This was a packet I researched and compiled for the actors and crew of Project Nongenue’s 2019 production of What You Will (or Twelfth Night). Project Nongenue aims to bring marginalized voices to the center of classical theatre - in the case of What You Will, director Olivia Buntaine wanted to focus on and amplify the inherent queerness of the source material. A lot of the early rehearsals involved discussions of gender identity and sexuality. Buntaine wanted me to highlight cross-dressing throughout history - who was cross-dressing, why were they cross-dressing, and what did it mean about the way they perceived themselves?
I was present at the first read-through, where I was able to observe what words, phrases, and concepts the actors were confused by. I created a glossary to clear up any confusion they were feeling (particularly the actor playing Sir Toby, who was the source of most of the unfamiliar vocabulary terms).
What I enjoyed researching the most was past productions of Twelfth Night that called upon its queerness. The various ways in which cross-gendered casting was employed were as different as night and day, and I like to think that Project Nongenue’s reimagining of the text exists somewhere in what would be the twilight.
1
WHAT YOU WILL (OR TWELFTH NIGHT)
Dramaturgical Research Conducted By Mimi RuthStiver For Project Nongenue
2 TABLE OF CONTENTS:
A History of Twelfth Night, or What You Will 4 Theatre in the Elizabethan Era 5 What is Twelfth Night? 6 Illyria 6 Glossary (AKA “what is Toby talking about?”) 8 Notable Productions 9 Was Shakespeare Queer? 14 Cross-dressing in History: A Timeline 16 Notable Figures in Cross-Dressing History 18 References 23
3 Disclaimer: Every resource I found used very binary language - for example, “all-male productions,” and “all women were banned from the Elizabethan stage”. While I know that gender exists not in black and white but in all shades of grey, I struggled to find a way to convey that in writing while still getting the source materials' points across. Please know that all uses of gendered language do not reflect my actual stance. A History of Twelfth Night, or What You Will
MALVOLIO APPEARS CROSS-GARTERED TO OLIVIA IN MALVOLIO AND THE COUNTESS BY DANIEL MACLISE.
William Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night sometime around 1601, with performances debuting the following year.
Historians have found several possible sources as to what inspired Twelfth Night:
1. Plato’s Symposium, particularly the section wherein fellow philosopher Aristophanes describes the history of soulmates. According to Aristophanes, humans were originally designed conjoined. Each pair could be any combination of genders (both women, both men, a man and a woman, etc). Together, each pair formed a complete person. When Zeus decided to punish humans for their arrogance, he split them down the middle and separated them from their other halves.
4 2. “Apolonius and Silla,” a short story by Barnaby Riche for Riche his farewell to his military profession (1581). Riche told the story of a set of twins and their respective love interests. Upon losing her twin brother, Silla cross-dresses as him and adopts his name, Silvio, when she presents as such. She performs as Silvio to work for and eventually woo the duke, Apolonius.
3. GI’Ingannati (“The Deceit”), written by the Academia deli Intronati, an Italian play about twins, cross-dressing, and mistaken identities.
Shakespeare likely drew most of his inspiration from his own life, as in 1585 he became the father of twins, a boy and a girl named Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet died in 1596, making the story of a sister yearning for her (presumed) dead twin brother even more poignant. Theatre in the Elizabethan Era
Elizabethan theatre originated in “inn- yards” - the courtyards of local inns. Hundreds of people attended plays, making acting an extremely profitable profession.
James Burbage, an English actor and theatre builder, was the first person to come up with the idea to move performances from inn-yards to locations built specifically for theatre. The first venue was simply called “The Theatre” and was modeled after AN INN-YARD. old Greek and Roman open-air amphitheaters. The Theatre was greatly successful, but profits dropped drastically in the wintertime when patrons didn’t want to venture into the snow to see a play; this lead to the invention of the playhouse, indoor theatre venues that were converted from existing buildings.
The laws of contemporary theatre in the Elizabethan era prohibited women from acting in any of Shakespeare’s plays; he wrote Twelfth Night (and all his other plays) knowing that Viola was going to be a woman pretending to be a man played by a man pretending to be a woman.
