Shakespeares Exploration of Cross-Dressing - Essay Example

Shakespeare’s Exploration of Cross-Dressing William Shakespeare is today widely regarded as a master playwright. Almost everyone who’s ever attended an English class has studied at least one of his plays or poems searching for the inner meanings, symbolism, etc. However, his plays weren’t originally intended to be looked at in this way. Instead, they were generally written in order to provide an evening’s worth of entertainment with a little education and social enlightenment thrown in. “Shakespeare’s plays were written to be performed to an audience from different social classes and of varying levels of intellect. Thus they contain down-to-earth characters who appeal to the working classes, side-by-side with complexities of plot which would satisfy the appetites of the aristocrats among the audience” (Geraghty, 2002). To create these complexities that could interest the aristocracy as well as the commoners, Shakespeare’s plays usually did include some form of commentary upon his culture and its values within the text, which is what we study today. Shakespeare found many ways of combining entertainment with social commentary within his plays, such as his feminist message of female empowerment disguised within the comical cross-dressing women of Twelfth Night and As You Like It. Twelfth Night tells the story of a pair of fraternal twins who have been washed up separately upon the same shore following a shipwreck, each believing the other is dead. Viola immediately goes about protecting herself by dressing up as a man and hiring herself out as a servant to Duke Orsino, with whom she eventually falls in love. Upon her arrival ashore, she discovers from her rescuers where she is and then asks for their assistance in concealing her true nature. “Conceal me what I am, and be my aid / For such disguise as haply shall become / The form of my intent” (I, ii, 53-55). Duke Orsino, however, is in love with Lady Olivia, who is still grieving the death of her brother and won’t consider love. Orsino sends his messages of love to Lady Olivia through his servant Cesario, who is really Viola in disguise, and Olivia falls in love with Cesario. Upon Olivia’s confession of love for Cesario, Viola responds with a message of female strength and inner fortitude that matches that of any man: “I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth, / And that no woman has; nor never none / Shall mistress be of it, save I alone” (III, i, 155-157). While she is equally capable as Olivia of falling in love, she is strong in her knowledge, despite her present attire, of her own identity as a woman belonging only to herself. Viola’s twin brother Sebastian arrives on the scene just in time to save his sister from the trap she’s developed for herself, accepting Lady Olivia’s proposal of marriage in Viola’s place. Meanwhile, Viola is forced to reveal her true identity and Orsino acknowledges his love for her allowing the play to end with a ‘happily ever after’. With the simple change of clothing, Viola is suddenly granted a great deal more freedom of movement and expression, which is seen as she first confronts Lady Olivia in her garden. As she answers Olivia’s question of what she would do in courtship, Viola answers “Make me a willow cabin at your gate / And call upon my soul within the house; / Write loyal cantons of contemned love / And sing them loud even in the dead of night” (254-257). In this statement, Viola mocks Olivia’s posturing and demonstrates that she has learned how to speak frankly and openly to those around her. In doing so in the guise of a servant and a man, she surprises Lady Olivia by her ‘surprising’ understanding of women’s true desires. Although she is consistently rejected and rebuffed by Viola’s responses to her, Olivia is intrigued by the younger ‘man’s’ honest and forthright behavior. “By maidhood, honor, truth and everything, / I love thee so that, maugre all thy pride, / Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide” (III, i, 147-149). In other words, no matter what Cesario does or says, Olivia is going to be in love with him because of the way he expresses himself so differently from what she’s accustomed to. Through this portrayal, Shakespeare can be understood as making a claim for greater respect of women’s abilities at the same time that the hilarity of a man dressed up like a woman (as would have been the actor playing the part in Shakespeare’s time), pretending to be a man fending off the attentions of a woman couldn’t fail to grab the attention of the more common elements of the audience. As You Like It is perhaps more complicated in plot as two girls, Rosalind and Celia, decide to run away from Celia’s father’s estate after Celia’s father, Duke Frederick, banishes his niece and Celia’s best friend Rosalind from the premises. This occurs just after Rosalind and Orlando, a youth from the neighboring estate, fall in