ABSTRACT
Teachers might decide to play it safe – or might use the existence of the Section as an excuse not to recognize their own unconscious prejudice against homosexuality. Sodomites might seem a surprising part of the list but, as recent work on the history of homosexuality has shown, the possibility of sexual misconduct, and its relationship to other forms of social disorder, were much written about in renaissance England. The play’s opening, therefore, clearly indicates the need for familial stability if social stability is to be maintained, whilst also emphasizing that the legal and conventional differentiations of status between older and younger brothers was a source of rebellion and rage. For a lesbian and feminist reader/teacher such as me, however, the central focus of the play’s concern with order is found in the character of Rosalind. The word ‘ganymede’, in fact, was one commonly used in the renaissance to refer to homosexuals.