Shortly after the English Civil War began in 1642, Parliament closed the theaters and banned all public stage plays. King Charles II reopened the theaters and lifted the ban on female actresses when the monarchy was restored in 1660. The trend of cross-gendered casting quickly died out from there.
5 What is Twelfth Night?
Twelfth Night is a British holiday celebrated on January 5th, the 12th night after Christmas. Twelfth Night is when all Christmas decorations should be taken down - any left up should remain displayed until the following year, as taking decorations down any day other than January 5th is said to bring bad luck upon the house.
Historically, Twelfth Night was a day of practical jokes and plays.
Illyria
From roughly 400 B.C. to 167 B.C., the region known now as the Balkan Peninsula was occupied by several tribes, collectively known as Illyrians. (Dramaturg’s note: This is one of several definitions of Illyria/Illyrians - the history is murky and this reading was the clearest one I could find.)
Illyrians spoke an Indo- European language, one that shares a lot of similarities with Albanian and Messapic (a language spoken in Apulia, a region of Southern Italy). It is hypothesized that both of these languages derived from the Illyrian language. A MAP ESTIMATING ILLYRIA’S BOUNDARIES. The kingdom began its expansion under the rule of King Agron around 250 B.C. Agron’s primary focus as a ruler was military advancement - he built up the Illyrian naval forces in the Mediterranean Sea and expanded his rule up the Adriatic coast (the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea). Under his leadership, the Illyrians bested the Aetolians (a community of various tribes and cities in Greece) in battle around 231 B.C. After celebrating his victory with copious amounts of alcohol, Agron became ill with pleurisy (inflammation in the chest and lungs) and passed away.
6 Agron’s wife, Teuta, then took the throne. She followed in her husband’s military-minded footsteps, conquering both Dyrrachium and Phoenice. Along with Illyria’s naval forces, Teuta also commanded pirates. Piracy was legal and even embraced in Illyria, seen as an honorable profession. Teuta’s pirate ships had free reign of the Mediterranean Sea.
The Roman Senate tried to intervene in 230 B.C. after receiving numerous complaints from their merchants. Since Rome used the Eastern Mediterranean Sea for several important trade routes, their work was constantly spoiled by Teuta’s pirates who raided their ships and stole their goods. The Romans sent two ambassadors to Illyria to try to convince Teuta to control her pirates and not have them interfere with the Roman’s trade routes. Teuta refused - after all, since piracy wasn’t illegal in Illyria, it wasn’t fair to change her kingdom’s laws to suit the Romans. On top of her refusal, Teuta was so insulted by the Romans’ request that she held one ambassador captive, had the other one killed, and ordered her pirates to seize their ships.
After learning of their ambassador’s death, the Roman Senate declared war on Illyria, sending a fleet of about 200 ships and 20,000 soldiers. When the soldiers arrived at Corcyra, Teuta’s governor Demetrius immediately “betrayed her by handing over control of Corcyra to the Romans and joining their side as an advisor. From there, the Roman troops advanced north to Apollonia, attacking towns along the way until they arrived at the capital city of Scodra.”
Rome’s militia was a lot stronger than the A BUST OF QUEEN TEUTA Illyrian navy, so Teuta fled south. By 228 B.C. Rome had gained control over the whole Illyrian coast, and in 227 B.C. Teuta officially surrendered to them. Rome declared peace and offered Teuta the chance to continue ruling over a small region so long as she acknowledged that Rome was the superior land. Humiliated at the thought of succumbing to her foes and accepting their pity offer of a tiny reign, Teuta gave up the throne. According to some accounts, Teuta never got over her defeat and eventually ended her own life by jumping off a cliff in the Bay of Kotor (what is now Risan, Montenegro).
