Experimentation Through Disguise in Shakespearean Comedies

EXPERIMENTATION THROUGH DISGUISE IN SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDIES

______

A Thesis

Presented

to the Faculty of

California State University Dominguez Hills

______

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

English

______

Melvianne Quarles Andersen

Summer 2019

THESIS: EXPERIMENTATION THROUGH DISGUISE IN SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDIES AUTHOR: MELVIANNE QUARLES ANDERSEN

APPROVAL PAGE

APPROVED:

______Kimberly Huth, Ph.D. Thesis Committee Chair

______Debra Best, Ph.D. Committee Member

______Helen Oesterheld, Ph.D. Committee Member

MELVIANNE QUARLES ANDERSEN

2019

DEDICATION

Mike,

This… this is for you.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. —King James Version Gal. 6.9

Unlike any other experience I have had, writing a thesis has been an extremely solitary endeavor. It becomes disheartening to work in the isolation required to complete it. A strong support system makes all the difference in the world. I offer my most heartfelt gratitude to those who supported me during this grueling process.

To my mother, Alicia, who always put her children first: thank you for the example you set for me, for the long talks, and for the constant love and support. I always know that you have my back in any situation. You are an amazing woman. Thank you for who you are and for who you helped me become. You made me believe I could do and be anything, and that nothing is impossible. I love you with all my heart.

My sister and brother, Akida and Jahid, have always provided a place of safety and laughter. We have had some wonderful experiences together. Being able to reach out to you both has helped me get through some of the toughest times in my life. Just knowing that you are there has made me want to do and be better.

My thesis committee became an integral part of my support system:

Dr. Kimberly Huth who encouraged me to join the MA program in the first place, then pointed out the kernel of wisdom that eventually became this thesis;

Dr. Debra Best who transitioned from the Graduate Coordinator who took a chance on me to a true mentor and friend; and

Dr. Helen Oesterheld who throughout the long grueling process remained enthusiastic about my work, even when I didn’t.

My DH Friends became like family and are too numerous to name.

Lastly, to my Father God, who has set before me “life and death, blessing and cursing”; I choose life.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

APPROVAL PAGE ...... II COPYRIGHT PAGE ...... III DEDICATION ...... IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... V ABSTRACT ...... VIII CHAPTER 1 ...... 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1 CHAPTER 2 ...... 13 LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST AND KNOWLEDGE IN DISGUISE ...... 13 CHAPTER 3 ...... 33 EXPERIMENTING WITH ORLANDO’S LOVE IN AS YOU LIKE IT ...... 33 CHAPTER 4 ...... 49 THE VALUE OF PORTIA IN THE MERCHANT OF VENICE ...... 49 CHAPTER 5 ...... 68 EPILOGUE ...... 68 WORKS CITED ...... 72

vii ABSTRACT

This study explores Shakespeare’s use of experimentation in three plays: Love’s Labour’s

Lost, As You Like It, and The Merchant of Venice. In each play, the female protagonist dons a disguise to experiment with her love interest, testing his suitability as a husband, and developing agency for herself in the relationship. Only in the triangulation of disguise, experimentation, and comedy does this agency become fully realized. The various iterations of the experimentation provide the women an avenue to acquire agency in their romantic relationships. These iterations also illustrate Shakespeare’s engagement with Early Modern scientific discourse. Each play approaches the experiment differently and achieves different results. That difference reveals the true nature of each relationship.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Recent scholarship in Shakespearean studies has focused on what Shakespeare knew about science. Howard Marchitello argues that Shakespeare includes machinery in his texts, and experimentation produces machinery. Elizabeth Spiller argues that The Tempest was

Shakespeare’s acknowledgement of the shift from Aristotelian based knowledge to experimental fact-based epistemology, and B.J. Sokol explores intellectual matters, such as science, that are reflected in Shakespeare’s works. Of course, the term “science” as we know it today was not used during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Contrary to popular belief, however, the term was in use in these and previous eras. In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary

(OED) indicates that the first use of “science” was in 1350. The OED defines this, science’s first use as “the state or fact of knowing; knowledge or cognizance of something; knowledge as a personal attribute” (“Science, n1a”). This definition provides an understanding of science as it relates to Shakespeare because of its focus on knowledge. A now archaic definition, “particular area of knowledge or study; a recognized branch of learning; spec. (in the Middle Ages) each of the seven subjects forming the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium

(arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy)” (“Science, n3a”) proves inappropriate for this research because no branch of scientific study existed during the Early Modern period, and the trivium did not include it amongst its subjects. Of course, today’s more common understanding of science, “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing those branches of study that relate to the phenomena of the physical universe and their laws” (“Science, n5b”) does not apply here either. A more tangible connection between Shakespeare and science is the OED definition,

“a branch of study that deals with a connected body of demonstrated truths or with observed

2 facts systematically classified and more or less comprehended by general laws, and incorporating trustworthy methods (now esp. those involving the scientific method and which incorporate falsifiable hypotheses) for the discovery of new truth in its own domain” (“Science, 4b”). This definition, with its focus on observed facts incorporating trustworthy methods for the discovery of new truth, seems to apply most effectively to Shakespeare since he incorporates observation, testing and new discoveries along with the changing nature of knowledge about the natural world in his plays.

Shakespeare also included in his plays an understanding of societal norms, which he often circumvented. For example, society place limitations on those who could participate in this new understanding of science, especially women. Women’s lack of agency often limited their ability to participate in cultural activities outside the home. The Early Modern culture excluded women from practicing the general form of science that slowly developed. In her consideration of women and science Kathleen P. Long poses the questions, “what is at stake when women participate in scientific enterprises and discourses? In what contexts do women engage in scientific inquiry, how might that engagement be limited, and how do women bypass or overcome these limitations?” (18). Shakespeare devices a way to do just that. Certainly,

Shakespeare has proven masterful at displaying intelligent women. He includes these knowledgeable women in all genres. However, the combination of women’s knowledge and the practices of science by women in disguise becomes more apparent within Shakespeare’s comedy plays. Shakespeare uses the stage convention of disguise to allow women to bypass social limitations and participate in experimentation. This in turn allows women to acquire agency in their romantic relationships.

A discussion concerning Shakespeare’s inclusion of new epistemologies requires first a discussion of the competing epistemologies of his time. At the beginning of the Early Modern period, the population was still enthralled by antiquity. Aristotle and knowledge of the Classics dominated epistemological inquiries. Little change in knowledge of the natural world and natural phenomena occurred because “Aristotelian tradition insisted that the highest form of knowledge was deductive, syllogistic knowledge” (Wootton 320). This contrasted with the rising interest in

Paracelsian knowledge, which valued observation in research, but was not as widely accepted as

Aristotelian knowledge. Even though Aristotle started his Metaphysics with “all men by nature desire to know,” this desire does not lead scholars to look beyond what has already been discovered and accepted as “knowledge.” The early developments of epistemology focused on the “recovery [of] the lost culture of the past, not to establish new knowledge of their own… The assumption was that the argument of the ancients needed to be interpreted not challenged”

(Wootton 73). Additionally, religious concerns augmented this reluctance to question acceptable knowledge. Because of Adam and Eve’s original sin caused by curiosity, Shakespeare’s contemporaries considered curiosity a sin, concluding that, “curiosity, along with pride and disobedience was thus implicated in the first sin and in the subsequent fall of the whole human race” (Harrison 267). As a result of this disdain for curiosity, the Early Modern scholar would organize and re-organize knowledge to make it a moral or ethical lesson. They would not, however, go beyond what was readily available to them in books.

But suddenly, a new star appeared and all that changed. In November 1572, a bright new star appeared in the sky in the constellation Cassiopeia. This was unheard of as all stars were believed to be created by God. It was believed that all stars were in their perfect place with nothing missing, nothing broken, nothing added, and nothing taken away. After all, God’s

4 creation was perfect; there was no need for repair or augmentation. And yet, there was that new star, and no one could deny its existence. This then created a need to rethink the study of astronomy and all areas of nature. Mary Thomas Crane argues, “Spenser, Marlowe, and

Shakespeare were reacting directly to the loss of an intuitive connection with nature” (9). The new ideas about astronomy and the loss of connection to nature created an atmosphere that left all areas of nature open to speculation.

Once this shift occurred in the understanding of nature, experimentation became increasingly important. Accepted knowledge was no longer enough and experimental inquiry became necessary, particularly for subjects of which there was no prior knowledge from antiquity such as the magnet. The magnet was “the first major field for experimental enquiry in the early modern period…, a subject on which there was virtually no classical commentary

(because the compass was unknown in antiquity), which meant that the experimental approach faced fewer obstacles than with any other topic” (Wootton 327). The magnet was used to create the compass, an important tool for navigation in the oceans and an aid with commerce. It soon became widely used. The magnet increased experimentation’s acceptance and scope making participation in experimentation less problematic. A new science arose with the increase of experimentation which was available to those outside aristocracy or the upper classes.

How did Shakespeare become exposed to this new science? He was, after all, only educated through his local grammar school and had not attended any school beyond that. Many argue that just as he was aware of the politics of the time, he would have been aware of the natural phenomena of the time. For example, B.J. Sokol argues that “Shakespeare was surrounded by a culture developing new types, or new extensions, of rational and proto-scientific thinking” (15-16). He surrounded himself with current events and those who could speak about

5 them. Shakespeare would have been exposed to the bright star that had appeared. He could not have missed it on a clear, or even not so clear, night. According to Dan Falk, a scientist by trade,

Shakespeare, “could have seen at least some of the evidence for the ‘new astronomy’ with his own eyes” (8). Moreover, he could not have helped but to hear the discussions about this new star and the theories that were being bandied around about its incredible existence. As more discoveries about the science of the period and relationships between science and art arise, tenuous though they may be, a greater acceptance of Shakespeare’s interest and exposure to science increases. Falk argues that, “a reassessment may finally be at hand. In the last few years, a handful of scholars have begun to look more closely at Shakespeare’s interest in the scientific discoveries of his time—asking what he knew, when he knew it, and how that knowledge might be reflected in his work” (9). William Empson, for example, argues that “Shakespeare was a

Copernican” (Sokol 26). Crane posits that “a number of writers in sixteenth-century England were aware of and understood the implications of Copernican astronomy and new theories of matter for the Aristotelian, Ptolemaic, and Galenic systems and the epistemology on which they were based” (16). Crane includes Shakespeare among those writers. It is becoming increasingly accepted by these and others of the scholarly literary community that Shakespeare was aware of and participated with those practicing Early Modern science.

Early Modern science began to accept the Paracelsian form of knowledge and the newly required experimentation that accompanied it. Experimentation was already in use but “invoked only to fill gaps in a fundamentally deductive system of knowledge, never to question the reliability of deductive knowledge itself; and these gaps were always of limited significance within a curriculum centered upon Aristotle’s texts” (Wootton 320). The limitations that previously made experimentation unnecessary were fading as Paracelsian inquiry became more

6 utilized. Falk has concluded that “Shakespeare’s writing often reflects the scientific ideas of his time—and the philosophical problems they were raising” (12). It bears repeating that the scientific world permeates all genres of Shakespeare’s writing: in the tragedy King Lear,

“Shakespeare responds to a growing realization that the structures developed by existing systems of thought to explain the invisible and counterintuitive workings of matter no longer work”

(Crane 132); in the comedy The Tempest, Caliban wonders how “to name the bigger light and how the less” (1.2.340); and in the history Henry V, the Duke of Burgundy laments that they

“have lost, or do not learn from want of time, the sciences that should become our country”

(5.2.57-58). Likewise, science litters his sonnets. For example, Sonnet 14 opens with the discussion of astronomy, “not from the stars do I my judgement pluck, / And yet methinks I have astronomy” (1-2). Clearly, the scientific ideas that were filtering through Early Modern England were also filtering through Shakespeare’s works. The transfer of scientific knowledge from the university or classroom setting into the mainstream, encourages acceptance of Shakespeare’s exposure to it.

The expanding epistemology in the Early Modern period, use of the experimental processes of Paracelsian study, often occurred in the home, which made it accessible to women.

Experimentation became increasingly important, including medical experimentation through medical schools, but also experimentation through private spheres such as the home. Although they were kept away from the academic setting of the medical schools, Early Modern women would be familiar, at some level, with experimentation. Their exclusion from the scientific realm forced women to operate in trial and error modes within non-academic settings. According to

Wootton, this “trial and error” was a precursor to the experiments and “experiments are not new.

The first person who rubbed two sticks together to make a fire was conducting an experiment”

(Wootton 346). Scientific experimentation expanded, including medical experimentation through dissection. As stated earlier, this medical experimentation was not open to women. However, medical experimentation was not limited to the medical profession since many people were exposed to death and dead bodies in their everyday lives, and midwives were often called upon with difficult births. There were any number of people, men and women alike, who were involved in medicine, yet “among all the number and variety of medical practitioners in early modern England, one small group self-consciously considered itself to be professional: the physicians” (Cook 2). These professionals separated themselves from mere practitioners by virtue of the “long university education that marked physicians from all other medical practitioners” (Cook 4). Women were not allowed into these university settings to study medicine and were thus prevented from becoming medical professionals. Women then were able to participate in experimentation only peripherally without being a part of the medical profession or academia.