love. Unknowingly, both Rosalind and Orlando head for the nearby Forest of Ardenne, where Rosalind’s father, Duke Senior, the rightful ruler of the family estate, has taken refuge after being exiled by Duke Frederick. Like Viola, Rosalind decides to take on the outer image of a man in order to protect herself while she is out in the world beyond the estate. “Were it not better, / Because that I am more than common tall, / That I did suit me all points like a man? / … / A boar-spear in my hand; and in my heart / Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will, / We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside, / As many other mannish cowards have / That do outface it with their semblances” (I, iii, 111-118). As Ganymede, she travels with Celia and the jester Touchstone, while Orlando traveling with his servant Adam is able to find the camp of Duke Senior, who takes him in as the son of an old friend. The two girls purchase a small cottage for themselves and take up residence which makes it possible for Orlando to meet up with Ganymede completely unaware of Rosalind’s hidden identity. Like Viola, Rosalind finds herself in love with a man who thinks he’s in love with someone else at the same time that she is pursued by someone of her own sex in the form of the shepherdess Phoebe. As the players begin to tire of their romantic game in the forest, Rosalind calls an end to it and the play ends with everyone getting happily married to the individual of their choosing. Again, Shakespeare combines subtle social commentary with highly amusing sexual connotations as his cross-dressing females encounter too much love to cope with. As is made clear in the summary of this play, there is a great deal of similarity between the way in which Rosalind finds inner strength and the way in which Viola discovers inner strength. Through the simple necessity of having to dress like a boy in order to secure her own protection, Rosaline is able to discover courage and strength she was previously unaware of. While she is seen to be pleading with her uncle for safe shelter at the beginning of the play, “I do beseech your Grace, / Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me / If with myself I hold intelligence / Or have acquaintance with my own desires / … then, dear uncle, / Never so much as in a thought unborn / Did I offend your Highness” (I, iii, 41-48). However, already as she has found herself living in the woods as a man, Rosalind is able by the third act to assert herself even in the presence of the man she loves and who she strongly suspects has feelings for her. Because these feelings seem so inappropriately expressed though, she undertakes to teach him what she wants him to know of love, thus reversing the traditional male/female roles at the same time that she has switched her clothing. She promises him, “I would cure you, it you would but call me Rosalind and come every day to my cote and woo me” (III, ii, 399-400). Thus, in the end, it is through her own efforts that Rosalind is able to get the man she wants, both in physical form and as he has been educated as to how to properly treat his lady, taught by her own hand. In both of these plays, Shakespeare provides his audience with a great deal of bawdy entertainment as they watched a man dressed like a woman pretend to be a man as she was pursued by a woman. However, hidden beneath this hilarity, he demonstrates that the strength of women goes much deeper than men would typically like to believe even as their cleverness enables them to accomplish much more than society would normally allow. Both Viola and Rosalind break the traditional patterns as they each undertake the necessary steps of educating their selected men in the art of true love and passion as opposed to the men’s vacuous understanding and pitiful attempts at courtship. While there are some differences in plot and Rosalind emerges as being the stronger of these two women in that she brings the entire play full circle, arranging in the end for her own marriage rather than leaving it up to others, it remains clear that both women have discovered their own strength and voice in the donning of men’s clothing. While Shakespeare’s primary intent might have been to entertain a widely diverse audience, he was also able to subtly include lessons to his society that supported the strength of his queen and her gender within the highly constrictive understandings of his time.   Works Cited Geraghty, Jenia. “William Shakespeare. Twelfth Night.” Literature Study Online. (November 2002). April 13, 2009 < http://www.literature-study-online.com/essays/twelfth-night.html> Shakespeare, William. “As You Like It.” William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Alfred Harbage (Ed.). New York: Viking Books, 1969. Shakespeare, William. “Twelfth Night, or, What You Will.” William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Alfred Harbage (Ed.). New York: Viking Books, 1969. Read More