Gender in Shakespeare’s England

The subtitle of Twelfth Night, “or what you will” could have easily been a commentary on the fluid gender dynamics of the play.

‍In Shakespeare’s day, Viola would have been a boy playing a girl playing a boy for most of the play and Olivia would have been a boy playing a girl in love with a boy playing a girl playing a boy. PHEW.

The Early Modern period was an interesting clash between rigid rules about what a man and a woman could do legally and a period with a surprising amount of female agency, perhaps due to having a female monarch on the throne.

The fabulous creature to the left is Mary Frith also known as Moll Cutpurse. Frith wore male attire, despite social mores, and became a celebrated figure in London, featuring in Middleton and Dekker’s play The Roaring Girl (1611).

Firth wasn’t the only one. Britannica tells us that “Arrest records of the period demonstrate instances of prostitutes disguising themselves as men so as to be less noticeable to the authorities while on the streets and of women wearing male clothing to visit or elope with their lovers.”

The pamphlets Hic Mulier: or, The Man-Woman  and Haec-Vir: or, the Womanish-Man (1620) indicate some of the anxieties around gender in Early Modern England. While Hic Mulier against women wearing men’s clothes, Haec-Vir argues that women were forced into "overstepping their bounds" because men have ceased to be "real men".

‍Similarly, many of the anti-theatrical tracts from the period rail against boy players taking on female roles, which “effeminized” the minds of the audience and could negatively impact the gender identity of the performers.‍ ‍