Elizabeth-Cross Dressing As You Like It

ELIZABETH-CROSS DRESSING AS YOU LIKE IT
Many of Shakespeare's best-loved comedies, including As You Like It and A Midsummer

Night's Dream, take place in two distinct locations: one urban, one rural. The two
locations inevitably contrast the order and constancy of urban civilization with the fluidity
of pastoral life, a clash of values that is often expressed through a cross-dressing
heroine. Cymbeline, in its particular way, fits this classically Shakespearean model. Much
like Rosalind in As You Like It or Viola in Twelfth Night, Imogen escapes from the unjust
pressure of being a woman in a rigid, male-dominated society by taking on a false male
identity in a more indeterminate environment.
A further layer of complication attends any instance of cross-dressing in Shakespeare's

plays. Historically, women were not allowed to act on the stage until the Reformation,
long after Shakespeare and his contemporaries had passed away. Thus, female roles in
Shakespeare's plays were played by young men, often no older than boys, with fair
complexions and feminine bearings. It is often difficult for a modern reader to get her or
his head around this, but a cross-dressing female in Shakespeare is, effectually, a male
cross-cross-dressing as a male. Gender was always already an indeterminate
characteristic in any performance. Thus one can safely assume that gender-bending, so
to speak, was more acceptable for an Elizabethan or Jacobean audience than it would be
for ours. Cross-dressing did not inevitably pass judgment on the character who cross-
dressed-it was a given facet of the theater. Likewise, cross-dressing was not an
individual psychological matter, as it is often considered to be today; it was a matter of
broader, cultural psychology. In other words, it is Imogen's culture, not Imogen's nature,
which forces her to swap genders.
Imogen's cross-dressing also continues the theme of clothing. In taking on the clothes of
a man, Imogen becomes a man. She is immediately recognized as male by Belarius and
his supposed sons, and indeed in Act Five even her own husband does not recognize her
beneath her masculine attire. This may seem as ludicrous as no one recognizing that
Clark Kent is Superman, just because Clark is wearing glasses and a tie. And indeed,
Cymbeline operates by a logic similar to that of comic books. The deeper questions in the
story-questions of appearance versus identity, of historical context, and so on-are
consistently expressed in naive and superficial imagery. Imogen's superficial change in
clothing expresses her essential need for a change in identity following her condemnation
by Posthumus; and the other characters' failure to recognize her appearance echoes their
failure to recognize her virtue.
- Hic Mulier-The female travestite
Where Hic Mulier argued against transvestitism, and more broadly women's rights, Haec-Vir
defended those women who did not fit their expected gender role. The pamphlet is designed
as a dialogue between Hic Mulier (The Man-Woman, a female transvestite) and Haec-Vir
(The Womanish Man, an effeminate man). The pamphlet is notable as an early expression of
feminism in the Renaissance. It is noteworthy that Hic Mulier seems to abandon some of her
previous ideals by stating that the only reason women are "overstepping their bounds" is
because men have ceased to be "real men." In the last decade of James I's reign, England
appears to have witnessed a minor crisis of conscience over the issue of cross-dressing and
other activities supposed to violate gender norms. It is possible that this crisis related to actual
changes in behavior; Mary Frith, for instance, had recently achieved notoriety. However, such
a trend in society has proven difficult to determine precisely.
What is clear is that a number of social and political developments made transvestism more
threatening to . The perception of political corruption and homosexuality at court on the one
hand, and the rising intolerance and vehemence of the Puritans on the other, contributed to a
heavily polarized social scene in which tolerance or compromise became progressively more
difficult. As regards women, scandals such as the murder of Thomas Overbury revealed some
women in a light that was conducive to misogynistic fears. As regards men, the long era of
peace enforced by James's foreign policy was assumed to lead to "soft" men; there was, for
some English people, a noted contrast between the delicate Jacobean courtier and the
idealized martial courtier remembered from Elizabeth I's day. Finally, the promulgation of the
Statutes of Apparel in 1574 may have served to remind some English people of the traditional
limits on freedom of dress

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ELIZABETH-CROSS DRESSING AS YOU LIKE IT

Many of Shakespeare's best-loved comedies, including As You Like It and A Midsummer

A further layer of complication attends any instance of cross-dressing in Shakespeare's

- Hic Mulier-The female travestite

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