7 Glossary (AKA “what is Toby talking about?”)
Elysium (1.2) - in Greek mythology, the paradise where the heroes that the gods made immortal were sent Eunuch (1.2) - a man who has been castrated for a specific social reason, often to guard women’s quarters or as a king’s servant Viol-de-gamboys (1.3) - a viola played between the legs (like a cello); often used with a sexual connotation “thou lackest a cup of canary” (1.3) - “you need a drink” Kickshawses (1.3) - from the French phrase quelque chose, meaning “something”; in modern context, it means either something frivolous or needlessly intricate, or a fancy meal Galliard (1.3) - a lively dance characterized by jumps and leaps, done in triple time by two people Profanation (1.5) - to treat something/someone with disgust or abuse Diluculo surgere (2.3) - to awaken at dawn Mellifluous (2.3) - a voice/words that is/are sweet and pleasant to hear “To hear by the nose…..out of one weaver?” (2.3) - “If we were to listen to Feste with our noses, we would say that he stinks very sweetly. Let’s all sing very loudly, loud enough to wake up the night owls.” Consanguineous (2.3) - sharing a common kin/ancestor “Rub your chain with crumbs” (2.3) - “Go polish your steward’s chain” “Go shake your ears” (2.3) - This means exactly what it sounds like! Penthesilea (2.3) - An Amazonian queen, in Greek mythology, who assisted Troy in the Trojan War and was killed by Achilles “my metal of India” (2.5) - “my golden girl” (thanks, No Fear Shakespeare!) “Dieu vous garde” (3.1) - “God keep you" “Et vous aussi; votre serviteur” (3.1) - “And you also; your servant” “’tis not for gravity to play at cherry-pit with Satan” (3.4) - “You know better than to play games with Satan” Jocund (5.1) - lighthearted Coxcomb (5.1) - a conceited person
8 Notable Productions
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 2002
Tim Carroll’s production of Twelfth Night was regarded as being the most historically accurate production the Globe had put on to date. In addition to the all-male cast, the production utilized period-appropriate costumes, music, and set design. It was theorized that by creating an environment as historically accurate as possible, the audience would feel more comfortable watching a show with cross-gender casting.
What’s particularly interesting about Carroll’s production is how the relationship between Sebastian and Antonio was handled. Widely regarded as being the least subtle homoerotic pairing in a Shakespeare play, Sebastian and Antonio have been a puzzle for directors to solve since Twelfth Night’s inception - how queer do you read this twosome, and how comfortable will your audience be if you lean into their tender interactions? Under Carroll’s direction, the scenes with Antonio and Sebastian are strictly no-homo, ensuring that little to no erotic connection is detected. Antonio follows Sebastian to Illyria not out of love, but out of a sense of duty.
Carroll’s production was revived at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway in 2012.
Cheek by Jowl, 2003
Artistic Director of London’s Cheek by Jowl theatre company Declan Donnellan’s all-male production of Twelfth Night was originally launched for the Chekhov International Theatre Festival. The production is likely the longest- MARK RYLANCE AS OLIVIA IN TIM CARROLL’S TWELFTH NIGHT. running adaptation of Twelfth Night, having toured up until 2018.
In Donnellan’s production, Antonio and Sebastian are romantically linked. In their first exchange, Antonio brushes the hair back from Sebastian’s face; the scene feels like a parting of lovers. In the double wedding finale, Antonio is often left in the dust as his beloved Sebastian marries Olivia; Donnellan instead took the liberty to pair Antonio with Feste the clown. Feste, played by
9 an actor in his 50s-60s, is portrayed as a “transgressive queer figure, [who] in spite of his age [still] desires male sexual contact, repeatedly grabbing at the other men in erotic ways.”
Propeller, 2006
In yet-another all-male production, director Edward Hall opted to utilize “radical drag” - i.e., choosing costumes that reveal body hair and outline the male physique on female characters as well as playing those roles in full make-up and feminine garb - in his adaptation of Twelfth Night. The usage of radical drag allowed Hall to blur the lines between masculinity and femininity, suggesting that gender is nothing more than performative.
To further cement the point, Hall’s production of Twelfth Night toured with Propeller’s production of The Taming of the Shrew with the same cast performing in both shows. You could see an actor play Olivia one night and see him play Petruchio the next, “[providing] an insight into gender’s instability as [the actor] moves from ultra- feminine to hyper-masculine.”
Queen’s Company, 2008 OLIVIA AND VIOLA IN EDWARD HALL’S TWELFTH NIGHT. Another cross-gendered production of Twelfth Night was launched in the early ‘00s, but this time it was produced by the Queen’s Company, an all-female classical theatre company based in New York. Director Rebecca Patterson is a champion for “gender-blind casting,” and Twelfth Night was the perfect show to embody that.
