ABSTRACT
Starting from medieval French romance, and threading her way through the novels or plays of Italy, the heroine in hose and doublet at last reached the England of Shakespeare, where she became the most graceful and charming figure on the stage. 1 Perhaps in real life, too, the female page sometimes wandered through merry England. Queen Elizabeth herself once listened to an ambassador who offered to convey her secretly to Scotland, dressed like a page, in order that she might under this disguise see Queen Mary. Elizabeth appeared to like the plan, but answered with a sigh, saying “Alas! If I might do it thus!” 2 At any rate we shall see that as a literary tradition, in the novels and on the stage, the disguised heroine was already established in England when Shakespeare wrote his Two Gentlemen of Verona.