Even though women were excluded from the medical profession publicly, amongst themselves and their family’s women were increasingly accepted as experimenters, and they often shared their findings with one another. Lynette Hunter argues that the modes of communication used by women for sharing and preserving knowledge, and the impact that these modes had on the kind of science in which they engaged, were valuable to the scientific community of the time, even as they were also overlooked. Hunter argues that more women than we are aware of were involved with science, and that “by the end of the sixteenth century, there were many women practicing science and medicine,” (128), but they were not considered medical professionals, including those women who served as midwives. Women began using science as a leisurely activity while still other women used their science in commercial activities.

One example, Grace Mildmay, author of one of the first autobiographies of an English woman, produced her remedies and concoctions in ten-gallon batches for distribution outside her family.

Even though it was permitted for the women to operate in the field of science at home, and

“although women did work with the commercial secrets of the artisan world, they had a much larger commitment to communal information—this kind of science being one of the primary modes for women to participate in ‘service’ or public action in society” (Hunter 127). These multiple modes of scientific knowledge were accessible to women, even as they were increasingly limited to operating only in their own homes.

Women’s participation in the search for knowledge was often unnoticed and unacknowledged; it was also a practice not widely advertised throughout society. Their knowledge, often secretly gained, was discounted or deemed inferior. Even with these limitations, “the manuscripts of women from the 1530s to 1660 are marked by an increasing awareness of Paracelsian science, with its attendant focus on hypothesis and experiment”

(Hunter 131). Since experimentation and study were often conducted in the home, women were exposed to it and often participated with their fathers or husbands. This demonstrates what

Elaine Leong says was “family-wide involvement in gathering and generating practical knowledge” (95). Women would have been privy to the experimentation that was occurring in their homes and may have been deeply involved with it. Leong argues that the study of knowledge generation within the households should encourage “a rethinking of the gendering of household medical and scientific activities” (95). These examples of female participation in science demonstrate that women were aware of experimentation and participated in experimentation often without male involvement.

In addition to this exposure of science through their husbands and fathers, women were the caretakers in the household. They were the cooks who had to know the difference between poisonous mushrooms and edible ones, and they were the nurses who had to know which herbs helped soothe a burn or a stomachache. These activities required working in a scientific method to determine which items were safe and which were not. These women passed their skills down to one another, but they also had to create new solutions, which were often written in books and

“provided readers with a framework of health-related knowledge to guide… home based practices” (Leong, “Collecting” 82). If it is accepted that Shakespeare would have been privy to these new discoveries and practices in science, then it must be accepted that he would want to include this new found knowledge in his works, and he would have had no problem with allowing his female characters to participate in them.

Does this, however, mean that Shakespeare’s writing about women understanding the concepts of experimentation and the “scientific method” of experimentation was an accepted possibility for his audience? Shakespeare often afforded his female characters a superior intelligence and wit which would have been needed to understand and operate within the confines of the scientific method. Certainly, they had both the intellect and wit, and Shakespeare remained unafraid and unapologetic about demonstrating women’s intellect and wit in his plays.

However, women’s participation in medicine and science remained unaccepted. It was one thing to have the women experimenting with food and home-grown remedies; it was quite another to have them conducting these experiments in public. Shakespeare then uses the disguised woman to practice in these experimental fields without incurring the wrath of his audience.

The use of disguise has been broadly studied within Shakespearean texts. The OED, which uses the Shakespearean text King Lear as an example, defines “disguise” as an “altered

10 fashion of dress and personal appearance intended to conceal the wearer’s identity; the state of being thus transformed in appearance for concealment’s sake” (“Disguise, n2a”). This dual identity often concealed an evil aspect to characters like Iago or Macbeth who both appeared innocent while at the same time plotting evil. Many critics have viewed the use of disguise as merely a plot device to further the action of the play without considering the meaning behind the disguise. M.C. Bradbrook is representative of this group of critics. Bradbrook, in an early study from 1952, stated that her preferred definition of disguise was a “substitution, overlaying or metamorphosis of dramatic identity, whereby one character sustains two roles” (160). Dual identity disguises, such as those used by Iago and Macbeth, disguises moral character, not an identity change. The identity change creates an opportunity for new discoveries. By maintaining the women’s moral character while in disguise, Shakespeare’s women use the disguise to participate in activities that they would be barred from. Contributing to their agency is their exposure to new information about themselves and those around them thereby gaining the upper hand in their romantic relationships.

In their disguises, Shakespeare allows his female characters to acquire newfound knowledge that is only available to them because they have changed their identity. Because this change of identity often includes a change or gender, more recent research has focused on the transvestitism of the disguise on female characters. Stephen Orgel posits that the creation of gender in clothing was often used as a means for cross-dressing within the society and that transvestitism was an oft-repeated practice that was written within the plays. The irony of boys portraying women acting as men contributes to this transvestitism argument because “in recognizing the male actor beneath the female character impersonating a man, or beneath a male character who pretends to be a woman,” the audience experiences on stage what Orgel suggests

11 was an “oft-repeated practice” of cross-dressing (Orgel 130). Certainly, the concept of transvestitism was not foreign to the Early Modern audience; however, Orgel’s theory ignores the expected theatricality of the audience who willingly suspend disbelief. Other critics, like author Lloyd Davis, argue for a focus on identity and motivation as it relates to disguise. In moving beyond Bradbrook, Davis argues that “beneath the surface significance of dual roles and deception more complicated notions of identity and motivation are raised” (4). For Davis, the female identity is formed using disguise and “concentrates the dramatistic and rhetorical processes through which character is enacted and depicted” (4). The female character’s identity forms through use of the disguise because the disguise gives her more “confidence and courage”

(4). Davis fails to recognize the initial confidence and courage required of the women to don the disguise, nor does he acknowledge their newfound knowledge that is acquired along with their augmented confidence and courage.

This research studies the plays Love’s Labour’s Lost (LLL), As You Like It (AYLI), and

The Merchant of Venice (MOV) to interrogate the connection between Shakespeare’s use of disguise and the use of science and experimentation. The disguise opens a new world to the women, a consequence illustrated in the three plays under examination here. There are similarities between these plays that make them conducive to this study. All three are amongst his comedies, which means they involve lovers and more likely than not have a happy ending.

The comedies expose Shakespeare’s attitudes about women, for it is “in the comedies

Shakespeare seems if not a feminist then at least a man who takes the woman’s part” (Bamber 2).

The women usually wear their disguises in the presence of their love interests to determine the suitability of their mate. The women in these plays all don disguises at some point in the play and within those disguises they use the experimental method to test the character of their lover

12 thereby gaining a modicum of agency within their relationships. The similarities between these plays’ use of disguise, experimentation, and agency demonstrates not only Shakespeare’s knowledge about the scientific discoveries occurring during the period, but also his willingness to afford his female characters the wit and ingenuity necessary to devise their own experiments in their own fashion.

The distinct ways in which each play utilizes the disguised woman and her use of experimentation highlights Shakespeare’s determination to allow agency for these characters.

The LLL ladies conduct their experiment objectively, allowing the experiment alone to determine the results. These results prove unsatisfactory and the ladies exercise their agency by requiring the men to improve their character with a year-long engagement filled with character changing activities. In contrast, Rosalind in AYLI participates in a two-step process by conflating experimenting with training. When she tests Orlando and finds him lacking, she trains him, and thereafter has a second round of experimenting to ensure that her training has been successful.

Through her agency, she turns Orlando into a desirable husband and pairs the other romantic couples in the play. In MOV, Portia also participates in a two-step process with experimenting.

The first experiment, arranged by her father, constrains her only to observe the experiment, but she orchestrates her desired outcome, thus requiring a second experiment which, because of her disguise, proves more successful, if not more fortunate. Her agency becomes fully realized when she reclaims her honor after finding her husband unsuitable. In looking at the varying uses of experiments in these plays, this research provides a new understanding of how Shakespeare facilitates the agency of women in an Early Modern period that historically limited them.

CHAPTER 2

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST AND KNOWLEDGE IN DISGUISE

LLL is fundamentally a play about knowledge acquisition and the methodology of the different genders to acquire said knowledge. It explicitly compares the Aristotelian form of knowledge acquisition, which is faulty and unsustainable, to the Paracelsian form of knowledge acquisition, the experiment, which, if used properly, is far more effective and accurate. Though not gendered themselves, these forms of knowledge limit those who can participate in them by gender. Paracelsian knowledge was open to women because of its reliance on experimentation while Aristotelian knowledge precluded women as King Navarre does. The King of Navarre’s formation of a school of thought that prohibits women from the realm ignores the impact women could have on the environment of study. The King’s school also mirrors the universities, and more explicitly medical universities, that excluded women. The play opens with the male characters discussing how to increase their knowledge, thus introducing the concept of knowledge acquisition and its centrality to the play as well as highlighting the contrast of knowledge acquisition by the women. The King and his court agree to starve themselves of all pleasure to gain wisdom; that is their solution to increasing knowledge. The men believe that they more easily absorb and retain the knowledge they seek by avoiding all distractions. The

King of Navarre recounts his edict of the land to his court:

Therefore, brave conquerors—for so you are,

that war against your own affections

and the huge army of the world’s desires—

our late edict shall strongly stand in force.

Navarre shall be the wonder of the world;

our court shall be a little academe,

still and contemplative in living art. (1.1.8-14)

The men of the court expect to find fulfillment through their study which requires minimal food

(one meal a day and fasting one day a week), minimal sleep (three hours a day), and the exclusion of women. The men’s learning style adopts Aristotelian epistemology, so they rely on tradition for their knowledge. This form of knowledge acquisition juxtaposed against the women’s knowledge acquisition echoes throughout the play. The women’s use of scientific experimentation proves a more effective means of knowledge acquisition than what the men’s

“little academe” provides. Shakespeare privileges the more modern scientific forms of knowledge acquisition thereby privileging the women in the play.

The Princess of France and her ladies do not rely on the books of the ancients for epistemological enrichment. In fact, since they are barred from universities, they cannot rely on the books that the men use. The women use Paracelsian epistemology which relies heavily on experimentation and practice. The Princess and her court value wisdom and wit. The Princess admonishes the attendant who praises her beauty:

Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,

Needs not the painted flourish of your praise.

Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,

Not uttered by base sale of chapmen’s tongues.

I am less proud to hear you tell my worth

Than you much willing to be counted wise

In spending your wit in the praise of mine. (2.1.13-19)

The Princess is just as concerned with her wisdom as the men of the King’s academe. She places less value in her beauty, which she disparages, than in her own wisdom. The Princess immediately upon meeting the King of Navarre mocks his academe and his attempt to increase his knowledge. In bantering with the King, she states, “Were my lord so, his ignorance were wise, / Where now his knowledge must prove ignorance” (2.1.102-103). She is disparaging his pursuit of knowledge through his academe suggesting that ignorance would be wise, but the pursuit of knowledge is ignorant. The Princess suggests that the King’s version of knowledge acquisition proves ignorant, not that all wisdom is ignorant. The Paracelsian experimentation will allow the Princess and her ladies to gain knowledge of the men and acquire agency. The newly acquired agency over the men gives them control in the romantic sphere. Shakespeare sharply contrasts the men’s Aristetolian epistemological book studying against the women’s Paracelsian epistemology using experimentation. This contrast allows Shakespeare to demonstrate the women’s agency, when they choose to delay a marriage that the audience of a comedy would have expected.

The men’s study will be through books even though the books are dead tomes of knowledge. Studying will be their life, so they themselves will be the “living art” the King proclaims. The use of “living art” is ironic since they will be looking into the books of dead men.

For Shakespeare, “scholastic learning becomes little more than a literary corpse, necromantic in its form and function as it keeps preserved the dead letters of those who have gone before” (E.

Brown 23-24). The King’s “little academe” is comparable to academies of his time. As they engross themselves in the texts of the ancients, they accept that as the only true form of knowledge, at least important knowledge, available to them. The Early Modern scholar would spend most of his time studying the works of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates and others of the ancient

16 period. As such, when the King offers his court the opportunity to study, their form of studying follows the norm of the day by including only the absorption of books. By limiting their knowledge to books already written by men long dead, King Navarre has succumbed to the

Aristotelian version of knowledge acquisition. These men do not create new knowledge but attempt to conform to and memorize the knowledge that has been gained by others years ago.

Aristotelian scholars in the Early Modern period studied in seclusion, separated from women and society in general. King Navarre requires that his court, too, become “cloistered readers, imitating Aristotle at the expense of broader experience (even at the expense of other authors and authorities) and weaving like spiders in some darkened corner” (E. Brown 23).

Because they stayed within the confines of books, they became obsessed with the impossibilities that were suggested therein. Eric Brown, in discussing a comparison between LLL and

Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, states that the “play takes as its primary inquiry an epistemological conundrum: what is the final end of knowledge?” (22). Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus alludes to the obsessive nature of those who followed this form of learning. Doctor Faustus’s obsession with deeply hidden knowledge in books exposes him to unnatural knowledge leading to the eventual conjuring of a demon. The men of Navarre will live in similar seclusion without experiencing anything other than the books that they bury themselves in. This form of knowledge is both limiting and dangerous.