Refreshingly, Patterson’s production explicitly exhibited that Antonio and Sebastian are lovers. In their first scene, lights fade up to show the couple lying in bed, clad in boxer briefs while Celine Dion’s hit “My Heart Will Go On” accompanies. What’s more, as argued in Chad Allen Thomas’s brilliant paper “Antonio’s (Happy) Ending: Queer Closure in All-Male Twelfth Night,” (attached at the end of this packet), Shakespeare’s text supports this reading. When expressing his fondness for Sebastian, Antonio speaks in verse, which the Bard most often used when expressing romantic love. When deciding to follow Sebastian to Illyeria, Antonio switches from speaking in prose to iambic pentameter capped with an end-rhymed couplet (“so” and “go”), mirroring that of sonnets. Additionally, in the preceding scene, the audience learns that Olivia has fallen in love with Cesario, as showcased from her switch from prose to verse.
10 Patterson’s reimagining paid off, as many audience members were grateful to finally see Antonio and Sebastian played as lovers, as showcased by a few sighs of “finally!”.
QUEEN’S COMPANY’S 2008 PRODUCTION OF TWELFTH NIGHT.
Oberlin College, 2017
Oberlin College student Jenny Kneebone produced a production of Twelfth Night as her senior project. Kneebone always found the ending of Twelfth Night disappointing (“Olivia has married the wrong person, and she’s just supposed to be OK with this.”), and sought to change that. Kneebone’s updated ending acknowledged this slighting, with Olivia kissing Viola when they are alone as the curtain falls.
Kneebone also tackled Orsino’s feelings for Cesario. In her eyes, Orsino is loudly pining after Olivia because he feels the need to overcompensate for his feelings for Cesario; the duke nearly kisses his disguised servant during a dance, before pulling himself back. “According to Orsino, his eternal curse throughout the play is his love sickness,” stated Orsino actor Quentin Nguyen-duy. “I used the sincerity of his companionship with Cesario….to contrast Orsino’s blind romanticization of Olivia.”
11 Shakespeare in Clark Park, 2018
Director Jack Tamburri looked at Twelfth Night through fresh eyes in two notable ways - one, through the frequent accompaniment of glam rock music; and two, by exploring the notion that Viola isn’t just disguising herself as a man to stay alive in Illyria, but born from “a genuine desire to alter her gender presentation in a new land where no one knows her.” Viola became “Vi,” who uses ze/zir pronouns. Dialogue was altered to communicate this shift to the audience, as shown by an excerpt from Act V:
Orsino: Your master quits you, and for your service done him, Here is my hand. You shall from this time be Your master’s master-mistress. Now I see Thee as thou art, but what shall you be called?
Viola: I’ll choose a name to reference days gone by But flower am I not; thus, call me Vi. Forget old names and use this one for me.
Olivia: From henceforth Vi. A sibling, You are.
Vi: Ze.
NON-BINARY PERFORMERS PAX RESSLER (VI) AND ANGELA BEY (ORSINO) IN SHAKESPEARE IN CLARK PARK’S TWELFTH NIGHT.
12 WSC Avant Bard, 2018
WSC Avant Bard, a DC-based classical theatre company, produced an updated version of Twelfth Night for their Fall 2018 season, retitled Illyria. In this production (adapted by Jonelle Walker and Mitchell Hébert and directed by Mitchell Hébert), the titular land is now the name of an underground gay club in Manhattan and the story is set in the 1980s disco era. Hébert first had the idea to put this particular spin on Shakespeare’s classic when he was cast in a production of La Cage Aux Folles as Edouard Dindon, a conservative politician who, in one scene, must dress in drag in order to escape a gay club undetected: “I discovered that when I/he was in drag it was liberating. That’s not to say he was gay (although he might have been), but rather being in drag allowed him to express a part of himself that was inaccessible before,” said Hébert in an interview with DC Theatre Scene. “Meantime back at Illyria…I was curious about the identity issues imbedded in Twelfth Night. What would happen if I explored them as fully as possible? That brought me back to a 1980’s disco, a place where all the characters could be free to be themselves.”
Hébert and Walker altered the identities of the characters to fit Illyria’s world as such:
- Orsino is the owner of the club. - Feste is the club’s DJ (“how dost thou like this tune?”). - Olivia is the club’s singer in residence. - Fabian is a drag queen who occasionally stops in to sing a power ballad.
