 FOLLOWING THE FEMININE IN SHAKESPEARE´S PLAYS Strong-willed, assertive, intelligent, humane sometimes independent, often the centre of attention – women play dominate roles in Shakespeare´s worlds. When on stage, female characters interact with each other; they illustrate women falling in love, women struggling to survive or – in disguise – women engaged in a wooing game with each other. Most notably, women are presented as “single, solitary figures in a man´s world” (Dash 1997: 17), facing challenges of patriarchy and male hegemony. Through these multifaceted portraits of female characters as mothers, daughters, sisters, lovers and wives, Shakespeare´s plays raise questions about women´s lives in early modern times. His female characters transcend traditional labels and gender stereotypes in undercutting an established social order (cf. ibid.: 250). Contrary notions of gender identity create and finally resolve conflicts between mutuality and patriarchy – a “conflict between emotion and control” (Novy 1984: 4). The comedies in particular display, deplore and enforce traditional concepts of gender and the inherent power relations between the sexes. The early modern theatre was an important site of gender fluidity, theatrical transvestism and cultural transformation (cf. Casey 1997: 122). Rackin (2006: 114) claims that out of 39 surviving plays that have been attributed to Shakespeare, one fifth involves recurring elements of mistaken identities, substitution and cross-dressing. In five Shakespearian plays, female heroines assume masculine clothing. In three of them, namely the Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night and As You Like It, paradigms of female sexuality and changing gender definitions contribute to the complication and resolution of the comic plot (cf. ibid.). The three crossdressing plays mentioned above will constitute the focus of my analysis. Although the voices of Shakespeare´s women have often been marginalized in research, the feminine is central to the significance of Shakespeare´s work. In this thesis, I will explore the roles of cross-dressed heroines and their construction of the female self as shaped by experiences of masculinity. Feminine wit and intelligence in the comedy often seems to provide juxtaposition to the strict male dominated world of patriarchy. In order to kindle the discussion about the position of women in the Elizabethan and Jacobean era, historical realities of early modern femininity will be considered as a framework for further analysis. The next chapters will be then be concerned with the genre of the comedy and 1 women´s assigned roles in the world of the play. In this context, theatrical conventions such as the boy actress phenomenon and its implications for the performance will be considered. How might the text, whose primary function was perceived as a script for performance, have been projected on stage? What did the early modern audience see when watching one of Shakespeare´s heroines on stage? – Those are some questions at the centre of my research. Furthermore, cross-dressing will be explored both as a dramatized theatrical device on the Elizabethan stage and as social practice. As crossdressing plays a decisive role in blurring the traditional limitations of gender it is also seems closely linked to aspects of costume and questions of performance. By means of costume, the female subject is made to choose a gender identity – either being feminine, masculine or both at the same time. Shakespeare´s female heroines offer different models and possibilities of what it means to be a woman (or at least to masquerade as one). On a meta-level it can be argued that

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