Gendered Guise: Shakespeare’s use of Transvestism and Gender Appropriation in his Plays

Abstract

Often, transvestism or cross-dressing, (that is, wearing normative, gender-designated attire of the opposite sex) is both a leitmotif and a theatrical device in William Shakespeare’s plays. It not only serves as an integral element of a narrative/plot but it is also a dramatic device that is applied in order to preclude the woman as an actor (vis-a-vis her accepted participation) in the plays. Naturally therefore, transvestism or using socially-determined attires open up newer discourses on cultural and gender stereotypes in Shakespeare’s performative art, when cross-dressing was a somewhat compulsive alternative abiding the social mores of that time, which did not quite expect women’s active participation on-stage. In this paper we shall read how this gender imbalance on Shakespearean stage made the dramatis personae and the crew more significant, on the basis of their attires, cross-dressing and gender-appropriation on stage. We shall specifically read how the master playwright used cross-dressing also as a theme in his various plays which in a way problematized gender appropriation further.

Keywords

• transvestism
• alternative sexuality
• gender