The tagline for the show was “If music be the food of love, work it,” which bears mentioning.
13 Was Shakespeare Queer?
IMAGE BY MATT MCCARTY.
Shakespeare’s sexuality has long been debated by historians, largely thanks to his sonnet cycle. While married to his wife, Anne Hathaway (who remained at home in Stratford-upon-Avon while her husband worked in London), Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, with 126 of them being addressed to a figure known as “the Fair Youth” (including Sonnet 18, “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”). As was common for sonnet cycles of the era, Shakespeare’s cycle followed a loose narrative about ideal love, featuring all of the typical tropes expected of a sonnet cycle: staying up all night to pine, being consumed by jealousy, long descriptions of the Fair Youth’s beauty. What separates Shakespeare’s sonnet cycle from his contemporaries’ is that both the narrator and his beloved are men. Tellingly, Sonnet 20 ends with a line about how nature “pricked thee out for women’s pleasure” - in other words, “what a shame that he has a penis.”
In Sonnet 127, a new character known as “the Dark Lady” appears. The Dark Lady is promiscuous, has bad breath, and is generally grotesque to the narrator; nevertheless, he is still sleeping with her. In Sonnet 133, we learn that the Fair Youth is sleeping with her as well. The plot thickens in Sonnet 144, which implies a bisexual love triangle:
14 “Two loves I have of comfort and despair Which like two spirits do suggest me still: The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.”
As early at the 1640s, editors and publishers scrubbed and censored these sonnets, “straightening” them up by changing any “he”s to “she”s. Literary critic and Shakespeare historian George Steevens excluded the sonnets entirely from his 1793 compilation of Shakespeare’s works because they filled him with “disgust and indignation.” Steevens’ contemporary Edmond Malone defended the sonnets, stating that there was nothing homoerotic about them and that “such addresses to men were customary in our author’s time.” Debate continues as of 2014, with literary critic Sir Brian Vickers calling the notion of Shakespeare’s sonnets being inherently homosexual an “anachronistic assumption.” Indeed (and perhaps unfortunately?), the sonnets have not been found to be based in real life nor, as far as scholars can tell, did the Fair Youth nor the Dark Lady exist.
15 Cross-dressing in History: A Timeline
6th Century: The Chinese legend of Mulan, the warrior who disguised herself as a man to go to war in her father’s place, is transcribed for the first time.
1431: Joan of Arc is burned at the stake because she refuses to stop wearing men’s armor.
1700s: Numerous women disguise themselves as male soldiers and sailors, citing reasons of following a male lover, desire to fight for their country, and better wages.
1825: In Ireland, Harriet Moore is discovered as having lived as a man for 6-7 years.
1837-1901: In Victorian Britain, women who cross-dressed could be prosecuted for fraud. Their male counterparts were tried for indecency instead.
1869: Masquerade balls originate in Harlem, NY, marking the start of the “Pansy Craze” - in other words, drag queens begin to rise to prominence.
1881: Le Chat Noir nightclub in Paris, France is founded as a haven for people with “unconventional lifestyles” to party without judgement from wider society. Similar clubs begin popping up across Europe around the same time.
1910: Wellesley College in Massachusetts bans “mock weddings,” practice ceremonies between students in women-only colleges, for fear that they would lead to radical feminism and lesbianism. Women portrayed all roles in mock weddings, including groom, best man, and priest.
1920s: The Pansy Craze reaches its peak. Gene Malin, a noted New York female impersonator who was famous for his impersonations of Mae West, briefly becomes the highest-paid entertainer in the state.
1933: Gene Malin dies at age 25, marking the end of the Pansy Craze. A widespread moral panic about homosexuality forces many gay clubs across the US to go underground.
1945: Cross-dressing is banned from 45 U.S. cities. This did nothing to stop its existence. The Christian church deemed cross-dressing to be immoral, believing it went hand-in-hand with alcohol consumption and prostitution.
