"Thinke nothing true": Cross-Dressing in Late Elizabethan and Early Jacobean Drama

Abstract

This thesis analyses the role of cross-dressing in late Elizabethan and early Jacobean drama, focusing on six comedies of the period. Contrary to previous studies, which underlined the transgressive qualities of onstage cross-dressing, this work will stress its role as a metatheatrical device for the upholding of social norms. In these comedies, references breaking the illusion of all-male cast conventions highlight the liminal features of theatrical travesty and of the theatrical "as-if" dimension. However, both such carnivalesque qualities and the comic framework have been shown to be deeply conservative, and these comedies reinforce the established social order also by restating the appropriateness of certain behaviours for each gender. This process seems to "under-power" assertive female characters and also to question previous assumptions on the homoerotic safety of the theatrical dimension.