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... bsp; theater characteristically calls idealization into question and foregrounds excess' (Belsey 92). Helen is both idealized and the pursuit of her excessive; hence she is unlikely to escape unscathed in a satirical treatment of the Trojan war. The contrast between the empowering masculinization of female characters and the paralyzing feminization of males make the latter more appropriate to a tragedy or a satire, the former more useful in comedy.
Rosalind speaks several times in ways that display an awareness of her (doubly) altered gender, for instance linking boys and women as 'cattle of this color' (III. ii. 414). In a more radical maneuver 'she' addresses the audience as a male epilogue. 'If I were a woman... ' (AYLI epilogue) not only calls attention to the gap between the gender of the performer and the gender of the actor, but demands that the audience recognize of the actor as actor. The tensions set up in the play remain in suspense until Ganymede disappears and Rosalind reappears near the end of Act V.
All the complications surrounding Orlando, Phebe, and Silvius are resolved as Rosalind gives up her assumption of a man's prerogatives. It is easy to assume that dominant males in Shakespearean comedy conform to norms of expectation and behavior, but it is more difficult to determine what those expectations may have been in the Elizabethan era. Psychologists have examined the development of sexual awareness as part of identity. Much psychological theory holds that the male child's initial awareness as Other (than Mother) has to do with a recognition first of separateness and then of difference; arguably sexual difference. If 'the awareness of being a man or a woman -- gender identity -- coexists with the awareness of being a separate individual. Part of making that separation is denying the authority of the females who raised male children during the English Renaissance, and as a consequence abrogating authority to women in later life would represent a challenge not only to a man's sense of power, but to his very sense of male identity. " (Kahn 9) If it is the man's part to swagger, roar, thunder, boast, and swear, then Petruchio is the perfect type of the male.
But these behaviors are excessive and 'farcical exaggerations of normal masculine behavior' (Kahn 109). We are encouraged to understand Petruchio's behavior as a performance. His initial scene with Kate establishes a basis for understanding his excesses throughout acts II-IV as part of an act. Later, Petruchio speaks of his acts as performance (IV. i. 188 - 211), perhaps to assure the audience that they are indeed witnessing a comedy and not something worse.
Barton (in Evans 107) argues that this performance is designed to show Katherine the folly of her excesses, demonstrate to her how shrewishness is intolerable. Petruchio's several allusions to his military past 'bespeak a lifelong acquaintance with masculine violence as a physical vocation' (Kahn 109). Petruchio's actions are part of a performance but the underlying truth (for Petruchio) is not that this excessive behavior is undesirable, but that it is undesirable in a woman. Behavior suited to a man is prohibited in a woman, since she must be complementary to him, not competitive with him. Petruchio goes too far, to make a point with Kate, but it is because Petruchio's assertion of his dominance is excessive that an audience is allowed to find it comedic. The best example of a Shakespearean comedy which depends on the success of a cross- gender disguise is As You Like It.
In order to escape the restrictions of Duke Frederick's court, Celia declares that she will accompany the banished Rosalind out of the court. They resolve to join Rosalind's father in the Forest of Arden. Fearing molestation should they travel as two women, Rosalind proposes to disguise herself as a man because she is 'more than common tall' (I. iii. 115).
realizing that more than cross-dressing is necessary to make her disguise convincing, she determines to assume 'a swashing and a martial outside, / As many other mannish cowards do' (I. iii. 120 - 121). Imogen (in Cym) is told by Piano that she 'must forget to be a woman; change... fear and niceness...
into a waggish courage, / Ready in gibes, quick-answer'd, saucy, and/ As quarrelsome as the weasel' (III. iv. 154 - 159). Imogen hardly has an opportunity to perform her role, but Rosalind, who has made many of the same choices, maintains hers for the better part of her time on stage. Not only are male disguises for female characters exploited for ironic humor and for the curiously compounded sexual tensions they make possible, they bring to the fore all the conventional expectations of masculine performance implied by Elizabethan society. Male disguise for a male character -- for such is the over determined performance of masculinity displayed by Petruchio -- similarly highlights those aspects of behavior that are taken for granted as 'male' when exaggeration does not make them obvious; and funny.
Works Consulted Bamber, Linda. Comic Women, Tragic Men: A Study of Gender and Genre in Shakespeare. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1982 Belsey, Catherine. "Desire's Excess: Edward II, Troilus and Cressida, Othello. ' In Erotic Politics: Desire on the Renaissance Stage. Susan Zimmerman, ed.
New York: Routledge, 1992 Cook, Carol. 'Unbodied Figures of Desire (on Troilus and Cressida). ' In Performing Feminism's: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. , Sue-Ellen Case, ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990 Dollimore, Jonathan. Subjectivity, Sexuality, and Transgression: The Jacobean Connection. Renaissance Drama n. s. 17 (1986), 53 - 81 Evans, G. Blakemore ed.
The Riverside Shakespeare. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. , 1974 Kahn, Coppzlia. Man's Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981 Traub, Valerie. Desire and Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama. New York: Routledge 1992
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