16 RURAL FESTIVAL, IMAGE ONE OF THREE BY HANS SEBALD BEHAM (1500-50)
“[Cross-dressing] was often central to early modern festivals, where the ‘world turned upside down’ was a key theme. Women dressed as men, men dressed as women, children dressed as kings and queens, beggars disguised themselves as rich men - the powerless became the powerful, if for a day. Cross-dressing was often a key component of the carnival, allowing people to vent frustration at social hierarchies - seen as natural or God-ordained - and at the same time, reinforcing their importance to community order.” - Katie Barclay
17 Notable Figures in Cross-Dressing History
Joan of Arc
In 1429, when she was just 17 years old, Joan of Arc - clad in men’s armor and surrounded by her followers, French peasants - presented herself at the court of Prince Charles, the heir to the French throne. She stated that her “mission, motivation, and mode of dress” were instructed by God. She proclaimed that she wished to assemble and lead an army of French peasants to drive out the English who were slaughtering them.
Joan was born in 1412, when France was being slaughtered thanks to the Hundred Years War with no discernible leadership or plan of uprising in sight. Prince Charles was moved by her tale, and appointed Joan the head of a 10,000-strong army. The illiterate Joan dictated a letter sent to the King of England as well as the Duke of Bedford (who was leading the occupying army in Orleans) demanding that they leave French soil. On April 29th, 1429, after the King and the Duke neglected to abide, Joan led a march on Orleans to drive them out herself. The English were routed by May 8, less than two weeks later. Shortly therafter, Joan led her army to Rheims - successfully crossing through English territory in the process - to see Charles be crowned King of France.
On May 23rd, Joan was captured by the Burgundians (French allies of English feudal lords). If Joan were a nobleman or a knight, King Charles would have offered a ransom for her freedom, as was customary when men were captured in battle; however, since Joan’s position as the leader of a peasant uprising threatened the same French ruling class she had helped bring to power, not a single franc was offered for her release. Joan was still donning a close-cropped haircut and men’s clothing, and the Burgundians took to referring to her as “hommasse,” or “man-woman.”
18 While in the Burgundians’ capture, the English persuaded the Catholic Church to condemn Joan for dressing in men’s clothes. In a letter to Inquisitor Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, King Henry VI wrote:
“It is sufficiently notorious and well-known that for some time past a woman calling herself Jeanne the Purcelle [the Maid], leaving off the dress and clothing of the feminine sex, a thing contrary to divine law and abominable before God, and forbidden by all laws, wore clothing and armor such as is worn by men.”
As further punishment, the Burgundians sold Joan to the English, who then turned her over to the Inquisition in November 1430. She was held in a civil prison in Rouen, France, with her cell guarded by male guards who violated the Church’s own rules by sleeping in Joan’s cell. She was kept standing in a cage with hands, legs, and neck chained.
Her trial began on January 9th, 1431. Joan was condemned by the Inquisition for cross-dressing as well as accused of practicing witchcraft. Joan’s followers remained faithful all through the trial, making the Church view her as even more of a threat. The Church accused her of “seducing the Catholic people, [and] many in her presence adored her as a saint.”
On April 2nd, 1431, Joan’s witchcraft charges were dropped (for being too hard to prove), and was then accused of heresy. She maintained that her cross-dressing was an act of religious duty, one that was propelled by visions of and voices from God. She was denounced for refusing to compromise or back down, stating that these visions were of a higher authority than the Church. A few weeks later, on April 24th, Joan’s judges claimed that she had recanted her statements after they took her on a tour of the torture chamber she was to be sentenced to and the cemetery that held the scaffold she was to die on. According to the judges, Joan submitted herself to the Catholic Church, agreeing that she had dressed and behaved in a way that “violated natural decency.” The Church switched her sentence from execution to life in prison, living on bread and water and forcing her to wear women’s clothes.
Days later, Joan recanted her statement and resume wearing men’s clothing. Since Joan was illiterate, it is believed she never changed her statement in the first place but instead was told to sign a document she could not read. She was burned at the stake on May 30th, 1431, with cross- dressing being the only crime to her name.
19 Ernest Boulton & Frederick Park, aka Stella & Fanny
Ernest Boulton (1848-1905) and Frederick Park (1846-1881) were two middle-class Londoners in their mid-20s who performed as Stella Clinton and Fanny Winnifred Park, a double act that was popular in the West End. The men attended social events in character and drummed up a lot of interest and gossip around their appearance and lifestyle.
