TY - BOOK AU - Shapiro,Michael ED - Project Muse. TI - Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage : : Boy Heroines and Female Pages / SN - 9780472904242 PY - 1996/// CY - Ann Arbor PB - The University of Michigan Press KW - Shakespeare, William, KW - Theâtre KW - Angleterre (GB) KW - Identite sexuelle KW - Dans la litterature KW - ram KW - 17e siecle KW - 16e siecle KW - Rôle selon le sexe KW - Women in the theater KW - fast KW - Women in literature KW - Theater KW - Casting KW - Sex role in literature KW - Gender identity in the theater KW - Gender identity in literature KW - Disguise in literature KW - Cross-dressing in literature KW - Child actors KW - Travestisme dans la litterature KW - Femmes dans la litterature KW - Deguisement dans la litterature KW - Rôle selon le sexe dans la litterature KW - Identite de genre dans la litterature KW - Enfants acteurs KW - Angleterre KW - Histoire KW - Femmes au theâtre KW - Identite de genre au theâtre KW - Distribution artistique KW - England KW - History KW - 17th century KW - 16th century KW - Electronic books. KW - local N1 - A brief social history of female cross-dressing -- Male cross-dressing in playhouses and plays -- Cross-gender disguise plus cross-gender casting -- Bringing the page onstage: The two gentlemen of Verona -- Doubling of cross-gender disguise: The merchant of Venice -- Layers of disguise: As you like it -- Anxieties of intimacy: Twelfth night -- From center to periphery: Cymbeline; Open Access N2 - "Like other English Renaissance writers and dramatists, Shakespeare was attracted to the heroine in male disguise. Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage examines the use of this type of character--man playing woman playing man--by framing five plays by Shakespeare against readings of some of the other "female page" plays written by other playwrights of the period. The many variations Michael Shapiro traces are placed in the context of female cross-dressing as a social phenomenon and in the context of female impersonation as the standard way of representing women on the Shakespearean stage. Shakespeare's use of the female page spanned his entire career: The Two Gentlemen of Verona (an early comedy), The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night (mature romantic comedies), and Cymbeline (a late romance). Shapiro deploys several modes of literary criticism to establish the distinctiveness of each of Shakespeare's five disguised heroine plays and to trace the subtle and ingenious variations on the motif by such writers as Greene, Fletcher, Chapman, Middleton, Jonson, and Ford. The popularity of the "female page" is examined as a playful literary and theatrical way of confronting, avoiding, or merely exploiting issues such as the place of women in a patriarchal culture and the representation of women on stage. Looking beyond and behind the stage for the cultural anxieties that cross-dressing London women being punished as prostitutes and speculation that the apprentices who played female roles in adult companies engaged in homoerotic practices. [This book] will appeal not only to scholars of Renaissance drama but to any reader interested in the historical construction and analysis of gender and sexuality, both on- and offstage"-- Back cover UR - https://muse.jhu.edu/book/113372/ ER -