Biron disagrees with the concept of looking only to books to acquire knowledge. He argues that, “Small have continual plodders ever won, / Save base authority from others’ books”

(1.1.86-87). Biron disparages this “base authority from others’ books” as useless and finds it painful “to pore upon a book / To seek the light of truth, while truth the while / Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look” (1.1.74-76). Biron suggests that books will lead falsely and blind

17 the reader from what he is seeking. Biron furthers his argument against looking into books by comparing a book reader to an astronomer who knows the names of the stars in the sky but can do nothing else with that knowledge. He describes astronomers as:

These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights

That give a name to every fixéd star

Have no more profit of their shining nights

Than those that walk and wot not what they are. (1.1.188-191)

He argues that studying for study’s sake does not benefit men because the stars that were named so many years ago are no more beautiful to him than they are to the man who does not know the name of a single star. This dispute about the best form of knowledge acquisition occurs throughout the play as the men and women both seek wisdom in disparate ways.

Through Biron Shakespeare brings astronomy into the conversation. Though

Shakespeare’s writing of LLL was some twenty years after its first viewing, the star in Cassiopeia continued as a part of the general conversation and remained unforgettable. Biron’s inclusion of astronomy reminds the audience of Cassiopeia, and with the reminder Shakespeare also reminds the audience of the new epistemology that had come to the Early Modern scholarly community and the general public. Shenk highlights Shakespeare’s use of politics in his plays stating that

“early moderns could have fun with their politics, too. Love’s Labour’s Lost is a brilliant spoof”

(196). If it can be construed as an example of a “riff on elements in his own era’s journalism”

(Shenk 196), then certainly it can be assumed that Shakespeare would have included topics related to the journalistic fascination with the new star Cassiopeia.

Biron is the King’s most intelligent and witty friend, and although he opposes the learning environment the King proposes, he fails to suggest another. However, Biron recognizes

18 that with the new science available to them, signified by the astrological occurrence of the new star in Cassiopeia, better forms of knowledge acquisition should be explored instead of the proposed monk-like study session. Biron recognizes that the astronomers, who were just as surprised about the new star as the general public, were in no better position to understand its arrival. Biron, however, continues to rely on his own wit rather than the experimentation method, and remains unchanged.

Like the men of Navarre, the women, too, are on a mission to learn. As with most

Shakespearean comedies, romance, love, and marriage formulate a large part of the plot with most of the men and women paired up and married. LLL, however, does not conclude with a simple marital transaction. The women seek more than just a love match but also seek knowledge of their potential marriage partners. Historically, high-class women, such as those of the aristocracy, would not have a say in their marriage partners. Because of their status, their marriages were arranged to ensure a continuation of the family line, wealth, and a continued connection to the aristocracy. In contrast, the women of LLL, rather than immediately accepting the men who woo them, attempt to gain knowledge about and test the character of the King’s court. In their quest, the women use experimentation like that used in the scientific method. This use of this scientific method affords them control of their situation. The women then get to choose who and when they will wed. By giving the women the control of their marriage partners,

Shakespeare provides agency for his women in marriage. The women theorize that the men are worth marrying, they create an experiment to test their hypothesis, and based on the results, they decide the accuracy of their hypothesis or the need for further testing. This process is, in fact, an application of the scientific method, and the women are participating in science when they operate this way with the men.

Although excluded from scientific scholarship, women were able to conduct experiments.

Long determines that active engagement with experimentation “is not unusual for women of [the period]” (18). The Princess’s court would have been accustomed to sharing their discoveries with one another. Domestic research was not limited to the peasantry, but “from 1530 to 1580-1590 a generation of gentlewomen and noblewomen became increasingly recognized for their skill in preparation of many household and medicinal chemicals and pharmaceuticals” (Hunter 128). The

Princess’s experiments would not have been unusual to Shakespeare’s audience.

Unfortunately, women were often excluded from the academic environment as we see in

LLL. The King in his effort to create a little academe has written decrees to which his entire court must adhere, including, “That no woman shall come within a mile / of [his] court” (1.1.119). The exclusion of women from a scholastic experiment would not have been unusual for

Shakespeare’s audience. Long observes that women, “already excluded from academic disciplines were pushed out of the profession and practices of knowledge” (Long 20). The Ladies of France then have created a “little academe” of their own when they experiment with the men of Navarre. This group science would have been familiar to them as historically women “worked in specific communal locations: within their family environment, their community, within the confines of the English country house, or among groups of practitioners. They communicated possibly by way of circles of friends and probably by way of visitors and visits they themselves made” (Hunter 131). When the Ladies share their hypothesis about the men, the audience sees how sharing among female friends about their scientific discoveries could have occurred.

The women discuss the men they will soon meet prior to the King of Navarre and his court’s arrival to meet with the Princes and ladies of France. By discussing the men’s known

20 qualities, the ladies practice a form of hypothesis. They have observed the men and have some previous knowledge of them. Maria describes Longueville as

a man of sovereign parts he is esteemed:

Well fitted in arts, glorious in arms,

Nothing becomes him ill that he would well. (2.1.44-46)

Maria uses glowing terms, even though she met him only briefly at a marriage feast. Each woman in turn discusses the aspects of the men’s characters using similarly positive and affectionate terms. Katherine considers Dumaine “a well-accomplished youth /… least knowing ill,” (2.1.56-58). And to Rosaline, Biron is “a merrier man, / Within the limit of becoming mirth”

(2.1.66-67) who has a “sweet and voluble” (2.1.76) discourse. None of these women had spent much time with the men they describe, yet the hypotheses of their characters are all positive and the slight negative they see brushed aside. Even the Princess takes note of their admiring descriptions when she says,

God bless my ladies! Are they all in love,

That every one her own hath garnished

With such bedecking ornaments of praise? (2.1.77-79)

The women have created their hypothesis of the men. These glowing terms will be tested when the women have their second meeting with their love interests. Yes, the women know, or rather, know of the men; however, to gain further knowledge of them, they do not resort to books, but to experimentation. Certainly, no books exist about these suitors, but conduct books were popular in the late sixteenth century to teach ladies about expectations of marriage. Rather than resort to those books, however, the women choose to use the epistemological practice of experimentation.

This contrasts with the men’s approach which limits their ability to learn about the practicality of living life outside a cloistered academe.

Amongst themselves and their family members, the use of experimentation by women was not only acceptable, but an aspect of their social lives. Shakespeare again alludes to this accepted custom when Rosaline discusses her medical knowledge with Boyet, one of the lords attending the Princess, in bantering about his heart:

Boyet: Sick at the heart.

Rosaline: Alack, let it blood.

Boyet: Would that do it good?

Rosaline: My physic says ‘Ay.’ (2.1.184-187)

Physic here is often glossed as “medical knowledge.” According to the OED, “physic” is defined as “the science of the human body, its diseases, and their treatment; medical science” (“Physic, n4”). Rosaline has medical knowledge, which leads the audience to understand that she would have been involved in scientific experimentation as well, and the men she travels with know of her knowledge. Boyet is neither confused nor surprised by her declaration. In public, however, their familiarity with experimentation would have been a different thing. Therefore, women hid their participation because their open participation “became increasingly difficult with the controls levied by guilds over trade and by the Church over medicine in the late fifteenth century” (Hunter 127). Thus, Shakespeare disguises his women when they conduct their experiments.

The King’s illogical use of a disguise shows that his epistemology has not improved his ability to woo women. When the men discuss returning to the women to woo them, “they initially plan to court the women in their own persons, [but] by act five they change their minds

22 and come dressed in disguise” (Shenk 210). This display of fickleness to their academe and commitment to be forsworn is the harbinger for the women that these men fall short of the women’s original thought. The men have no purpose in wearing their disguises other than “to parley, to court, and dance” (5.2.122). By breaking their vows “not to see a woman” (1.1.37) during their three-year academe, the men have shown their inconstancy, and by wooing in disguise rather than their own identities, the men display their fickleness even further (Shenk

211). The men’s use of disguises has no point and consequently returns no results. The disguised men are easily identified by the women who have donned disguises of their own.

The men’s knowledge deficiency leaves them unable to distinguish the women other than by surface symbols. When Boyet informs the ladies that the King’s court will arrive in disguise he states that each man “will advance / Unto his several mistress, which they’ll know / By favors several which they did bestow” (5.2.124-125). The men will only know the women based on a trinket or baud that they had given. The men look only to the surface beauty of the women without any consideration for their characters or personalities. While the women have only a cursory knowledge of the men, their limited knowledge focuses on the men’s character and personality traits. The men have no such consideration and must rely on outward appearances to find their mate. Because of the need for these outward symbols, the men expose their knowledge of the women as substandard and superficial.

The women, on the other hand, experiment with the men and use their prior knowledge to further their knowledge. The women test what they already know while at the same time experimenting for an even greater understanding of their subjects. For these women, experimentation provides the best means to test their hypothesis about the men. The disguise allows them the opportunity for experimentation, but the experimentation itself reveals the men’s

23 characters. Although the men also use disguise, they ineffectively conceal their identities and fail in acquiring any additional information about the women they pursue. They have no interest in gaining knowledge as they claim at the onset of the play, but only in conquering the women.

Viewing both men and women in disguise exemplifies that the donning of disguise alone does not provide knowledge. In concealing their identities, the women seek more than to fool their male counterparts; they plan to gain knowledge, setting out specifically to do so using their disguise. That plan yields the desired results. As the men of Navarre attempt to both deceive and gain knowledge, their results prove less successful and contribute to the comedy.

Most of the disguised heroines in Shakespeare’s plays disguise themselves as men. These gender shifting disguises are often worn as a form of protection for the women, or to allow them access to arenas into which they would otherwise be barred. The women of LLL, however, are not disguised as men but as other women. The women in LLL use their disguises not only to learn something about the men, but also so that the men can prove their “knowledge” of the women that they profess to love. Even in their disguises as women, they retain complete control of the situation. The women disguise themselves as one another to determine if the men’s professed love for them is true or simply a passing fancy. The women give each man the task of recognizing the woman he professes to love, as the Princess states:

The gallants shall be tasked;

For, ladies, we will everyone be masked;

And not a man of them shall have the grace

Despite of suit to see a lady’s face. (5.2.126-129)

Through this experimentation and while in their disguises the women test the men’s knowledge, character, love, and fidelity.

Before the men approach the women in their disguised state, they again discuss the edict and the ways to acquire knowledge. The King asks Biron for a way to break their vow and to

“prove / [Their] loving lawful and [their] faith not torn” (4.3.278-279). After their first unsuccessful attempt to discover the source of knowledge through their academe, the men flounder for yet another source of knowledge. In response, Biron resituates their reason for studying, changing it to women and love thereby giving the men the freedom to be with the women they claim to love while at the same time upholding their scholastic vow. His argument suggests that:

love, first learned in a lady’s eyes,

Lives not alone immured in the brain,

But with the motion of all elements

Courses as swift as thought in every power,

And gives to every power a double power,

Above their functions and their offices. (4.3.322-327)

Biron shifts towards “love” replicating what the women, too, endeavor to learn about. The men previously believed that they would find knowledge in books and in abstinence from food, sleep, and women. Biron acknowledges that “fools [they] were these women to forswear” (4.3.350).

Their epistemology is not through books as they had originally believed. Now, these men believe they will find knowledge by studying love. Unfortunately, their new approach proves just as foolish as the last. The men have a limited understanding of love which focuses on surface attraction. Shakespeare demonstrates their failure to move beyond the sport of love when they approach the women in their Muscovite disguises.

Shakespeare uses the competing disguises to demonstrate the women’s superiority. After rejecting their earlier quest for knowledge, the men decide to approach the women once more

“appareled thus, / Like Muscovites or Russians” (5.2.120-121). The men’s faulty use of the ethnic disguise compares negatively to the women and their far more effective use of disguise.

The men have no reason to conceal their identities. Their attempt at wooing in disguise is just as baseless as their earlier declaration to avoid women. The women, on the other hand, use the disguise to participate in their experiment. When asked by the ladies why they should wear the masks, the Princess admits that “the effect of my intent is to cross theirs. / They [the men] do it in mocking merriment, / And mock for mock is only my intent” (5.2.138-140). However, in addition to mocking, the ladies use the disguise to question the men, thereby administering their own experiment. The Princess creates a connection between wit and experimentation demonstrating the necessity for both to acquire knowledge. The women, who seek knowledge through experimentation, have just as good if not a better technique of learning in the disguise than the men having at winning the woman of their choice. Consequently, the Princess has productively connected wit with experimentation, which Biron fails to do in his witty responses.

The women’s disguises include a simple veil and switched tokens of affection that the men had sent. The simplicity of their disguise should have made it easy for the men to discover the deceit.

Their failure to do so demonstrates their failure to know these women they claim to love. The men’s absorption with books has left them unable to formulate practical knowledge.

Shakespeare also utilizes competing forms of epistemology to showcase female superiority. The men consider themselves intelligent and have pledged their continuing quest for knowledge. However, they are poorly equipped to solve the “task” set by the women. By showing their inability to solve so simple a problem, Shakespeare continues his criticism of the

“the tradition of scholarly auctoritas, and assignations of truth-value based on precedent” (E.

Brown 24). The men’s book-based education juxtaposed against the education that the women gain with their experimentation condemns the men’s epistemological attempts. The men’s inept pursuit causes them to lose their well-trained thoughts and begin stumbling over their rehearsed speeches. They begin to lose the concept of math. Rosaline, dressed as the Princess, quizzes them on “how many inches / Is in one mile. If they have measured many, / The measure, then, of one is eas’ly told” (5.2.189-191). Rosaline mocks Petrarchan tropes of love that the men use to woo, but this too merely duplicates already established ideas about wooing. This opening quiz about math also allows Shakespeare to contrast the faulty learning of the men with the experimental abilities of the ladies, thereby continuing E. Brown’s claim that Shakespeare

“undermines the foundation of scholasticism itself” (24). The men continue dumbfounded and lost in the banter that the women participate in. The women use repeated barbs against the men who seem oblivious to the them, as Boyet notes after watching the women banter with the men,

“The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen / As is the razor’s edge—invisible, / Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen” (5.2.257-259). Boyet marvels at the women who use their wit to wound without the victim’s knowledge. The women display sharper wit than the men and use it against them unsparingly.