In 1870, Boulton and Park were arrested during a performance at the Strand Theatre while “behaving raucously in a box while dressed in their best female finery,” along with their escort Hugh Mundell. All parties were thrown in jail and brought to court the very next morning, still in their dresses and wigs. The prosecution was unsure whether or not cross-dressing was an offense, so they shifted their focus to figuring out whether or not they could accuse the pair with sodomy. Along with Mundell (who claimed he didn’t believe that Boulton and Park were men, even when they told him outright), two other men were arrested for partaking in the Stella and Fanny conspiracy - John Safford Fiske and Louis Charles Hurt, young men with good backgrounds and good jobs who “[moved] in polite society and [were] each a rival for Boulton’s affections.” A fourth man, Lord Arthur Clinton (the man Boulton/Stella fell hardest for, and even possibly marrying), evaded arrest by escaping London under an assumed name. He died the very next day (supposedly of scarlet fever, although suicide is rumored).
Witnesses to the trial included a man who enjoyed dressing in drag for “theatrical purposes,” an “extremely effeminate” gentleman who threw cross-dressing balls, and Ernest Boulton’s mother, who “had rejoiced in her son’s female performances, not blinked an eye at her son’s friendship with Lord Arthur Clinton, and welcomed all of his male friends into her home.” Ultimately, the
20 prosecution couldn’t prove that either of them had had sex with any of their convicted supposed cohorts, and after a second trial a year later, the men were found not guilty and allowed to resume their life of show business.
Harriet Moore
In 19th century Ireland, kidnapping, rape, and other forms of violence ran rampant. When Harriet Moore was 14, her parents died; she knew she couldn’t survive as a girl without the protection that they had offered. She began wearing her brother’s clothes and working as a grazier (someone who rears and fattens sheep and cattle for market). A few years later, she moved to England to work for a drover (someone who moves livestock across long distances). She quickly got promoted to groom (someone who cares for horses in a stable), then footboy (a servant). Moore was discharged 2 years later and went to work in a salt yard. During this time, she lived with a woman named Lacy, who accidentally discovered Moore’s sex. Lacy blackmailed Moore into marrying her pregnant daughter Matilda, promising a never-received dowry.
Moore struggled as a husband, having to support a wife, a mother-in-law, and a child that wasn’t hers. A DRAWING OF HARRIET MOORE, When Matilda got pregnant a second time, Moore left AKA JOHN MURPHY, DONE BY home to find work elsewhere. Parish officers were hot SOMEONE KNOWN ONLY AS “MR. on her tails, ready to prosecute her for “wife desertion.” OAKLEY.” To escape the wrath of the law, Moore stopped cross- dressing and donned her petticoats for the first time in almost 7 years, thereby extricating herself from all marital and paternal obligations. Moore’s con was discovered in 1825, but by then it was too late to do anything.
Anne Lister
Anne Lister was known as the world’s “first modern lesbian.” Lister was exceptionally original, finding a way to rise above the misogynistic climate of 19th century England. She was a mountaineer, a politician, and a businesswoman, but what she’s most known for are her diaries. Her diaries tell detailed accounts of her affairs with the women she fell in love with, written in code and shocking the historians who deciphered them.
Lister was sent to boarding school at age seven, as her mother believed her to be an “unmanageable tomboy.” Her teachers would afraid that her independent nature and rebellious behavior would rub off on the other students, confining her to a solitary attic room when she was a teenager. This is when Lister began journaling - she was lonely, and her diary became her only
21 companion. She wrote about EVERYTHING - what she’d eaten that day, how she slept and when she woke up, what she learned in her classes, and, of course, her feelings for other women. When she began a sexual affair with a schoolmate, Eliza Raine, both girls would write “felix” (“happy”) in their diaries as a brief way of noting their copulation. Lister wanted to record in more detail, so she created a code consisting of Greek and Latin, mathematical symbols, punctation, and zodiac signs, to ensure that what she was writing would be (she believed) indecipherable.
Lister was nicknamed “Gentleman Jack” because of the masculine way that she dressed. Whenever she went for a walk, men would jokingly proposition her or shout at her. She received frequent abusive anonymous letters, and once even A PORTRAIT OF ANNE LISTER, PAINTED BY had an ad placed in the paper in her name JOSHUA HORNER IN 1830. seeking a husband.
