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Cross-Dressing, Gender, and Absolutism in the Beaumont and Fletcher Plays
- SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 44, Number 2, Spring 2004
- pp. 359-377
- 10.1353/sel.2004.0013
- Article
- Additional Information
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Cross-dressing in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon marks anxieties or conflicted ideas about royal absolutism. Love's Cure, The Loyal Subject, Philaster, and The Maid's Tragedy display anxiety about the intersection of gender and authority. Tragicomic dramaturgy lends itself to the social function of embodying rather than resolving contradictions. And a new kind of "femaleness" in these plays, encoding passive versions of male virtue, implies a redefinition of maleness that conflates passivity with heroism. Mingling the discourses of gender and of sovereignty, Beaumont and Fletcher created immoral or inept monarchs and women whose conduct reassured an androgynous masculinity.