The men’s knowledge remains demonstrably inferior to the women. Once the King and his men depart, the women discuss their disappointment with the Navarre men’s knowledge. The rumors that the Navarre court had “made a vow, / Till painful study shall outwear three years /

No woman may approach his silent court” had reached the Princess of France (2.1.22-24). The

Princess becomes aware that the court’s quest for knowledge has forced the ladies of France to spend their time outside the gates of Navarre. With such a drastic edict to acquire knowledge, the

Princess clearly expects sharper wits from men thus devoted to knowledge; she queries, “are these the breed of wits so wondered at?” (5.2.267). Here again Shakespeare participates in what

E. Brown declares is “Shakespeare parod[ying] the lucubrations of academic learning” (24). The men fail to impress the women with their ability to identify each woman, and they fail to impress the women with their witty banter. Their intensive study should have resulted in an intellect that would have been able to discover the disguises and participate in conversation that was common in courts of the nobility. The men’s book knowledge has usurped their social knowledge and they struggle to participate in common flirting conventions of the Early Modern period. Upon their exit, Biron, recognizing their failure, concedes that they have been outwitted stating, “”by heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff” (5.2.264). The men fail to identify their lover, woo effectively, or banter wittily, and the women mock them for their failure. Shakespeare repeats the criticism of the men after their disguised encounter. The women berate the men,

Rosaline: Well liking wits they have—gross, gross, fat, fat!

Princess: Oh, poverty in wit! Kingly-poor flout! (5.2.269-270)

Unfortunately for the men of Navarre, the women mock them, but they have also discovered that the men are untrustworthy. The women therefore decline to be participants in the love charade that the men later devise. The ladies have successfully displayed to the King’s court “the distinction between being in love and merely acting and talking love” (Chaney 48). The Princess and her ladies know the difference, and through their use of the disguise, the women demonstrate their agency and participate in an experiment of their own making. The men must willingly obey or lose the love they declare to have.

As the play concludes, the women have learned a great deal, but the men still must seek knowledge. The women successfully acquire knowledge about the men they are interested in. In

28 their own disguises, however, the men are incapable of determining anything of value about the women. They become thwarted and confused victims of their own disguise game. The women in their experiment have conquered the men, while the men are left bewildered. Shakespeare here has given a greater wit to the women and has thereby allowed greater subjectivity to the women for “the women have a more effective wit” (Erickson 70). Their greater wit, gained through experimentation, provides a means to gather knowledge. Through the experiment, and not books, the women gather the knowledge needed to acquire agency. The women exercise their agency which gives them control over the men and their situation. The men, therefore, become the

“losers” in love’s labor. As E. Brown suggests, “those who rely on the tenets of scholasticism inevitably are the losers of all labors in the play, whether of love or study” (27). The winner then, is she who experiments.

LLL begins and ends with an interrogation of epistemology. Shakespeare’s positioning of the two competing epistemologies highlights the debate occurring during this time. Shakespeare provides his audience with his answer to the debate by ending his play with experimentation.

Instead of the expected happily ever after of most Shakespearean comedies, LLL ends with yet another experiment. The men are each tasked with maintaining a decorum that the women would prefer of a spouse. What was once considered a virtue has become undelightful. Each woman’s initial speech about their intended mate is contradicted at the end of the play. Lewis states that

“the wit that is clearly described as salutary in the first passage has turned hurtful (to the women) in the second” (Lewis 246). Therefore, the women want the men to now perform an experiment that the women generate.

Shakespeare increases the level of agency acquired by the women when the Princess receives notice that her father, the King of France, has died. She suddenly becomes the Queen of

29 her country as well as the Queen of her own fate. Jesting ceases. If the men can change their ways at the end of twelve months, they will each gain a spouse as the Princess, now Queen, tells the King of Navarre, “Your oath I will not trust… / But that it bear this trial and last love – /

Then at the expiration of the year, / Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts / And by this virgin palm now kissing thine, / I will be thine” (5.2.780-793). In the concluding scene between the would-be lovers, the women with their superior experiential knowledge control the situation and the progress of their relationships.

What knowledge have the women been seeking throughout the course of the play? The women have been trying to ascertain if the men are suitable for marriage. The men have proven that their love is simply superficial, further diminishing them in the women’s eyes. The men are only interested in looking at the appearance of the women, similar to their looking at the appearance of the words in the pre-written books. The men would have acquired no deeper knowledge or understanding than what they have received from others. Because of this limitation in learning, “the men’s judgement proves dim, based as it is on outward signs, like the brooch and the glove that confuse them when the ladies switch their love tokens” (Lewis 254). The women’s quest for knowledge is far more important to their lives as it will pertain to the future of their nations, with the marrying of not just people but kingdoms. Their quest, therefore, is far weightier stuff; not just to be the “wonder of the world” (1.1.12) as the King hopes but to create an even greater combined kingdom. Shakespeare has permitted a greater awareness of knowledge and how to achieve it to the women of the play than to the men. The women use experimentation, not scholarship, to gain knowledge, and their knowledge proves far surer than the knowledge that the men gain, which is quickly eschewed when confronted with the challenges of life.

Through this use of experimentation, the women have also acquired agency. If knowledge, as the King suggests, is the greatest achievement for man, and to have knowledge is to uncover “things hid and barred… from common sense” (1.1.57), then the men have failed in their quest while the women have been utterly successful. Shakespeare, accordingly, affords the women the agency over their lives and relationship, and the audience would not have been offended by this display of agency. When given their tasks, Biron doubts his own ability to successfully complete the experiment laid before him when he states “A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall” (5.2.856). Biron’s statement “both conveys a tone of resignation and suggests that [he] foresees the possibility that chance may intervene to disappoint his best intentions” (Chaney 60). The play makes it clear that the men should not be followed or even loved by these women. At least not yet.

The women’s disguised experiment works toward a greater social good in the quest to identify suitable partners. The men have taken their wooing lightly. The now-Queen reminds the

King that she considered his expressions of love as a

courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy,

As bombast as the lining of time;

But more devout than this in our respects

Have we not been, and therefore met your loves

In their own fashion, like a merriment. (5.2.766-769)

The women took the men to be jesting, so they participated in the jest with them. The experiment that the ladies conduct provides a serious endeavor that proves useful in acquiring knowledge.

Therefore, the women willingly participate in the jest, but because they have connected it with their experiment, their outcome becomes more significant than “mock for mock.” The Queen

31 does not admit that the experiment allows them a deeper glimpse of the men’s characters.

However, through the experimentation and jesting with the men, the women have gained both knowledge and agency. The women have achieved agency even as they continue to experiment with the men. Larson argues that Shakespeare “extends… the agency of the female protagonists beyond the parameters of their seemingly isolated playing spaces” (Larson 167). They display agency both within and without their isolated space. Within this space, the women participate in experimentation and their female agency becomes extended. Without the space, their agency remains display as the women control the remainder of the play. As they banter with the King and his friends, they gain greater control of the situation. Their courtly exchange and conversational game play provide the women the ability to practice experimentation. The women are aware of their superior position of wisdom; the Princess states, “we are wise girls to mock our lovers so” (5.2.59). She voices her wisdom and the wisdom of the women who accompany her. Clearly, the men cannot identify the women they claim to love, and their wooing becomes a

“pleasant jest” and a farce.

Within their disguises, the women have achieved far more than the men have within the little academe created by the King of Navarre. The conclusion of LLL defies expectations of a comedy. Typically, Shakespeare’s comedy plays end with most, if not all, cast members of the play marrying and all disharmony resolved. LLL does not have this happily ever after ending.

The levity that follows the unmasking becomes quickly lost. With the sad news of the French

King’s death, the women do not agree to marriage immediately, but require more of their suitors.

Their knowledge and increased agency allow the ladies to demand a change in their suitors’ character and a yearlong engagement. With this demand of the year-long experiment that the women task the men with, the audience is left to wonder if the men will succeed in completing

32 their experiment as the women have in completing theirs. The women have utilized their disguises to acquire knowledge of their pursuers and use their newfound knowledge to determine the fate of their relationships and thus their lives. LLL ends before the audience can see whether the men follow through on the experiment that has been devised for them and the audience remains unsure if the men can be trained to be good husbands. As You Like It, on the other hand, does just that: explores beyond the initial training, and presents a testing process that entails testing, training, and re-testing of the suitor.

CHAPTER 3

EXPERIMENTING WITH ORLANDO’S LOVE IN AS YOU LIKE IT

While the women of LLL use their disguise in a place of physical safety to experiment with the men in their lives, Rosalind, of AYLI, wears her disguise initially for protection in exile.

Soon to exit into parts unknown, Celia declares, “now go we in content / To liberty, and not to banishment” (1.3.135-136). Rosalind finds not only liberty, but also the ability to question the limitations placed on her as a woman. Rosalind discovers her ability to survive in a foreign environment and experiments with her love interest to determine his suitability as a mate. Earlier in the play we see Rosalind’s wit as she banters with Duke Frederick to defend herself against his false accusations, but Rosalind becomes an even more witty and daring character in her male disguise. As Clara Claiborne Park states, “Dressed as a man, a nubile woman can go places and do things she couldn’t do otherwise” (270). In her disguise as the male Ganymede Rosalind experiments with her personal circumstances and discovers freedom from the restrictions of the male dominated society in which she lives. Rosalind uses the disguise, much like the women of

LLL, to challenge the love and wisdom of her mate through experimentation. Rosalind’s experimentation is not perfect, however. After her first experiment, Rosalind begins training

Orlando and must re-examine him thereafter to ensure that he adheres to her requirements. Thus,

Rosalind adjusts the conditions under which she tests her subject so that in the second experiment, she is assured a positive outcome. Rosalind uses the scientific experimentation method in two ways while disguised. First, she uses it to test and train Orlando, and after she has adequately trained him, she conducts a second experiment in how to be a good husband. Both uses of experimentation allow Rosalind to develop her confidence and agency in her relationship.

Additionally, Rosalind controls more than Orlando, but the actions of several of the characters in the play as well.

Shakespeare’s use of cross-dressing disguise in AYLI is not unusual during this time.

However, as Rackin states, “In plays where the heroines dressed as boys, gender became doubly problematic” (29). As with LLL, the disguise allows Rosalind to question the men in her life and to test her own fortitude in the world. Some critics have focused on this dual disguise to discuss the homoerotic aspects of the play because of Celia’s declarations of love and devotion to

Rosalind, and Orlando’s wooing of a character he assumes is male. Philip Traci and Ian F.

Moulton argue that homosexuality runs throughout the multiple story lines of the play. As intriguing as these ideas may be, Rosalind’s use of disguise appears gendered, but not homoerotic. She assumes the identity of a male youth and as such, she performs actions that she would not have been able to as a woman. She uses the disguise to participate in experimentation with her love interest as well as with herself. To do so, she becomes Rosalind disguised as

Ganymede disguised as Rosalind. The double layering of disguise questions the expectations of genders and how these expectations prove faulty. She experiments with Orlando in scenarios she creates and requires his response according to her requirements for a mate. As a “man” speaking with Orlando, Rosalind becomes the proverbial fly on the wall listening to conversations that

Orlando has with Ganymede about women and Rosalind in particular. Rosalind tests Orlando’s attitudes about gendered expectations for men and women. When she finds him lacking, she corrects him, and tests again to confirm his changed attitude.

Through the cross-dressed Rosalind, Shakespeare interrogates gender conventions of the

Early Modern period. He exposes the faulty gender conventions that limit women and privilege men. When Rosalind decides to create her “contentment” dressed as a man, she enumerates the

35 male characteristics that she will display to operate successfully as a man. She declares that she will have “a swashing and a martial outside, / As many other mannish cowards have / That do outface it with their semblances” (1.3.116-118). Rosalind recognizes that many men who are

“cowards” put up a false front of bravery to function as a man in their society. Ludlin argues that

“one of the key traits of masculinity was courage, for men were expected to exercise their agency in the English patriarchal society” (24). Thus, Rosalind recognizes that she must at least feign courage as other “mannish cowards” do and exercise her agency as Ganymede. She will, therefore, put up the “semblance” of a man. Orlando puts on a similar “semblance” when he enters the forest and threatens Duke Senior and Jacques with his sword to get food. In explaining his actions, Orlando states, “I thought that all things had been savage here, / And therefore put I on the countenance / Of stern commandment” (2.7.112-114). Orlando exemplifies this false front and the audience witnesses the very actions that Rosalind had described. Rosalind also lists the weaponry that she will wear to signify her masculinity: a “curtal ax” and a “boar-spear”

(1.3.113-114). These weapons “were integral to a subject’s sense of identity or self” (Ludlin 23).

Rosalind wears the clothes and weaponry of men; therefore, she embodies the outer trappings of a man.