After a symbolic “wedding” in 1834 to her lover Ann Walker, the pair honeymooned through France and Switzerland for three months before settling down in Shibden, a village in West Yorkshire. This cohabitation of two women from wealthy backgrounds was a scandal in the eyes of the city; a mock advertisement appeared in the paper congratulating “Captain Tom Lister of Shibden Hall” on his marriage, along with several letters addressed to Captain Lister. As Lister wrote in her diary, these pranks were “probably meant to annoy, but, if so, a failure.”
22 References n.a. “Elizabethan theatres.” Elizabethan-Era, n.d. http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/ elizabethan-theatres.htm n.a. “Gi’Ingannati, an Italian play about twins and mistaken identity.” British Library, n.d. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/gl-ingannati-an-italian-play-about-twins-and-mistaken- identity n.a. “The curious phenomenon of mock weddings.” Financial Times, 17 August 2018. https:// www.ft.com/content/ca8cac46-a01c-11e8-85da-eeb7a9ce36e4
Aidun, Ivan. “Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night receives queer update. The Oberlin Review, 3 February 2017. https://oberlinreview.org/12380/arts/shakespeares-twelfth-night-receives-queer- update/?print=true
Barclay, Katie. “Cross-dressing in historical perspective.” Women’s History Network, 13 June 2010. https://womenshistorynetwork.org/cross-dressing-in-historical-perspective/
Bullock, Darryl W. “Pansy Craze: The wild 1930s drag parties that kickstarted gay nightlife.” The Guardian, 14 September 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/sep/14/pansy- craze-the-wild-1930s-drag-parties-that-kickstarted-gay-nightlife
Chandler, Glenn. “Fanny and Stella: Victorian cross dressers accused of ‘homosexual offences’ in 1870. Mirror, 15 May 2019. http://mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/fanny-stella-victorian- cross-dressers-15800317
Feinberg, Leslie. Transgender Warriors: making history from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman. Beacon Press, 1996.
Hughes, Kathryn. “Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England by Neil McKenna - review.” The Guardian, 25 January 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/books/ 2013/jan/25/fanny-stella-neil-mckenna-review
Jordan, Nicolette. “Our cross-dressing ancestors.” Messy Nessy Chic, 24 October 2017. messynessychic.com/2017/10/24/our-cross-dressing-ancestors/
Klimek, Chris. “WSC Avant Bard’s Illyria, or What You Will moves Twelfth Night to 1980s Manhattan.” Washington City Paper, 1 November 2018. https:// www.washingtoncitypaper.com/arts/theater/article/21030182/wsc-avant-bards-illyria-or- what-you-will-moves-twelfth-night-to-1980s-manhattan
Lamoureux, Aimee. “Teuta: The warrior queen who dared steal from ancient Rome.” All That’s Interesting, 22 June 2018. https://allthatsinteresting.com/queen-teuta-ancient-illyria
23 Learn English with EnglishClass101.com. “British English holidays - Twelfth Night.” YouTube, 2 January 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJv2sNLRQ0Q
Lendering, Joan. “Illyrians.” Livius, 1 August 2019. https://www.livius.org/articles/people/ illyrians/
Loria, Keith. “What’s Twelfth Night doing in an ’80’s queer club? Avant Bard adaptors explain.” DCTheatre Scene, 15 October 2018. https://dctheatrescene.com/2018/10/15/whats-twelfth- night-doing-in-a-ny-80s-queer-club-avant-bard-adaptors-explain/
Song, Amanda. “Cross-dressing: A secret history.” 1843 Magazine, 20 March 2018. https://www. 1843magazine.com/culture/look-closer/crossdressing-a-secret-history
Thomas, Chad Allen. “Antonio’s (happy) ending: Queer closure in all-male Twelfth Night.” Comparative Drama: Vol. 48: Iss. 3, Article 2.
Thomas, Miranda Fay. “A queer reading of Twelfth Night.” British Library, 15 March 2016. https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/a-queer-reading-of-twelfth-night
Woods, Rebecca. “The life and loves of Ann Lister.” BBC, 3 May 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/ news/resources/idt-sh/the_life_and_loves_of_anne_lister
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