Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages (review)

The enticing possibilities of gender performativity have seduced many current scholars into studying cross-dressing on the stage and have provided critical legitimacy to theatrical and dramaturgical practices previously considered relatively inconsequential. The early modern stage, especially the custom of the boy player presenting female roles, has provided an abundance of material for theorizing gender. The richness and complexity of this area of study is apparent in Michael Shapiro’s Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages. Not content simply to examine the ramifications of boys playing women’s roles, however, Shapiro focuses on the convention of boy actors playing female characters who disguise themselves as boys. The delightful complications of this gender layering, and the clarity with which Shapiro untangles this multiplicity makes this a significant contribution to the study of cross-dressing in the early modern theatre. As the author of Children of the Revels and of substantial articles on the audience reception of the boy player, Shapiro has written a book that complements his already considerable body of work in this area.

The book, divided into two parts, examines the male actor/female character/male disguise from three evidential perspectives. Shapiro discusses the social context of cross-dressing in early modern England, the theatrical practice of the boy heroine, and the dramaturgical treatment of the disguised female page. Part one considers extradramatic sources which may have impacted the reception of the cross-dressed heroine in early modern drama. Using legal and literary sources Shapiro shows that working-class women who cross-dressed were accused of sexual transgressions, while middle-class women who crossed sartorial lines were castigated for attempting to usurp male prerogatives. However, the disguised female heroine of literature, including drama, was recuperated into respectability by the romantic notion which prompted the disguise. Shapiro goes on to investigate the theatrical practice of boys playing women, with special emphasis on the performance of disguised heroines. Building on his earlier notion of the dual consciousness of the audience, which allowed spectators to remain aware of the male performer under the female character, Shapiro identifies an effect in these plays which he terms “theatrical vibrancy” (7). The layering of gender identities and the self-referential possibilities of the boy actor playing a woman who disguises herself as a boy “created a splendid opportunity for the play-boy to display his virtuosity” with “rapid oscillation between layers” (59). Shapiro sees power and depth in the shifts among actor, character, and disguise; it is this depth which he names as theatrical vibrancy.

The second part of the book focuses on dramaturgical considerations of the disguised heroine. Emphasizing the works of Shakespeare, Shapiro divides his chapters among the five plays which include a disguised heroine, namely The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Cymbeline. From the pert Lylian page, a saucy lackey who boldly manipulates the action for her own devices, to the frail waif who employs disguise only to camouflage identity and/or gender, Shapiro displays the diversity and vitality of the motif. His careful readings of the texts uncover the subtlety and intricacy of this character complication. For example, while discussing As You Like It, Shapiro recognizes the fourth level of gender layering operating in the narrative when the boy actor playing Rosalind, who has disguised herself as Ganymed, must present a stereotypical woman in an attempt to cure Orlando from his lovesickness. This addition to the layering of gender identities could “intensify what was already a highly reflexive situation” (119), which, Shapiro believes, “allowed the audience to share the performer’s perspective (142). As conjectural as that statement is, the reconstructed models offered by Shapiro present an excellent point for dialogue and further consideration.

One area in which this book is especially strong is the broad range of historical, literary and dramatic texts used as evidence. As Shapiro himself points...