Even as she encounters men and develops relationships with them in her disguise as a man, Rosalind is not exposed as the woman we all know her to be. Pamela Brown argues that

Shakespeare is exposing the contrast between boys and women on the stage with Rosalind’s ability to successfully operate in both spheres. P. Brown argues that while Rosalind was successful as a boy, she failed in the performance of “adult manhood” because she could not maintain the stoicism expected of adult men, and “by letting the gender mask slip, Shakespeare draws attention to the boy who is cleverly acting a woman who fails to ‘counterfeit to be a man’”

(159). However, Rosalind does operate as a young man more so than a boy in her disguise. The first encounter that Rosalind has as Ganymede is with Corin, a man who typically appears in the pastoral setting. Upon greeting her he names Rosalind, “fair sir” (2.4.68). Corin’s greeting proves Rosalind’s acceptance as a man in her disguise. As Ganymede, Rosalind interacts with men of Arden as well as Duke Senior’s court. When she encounters other men from the country

Rosalind is not accosted or accused of being a fraud. She is accepted as a young man in every sense of the word. Her wisdom unquestioned she makes decisions for the lives of others, albeit only in the romantic realm. Both men and women from the pastoral society find her such a credible man that women want to woo her, and men want to befriend her.

Rosalind initially wears her disguise for protection’s sake, but soon comes to appreciate the freedom that being disguised as a man provides. As they flee court, Rosalind and Celia devise how to protect themselves from the dangers to come by using the disguise of a man.

Rosalind states:

Were it not better

Because that I am more than common tall,

That I did suit me all points like a man:

Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will. (1.3.110-111,114)

Similar to Viola in Twelfth Night, Rosalind travels without male protection in an unknown location and resorts to the disguise of a man to provide the protection that she needs from potential assault. Both women find themselves in situations outside of their control. Rosalind has been banished from her country on pain of death and Viola is shipwrecked far from her homeland. Both must preserve themselves until reunited with their separated male protectors.

However, Rosalind speaks far more openly of the danger to both her and Celia traveling alone

37 when she tells Celia, “what danger will it be to us. / Maids as we are to travel forth so far! /

Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold” (1.3.104-106). Both women are forced into the untenable position of travelling without a familial male companion and so must disguise themselves for protection. Rosalind and Celia must travel to the Forest of Arden and find a place to live once there. In her disguise, however, Rosalind finds a joy of freedom, “O Jupiter, how merry are my spirits!” (2.4.1). Celia, on the other hand, does not find the same merriment and states, “I care not for my spirits if my legs were not weary” (2.4.2). The first appearance of

Rosalind as Ganymede, the boy, and Celia as Aliena, his sister show the difference in their attitudes based on the freedom of their differing clothing. The man’s attire, even in costume, would have been more comfortable than the requirements of female dress. Though their shoes were probably the same, “shoes [that] were square-toed in shape and did not begin to have heels until the end of the sixteenth century” (Ludlin 18), the bodice of a woman’s dress would have been “quite rigid and tapered to a sharp point at or below the waistline. To maintain this shape, it was sometimes bolstered by busks or stays made of wood or whalebone, or even by iron bodies that were either a part of the garment or worn underneath it” (Ludlin 18). This gendering of clothing also provided a gendering of attitude in the characters, “since all of the actors on the

Shakespearean stage were male, their characters’ sex or gender resulted overwhelmingly from the clothes they wore” (Ludlin 1). The difference in the apparel would certainly have made a difference in the ability to travel far on foot. Rosalind and Celia would have been dressed similarly in the court; however, in the Forest of Arden, Ganymede and Aliena have a different dress and thus a dissimilar reaction to their travels.

Rosalind mocks the gendered expectations of men and women as she traverses both realms. This mockery of gendered expectations is also how she will experiment with Orlando. In

38 her exhaustion, Rosalind experiences more freedom in her male attire than does Celia. She comforts Celia stating:

I could find in my heart to disgrace my man’s

apparel and to cry like a woman, but I must comfort the

weaker vessel, as doublet and hose out to show itself

courageous to petticoat; therefore, courage, good Aliena. (2.4.3-6)

Rosalind blatantly points to the gendered clothing to discuss the requirements of men. The doublet and hose restrain Rosalind and she must not “cry like a woman.” She must show herself courageous to the petticoat, Aliena, and therefore she will not cry. Her disguise has determined her gender and thus determines her reactions to situations she encounters.

Rosalind must maintain her gendered role regardless of emotional turmoil. When

Rosalind is told of Orlando’s lioness attack, she faints. But because she is in the guise of a man who would not succumb to their feelings in this way, she must find an excuse for her reaction,

“Ah, sirrah, a body would think this was well counterfeited! / I pray you, tell your brother how well I counterfeited” (4.3.164-165). Oliver, recognizing this inappropriate reaction from a man, even a youth, shows his astonishment with Ganymede’s reaction and tells him to “take a good heart and counterfeit to be a man” (3.3.170). Rosalind’s incorrect reaction calls into questions

Ganymede’s manhood. Oliver’s repetition of “counterfeit” also suggests that even real men had to fake their emotions and reactions. These gendered expectations mandate the reactions that a man can safely display. Oliver’s statement provides confirmation to the audience that men recognize the counterfeit that they themselves as well as other men display in controlling their emotions. Celia, too, points out the reactions that Rosalind should have as the man, Ganymede.

When Orlando does not show up for their first training with Ganymede pretending to be

Rosalind, Rosalind bemoans her heartbreak. She confesses to Celia that she will weep, and Celia reminds Rosalind of the requirements of manhood: “yet have the grace to consider that / tears do not become a man” (3.4.2-3). Rosalind receives multiple reminders that her gender must conform with societal expectations.

Shakespeare highlights these faulty expectations when he uses the male disguise for

Rosalind. Throughout the play, Rosalind repeatedly mocks the gendered roles of men and women. She does so by constantly recalling to the audience that she is, in fact, a woman in disguise. In speaking to Celia about Orlando, Rosalind declares, “Do you not know that I am a woman? When I think I / must speak” (3.2.230-231). This is, of course, one of the many stereotypes of women: they speak whatever comes into their heads and are not easily kept quiet.

Rosalind continues her castigation of women during a conversation with Orlando. When explaining to Orlando how a young man such as herself has such elevated language, she explains that her uncle, who was an “inland man” who had fallen in love with a woman there, taught her how to speak above her station. To this explanation she adds, “Thank God [she is] not a woman, to be touched / with so many giddy offenses as [her uncle] hath generally taxed their / whole sex withal” (3.2.321-322). The audience is in on the joke and recognizes that Rosalind describes stereotypes that she does not believe are true about herself. In this, her first negative comment about women to Orlando, Rosalind interrogates the requirements and expectations of women.

When Orlando agrees to her offer to help him overcome his love of Rosalind, she repeatedly prefaces her commands with “an I were your very Rosalind” when correcting Orlando. In her disguise, Rosalind “performs” her gender for the audience and for Orlando. Rosalind then verbalizes what society expects of women, including actions and words when being wooed. Her

40 disparaging comments about women in his presence provide an opportunity to discover

Orlando’s opinions about women as well.

Rosalind begins the experiment by convincing Orlando she can cure him of his unrequited and unrealistic love sickness. In her disguised state, she can openly state that she will

“not cast away my physic but on those / that are sick [with love]” (3.2.329-330). This statement places her in league with those who openly practice medicine: men. She then declares:

Love is merely a madness and, I tell you, deserves

as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the

reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the

lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I

profess curing it by counsel. (3.2.363-367)

The use of the words “sickness” and “cure” hearkens to the idea of the science of medical treatments. Medical treatments were often lengthy in nature to cure ailments. Women were involved in creating some of these remedies, and “from manuscripts we learn that several women at least engaged with and responded to changes in the environment, for example learning how to deal with smallpox coming into England in the fifteenth century” (Hunter 127). According to

Hunter, remedies were discovered and replicated to combat the sicknesses that were occurring in early modern England. When Orlando asks for help to overcome his “madness,” Rosalind discusses the way that she has previously “cured” a sufferer from the malady of love. The experiment that Rosalind recounts on the phantom lover she invents requires the lover to imagine

Ganymede as:

his mistress, and I set him every day to woo me.

At which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve,

be effeminate, changeable, loving and liking, proud, fantastical,

apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of

smiles; for every passion something and for no passion truly anything.

(3.2.371-375)

In this manner, Rosalind plans to “cure” Orlando and make his liver “as clean as a sound sheep’s heart, that there / shall not be one spot of love in’t” (3.2.382-383). With her introduction of the cure, she continues her practice of disparaging women. This overt mocking of women demonstrates the irony of her situation. Just as the audience is aware that she does not believe this as the truth about women, the audience is also aware that she does not hope to cure him of his malady, but rather to ascertain the validity of his love. Her experiment does not cure but seeks to confirm.

As Rosalind interacts with Orlando, her disguised condition allows her to experiment with him and train him in the proper way to woo her. Like the Princess and her ladies in LLL,

Rosalind has foreknowledge of Orlando. Her disguise allows her to test the strength of Orlando’s professed love and his ability to woo. In his first test, Orlando fails, and Rosalind castigates him to Celia: “his very hair is of the dissembling color” (3.4.6). Her test of his faithfulness has found him lacking. Celia, acting as a participant in the experiment of Orlando, finds far more wrong with Orlando’s actions than does Rosalind. She tells Rosalind that she finds “no truth in him”

(3.4.19). However, Celia’s reproach of Orlando also shows her commitment to Rosalind, who is, after all her, cousin. Their familial connection and shared experience of escape have created a bond that causes the ladies to be protective of one another. When Celia first becomes aware that

Orlando also resides in the Forest of Arden, she happily declares to Rosalind, “Oh, wonderful, wonderful and most wonderful— / wonderful and yet again wonderful, and after that out of all /

42 hooping” (3.2.175-177). Celia makes it clear that she rejoices that Orlando and Rosalind are in the forest together, but also that he has penned love poetry about Rosalind. Only after he does not live up to his word, thereby failing the experiment, does Celia become reproachful of him:

“Oh, that’s a brave man: he writes brave verses, speaks / brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely” (3.4.35-36). However much Celia was initially in favor of Orlando, his untrustworthiness causes her to turn against him. She witnesses her cousin’s pain and becomes defensive on her behalf.

During this conversation Rosalind and Celia contemplate testing Orlando. Celia begins to tell Rosalind about discovering Orlando pining for his love. Rosalind peppers Celia with questions about Orlando such as, “What did he when thou saw’st him? What said he? How looked he? Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where remains he?”

(3.2.202-204). In response to these questions Celia replies, “It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the propositions / of a lover” (3.2.214-215). Herein, Celia raises the idea of science and experimentation. The idea of atoms was already circulating during the Early Modern period. The

OED defines “atomies” as “an atom, a mote” (“Atomy, n1”) and uses this very quote from AYLI as an example of the word’s use. Here, Shakespeare displays his understanding of science and atoms: that atoms were small, invisible to the naked eye and numerous. Rosalind asks many questions, and Celia compares the number of questions she asks to atoms. Additionally, Celia suggests that there may be more questions than atoms and that it is just as difficult to “resolve the propositions of a lover.” This has often been glossed as “answer the questions.” The word

“proposition” can also be considered the hypothesis developed by scientists to establish an idea later tested through further investigation. This further investigation is exactly what Rosalind participates in when she experiments with Orlando.

Rosalind experiments by portraying a difficult “Rosalind” and she fulfills gendered stereotypes by intentionally acting exactly as she describes earlier: changeable, proud, and shallow. She does so to experiment with Orlando’s fidelity. Will he continue to profess his love to a woman who intentionally makes his life difficult? Is he able to overlook such flaws and continue to love her? Orlando originally intends to be cured of the malady of love for a woman who was out of his reach both physically and socially. Rosalind’s intent, on the other hand, is to test his faithfulness as a lover despite her faults and to train him in the proper way to love her.

Initially, Rosalind experiments to discover his viability as a lover. She sets the test and awaits his response. When he arrives late, she berates him, “You, a lover? An you serve me such another trick, never / come in my sight more” (4.1.35-36), and thus begins Orlando’s training.

Rosalind’s experiment transitions from objective testing to manipulating the test to get her desired result. Ganymede suggests that Orlando will be cuckolded, and Orlando argues that

Rosalind is virtuous. Orlando successfully navigates the first few passes in their joust. As they continue Rosalind corrects Orlando and tells him the correct responses that he should make in particular situations with Rosalind. When Orlando says he will love Rosalind “forever and a day,” Rosalind provides him with the correct answer: “Say ‘a day’ without the ‘ever.’ No, no,

Orlando: men / are April when they woo, December when they wed” (4.1.127-128). Rosalind highlights the gender stereotype of men who are only passionate about love during the wooing time of the relationship but turn cold after marriage. She does not want him to be the conventionally unfaithful male dictated by stereotypical gendering. Of course she wants him to love her “forever and a day,” but not to just espouse the conventional lines of “May” love. She dictates his future and present actions to ensure his preparation to be her true spouse. Each encounter between Ganymede and Orlando requires Orlando to prove his worth and conform to

Ganymede, thereby bringing him closer to acceptability. She sends Orlando away until they meet again with a directive that casts her in the role of controller of the romance.

