ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the halved beard's putative power to undo manhood in the martial register alongside dramatic representations associating the half-bearded boy-actor with the hermaphrodite. It also considers the complex value of the early modern hermaphrodite, arguing that representations of the figure gesture not only toward the potential for male diminution and the vertical alignment of sex and gender paradigms but also toward the cause and compensatory function of fetish more generally. Edwin Sandys insists that the half beards worn by King David's messengers are not accurate reflections of their duplicity or diminution but rather evidence of their exemplary righteousness. In the drama, the threat posed to the gender system by social hermaphrodites could be contained and assuaged by projecting female cross-dressing onto the bodies of smooth boys, themselves figurative hermaphrodites. Thomas Harrab thus interprets the half beard pejoratively as a symbol of diminished ritual resulting in religious attenuation, diminution, and decline.