The second part of Rosalind’s training involves Orlando’s honor. Now that he has been given the proper responses, Rosalind wants to make sure that he can follow the commands that she has given. She provides one parting shot to make him aware of his actions towards her:

if you break one jot of your promise or come one minute

behind your hour, I will think you the most pathetical

break-promise, and the most hollow lover, and the most

unworthy of her you call Rosalind that may be chosen out of

the gross band of unfaithful. Therefore beware my censure

and keep your promise! (4.2.166-171)

This decree conveys Rosalind’s most fierce command to Orlando, and he responds meekly and lovingly to her harsh remarks, accepting Ganymede as Rosalind without reservation. Orlando’s responses demonstrate the blurred lines between Ganymede playacting as Rosalind and the real

Rosalind. The disguise has overtaken the character. The disguise then becomes a part of her identity thereby allowing “the garb of disguise [to] remain a meaningful extension of character, and… where the performed act of disguise gains the upper hand of the image of the character”

(Weimann 800). Ganymede is Rosalind, but Rosalind to a certain extent has been taken over by

Ganymede. In this manner, Rosalind becomes the master in their future marriage. She has authority over how Orlando will treat her.

Rosalind conducts her final experiment on Orlando to be sure that her training has been effective. After the disappointing results of her first experiment, Rosalind suggests changes to

Orlando and prepares to re-test her initial hypothesis based on Orlando’s anticipated

45 transformation. Therefore, before transitioning back to her female personae from her male disguise, Rosalind tells Orlando that she can do strange things because she is a magician. She presents him with a series of conditional statements to verify his continuing love for Rosalind after the abuse he had received at the hands of the pretend Rosalind. She begins her conditions with “If you do love Rosalind,” followed by “if it appear not inconvenient to you” then she will

“set her before your eyes tomorrow” (5.2.56-60, italics added). She tests for verification from

Orlando that his love continues, and that his love is now ready to move to the binding marriage contract. Therefore, she continues her conditional statements with “if you will be married tomorrow you / shall, and to Rosalind if you will” (5.2.65-66, italics added). A discussion of the virtues of love begins amongst several characters including Orlando and the still disguised

Rosalind. Orlando then declares without prompting how he will love Rosalind through a series of statements affirming that he is “for Rosalind.” They all agree about love: “it is to be all made of sighs and tears” (5.2.75), to which Orlando declares “and I for Rosalind” (5.2.78). The discussion continues that love is “to be all made of faith and service” (5.2.80), and again Orlando declares “and I for Rosalind” (5.2.84). Lastly Silvius, a youth from the country states that love is:

to be all made of fantasy,

All made of passion and all made of wishes

All adoration, duty, and observance,

All humbleness, all patience and impatience,

All purity, all trial, all observance. (5.2.85-89)

Orlando heartily responds, “And so am I for Rosalind” (5.2.92). This typifies the kind of love that Rosalind was trying to develop in Orlando, and through her training, Orlando develops this

46 type of love for her. The second experiment has been a success, and Rosalind has ensured that she will receive the kind of love that she desires.

Just as Rosalind experiments with Orlando’s love, she also experiments with her own fortitude as she navigates being a woman without a male guardian in a strange land. She has created an environment that allows her to gain agency that she did not have in her uncle’s household at the beginning of the play. She has become a landowner in her own right, overseeing a business and possessing authority to hire and fire workers. She is now a shepherd; she is no longer a dependent but an independent woman who has come into her own. Clara Park views

AYLI as a story of bildung for girls. In fact, many of Shakespeare’s plays are an example for girls to follow in finding their identity, including AYLI, The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About

Nothing. All these plays include women wearing disguises to accomplish their goals of developing autonomy as a key part of their identity. We know that Rosalind interrogates her love interest, Orlando, in her disguise, but she also interrogates the restrictions placed on her as a woman in the Early Modern culture. Rosalind takes control not only of her relationship with

Orlando, but also of the other romantic relationships of the play, Park states that “it is by

[Rosalind’s] agency that the four couples assemble in the concluding nuptial dance” (270).

Through Rosalind the very action of the play moves forward, and through her the traditionally comic ending may occur.

In the play’s conclusion, Rosalind, of course, reveals her identity. She has already claimed her agency by this point in the play, so the revelation that she is a woman does not negate it. Rosalind resolves everyone’s problem. She pairs the lovers, and she sets the court aright. Her agency remains undiminished with the donning of her feminine clothes. Her disguise allows Rosalind to experiment with herself and her lover. She has become confident in herself as

47 a woman and in Orlando’s love. Because of her experience as Ganymede, Rosalind is no longer reduced to a victim of circumstance but instead the conductor of the play’s action. Her agency has so developed that she also provides the play’s “Epilogue.” Shakespeare acknowledges that

“it is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue” (5.4.190), but because Rosalind has taken control of every other closing action in the play, she can, unlike many women in his plays, command it. This action also demonstrates that with the donning of her feminine clothes,

Rosalind does not lose the agency gained in her Ganymede garb. Rosalind’s agency remains regardless of the clothes she wears and her “Epilogue” demonstrates this. The disguise has afforded her the opportunity to acquire this agency, but the disguise’s removal does not remove her agency.

Rosalind does not conduct the scientific experimentation with the objective outlook of a true scientist. She is deeply involved and concerned with the outcome. Her experimentation is not merely an exercise in academics but will determine her future outcome. As a result, Rosalind does not let the results of Orlando’s experimentation stand for themselves. She works to mold him into the man that she wants him to be. Like the ladies of LLL, Rosalind tasks her love interest with adhering to her requirements for a mate. Shakespeare leaves it to the audience’s imagination and curiosity whether the men of Navarre can adhere to the ladies’ requirements for the year. A marriage between the characters of LLL is left in doubt. Unlike the ladies of LLL who require their love interests to participate in a year of experimentation before they will marry,

AYLI has an immediate marriage. Rosalind’s use of the experiment, which is longer and more developed than that of the ladies of LLL, produces the marriageable man that she has loved all along. Rosalind prepares her initial experiment, gets results, and adjusts the understanding of her test subject so that in her next experiment, Orlando succeeds. The wedding itself may not take

48 place on the stage, but the audience has no doubt that it will immediately occur. And, because of

Rosalind’s completed experimentation with Orlando, the audience can anticipate the happy ending that conclude most of Shakespeare’s comedies.

CHAPTER 4

THE VALUE OF PORTIA IN THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

In MOV, however, Shakespeare demonstrates what happens when an experiment of this nature is thwarted, and the wedding occurs before the experiment accomplishes its intended goal of discovery. With the introduction of the female protagonist in MOV, Shakespeare also introduces the concept of experimentation to the play. Upon her father’s death, Portia is tasked with requiring any potential mate to answer a series of questions that will determine his suitability as a husband for her. To eliminate opportunists only interested in her fortune, Portia’s father devises an experiment to test the men’s motivation for wanting to marry Portia. To ensure his wishes, he requires its implementation and forswears Portia from helping any who may participate. Portia’s only participation in this, the first experiment, limits her to silent observation. She knows the answer but cannot provide it to any suitors who participate. Unhappy with the requirements that her father has placed on her, Portia works to thwart the experiment when Bassanio, the man she wants to marry, arrives to participate. This disruption of the first experiment requires Portia to conduct a second one of her own making to determine her new husband’s love. Because Portia disrupts the initial experiment, she must conduct a second to put her desired husband to the test and in so doing, Portia becomes an engaged experimenter and increases her agency within her marriage.

Portia bemoans the fact that she cannot choose her own spouse because of the condition that her father placed on the marriage requirements in his will. With this inability to choose,

Shakespeare illuminates women’s lack of agency in selecting their husbands. Portia complains:

But this reasoning is not in the fashion to choose me a husband.

O me! The word ‘choose’! I may neither choose who I would

nor refuse who I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter

curbed by the will of a dead father. (1.2.18-22)

Portia’s continued complaint about her situation demonstrates her rancor at having her agency removed. Her father’s will decrees that to marry, Portia’s suitor must pass the test of the caskets.

He does not want Portia “led / by nice direction [fastidious guidance] of [her] maiden’s eyes”

(2.1.13-14); that is swayed by lust for a handsome face and muscular body; he would rather she be guided by his experiment of the caskets which interrogates the intelligence, fidelity, and faithfulness of Portia’s suitors, giving her a glimpse of the true character of the man she will marry. The casket test determines whether they love her more than they love the money they believe she will bring to the marriage. If the suitor fails, they commit, “never to speak to lady afterward” (2.1.41) which not only bars them from marrying Portia but any woman. The men agree to this arrangement because of Portia’s beauty and wealth, but also because their arrogance leads each to believe he will easily discover the correct casket. Each suitor must receive the opportunity to participate in the experiment. Of the three caskets, “one of them contains [her] picture…, / If [they] choose that, then [she] is [theirs] withal” (2.7.11-12). The three caskets’ exteriors are gold, silver, and lead containing a message on the outside and a note on the inside.

How the suitor selects the casket exposes his character This experiment, devised by her father, has a finality that Portia cannot remove and cannot deny, or so the audience believes.

The caskets of the experiment themselves are indicators of the greed of Portia’s suitors.

Shakespeare includes two suitors failing the experiment: one chooses the gold casket, and another chooses the silver. The message on the outside of the gold casket is, “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire” (2.7.5). However, inside the casket, much as inside the heart

51 of a man who seeks first for money, is a symbol of death. The message on a scroll in the eye socket of a skull reads,

All that glitters is not gold.

Had you been as wise as bold,

Young in limbs, in judgment old,

Your answer had not been inscrolled.

Fare you well; your suit is cold. (2.7.65, 69-73)

The message within the gold casket makes it clear that Portia’s father does not want a man who only desires the wealth that Portia would bring. The second casket, the silver, also a metal of value, has a message on the outside that states, “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves” (2.9.49). This casket contains the “portrait of a blinking idiot / Presenting a schedule”

(2.9.53-54). The silver casket also proves to be the incorrect selection, and the message revealed states,

Some there be that shadows kiss;

Such have but a shadow’s bliss.

There be fools alive, iwis,

Silvered o’er and so was this.

Take what wife you will to bed,

I will ever be your head.

So be gone; you are sped. (2.9.65-71)

The message within the silver casket demonstrates that Portia’s father considers the man a fool who selects the silver casket and he would not want Portia to wed a fool. Through these caskets,

Portia’s father experiments with her suitors and rejects those who select incorrectly. These caskets also include the theme of understanding value and worth that repeats throughout the play.

Earlier in the play Bassanio discusses with his best friend, Antonio, his main interest in participating in the experiment: he needs money and marrying Portia will provide it. Bassanio uses words of value and money along with words of admiration for Portia’s beauty and virtue.

Bassanio weaves Portia’s monetary value with her other admirable qualities and cannot separate the two. His description of her to Antonio repeatedly uses these terms:

In Belmont is a lady richly left,

And she is fair, and, fairer than that word,

Of wondrous virtues…

Her name is Portia, nothing undervalued

To Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ Portia.

Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,…

O my Antonio, had I but the means

To hold a rival place with one of them,

I have a mind presages me such thrift

That I should questionless be fortunate! (1.1.161-176; italics added)

Throughout Bassanio’s description of Portia and his desire to woo her, he focuses more on money and his interest in improving his financial state than on Portia herself. His use of the words “richly,” “undervalued,” “worth,” “thrift,” and “fortunate,” demonstrates his love of the money that she will bring to the marriage. Bassanio embodies the type of suitor the casket experiment would have discovered, barring her disruption. Had Bassanio’s participation in the experiment proceeded as Portia’s father had intended, Bassanio would have failed just as the

53 earlier suitors had. According to Russin, “Bassanio’s suit itself has little to do with love—with lust, perhaps, Portia is beautiful, after all” (116); but Bassanio’s primary interest remains in her value. His love of money far exceeds his love of Portia.

The experiment proves successful in eliminating the false suitors until Portia decides to take matters into her own hands when Bassanio arrives. Unlike the ladies of LLL, who allow the experiment to provide the results without hinderance, Portia interferes with the results. Portia admits that she cannot reveal the correct answer to the suitors, stating to Bassanio,

I could teach you

How to choose right, but then I am forsworn;

So will I never be. So may you miss me,

But if you do, you’ll make me wish a sin—

That I had been forsworn. (3.2.10-14)

Portia does not conceal her struggle. Although she cannot provide the answer, the man she wants has arrived to contend for her love. Through the casket test, Portia’s father affords her the opportunity to witness how experimentation can provide a level of knowledge that a direct line of questioning might not. Portia’s father in absentia exposes the characters of the suitors that pursue her. But Portia, rather than following her father’s command and allowing his experiment to progress as he had planned, intercedes on Bassanio’s behalf by providing him with the answer that will allow him to marry her. Even after meeting and wooing Portia, as Bassanio walks towards the caskets, he again uses the terminology of commerce, “but let me to my fortune and the caskets” (3.2.39). “Fortune” here can be understood to mean both the financial gain Bassanio will receive if he wins as well as fate. “Fortune” during the Medieval and Early Modern periods controlled people’s lives. “Fortune” was a capricious non-Christian goddess who gave fame and

54 fortune to some while taking it from others. One’s fortune could unpredictably rise or fall at the turn of a wheel or at the whim of this capricious deity. Whether Bassanio refers to the money he will receive, his fate, or both, he impatiently proceeds with the choosing process. Bassanio demonstrates his anxiety to select a casket as he demands, “Let me choose” (3.2.24).

Portia helps Bassanio discover the correct casket to marry her and acquire her wealth.

While Bassanio is looking at the caskets to make his choice, Portia calls for music commanding,

“let music sound while he doth make his choice” (3.2.43). The words of the song provide a clue for Bassanio:

First Musician: Tell me where is fancy bred:

Or in the heart or in the head;

How begot, how nourishéd?

Reply, reply!

Second Musician: It is engend’red in the eye

With gazing fed; and fancy dies

In the cradle where it lies.

Let us all ring fancy’s knell

I’ll begin it: Ding dong, bell.

Ding, dong, bell. (3.2.63-72, italics added)

This song presents an ambiguous moment in the play, both dramatically and experimentally, because Portia’s clues for Bassanio seem to be couched in the liminal text of background music.

Horwich, for example, doubts that Portia provided Bassanio a clue to the correct casket because it remains “not at all clear that he listens to the song. While it is being sung, he ‘comments on the caskets himself,’ according to the stage direction” (193). This interpretation suggests that

Bassanio has used logic and is driven “like a man bent on solving a riddle in order to best

Portia’s father in a contest of wits” rather than being reliant on Portia for the correct answer

(193). Berger contends that the audience must “wonder about” whether or not Portia has broken her vow because no evidence exists that she consciously gave the hint nor that Bassanio acknowledged a hint (157). Berger attributes this ambiguity to Portia’s internal conflict about whether she wants to be married to Bassanio, thereby giving up her freedom. Berger continues that Portia displays apprehension “that her father and Bassanio bar her from her rightful ownership of her own person and, by extension, of her father’s purse” (158). Yet even if marriage might constrain Portia’s agency, her manipulation of the experiment demonstrates her agency to thwart her father’s control. The song, clearly intended as a hint for Bassanio as he chooses a casket, directly relates to the situation at hand. The music Portia selects provides a pointed clue for Bassanio. Austin Gray contends that the musicality of the song will cause the audience to hear the word “lead” being sung repeatedly. In addition, the words of the song explain that fancy dies in the eye; a warning that the eye deceives and to not expect that fancy resides in pretty things, like gold and silver. Also, it cannot be ignored that the words “bred,”

“head,” and “nourishéd” all rhyme with the word “lead,” the correct casket. Bassanio cannot help but be guided by the music that Portia insists on playing when he makes his selection. After the last line of the song, Bassanio states, “so may the outward shows be least themselves. / The world is still deceived with ornament” (3.2.73-74). He effectively explains the words of the song with the opening words of his monologue. Portia, then has manipulated the experiment, contrary to her father’s wishes.

Each of the notes within the caskets contain a lesson for the chooser. The casket of gold and silver sent the suitors away with “Fare you well; your suit is cold” (2.7.73) and “So be gone;

56 you are sped” (2.9.71) respectively. Unlike the caskets of gold and silver, the lead casket has an image of Portia and a congratulatory note. The note states:

You that choose not by the view

Chance as fair and choose as true.

Since this fortune falls to you,

Be content and seek no new.

If you be well pleased with this,

And hold your fortune for your bliss,

Turn you where your lady is

And claim her with a loving kiss. (3.2.131-138)

Bassanio gives the correct answer and in return Portia gives to him, “this house, these servants, and this same [herself]” (3.2.170) along with a ring, which “when [he] part[s] from, lose or give away” will become the “ruin of [their] love” (3.2.172-173). This promise sets up the challenge that both Portia and Bassanio will have to face later, precisely because Portia meddled with the casket experiment. Because Bassanio’s correct choice was enabled by Portia’s choice of song, the experiment could not fulfill its function of weeding out greedy suitors. And so the question remains: does he truly know and love Portia? This lack of reliable results from the casket test leads Portia to conduct her own experiment to test the validity of Bassanio’s professed love.

The second half of the play provides an opportunity for Portia to participate in an experiment of her own making. She disguises herself as a man to enter a court of law and operate as an attorney to help save her husband’s friend, Antonio, from having to relinquish a literal pound of flesh as recompense for a cash loan he failed to repay. Upon setting out to save

Antonio, Portia already had the notion to experiment with her husband. The audience wonders

57 about the reasons guiding Portia’s decision to dress as a man for when asked “why shall we turn to men?” (3.4.79), she gives the answer offstage. The audience knows that in her disguised state,

Portia has a better opportunity to accomplish her goals better as a male youth than as a wealthy, aristocratic, married woman. In the Early Modern period, clothing provided more than raiment for the body but, according to Lublin, “each item [of clothing] … dictated to the knowing audience a range of actions that the wearer was able to pursue as well as those actions the wearer ought to pursue” (23). For Shakespeare and those of the Early Modern period, the concept that

“apparel doth oft proclaim the man” was a lived reality (Hamlet 1.3.71). Therefore, for Portia to be able to enter the courtroom and argue the case on Antonio’s behalf, men’s clothing was required. When Portia enters the courtroom, she not only fights for Antonio’s life, but also for her marriage.

Portia describes the requirements to successfully operate as a man in her disguise. She discusses the expectations of the male gender and describes how men display their masculinity.

Recent scholarship has focused on the actual costumes that were worn to indicate the gender of the characters. Ludlin argues that “just as breeches, beards, swords, and codpieces materially constituted masculinity on the early modern English stage, so did long hair serve to assert the wearer’s femininity” (Ludlin 25). However, Portia’s description of the attributes of masculinity have less to do with the clothing worn and more with the attitude and speech of men. Portia lists what she considers masculine attributes. In her disguise she will:

wear my dagger with the braver grace,

And speak between the change of man and boy

With a reed voice, and turn two mincing steps

Into a manly stride and speak of frays

Like a fine bragging youth, and tell quaint lies

How honorable ladies sought my love,

Which I denying, they fell sick and died—

………………………………………..

And twenty of these puny lies I’ll tell,

That men shall swear I have discontinued school

Above a twelve-month. I have within my mind

A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks,

Which I will practice (3.4.65-71, 74-78).

Just like Rosalind, Portia does not just put on the accoutrement of manhood but will also acts in

“all points like a man” (AYLI 1.3.112). Portia’s disguise consists of the clothes, weaponry, and mannerisms of a young man; however, she does not find these attributes attractive. She describes men who participate in false bravado and tales of love as “bragging Jacks.” Portia is more intelligent than many men, but most men of the period would not recognize it in her because of her sex. Portia’s cousin, Bellario, describes Portia as “furnished with my opinion which, bettered with his [Portia’s] own / learning—the greatness whereof I cannot enough commend” (4.1.156-

157). Bellario recognizes Portia’s intelligence, and their familial relationship allows him to readily accept it and her. The other men of the courtroom outside her family must now be convinced.

In the courtroom, the disguised Portia displays her ability to manipulate the legal system to release Antonio and condemn Shylock. Portia proves a master at manipulation with the courtroom scene mirroring her manipulation of the casket experiment wherein she respects the letter of the law, but not its spirit. Although she pleads for mercy for Antonio, Portia uses

Shylock’s inflexibility against him and leads Shylock to his own damnation: a Christian baptism, and the loss of all his worldly possessions. According to Bilello, an equal application of mercy does not exist since no “discussion of whether the law as applied is consistent with the legislator’s intention” (15). Bilello further contends that, “Portia’s judgment has little to do with justice or equity. Instead, she is motivated more by her desire to protect Antonio, her new husband’s confidant” (12). For Bilello, Portia’s use of the disguise unfairly disadvantages

Shylock because her lack of impartiality hides beneath the disguise. She represents herself as an impartial arbiter of the law, all the while motivated to have Antonio released.

The disguised Portia repeatedly displays her intelligence in the courtroom. According to

Russin, “by impersonating a male doctor of law, she has proved to be the best man in the room, smarter and more resourceful than the hapless Antonio, and better than Shylock or even the Duke at using the law to her advantage” (123). Portia proves a worthy courtroom doctor, and the audience must concede to her superior knowledge but also to her performance as a man.

Unfortunately, only a disguised Portia can display her brilliance outside of the home. According to Park, in her disguise, “Portia is allowed to confront a man over matters outside a woman’s sphere and to win” (272). Portia displays her brilliance to both the courtroom audience and the audience of the play in her disguise as Balthazar, and she retains that brilliance throughout the balance of the play. Like Rosalind in AYLI, the disguised Portia displays her full intelligence,

“but unlike [Rosalind], Portia is allowed to engage in intelligence with matters more serious than the pairing of lovers” (Park 272). Portia determines Antonio’s fate through her ability to manipulate Shylock and the laws of the courtroom.

In her disguise, Portia presents Bassanio with one final test to prove his love and devotion to her, bringing to completion her engagement in experimentation. This had been her intent all

60 along, as she devised the plan prior to leaving Belmont. Some critics have seen this final test as the culmination of an ongoing battle between Antonio and Portia for Bassanio’s love. Russin views Antonio as Portia’s “main adversary” and determines that “throughout the play they remain rivals for the attention and affections of their object of desire: Bassanio” (120). As such,

Portia becomes the interloper in a friendship fully formed prior to her entrance into Bassanio’s life. Portia’s apparent uncertainty in Bassanio’s love leads to her need for the second experiment.

Portia did not give credence to her father’s experiment, believing that she has disrupted what her father had intended as a mere “lottery that he / hath devised in [the] three chests… /whereof who chooses his meaning chooses [Portia]” (1.2.25-27). She soon learns the importance of the experiment when her doubt of Bassanio’s love arises. She thereafter recognizes the importance of experimentation and proceeds to conduct one of her own.

When Antonio believes that he will die, Portia asks for his last words, and she witnesses

Antonio’s clear devotion to Bassanio. Antonio believes that among his last words will be “Give me your hand, Bassanio; fare you well. / Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you” (4.1.263-

264). Bassanio and Antonio lovingly clasp hands, and Antonio suggests that he dies for

Bassanio’s sake alone. Antonio continues to remind Bassanio of the love that they had prior to his marriage to Portia when he instructs him to:

Commend me to your honorable wife:

Tell her the process of Antonio’s end;

Say how I loved you; speak me fair in death.

And when the tale is told, bid her be judge

Whether Bassanio had not once a love. (4.1.271-275)

Antonio reminds Bassanio of their love, and his statement brings into further question Bassanio’s love for Portia. Antonio continues to demonstrate his devotion to Bassanio in word and deed.

Antonio borrows the money from Shylock for Bassanio and now he will die for the benefit of loving Bassanio. He commits to repay Shylock as a sign of his devotion to Bassanio without any consideration for his own financial well-being, safety, or life. Antonio ends his speech with a comment about the profundity of his feelings for Bassanio declaring, “for if the Jew do cut but deep enough, / I’ll pay it instantly with all my heart” (4.1.278-279). In his dying breath, Antonio has professed his love for Bassanio for all to hear, including, unbeknownst to him, Portia.

Portia witnesses Antonio’s declaration of love and devotion in her disguise and is non- plussed. Though Portia at first remains silent, Bassanio responds immediately:

Antonio, I am married to a wife

Which is as dear to me as life itself;

But life itself, my wife, and all the world

Are not with me esteemed above thy life.

I would lose all—ay, sacrifice them all

Here to this devil to deliver you. (4.1.280-285)

Bassanio has in effect reciprocated Antonio’s declaration of love and devotion with one of his own—one that belittles his wife and upholds Antonio as the first love that he had. Bassanio not only confirms their love but also puts it above his love for his wife. He willingly “sacrifice[s]”

Portia to save Antonio. This declaration surpasses the love of friendship and supplants the marital bond. More importantly, Bassanio and Antonio’s love proves greater than that between husband and wife. Portia, recognizing the slight responds, “Your wife would give you little thanks for that / If she were by to hear you make the offer” (4.1.286-287). Though humorous,

62 because she is there to hear him make the offer, it also indicates her anger at such easy replacement of her person with Antonio in Bassanio’s eyes. Nerissa also comments (while in disguise) that Portia’s hearing such a declaration from Bassanio “would make an unquiet house”

(4.1.292). Certainly, Nerissa has put herself in Portia’s position and found fault with the comment, as would any wife, but especially a wife who lives in uncertainty about the love of her spouse.

Portia discovers that her husband’s love for his friend outweighs the devotion to his wife.

He has after all offered to give her in exchange for Antonio’s deliverance. Even though Graziano makes a similar statement wishing his wife were in heaven “so she could / Entreat some power to change this currish Jew” (4.1.288-289), Graziano has not requested a trade in the same way that

Bassanio has. Graziano’s comment compares to a statement such as, “if my wife were in heaven, she could fix this,” whereas Bassanio’s comment declares his desire to have Portia and Antonio swap places. He offers to “sacrifice them all here to this devil,” which would replace Antonio with Portia and place her life in the same jeopardy as Antonio. Bassanio suggests a trade of loves, spouses and lives. Portia has been privy to these declarations and determines to rectify this condition. After getting Antonio released with half of Shylock’s fortune due to Portia’s arguments, she responds to Antonio’s thanks with an almost threatening “I pray you, know me when we meet again” (4.1.417). Her words recall not only the use of the disguise and her part in

Antonio’s salvation, but also her position as Bassanio’s wife. She wants Antonio to know and recognize her as his savior and as Bassanio’s wife. With the inconsistencies of punctuation use in the Early Modern period, the comma after “you” being removed would further identify her request that she be recognized as Bassanio’s wife. Instead of “I pray you” being an introduction to a request such as “hopefully,” it indicates her intent to indeed pray for her own recognition.

Thus, “I pray you, know me when we meet again” becomes “I pray you know me when we meet again.” The placement of that comma shifts our understanding of her comment to Antonio. She has not been exchanged for Antonio to achieve his freedom, and her place in Bassanio’s life as his wife will continue. Antonio must recognize that. Portia then moves on to Bassanio to conduct her experiment on him and make sure that he recognizes her place as his wife as well.

Portia experiments with Bassanio’s commitment to the ornament that was to be the symbol of his love and devotion to her, thereby experimenting with Bassanio’s love for her.

Bassanio’s failure to adhere to his promise to cherish Portia’s ring remains a challenge. In promising to cherish the ring, he has promised to cherish Portia herself. His willingness now to remove the ring calls into question his love for Portia and his commitment to the marriage.

Bassanio offers to pay Portia (as Balthazar) but the only acceptable payment includes Bassanio’s gloves and the ring as a token of his love. Bassanio has put the love of his friend, Antonio, over the love he has claimed to bear for Portia. His willingness to part with the ring provides another example of his devotion to Antonio and disregard for Portia. Portia describes herself as a supplicant when Bassanio first refuses to part with his ring: “I see, sir, you are liberal in offers. /

You taught me first to beg, and now, methinks, / You teach me how a beggar should be answered” (4.1.436-438). The first time he teaches her to beg was before he made his casket selection when she begs him to “pause a day or two” before hazarding a guess for the casket. She begs that he stay so that they can get to know one another and perhaps then he would have a better understanding of which casket would reveal her. Additionally, she declares in the same speech asking him to pause that she does not want to lose him. He refuses her begging request before he makes his casket choice. His refusal of a delay suggests a refusal to get to know her.

His refusal to relinquish the ring provides a lesson that she learns about how he views her as a

64 beggar. He accepts her in marriage but refuses her in love. Bassanio has now taught her how he answers her as a beggar: with a refusal.

Antonio’s and Bassanio’s love for one another again proves stronger than Bassanio’s love and devotion to Portia. Antonio encourages Bassanio to break his commitment to his wife and relinquish the ring. Bassanio suggests that his love for Antonio exceeds the value of his wife’s ring when he states, “Let [Bathazar’s] deservings and my love withal / Be valued against your wife's commandment” (4.1.448-449). In releasing the ring to Balthazar, Bassanio, albeit reluctantly, concedes that he considers Antonio more important and more valuable to him than

Portia. In his concessions to Antonio, Bassanio continually demonstrates his valuation of Portia comparted to Antonio.

Portia seems despondent upon learning her place in Bassanio’s estimation. On her return to her house, disguise removed, Portia discusses the difference between a substitute and a real king. In making this comparison, especially in light of the knowledge that Bassanio would exchange her for Antonio and willingly gives up his ring in payment of saving Antonio, Portia places herself in the position of the substitute. She has witnessed where she stands in the hierarchy of Bassanio’s love. Portia declares:

So doth the greater glory dim the less.

As substitute shines brightly as a king

Until a king be by, and then his state

Empties itself as doth an inland brook

Into the main waters. (5.1.93-97)

Portia has been compared to Antonio and in Bassanio’s eyes and has been deemed the lesser light and Antonio the greater. In the courtroom, Bassanio declares that his wife is “as dear to

[him] as life itself” (4.1.281). Unfortunately, she does not rise to the same level of “dear” to

Bassanio as Antonio does. Even though she wins the court victory, she has lost the battle with

Antonio. She sees herself as the dim substitute and Antonio as the bright king. When Bassanio returns home, Portia’s first comment to him once again references a bright light and a dim light.

She responds to Bassanio’s flattery that she shines bright like the sun when she walks with, “let me give light, but let me not be light” (5.1.129). Some editors gloss the second use of “light” with “unfaithful.” However, considering her earlier remarks about bright lights and dim lights, it makes more sense to understand that she wants to be the bright light of a king and not be light or less weighty in providing the light of the lesser substitute. She wants to be the bright light in

Bassanio’s eyes. Her experiment, however, has revealed to her that she remains the dim light.

Her use of the disguise and the experiment has allowed her to make this discovery.

Portia uses her newfound knowledge to create a different understanding with Bassanio in their marriage relation. When she reveals the “missing” ring, Portia uses the information gleaned from her experiment to castigate Bassanio, but also to adjust the terms of their marriage. Because

Bassanio did not know the value of the woman he wed, nor the value of the commitment that the ring signified, he willingly relinquished the ring. Bassanio defends his releasing the ring by arguing:

If you did know to whom I gave the ring,

If you did know for whom I gave the ring,

And would conceive for what I gave the ring,

And how unwillingly I left the ring

When naught would be accepted but the ring,

You would abate the strength of your displeasure. (5.1.193-198)

For Portia, the rings are signifiers of the love that they carry for one another. Portia’s response indicates her continued disappointment with Bassanio’s decision to relinquish the ring. She responds with a statement that shames Bassanio for giving his ring to the “law clerk” while elevating her position:

If you had known the virtue of the ring,

Or half her worthiness that gave the ring

Or your own honor to contain the ring

You would not then have parted with the ring. (5.1.199-202)

Portia’s words closely mirror Bassanio’s. By using his language, she shows him the fault in his logic and in his love. Portia’s statement indicates her recognition of her own self-worth while simultaneously denouncing Bassanio’s honor. In their exchange, both Bassanio and Portia use

“know” or “known” to indicate the value of the person discussed symbolized by the ring. Their varying valuation methods and disparate knowledge has brought discord to their marriage.

Bassanio focuses on knowing the man to whom he gave the ring and the person for whom he gave the ring. Bassanio highly values Antonio and holds him dear. Portia, on the other hand, discusses Bassanio’s lack of knowledge about her and his lower valuation of her compared to

Antonio. The repetitive use of “know” in this scene reminds the audience of Bassanio’s faulty knowledge and Portia’s enhanced knowledge.

Whereas LLL begins with a discussion about knowledge, MOV ends with one and in both instances the men are found lacking. Through their use of the experiment in disguise, however, the women have increased their knowledge and their agency in their relationships with these men. With her enhanced knowledge Portia also claims both her honor and her agency. Recall that when Bassanio guessed the correct casket, she offered him “this house, these servants, and

67 this same myself” (3.2.170). In this, the final scene, Portia declares ownership of her own honor when she tells Bassanio that he should keep a close eye on her. She declares, “now by mine honor, which is yet mine own” (5.1.232), and with this declaration of her own honor she also declares her agency. Women’s honor was often only considered chastity; however, Portia’s invocation of her own honor corresponds to what the OED defines as “exalted status or position; dignity, distinction” (“Honor, n3a”). She has retained her honor and has placed herself in an exalted position above Bassanio. Bassanio, on the other hand, has shown her his “double self” and she finds him lacking. When Bassanio finally figures out what has happened and admits that he did not know her, he questions, “were you the doctor and I knew you not?” (5.1.280). The idea of knowledge has again entered the play and the scene. No, Bassanio did not know Portia, either as Balthazar or as herself. He has demonstrated his limited knowledge of her. Portia, however, has gained knowledge of Bassanio, but more importantly she has gained knowledge of her own agency within her marriage and within a society of men.

Through her experiment, Portia learns more about her husband’s love and devotion towards her and how it compares with his love and devotion to Antonio. The final scene leaves the viewer curious about (and potentially skeptical of) the possibility for a happy marriage between Portia and Bassanio. Bassanio does not truly know her, and doubt persists that he loves her for more than the money she brings into the marriage. He gives no denouncement of his relationship with Antonio, suggesting that Bassanio’s love for Antonio will continue as before.

Bassanio and Antonio remain the same; however, Portia, with the help of her experiment, has changed. She has claimed her agency and her position of superiority within her marriage.

Although the play ends with uncertainty about the happiness of Portia’s marriage, she has at least discovered her own worth.

CHAPTER 5

EPILOGUE

Love’s Labour’s Lost, As You Like It, and The Merchant of Venice use the disguise to allow women to participate in experimentation with their romantic love interests. Shakespeare uses the disguised woman to interrogate the limitations of knowledge, gender norms, and female valuation. LLL subverts the accepted forms of education and epistemology. According to P.

Brown Shakespeare uses LLL as a “denouncement of academic learning in general. Scholastic learning becomes little more than a literary corpse” (23-24). Shakespeare’s discourse on education indicates his displeasure with the accepted form of knowledge acquisition. An inventor himself, he would have wanted to venture beyond what the Classics provided. AYLI provides

Shakespeare the opportunity to examine gender norms. Orgel states that, “Renaissance ideology had a vested interest in defining women in terms of men; the aim is thereby to establish the parameters of maleness, not of womanhood” (24); however, Shakespeare upends this ideology by allowing the main character of AYLI to be a woman who controls the outcome of the play and directs the actions of the players. Expected gender responses then are questioned, teased, and mocked. Lastly, Shakespeare upends the low valuation of women by allowing a woman to recognize her own self-worth in MOV. Shakespeare’s audience would surely have seen that “the happy endings of… The Merchant of Venice nevertheless promise significantly greater benefits to… Bassanio and Lorenzo than to their wives” (Orgel 14). The benefit that the women bring exceeds money, and the disguise provides the women the opportunity to prove just that.

Shakespeare’s disguised women successfully topple epistemological, gendered and valuation norms of Early Modern England.

Shakespeare’s use of the disguised woman also subverts relationship expectations even after the woman removes the disguise. Certainly, Shakespeare has used the disguise in other plays. In King Lear, Kent disguises himself as a servant and Edgar becomes a half-naked beggar;

Hal dresses and acts as a commoner in Henry IV and Henry V; and Falstaff disguises himself as an old woman in The Merry Wives of Windsor. The agency that the women acquire after they remove their disguises is what sets LLL, AYLI, and MOV apart from other plays that utilize the disguise either by men or women. The disguise provides the women the protection to question men, question social norms, and test their own agency. However useful the disguise has been, their inevitable removal in the end returns life to normal. The disguise then is only a temporary condition. Once Kent, Hal, and Falstaff remove their disguise, they return to their former selves and their former status. The women of LLL, AYLI, and MOV do not return to their former selves but experience a change even after the disguise is removed. The women of LLL, AYLI, and MOV interrogate the grounds of power and authority that limit their agency thus exposing these disparities of agency between men and women to the audience. The ladies of France remove their veils, and Rosalind and Portia return to their woman’s garb. The agency acquired while using these disguises, however, remains.

Shakespeare varies the treatment of the experiment to explore the success or failure of its use within the disguise. The ladies of the French court in LLL exchange love tokens used as signs of identification and wear veils to conceal their identities. Their experiment ends with their love interests required to submit to a year-long participation in an experiment of their own. Rosalind uses her disguise as Ganymede to both experiment with and train Orlando to love her as she needs. After his training, Orlando confirms his newly informed attitude about love and marriage.

The play ends with an impending marriage and a restoration of societal norms. Finally, Portia

70 must design and implement a second experiment because she disrupts the first experiment designed by her father to select her husband. As such, her second experiment helps her to determine Bassanio’s feelings about her and her worth. Having already married Bassanio,

Portia’s experiment ends with her realization that she comes in second place in her husband’s heart and estimation.

Because the women gain agency in their current or impending romantic relationships, it stands to reason that the plays discussed here are comedies. As comedies, the standard plot line focuses on the romances between the characters. In addition, Hyland argues that “almost all comedy involves false appearance or mistaken identity, often because of confusion of the signs, especially clothing, by which identity is conventionally recognized” (55), so the inclusion of the disguise reinforces the tropes of the comedic play. Shakespeare, however, subverts the expectations of the audience by not adhering completely to the expectations of a comedy play. In these particular comedies, Shakespeare allows his women to display their wit and intelligence as they perform in disguise. These witty women control the action of each play, and eventually control the construct of their marriages, thus acquiring agency. Shakespeare has successfully utilized witty women in other plays, but as critics such as Breitenberg suggests, these witty women are limited to comedies. The females in his tragedies are not commonly seen as witty, and the ones who do retain a level of wit are portrayed as crazy or are killed by the end. Lady

Macbeth, who strongly encourages her husband to kill the king, becomes distraught about the murder, eventually falls into insanity, and commits suicide. Julius Caesar’s Portia is not convinced that her husband Brutus will win the war and so she, too, commits suicide. Both these women involve themselves in their husbands’ careers and appear as a close equal to their husbands. However, Shakespeare disallows the women’s wit to control the entire action of the

71 tragic plays. Granted, in tragedies one expects most characters to die, and Shakespeare adheres to the conventions of the revenge tragedy by killing the women. Only through his comedies does the wit of the female exist without negative repercussion to the women or the societies they inhabit. And only in these comedies do the women retain their acquired agency.

The triangulation of the comedic genre, disguised women, and experimentation provides a space for female agency within the Shakespearean plays LLL, AYLI, and MOV. The happiness of all the characters, however, is called into question with the agency of these women. LLL does not provide a wedding but a prolonged engagement that may or may not end in marriage. Even

AYLI leaves the audience with a little doubt about the happiness of the marriage since the romantic action and happy conclusion takes place in the pastoral world of Arden. Happiness is not guaranteed upon their return to the court and a culture embroiled in intrigue, usurpation, and attempted murder. Most disturbingly, MOV ends with a marriage wherein happiness will always be in question. Despite the confusion that may continue in their marriages, the women have achieved an agency that they do not lose outside of the disguise nor do they lose it at the end of the play. These women have asserted their power and authority, and a marriage will not eliminate it. With these three plays, Shakespeare has provided an avenue for female agency that remains independent of male interference or male control.

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